Today in the UK, on the first day of the Conservative Party Conference in the seaside town of Blackpool, the Shadow chancellor George Osborne will be laying out some of his tax policies to his party and potential voters.

In his speech he will be promising to cut inheritance tax and stamp duty for first time home buyers.

Osborne claims that this will be paid for by a new levy of £25,000 on "non domiciles', who live in the UK but do not pay taxes on money that they earn in foreign countries.

The move is seen as a direct challenge to Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has been criticised by Labour party members on the issue of "non domiciles'.

Speaking today on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme Osborne said of his proposal: "I don't want to go chasing their [non domiciles] income in off-shore bank accounts,'

"All I am asking these people to do, in return for the certainty that I am not going to do any of those things in the years ahead, is that they pay this levy which I think is set at a pretty modest amount for most of them."

The new proposals are said to be the first of a string of new Conservative policies which will be unveiled at the conference this week.

The conference will no doubt be influenced by the apparently increasing possibility that the Prime Minister may call an election for as early as late October, following an unexpected jump in the polls for Labour, since the change of leadership, in what has been called the "Brown Bounce'.

United kingdom