“Poverty is a political choice, & the Tories choose their rich cronies over those struggling most in our country at every opportunity.”
Kate Osborne MP
By Kate Osborne MP
Today’s Spring Budget does nothing for my constituents of Jarrow and nothing for the North of England.
My constituents are dealing with huge rises in living costs, energy and food bills whilst their wages have stagnated, businesses are going under and more than a third of children in Jarrow live in poverty and public services are on their knees.
Instead of tackling any of this, we saw yet another budget for the rich.
The Chancellor’s flagship announcement of another cut to national insurance will disproportionately benefit the very richest – paid for by a raid on public service budgets when they are already cut to the bone with NHS waiting lists reaching new highs, schools crumble and social housing deteriorates.
For fourteen years now, consecutive Conservative Governments have failed this country.
They have trapped millions in poverty as a result of their repeated failures, chaos and corruption, with a continuous cycle of economic and political failures which has resulted in the UK falling into a recession.
This Spring Budget is yet another failure, letting down my Jarrow constituents – with no mention of any funding for schools, social care, pensions or affordable housing.
The Chancellor can’t even convince his own MP’s that this is a good budget – the UK is worse off under the Tories. Nothing Hunt said today changes that.
People are struggling or unable to afford food, heating, childcare, mortgage payments and rent. We’ve seen major lenders increase mortgage rates over recent weeks – and there is no comfort offered to homeowners in the Chancellor’s budget today.
We have the highest tax burden since the Second World War and the lowest wage growth since the Napoleonic War
Under this Government, child poverty has risen, pensioner poverty is up and our NHS, schools and Local Authorities are on their knees and we have a broken welfare system.
Poverty is a political choice, and the Tories choose their rich cronies over those struggling most in our country at every opportunity.
This is a Government that has quit governing.
The public won’t be fooled by this latest spin, there’s no budget giveaway for the lowest paid. They’ll be substantially worse off.
It’s time they called a General Election and let us fix the mess they have made.
- Kate Osborne is the MP for Jarrow and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow her on Facebook, twitter and Instagram.
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