Labour Lead Councillor for Culture & Sport Marian Livingston has leapt into the row about George Osborne’s trying to cap big donations to charities saying that while the measure won’t hit small local charities it shows a government speaking with forked tongues about charitable giving.
“On the one hand,” she says, “the Tory Government wants to withdraw from many areas and leave more and more to charity, on the other it caps the amount big donors can set against income tax. As Ed Miliband says, the Treasury is reducing taxes for all the wealthiest people in the country - except for those who are doing the right thing by giving large amounts of their money to charity, whether this is for cancer research, for major institutions like the National Gallery and the Royal Opera House, or help for the third world.
“Reading West MP Alok Sharma is of course a Treasury Minister, one always on the look-out for photo-opportunities with charities, and it would be interesting to know what he thinks about this nutty scheme.”
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