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Derek Scott, Tony Blair's own former economic adviser, has accused Gordon Brown of creating an economy in which 'excessive public spending, higher taxes and intrusive micromanagement are gradually taking their toll'.

Gisela Stuart MP, a former junior minister, said earlier this week that high taxes and and spending could lead to 'future stagnation'. She warned of complacency after years of apparent economic success.

She should know. Gisela Stuart was born in Velden, Germany. She has seen how her home country got complacent after years of apparent economic success and consequently lapsed into its current, long-lasting economic stagnation.

In 1966, Germany lost to England in the world cup final, but it was universally regarded as the easy winner in the race for economic prosperity after the devastation of the second world war. Its fabulous economic growth came in the wake of economic management by Ludwig Erhard. He believed in low regulation and low taxes. Erhard did away with price controls overnight. He was all for free enterprise and, as a result, Germany thrived. The people of Germany became far richer than the British.

Then Germany started taking its prosperity for granted and had a succession of Left-wing governments which increased taxes and regulations. At first there was little effect. But gradually, Germany began to slow down. Meanwhile in 1979, Britain elected Margaret Thatcher who set about doing the exact opposite. The British position was turned around. From being the sick man of Europe, Britain started to catch up again. Instead of us worrying about how we should copy France or Germany, those two countries began to admire this country, instead.

But now that era is over, too. Both countries have changed direction again. Gordon Brown has been increasing our taxes while, in Germany, they have been cutting back. We have now reached the point of cross-over, when German taxation is becoming lower than British as a proportion of the national economy.

The result is inevitable. Gradualy, British growth will tail off. The more that Mr Brown raises taxes, the slower our economy will develop. It is already starting. When Labour came to power, economic growth tended to be higher than most people expected and above that of the rest of Europe. Now there are few happy surprises and our performance no longer shines so brightly.

Most of us don't realise the full extent of how much we pay in tax. The standard tax rate of 22 per cent is only the tip of the iceberg. We also pay National Insurance, which has become a tax by another name. Many people who do pretty well in their careers are surprised how quickly they find themselves paying the top rate of tax of 40 per cent. The pay of all of us is reduced because the companies which employ us must pay corporation tax and other taxes. And when we spend our earnings, we have to pay VAT or other duties. Even when we die, some two million of us now have estates that would be liable to inheritance tax. Add all that up together and we get to the daunting figure of 42 per cent of the national economy disappearing in tax.

Tax dampens our incentives to work and create new businesses. It damages the profits of enterprises so they are less able to compete and invest.

Lower taxes are not just about you and I having a little more take-home pay. They are about the future prosperity of this country.

If only tax were much lower, as it was a century ago, the British would probably enjoy bigger personal incomes after tax than the citizens of any other major country in the world. That is an assertion based on an OECD estimate of the damaging effect which taxation has on growth.

As taxes slide upwards, this is no time for the Conservative Party to lose sight of the fact that tax levels are vitally important. The country is in increasing danger of getting used to the idea that heavy taxes are fine. They are not. They are the enemy not only of our own living standards, but those of our children and grandchildren.

This is the unedited version of the article that appears in today's Daily Express.

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He should remember that even in 2000, support for the disruption of supplies was not that fulsome. Only 56 per cent of people were behind further blockades according to one poll. But although people were not sure about the hauliers, they became convinced that the government was handling it badly. Disapproval of the leadership ran at the higher level of 72 per cent.

So while support for the hauliers may be more muted than before, anger with the government could still increase. It is a simple phenomenon: if anything goes badly wrong with the smooth running of the country, the government tends to lose popularity.

Anger with the government is likely to increase both because of the disruption and because we don't like paying so much for our petrol, especially as it comes just before we are going to have to pay for heating and lighting this winter. British Gas has already announced a price rise of 14 per cent.

The focus of annoyance is going to keep coming back to Mr Brown because he refuses to do anything to ease the pain. Worst of all, he is actually making money out of it.

