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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved and who bought a family house’ and that this would be addressed in the Conservative manifesto. Two opinion polls after the Budget, by Survation for the Mail on Sunday and by YouGov for the Sunday Times, had put Labour one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives. Nineteen Labour movement figures wrote to the Guardian warning the party not to hope to win the election on the basis of Tory unpopularity. The rate of inflation fell from 1.9 to 1.7 per cent, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, or from 2.8 to 2.7 per cent as measured by the Retail Prices Index. The government said it would sell another 7.5 per cent of Lloyds bank, worth about £4.2 billion at current prices. Royal Mail said it would cut 1,600 jobs to cut costs, mainly among managerial staff. Tax receipts from North Sea oil and gas will fall from £4.7 billion this year to £3.2 billion in 2016-17, the Office for Budget Responsibility said. A two-storey cottage in Colchester, 11 ft by 6 ft, went on sale at £77,000.
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, decided to go through with his televised debate with Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party. Public Health England, the government’s public health advisory body, urged councils in England to add fluoride to water to improve dental health. The 40 per cent rise in deaths from liver disease in England between 2001 and 2012 was a scandal, the all-party Parliamentary Hepatology Group said, since the main causes — alcohol misuse, obesity and viral hepatitis — were all preventable.
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