MADAM,

Stuart Willcock’s concern about “savings and investments to be seized by the state and not passed on to your children” (‘Acting for the many not the few,’ 24th May) would be all the more touching if we didn’t know Labour was proposing its own ‘death tax’. Indeed the exempt amount for couples would be halved from £850,000 to £425,000. We do not know to what extent end of life care might hit our savings but we do know that 40 per cent of savings above this threshold will be inescapable in Labour’s tax grab.

Who pays what to fund essential public services is of course tricky territory as Mrs May discovered last week. Labour’s suggestion that more money for the NHS, education, the abolition of University tuition fees, affordable housing, an enhancement of benefits etc, can be paid for by the richest five percent, big corporations and tax dodgers is superficially seductive but is it credible? At least the Liberal Democrats recognise that improved funding for the NHS will need a penny on income tax from all of us.

Despite the soft words geared to a Monmouthshire audience we are faced with the most left wing Labour manifesto in over 30 years.

So comprehensively have Labour occupied their territory, the Communist Party have given up in despair! For the first time in years they will not be fielding candidates but urging supporters to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Even the suggestion that the Conservative lead in the polls was narrowing was enough to unsettle sterling on the foreign exchanges last week.

Any run on the pound would quickly feed into the cost of living. I fear the cost of a Labour government spending spree would soon be paid for by the many rather than the few.

David Kenny

(Tredunnock)