The amount of revenue the government collected from North Sea Oil production last year was £5billion. This year, according to the UK Offshore Operators' Association, he is on course to take far more: £10billion. Even that estimate might be too low since it is based on an average price of of US$50 a gallon of crude oil. The price is currently much higher.

He is also making extra money out of VAT on every litre of petrol we buy at the pump. True, the amount he gets in petrol duty has not changed. It is a whopping 47.1p and that is what make the price of petrol in Britain among the highest in the world. But there is also VAT on petrol which has risen from 12.2p a year ago to 14.1p today. So 2p of the cost of each litre now is extra money which Gordon Brown is taking from compared to a year ago. If you fill up a tank with 45 litres, the extra money taken by Mr Brown is 90p. He is making a painfully high oil price even higher.

As more people realise this, they are going to demand that Mr Brown cuts back on his increased taxation of petrol - even if it is relatively short term. After all, the current sky-high oil price is not likely to last more than a year or two. At this price, all sorts of energy reserves around the world that were not worth exploiting before have become highly profitable. There is about to be a boom - especially in America and parts of the former Soviet Union - in oil, coal and gas development.

But Gordon Brown has another problem. One of the other differences between now and five years ago is that, in 2000, the economy was going pretty well and the government's finances were in good fettle. But he has used up both the good economic inheritance he got from the Tories and the sound financial position he gained from economic growth combined with tax increases. Mr Brown is therefore heading for increasing budget deficits and lower growth. He has not got so much room for manoeuvre. In his next budget, he was expected to raise taxes. He really needs the extra tax windfall that this higher oil price is bringing him.

He knows he is in trouble. That is why he tried to pre-empt discussion by saying he was not going to reduce the tax. He also has briefed newspapers that this is all an international problem and nothing to do with him. He has tried to re-direct attention away from himself by blaming the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries for not increasing production more. While he is at it, he is also trying to make us believe that the recent oil price rise is as economically devastating as the one in the 1970s. That is simply not true and he is saying it - being one of the most calculating of politicians - because he wants this to be accepted as the reason why the economy is doing worse now than he predicted.

In the world Brown wants us to believe in, everything that goes right is because of him and everything that goes wrong is because of someone else.

But the hard truth is Mr Brown's record of economic growth is coming to an end and he is now just a tax-and-spend chancellor making money out of other people's petrol misery. He had better bend with the wind if he does not want the frustations and unhappiness of the moment to turn soon into bitterness directed at him.

(This is the unedited version of an article that appeared in the Daily Express today.)

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It started with Estonia which established a flat tax rate of 26 per cent. The little country is so pleased with the results that it is going to bring the rate down to 20 per cent. Lithuania, Latvia and Russia have joined the bandwageon, followed by Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia. Poland intends to take it on.Greece might do too. Ireland is introducing a flat tax for companies. And - most significant of all - Angela Merkel, who is likely to become Germany's new leader in September, has employed a flat tax supporter as her economic advisor.

At first blush, the idea sounds like a charter for the rich. The top rate would fall from 40 per cent to, say, 22 per cent. But when you look at it more closely, you discover that the rich would not be the greatest beneficiaries. The poor would be.

They would be completely taken out of tax. Take a lone woman of 64 with income of only, say, £6,000. She is defined by the Government as being in 'poverty'. Yet at the same time, the government demands that she pays income tax. It is obscene. A flat tax would end this absurdity.

A research paper published by the Adam Smith Institute suggests that the benefit for the poorest ten per cent would amount to 9.2% of their income. All the biggest percentage gains would all be for those at the lower end of the income scale. They would pay no income tax at all or pay it on a much smaller part of their incomes.

This would also make it more worthwhile for low-earners to work. At present, those on Jobseekers Allowance or other out-of-work benefits have to compare carefully the money they get from the state with the cash they could earn after tax. But if there was no tax, the advantage of working would become clear as daylight. So more people would work which would mean a more productive economy, more income from tax and lower benefit pay-outs - a win-win-win situation.

