DOGS bark, cats miaow and Labour put up taxes. An observation made 20 years ago by a senior Conservative politician which has certainly stood the test of time.

Philosophically Conservatives believe in lower taxes for all and trust people to spend their own money. Labour on the other hand believe in higher taxes and tend to think that the state should play a bigger role in managing our lives. And this philosophical divide was abundantly clear during last week’s budget masterminded by a Conservative Chancellor and the Labour response to it.

Take the further increase in the Personal Allowance in April next year to £10,500. When this Government came to power, after 13 years of Labour, the personal allowance was just £6,475. The Government’s changes since then equate to a tax cut worth £800 a year for more than 43,000 hardworking people in my Reading West constituency.

I would like to see this trend continue and I hope that the next Conservative manifesto will contain an aspiration to continue raising the personal allowance and then pegging it to the minimum wage so that no one on the minimum wage has to pay any income tax.

My constituents welcome this cut in tax however, by contrast, Labour Leader Ed Miliband described cutting income tax last weekend as a 'race to the bottom’.

The same philosophy, to give people a greater control over their own money, can be attributed to the Government’s plans to reform the pensions system. The Chancellor announced plans to scrap the mandatory requirement to buy an annuity upon retirement and if you try and take more than your tax-free lump sum you will no longer be charged a punitive 55% tax rate, but taxed at your marginal rate.

This is a sensible reform and I would say that it is difficult to disagree with the idea that pensioners should be trusted to spend the money appropriately which they have spent a lifetime saving. But a senior Labour MP showed his party’s true colours when he suggested that “the government has every right” to tell pensioners how to spend their pension pot. And a former senior adviser to Tony Blair went further saying “you can’t trust people to spend their own money sensibly”.

The message from this Budget was clear, if you make the responsible choice to save for your family, save for a home or save for your retirement, Conservatives in government are on your side.