A Labour government should have cut taxes for business rather than middle income workers, according to Nationalist MEP candidate Ray Bugeja.

The businessman, who had contested the PN leadership last year, was speaking this morning at a gathering of supporters at the party’s Qormi club.

Mr Bugeja was criticising the benefits flaunted by the government of the controversial citizenship scheme.

He said the country needed productive investment and it would have been better had the government cut income tax for enterprise instead of personal taxes.

The income tax cuts Mr Bugeja spoke of were planned by a previous PN administration and had to be spread over three years.

The Labour government stuck to the plan and in its two Budgets delivered last year (April and November) continued with the gradual reduction of the top rate for those earning up to €60,000.

Reducing the top rate to 25 per cent from 35 per cent for those earning €60,000 had been a key pledge of the PN in the 2008 election and only started being implemented in the last year of the legislature.

But Mr Bugeja also lamented the difficulties Maltese businesses faced in accessing credit from banks.

On his candidature for the European Parliament election, Mr Bugeja said Maltese MEPs should hold their heads up high, proud of coming from a sovereign nation, but have the humility to understand they come from a small country.

He said MEPs should not go to Europe to fight, in a dig at former Labour Prime Minister Alfred Sant, but to engage in every forum.