The essence of what Gordon Brown has been doing over the past eight years has been to create all sorts of allowances and tax credits. One minute he is offering a concession to the elderly, then to low-income families with children and so on. But how much simpler it would be to offer low tax or no tax to all the less well-off. How much better that they should be able to avoid filling in one of Gordon Brown's forms. Many people - especially pensioners - cannot face the paperwork and feel humiliated asking for money. So they pay more tax than they should. The Government has imposed a system which it knows will penalise such people. A flat tax system would get rid of that.

Admittedly it would cost quite a lot of money. But the James Review identified savings of £35 billion that could be made by this wasteful government. And the economic growth and employment a flat tax would encourage would make the rest up before long.

Hong Kong has had a flat tax since 1947 and its economic success has been awesome. And a flat tax would, surprisingly, raise almost as much from the rich as the current rate. They would stop avoiding so much tax through deductions and evasion. More rich people would come to live in Britain, too.

Of course, a drawback for Gordon Brown would be be that he would not get to do all his economic micro-management. He would not be able to get favourable headlines by giving a hand-out to Paul while not mentioning that he was paying for it by robbing Peter.

No wonder Gordon Brown does not like the idea. But the rest of us should be seriously interested.

(This is the unedited version of an article which appears in the Daily Express today.)

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In a hard-hitting report, she says that, without reforms to the system, "a sizeable group of families will continue to suffer not only considerable inconvenience, but also significant worry and distress".

She urges ministers to reconsider the way the Government pays tax credits, which are claimed by around six million families.

She also accuses the Treasury of misleading MPs about the extent of the problems and calls for claimants to be allowed to keep overpayments received as a result of error. The ombudsman's findings, which are echoed in a separate report today from the charity Citizens Advice, are an embarrassment to the Chancellor, who considers tax credits to be one of his major achievements.

The full article is in the Telegraph.

Polly Toynbee, in the Guardian, rode to the defence of tax credits although in the process she was good enough to lay bare more about how disastrous they have been:

If the sums involved are eye-wateringly huge - £2bn overpaid - that is because more families are getting these payments and the money they receive is far more generous than ever before. Even so, it takes the breath away to find that out of the 6 million families getting tax credits, almost 2 million have been overpaid by an average of £1,000 each.

For Ms Toynbee, it is a regrettable side issue that two million overpayments have been made. For her, the point is how generous Mr Brown has been and how clever he is politically to help the poor, despite the fact that - so she claims - the electorate does not like this.

She claims, incidentally, that there is no higher incidence of computer systems going wrong in the private sector than in the public sector. I wonder what evidence she has for that, assuming she has some? But in any case, should not prudent government policy allow for the fact that public sector computer systems, at least, tend to go wrong (and way over budget)? Would it not be sensible to make policies, where possible, that do not heavily depend on them?

But the major failing of her piece is the failure to consider much simpler (and thus less accident-prone) approaches such as introducing a high threshold for tax free income. Tax credits are generally repayments of tax paid. It is far simpler not to take the tax in the first place.

A second failing in her piece is to ignore the fact that many of the poorest and least able do not claim their tax credits. It is just too difficult. So they are not helped at all.

Today, Polly Toynbee has been reminded that her great admiration for tax credits is not shared by, er,

The Guardian

The Guardian was the first newspaper to reveal the tax credit system was in trouble and Jobs & Money has campaigned tirelessly for two years for the Inland Revenue officials to take a more lenient stance on repayments.

Last year, under the headline "Don't make it easy for the taxman" we told how Citizens Advice was advising claimants to check their records before agreeing to make overpayments. Given the official reports detailing how Inland Revenue systems make thousands of errors a month, it turned out be sound advice.

In the spring we offered further tips on how to appeal if the Revenue had begun to claw back overpayments ("Tax credit victims in fightback") and reported on calls by MPs for ministers to tackle the "tax credit shambles".

