The Spectator’s Notes | 7 January 2006

In their New Year newspaper advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservatives say, ‘The right test for our policies is how they help the least well-off in society, not the rich.’ That is a good approach, but will it be invariably applied? For example, the clearest way that the rich are privileged in modern Britain is not through the tax system, which even now penalises them more than the poor, but through the planning acts.