I agree with , the move towards a £10k personal allowance is the right move but I think this should be paid through a cut back in benefits. The selling point being, go get a job and potentially you could earn a tax free wage.
You could if there was work out there!
I agree that the move to a £10K personal allowance is a positive one... And ulltimately making it FEASIBLE to move off benefits will reduce the burden...
But a HUGE unspoken part of the benefits bill relates to keeping offices full of utterly useless numpties that serve no other function than to harass benefit recipients into chasing jobs that don't exist... The Pauline Campbell-Jones character from "League of Geltlemen" was perillously well observed from an actual restart officer that Reece Shearsmith had the misfortune to encounter while on the dole before becoming successful... And having spent a (mercifully short) time working in the Careers Service myself I can confirm that such 'types' are pretty much the norm...
The benefits system is also known to 'trap' people; ramping down secondary benefits such as housing and council tax too rapidly to allow for the fact it costs money to GET to work and maintian oneself in work...
As for things like the tax credit system.. That's just a mess! People are better off avoiding it since they can get into the common situation where they're paying more money back in 'overpayments' due to DWP error (they almost never get it right) than they're getting in tax credits... Net effect poor people that need help are having their already inadequate income reduced by the state...
And the whole sorry mess costs a FORTUNE!!!
I don't think increasing VAT is the way to go though... Simply because it'll hit those on the most marginal incomes the hardest!
Personally, I'd sooner pay a bit more on the higher rate tax and perhaps see the layers above that squeezed a bit more... My having to save up a bit longer to buy my next Mont Blanc is less of a price than some kid having to go without because their parent's marginal income has been squeezed just that bit too far...
If anything they need to be making moves that will reduce prices in the shops.. Especially for food and fuel...