It would be a further two months before Dawn Primarolo, the minister in charge would concede to conducting a limited review. Calls for her resignation this week were rebuffed by the government.

The government has resisted calls for an overhaul of the tax credits system ever since it was launched in 2003 amid chaos and confusion.

Ms Primarolo ordered a limited review last month, but this week's critical reports have failed to persuade her the system is flawed.

She has also ignored calls by charities representing low income families, MPs and civil service unions, which have campaigned for a moratorium on demands for tax credits to be repaid until basic defects in the system are investigated.

"Chaos", "confusion", "shambles"? Not a problem for Polly.

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Ministers are bursting with ideas and are asking others to come up with more. A government policy document proposes that council tax in Northern Ireland should be based on home values. The idea could be tried out there and then applied nationwide.

If ministers don't go for that one, they will get suggestions from a review of council tax by Sir Michael Lyons later this year. He is likely to recommend changes to council tax which will result in many people paying more.

Don't let us forget second homes. Next month a 'rural housing commission' will start looking for ways in which to hurt those with a place in town and a hideaway in the country. This could be done through planning restrictions or by raising council tax for second home owners. Yvette Cooper, a minister in John Prescott's department, has said it might be a good idea to tax second home owners because this could make more homes affordable for local people. As ever, the government is keen to blame problems on other people. The real reason property is expensive is that we have a rising population (partly through immigration), more people living alone because of family breakdown and very restrictive planning laws. The result is inevitable and not the fault of second home owners.

Gordon Brown has already got 'form' on taxing property. He has increased the rate of stamp duty several times since he became chancellor and he has kept the increases in stamp duty thresholds - the point at which the higher rates apply - far below the increases in house prices. The top rate of stamp duty is now four per cent and many people who once thought the higher rates would never affect them are finding they are getting close to them.

Mr Brown also increasingly taxes property when people die. As with stamp duty, he has raised the inheritance tax threshold as slowly as possible. As property prices have risen, there are millions of people alive today who will not be able to leave their homes to their children, free and clear. They will be forced to leave up to forty per cent of the value to Gordon Brown.

Why does Labour government have it in for property?

One reason is grubbily political. Property taxes genrally raise money without hitting Labour's supporters in areas where property prices are relatively low. In Scotland and the North of England, some 60 per cent of property purchases do not attract stamp duty at all. That compares with only 13 per cent in the South East and less than five per cent in London. Similarly less than 10 per cent of purchases in Scotland, the North, the North-West, Yorkshire and Humberside and Wales attract the the three per cent or four per cent bands of stamp duty. In contrast, the higher rates are paid in close to 40 per cent of purchases in London. Stamp duty is a tax on the south and on Conservative Party supporters.

Gordon Brown has also got Left-wing theorists egging him on towards higher property taxation too. The Institute for Public Policy Research has called on the government to “reduce the under-taxation of home ownership” arguing that more tax would reduce the gap between the homes lived in by the rich and those of the poor. Another argument in favour of hitting home owners is the suggestion that, Britain has "too much owner" occupation and is "out of line" with the lower levels on the Continent.

Is it right that our property should be taxed more? Is it a 'good thing' we would be selfish to oppose?

Actually a high rate of home ownership is a positive thing. People look after their own homes better than, say, homes belonging to a council. The total destruction of many council estates over the years - both in Britain and abroad - is testament to this fact. The reason home ownership is less widespread in many Continental countries is probably because they have taxed it so heavily. Some Continental countries have made it disastrously expensive to buy and sell houses. The rules are far from simple but in France, for example, stamp duty is between 10 and 12 per cent for properties older than five years. In Italy the rate is 11 per cent. So what happens? People don't buy and sell. They rent, not through choice but because the government pushes them that way. These countries have made a mistake. They should change, not us.

Labour is missing the most profound point about property. A house or flat may seem to be just a piece of land with some bricks - a good target for taxation. But to each of us as individuals, an owned home is profoundly important. It is somewhere we can go to whenever we want and for as long as we want. It is financial security. Even if we lose our jobs or our shares go down, we feel that we will still own something if we own our home. And it will very probably keep, or increase, its value.

