Britain doesn't like the Government's deficit measures

The promise to do so is indeed a central plank of Tory policy — at least for some of the time — and in all fairness the need for it is accepted by pretty much everybody.

Accepted that is until government actually tries to do just that.

Yesterday the CBI issued a well-considered blast against the proposal unveiled in last autumn's pre-Budget report for a 1% increase in National Insurance Contributions.

Chancellor Alistair Darling had proposed that this would come into effect in 2011, when it is predicted growth will have resumed and the economy will be better placed to take the strain of a tax increase. The additional funds would be used to reduce the deficit.

The CBI does not like National Insurance, seeing it as a tax on jobs and there are many who would agree. But there is no denying that it is a very powerful revenue raiser.

So in objecting to the tax the CBI is objecting to plans to cut the deficit.

Likewise with pensions. That same pre-Budget report outlined plans to reduce the tax relief which high earners currently get on pension contributions, and again it has unleashed a wave of criticism from those in the pensions industry.

They think — probably with justification — that it will mean top earners will no longer pour so much into their pension plans.

But from the Government's perspective it is another relatively painless way to increase tax revenues.

Tax relief on pension contributions costs several billion a year — more in fact than is currently spent on the much-maligned public sector pensions — and most of it goes to those on high incomes who, if truth be told, are quite capable of saving without such an incentive.

In fact the surprising thing is the Chancellor did not go further and stop all pension relief at a much lower level.

The point though is not to support the measure, nor to say it is the right way to increase tax revenues.

Rather it is merely to point out that — contrary to the oft-repeated view — the Chancellor has put in place some measures to reduce the deficit. And we just don't like them.