A TAX on jobs, or 70 per cent of working people better off - it's your choice.

The choice in Harrow for the general election has become very clear. If you choose Labour, you are voting for a tax on jobs - on everyone earning over £20,000 - that will help kill the recovery.

Under these tax-raising plans, anyone earning over £20,000 a year will also 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. Just think about it for a moment and you can see why this tax is such a bad idea.

At the very time we want to help businesses, generate jobs and protect existing ones, Gordon Brown will make it more expensive to employ and hire people.

Business experts predict that it will cost 57,000 jobs in small and medium-size firms alone. The Chancellor thinks such job losses are 'manageable'.

And think about who will be hit by this tax - nurses, teachers, policemen. Labour clearly think you are rich if you earn over £20,000. They seem to have no idea just how hard-pressed people's budgets are, thanks to the recession. How out of touch can you be?

Worse still, Labour are raising taxes on working people while doing nothing about government waste. They know the waste is there, but they are waiting a year before they even start to cut it.

A Conservative government will stop the most damaging part of Labour's tax on jobs by cutting billions of pounds of wasteful government spending this year. Our plans means government will save just under £1 in every £100 that government spends.

Thanks to our plans, seven out of 10 working people will be better off with the Conservatives than under Labour, and employers will save too, helping them to take people on.

Our approach has been backed by the leaders of some of Britain's largest companies - such as Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Next, which, between them, employ more than 500,000 people - as well as the leaders of Britain's business organisations.

So, that is the choice we face: Five more years of Labour's debt, waste and taxes, or change with the Conservatives, who will cut waste, stop the jobs tax and get the economy working for everyone.

DR RACHEL JOYCE

Conservative parliamentary candidate for Harrow West