A house or flat is a way in which we try to improve our circumstances. We typically start off in a small place. But we hope to save, get promotion or an inheritance and then move on to something better. The desire to take ourselves and our families to better things is a natural part of human behaviour. It benefits ourselves, our families and the national economy.

These are things Tony Blair appeared to understand before he became prime minister. When out canvassing for votes, he met 'Sierra Man' polishing his car - the sort of person who had done well out of Lady Thatcher's years. Sierra Man had bought his council house and had been able to get his car because of lower taxes. 'Sierra Man' had 'got on' with the aid of property ownership and low taxes. It was because Mr Blair saw the importance of this that he got his landslide.

Unfortunately Tony Blair has not been in charge of the taxing and spending of this government. Gordon Brown has. What is more, he is likely to get the top job in the next few years. He subscribes to the idea that taxing property is good. So look out, home owners, you are first in line for the coming rise in taxes.

(This is an unedited version of an article that appeared in the Daily Express today.)

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Yobbery among the young has increased and - despite its claims to the contrary - the government has a policy of discouraging the expulsion of disruptive children. So at schools, middle class children, too, are more likely to be bullied and have their study disrupted.

Those who make the sacrifices to pay for full-time private education have long had to pay for education twice: once through their taxes and again through their fees. Now the government, in the Queen's Speech, has revived a plan to make them pay a third time, by forcing private schools to do more charitable work or else be taxed more heavily.

We grow up and get a job. Before we know it, we are paying a third of our income in tax and national insurance. If, in our efforts to get on, we succeed in earning more than £36,000, we are quickly into the top rate of tax. More people pay the top rate now than ever before.

The next step could be to buy a car. That's fine except that the tax on petrol is so high that a litre is not far short of a £1. Oh, and the Labour Government virtually stopped improving roads when it came to power in 1997, so they are more jams than before. The car - as Tony Blair once recognised - is the modern symbol of middle class life and it has come up against an anti-car culture, wholly in contrast with that in France or America.

Many of us then get married and have children. It is a quaint old tradition that survives among the middle class. Unfortunately the tax system is now loaded against you if you would like to split your roles with, say, the wife looking after childen and home and the husband going out to work. There is no married couples allowance or children's tax allowance any more. After the second world war a married man on average earnings with a wife looking after their two childen paid no income tax at all. Now they pay plenty.

At least we all have far more holidays than we used to. Unfortunately, the Euro has been strong in the last few years so holidays in Europe are pretty expensive. And it is not exactly cheap if we stay at home, either. A recent survey suggested that London is the second most expensive city in the world in which to live.

Still, we plough on. At least the middle class does not get the worst of rising crime, although we endure an increasing amount of rudeness and theft. There comes a point where we begin to think more about saving for a pension. Unfortunately we find that Gordon Brown has been thinking about pensions, too, and has been taxing them. Mr Brown has introduced an anti-savings tendency in government - a direct hit at the middle class. And if that was not bad enough, the stockmarket, into which most pension money is invested, has performed miserably since 1997.

Some of the middle class are doctors, teachers and policemen. They increasingly find that their role in life is being told what to do. Their independence and judgement have been replaced with instructions. And then, when the government-dominated system fails, who gets the blame? The government points the finger at precisely these middle class professionals whom it has disempowered.

Other members of the middle class run their own businesses. If they do well, they want to employ more people. That's a pity because there is a big tax on employment called employer's national insurance. Then they have to comply with a massive raft of laws. They must master the terrible complexities of the working tax credit, comply with the new religion of health 'n' safety and be ready to defend themselves in court if they have the temerity to sack anyone.

Even when we die - and probably would like to pass on our hard-won assets to our children - we are obliged to hand over 40 per cent of anything over £275,000 to that non-relative of ours, Mr Brown.

