Labour are planning to increase both employer and employee National Insurance Contributions by one per cent from April next year – a straightforward tax on jobs that threatens to kill the recovery. Under Labour’s tax-raising plans, anyone earning over £20,000 a year will see their pay packet shrink. Labour will also increase the tax that local firms pay for hiring workers who earn £5,700 a year or more.

The Federation of Small Businesses and the Centre for Economics and Business Research have estimated that this will cost 57,000 jobs in small and medium sized enterprises alone, some of these may be in Portsmouth.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that twelve per cent of employers will recruit fewer staff, while eight per cent will cut jobs.

That is why George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has announced that a Conservative government will stop the most damaging part of this jobs tax by cutting out £6 billion of wasteful government spending this year.

Our plans to cut waste are backed by Labour’s own efficiency advisers; and our plans to stop Labour’s jobs tax are backed by the leaders of all the main business organisations including the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses, as well as almost forty top business leaders of some of Britain’s largest companies – such as Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Next – which, between them, employ over 500,000 people, as well as the leaders of Britain’s business organisations.

This is just one part our plans to get Britain working by boosting enterprise. We will also cut headline corporation tax rates for companies of all sizes funded by reducing complex reliefs and allowances, abolish tax on the first ten jobs created by new firms in their first year and get people off welfare and into work. And we will act now on debt to get the economy moving – we will deal with the deficit further and faster than Labour, making a start this year.

The choice at this election is clear: five more years of Labour’s debt, waste and taxes, or change with the Conservatives who will stop the jobs tax and get the economy moving again.