From the BBC:
Having made an unfair diagonal comparison...
... the PM continued: "That is [Labour's] policy. The squeezed middle will be squeezed more. Now you need to tell us which people are going to pay which taxes because on this side of the House, we have cut council tax, we have cut petrol duty, we have cut the jobs tax, we have increased the married couples allowance."
OK.
They have not "cut" Council Tax, they have capped increases to +/- normal price inflation, and they only achieved this by increasing central grants to councils funded out of general taxation.
They have not "cut" petrol duty either, they have just increased it slightly less than originally planned.
They did not cut "the jobs tax" (National Insurance), they increased it by 2% (1% on Employer's, 1% on Employee's). There is a silly gimmick about knocking off the first £2,000 a year from the Employer's National Insurance. Whoopee do. The value of the allowance to small firms is about one-tenth as much as the overall extra tax from the extra 2%.
The married couples allowance has indeed been increased by £250, so the value of this is a maximum of £50 a year. But only married couples where the older partner was over 65 on 5 April 2000 can claim it.
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