We keep going, but it seems like an uphill struggle. It feels as though the government does not want us to succeed and, instead, is piling extra weights on our backs.

All of which may explain the rising emigration from Britain. A record 191,000 Britons packed up and left last year. That was more than fifty per cent more than in 1994. The number going to Australia has doubled in the past two years.

Has the increasing burden on the middle class at least done some good to the rest of society? Have the poor benefited? Sadly, even that does not seem to be the case. The poor are almost as highly taxed as the middle class - mostly through indirect taxes. On top of that, they get the worst of state education and medical care.

So it is all for nothing. Being a member of the British middle class is still better than most fates. But it is no longer the great privilege it once used to be.

(This is an unedited version of an article that appears in today's Daily Express. The surprise in the research I did for it was the major rise in the rate of emigration. 125,000 Britons left the country in 1994. 191,000 left in 2003.)

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Forget all the talk about a 48-hour working week: most mothers in Britain put in at least 100 hours and form the "hardest-working profession in Europe", according to a report today.

Business leaders may scoff at the idea that doing the laundry, the school run and vacuuming constitutes "work", but most mothers would disagree, pointing out that such labour is often physical, relentless, goes unnoticed and is certainly unpaid. Many also combine it with part-time paid work.

Research among 1,035 mothers found that for nearly 40 per cent of them, the day did not end until 9pm on a regular basis, and a third slept fewer than six hours a night.

For those in London, seven hours a week was devoted to the school run alone.

The research comes as a book on the stresses of motherhood, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, says women are living lives of silent desperation, trying to be supermums by looking after the children, keeping the home spotless and securing places for their children at the right school.

Here is one possible contributor to the phenomenon of the phenomenally hard-working mother: the tax system now favours two people in a couple working rather than one.

It used to be the other way round. It used to be that a married woman with children working part-time (which is very widespread now) would be taxed at the top rate of income tax incurred by her husband. In those days when the top rate of income tax was 83 per cent, that meant it was pretty much a waste of effort for the wife of a wealthy man to take a job. It was also not very remunerative for those with husbands on any above-average income.

Then Nigel Lawson introduced separate taxation. This was supposed to provide equality of treatment for women. But did it in fact contribute to the way that women now work incredibly hard?

He gave each member of a married couple a separate personal tax allowance and in each case, the rate of tax would rise first to the standard rate and only later to the top rate. So if, say, a husband and wife both earned £30,000, their combined income of £60,000 would mostly be taxed at the standard rate and over £9,000 of it would not be taxed at all. Whereas, currently, if all of it were earned by the husband, half of it would be taxed at the top rate and the tax free personal allowance would only be about £4,500 (or whatever the personal alowance has now reached).

Whereas before, for given combined family income, the tax advantage lay with only one of the two going out to work. Now the tax advantage lies with both of them having a job.

It might be better, perhaps, to go for something which - from memory - David Willetts suggested some years ago: a transferable personal allowance. A woman (or man) would be able to say to the inland revenue, 'I prefer to stay at home to look after the children and the home. I hereby transfer my personal allowance to my husband (or wife)'.

That would not entirely remove the tax disadvantage suffered by one-earner couples, but it would reduce it. In the process, it would allow many women the opportunity - but certainly not any compulsion - to stay at home looking after children and home if that is what they would prefer.

(The research that revealed the 100-hour working week of most mothers was commissioned by Comfort, manufacturers of fabric conditioner, but unfortunately the Daily Telegraph article on this does not say which organisation carried out the research.)

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The figures include National Insurance but not, I believe, the taxation of dividends within pension funds. In any case, the figures suggest that Mr Brown's self-praise over his treatment of the poor is much exaggerated.

It also suggests that the bulk of his tax-raising has been focused elsewhere.

How, one might wonder, does he manage to extract such a large proportion of the incomes of the poor? Through indirect taxation -VAT, duties on cigarettes, alcohol, petrol and so on. These are taxes which the Labour Party used to decry as 'regressive' because they take up a higher proportion of the incomes of the poor than the rich. But now that Mr Brown relies on these 'regressive' taxes to remove income from the poor, the Labour Party seems to find nothing objectionable about them at all.

