“The EU Directive which comes into force today that places massive restrictions on vaping, is exactly the sort of legislation that should be repealed when Britain finally leaves the EU”, said Paul Nuttall the UKIP leader in Clacton this morning. 

“The Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) was debated from a position of ignorance. There is no point to these regulations and no public health benefit. They do, however, destroy a highly successful free market which has seen almost 3 million people make the switch from tobacco to a far safer alternative at no cost to the taxpayer. Make no mistake, the only result of these regulations will be to deter smokers from quitting smoking. 

The provisions for new ‘death taxes’ in the Tory manifesto are the latest in a long line of examples where parties who have traditionally stood to defend people from the state, become, when in power the very thing that needs people to be defended against. UKIP stand full square with ordinary families who now face financial punishment for just getting old.

Patrick O’Flynn the UKIP Economics spokesman commented, “The Conservatives are planning to unleash the biggest tax raid in history on pensioner households. It is unbelievable that the elderly should be subjected to a new death tax by a party that pretends to defend their interests. UKIP will fight this just as hard as we are fighting Philip Hammond’s plan for a national insurance attack on the self-employed.”

Responding to today’s Conservative manifesto launch, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said:

“It is official. The Tory Party has become almost identical to the Labour Party. They offer no end to mass immigration, no firm Brexit, no end to spending billions of our hard-earned money on so-called foreign ‘aid’, and they offer no curb on our National Health Service being used as an international drop-in centre.”

UKIP will publish its fully-costed manifesto next week in a document that will reveal significant reductions to the £14bn so-called annual foreign aid budget, as well as a cast-iron guarantee around slashing net immigration by introducing a points-based mechanism.

This morning UKIP Thurrock Candidate, Cllr Tim Aker MEP blasted Theresa May and the Tory party for backing sliding on Brexit.

Cllr Tim Aker MEP said: “Without UKIP there would have been no Referendum. Without UKIP there would have been no vote to Leave the EU. Now, more than ever, we need UKIP MPs to make sure we finish the job and actually get Britain out of the EU on our terms, bringing back control of our borders, our laws, our fisheries and our money.

“Theresa May has talked a good game. She’s been doing this for years. When she was Home Secretary, every conference speech could have been written by UKIP. Her delivery, however, could have been orchestrated by Labour’s Diane Abbott.

“If you were to be blindfolded and heard policies such as police cuts, cuts to prison services and soaring net immigration to a third of a million, you would think I was reeling off Labour policies.

In response to today’s editorial in the Evening Standard, edited by the former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, UKIP Immigration Spokesman John Bickley said, 

“Under Cameron and Osborne’s government, which pledged to bring net immigration down the ‘tens of thousands’, with the explicit support of Mrs May, then Home Secretary, gross immigration ran at just under 600,000 a year. Why did Osborne’s Tories make this promise and then so disastrously fail to deliver it? Were they incompetent or misleading the British people, most likely both. 

“We don’t need lessons from a failed Chancellor, who having promised to eliminate the deficit within one Parliament missed his own target by a country mile.”