The Values to Vision Financial Planning owner and UKIP candidate for Watford said he wanted less, but stronger, regulation for financial advisers.
UKIP is the ‘party of small business’, he said, and will fight to rid advisers of complicated legislation coming from the European Union (EU) and being incorporated into the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rulebook.
“We need to get back to a sensible, ethical-based regulatory system and I think leaving the EU will encourage that because a lot of the regulation of the FCA is driven by [Europe],” Lincoln (pictured) said.
“We think we should have less regulation but better regulation, and let’s actually enforce it. Because at the moment the FCA has an enormous statute of regulation, everything done by a tick box.”
Lincoln believes Britain, as an island nation, should not be governed by politicians outside of the jurisdiction.
“We have ceded away our sovereignty to Brussels without ever being asked about it. It is undemocratic, it is un-British and it is a corrupt system,” he said.
“There is no doubt whatsoever that Brussels absolutely despises Anglo-Saxon capitalism, it despises the City of London and will do whatever it can to neuter it through regulation.”
UKIP wants to see a simpler, flatter, lower tax system, he suggested, and taxes such as inheritance tax or income tax for minimum wage earners cut out altogether.
Lincoln has been a member of UKIP since 2011. This is his first time standing as a candidate at an election.
He said he hopes to unseat incumbent Conservative MP Richard Harrington but said the outcome was unpredictable.
“It’s not a foregone conclusion. The good thing is it’s engaging people,” he said.
Lincoln admitted some of UKIP’s policy proposals were potentially divisive, such as allowing landlords to choose whether or not they allow smoking in their pubs.
Nevertheless the response from peers and clients has been positive, he said.
“Some of my clients are not UKIP supporters but they’ve all wished me well. I haven’t had any arguments or lost any clients over it. Most people admire you sticking your head above the parapet,” he said.
The party has a finance steering committee and Lincoln hopes he will be able to influence its policy on the lifetime allowance, to one based on ‘what people paid into their pension as opposed to the entire value of their pension’.
The lifetime allowance – the amount savers can pay into their pension before a tax charge applies – has been cut several times since its introduction in 2006, falling from £1.8m to £1.5m in 2011 and to £1.25m in April last year. It will fall further to £1m from April 2016.
Although so far campaigning has been manageable, Lincoln said he expects to now enter a ‘mad month’ ahead of the May election, with eight public debates with his competitors scheduled already.
“I just want to know I did the best I could,” he said.