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It is true that early on he halved the starting rate of income tax and reduced the basic rate by one per cent. But this has been cancelled out by the fact that he makes us pay income tax on a bigger a proportion of the money we earn. At present, most of us pay tax on every pound above £4,745. It is called the 'tax threshold'. If this had been increased in line with earnings since Mr Brown's first year as Chancellor, it would now be considerably higher, at about £5,384. So we pay tax on £640 of our earnings that we would not have done, if Gordon Brown had never existed.

The most fortunate, high-earning ones among us now pay tax at the top rate of 40 per cent on every pound above £36,146. They include people like senior policemen, doctors and head teachers. Where would they be if Gordon Brown had never existed? They would not be paying the top rate of tax at all unless they earn over £40,120. Someone earning that sum or more, pays top rate tax on an extra £3,974 because of Gordon Brown's eight years.

National insurance is now levied at 11 per cent whereas it would only be 10 per cent, if Gordon Brown had not increased it. And there would be no special one per cent national insurance levied on those who earn above the upper limit. Someone on the average income of £21,900 pays an extra £136.

Mr Brown has also increased the taxes we pay when we spend our money. The duty on a packet of cigarettes has soared under his rule. If it had risen in line with earnings, it would be £3.00. But as result of his increases, it has risen to a whopping £3.85. Someone who smokes 10 a day, pays an extra £155 a year in duty than would be the case without Gordon Brown.

If we decide to move house, he gets us again. If stamp duty had been increased in line with house prices, it would only be payable on houses and flats worth over £143,000. For seven long years, Mr Brown kept the threshold down at £60,000 and only, now, just before the election, has he increased the threshold to £120,000. That still means that someone buying a modest new home for, say, £140,000 pays £1,400 more than would have been the case if Mr Brown had not been in charge. Someone buying something bigger faces a much heftier bill because of the new, higher rates. Someone paying £260,000 for a place to live, pays £7,800, whereas he or she would have paid only £2,600, if Mr Brown had not had his way.

And so the list goes on. It would be a big exercise to take in all the increases including easy-to-overlook measures such as the increase in duty on insurance policies. One of the biggest levies has been the £5 billion a year tax on pension funds. That was a clever - or rather a cynical - move. We don't much notice it during our working lives. It will only be when we retire that we might, perhaps, recall that it was because of Gordon Brown we can't afford to be a member of a golf club or go to the theatre as before.

Even when we die, our inheritors will be worse off . The inheritance tax threshold now is £263,000. But if it had been increased in line with house prices, it would be vastly higher at £512,000. That means tax of nearly £100,000 payable on an estate of that higher amount, because of Mr Brown's presence.

Mr Brown could argue that it has all been in a good cause. It has been spent to bring state education and the NHS up to new high standards. There may indeed have been some modest improvement in the NHS although it is probably still the least effective medical system in the advanced world. Independent analysis of reading ability suggests that there has been precious little improvement in education.

Independent analysts reckon that there is more tax to come, too. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says an extra £11 billion will have to be raised after the next election - equivalent to 3.5p on income tax.

On Mr Brown's side, you can say that he has given money back in the form of tax credits. But the tax credits only go to those people he had chosen to select. Generally they do not go to people without children below pensionable age. They also have to be applied for and many people - often the poorest and most vulnerable - fail to go through the form-filling required.

More than half of pensioners are now entitled to means-tested benefits. He has gradually been turning us into a nation of supplicants, applying to him to get back a little of the money we have previously paid. He is creating dependancy Britain which, he hopes, will vote for his party to keep the payments flowing.

We would not just be richer, we would have more dignity and independence, if Gordon Brown had never existed.

An edited version of the above appeared in the Daily Express today. One major area of tax increases I failed to mention was council tax, which, according to estimates by the Conservatives, has risen on average by over 70 per cent since Labour came to power.

The Reform website is here. It is well worth signing up to be emailed the excellent daily media review.

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My lunch companion offered some other reasons apart from the Patten-effect why the Cowperthwaite inheritance was spoiled. With Chinese control imminent, the British were offering a bit of democracy and, in a democracy, of course, people are in favour of what they they perceive as 'free' benefits and services from the government. Also, times were good. The government was almost embarrassed by the amount of money it was raking in from property sales and so on. These three factors were a a bad mix (my view, not the official's): a British politician, a bit of democracy and rising prosperity.

Looking back, the big picture is that Hong Kong became prosperous through small-government and then, influenced by that very prosperity, started to give up small government. One measure of the success of the achievement of small government came when the official told me that a secretary in central London gets paid less than one in Hong Kong. And of course the London secretary has to pay much more tax.

Hong Kong retains a massive advantage over Britain in that the government role there is still small compared to what it is in Britain. At the same time, the Hong Kong government provides state schools, state hospitals and welfare benefits. How, I wondered, does it manage to do this for so much less money (as a percentage of GDP)than the British government?

Part of the explanation is that government-funded healthcare in Hong Kong only costs 2.7 per cent of GDP whereas in Britain the cost is in the region of 9.0 per cent. One reason for that big difference is that the Hong Kong government does not do much primary care. There are some government clinics. But the general practitioners are private. (This is not a great burden for patients since a visit to the GP only costs HK$120 (about £8). Seeing a private GP in London, in contrast, is about £60. But then the private GPs in London are aimed at the top of the market and offer plush premises in high-rent parts of town and leisurely consultations - so they are not exact equivalents. You could argue that the Hong Kong prices reveal how cheap GP consultations could be in a genuinely free market.)

Another possible explanation for the lower cost of the Hong Kong welfare state is that all the welfare benefits are means-tested and you do not need much in the way of 'means' to be disqualified. You will not qualify if you have more than about HK$50,000 (leaving aside your own property, if you have one). This is equivalent to only £3,400. Also the measurement of your means is 'family-based' not individual-based. So a young son at home with no money gets nothing if he is living with parents who have some savings. So, too, an elderly parent living with a high-earning son or daughter. On top of that, the welfare benefits are pretty low. I think HK$5,000 a month was mentioned, which is equivalent to only £340. So the benefits are low enough not to distort the behaviour of most people. (Although it must be mentioned that £340 goes further in Hong Kong. It apparently can buy you a place at a very basic old people's home.)

Because you are required to have very little in the way of 'means' and you only get a modest amount of benefits anyway if you qualify, only 15 per cent of people over 60 are on welfare benefits. This compares with virtually 100 per cent of people over 65 in Britain, since we have an insurance-based system in which everyone is required to be covered. The saving in Hongk Kong from this alone must be substantial.

But I got the impression that the Hong Kong government, at least, believes that its services are good and it is therefore seeking to provide more - in care for the elderly, for example. This is worrying. It is reminiscent of the early days after the second world war when it was thought, too, that the government was pretty good at education and healthcare. It was not appreciated that the hospitals and schools were benefiting from their inheritance as private and charitable institutions. Their deterioration took place through two processes: 1. Time and 2. Increasing state control. Both those processes are inevitable once the state has taken over the purse-strings. They will happen in Hong Kong. But it takes foresight for policymakers to realise that they will happen. Civil servants, like Cowperthwaite, can be capable of such long-term foresight. Politicians rarely are.

Already there are aspects of the social policy that have the potential, if they become more significant, to do social damage. It would be a pity if welfare benefits assessed on a family means test became valuable enough to influence families to encourage, for example, the grandparents to leave the family home. That kind of thing was reported both by George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, and in the 1834 Royal Commission report on the operation of the Poor Laws.

Hong Kong is still one of the few places where the welfare state has not been too pervasive and where, as a result, there has been a wonderful growth in prosperity and relatively little societal breakdown. But it is on a slippery slope.

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