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Local MP's Response to Budget that Fails to Tackle Present Crises
Gordon MP Richard Thomson has said the UK Government’s Budget which was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday (Wednesday) will lead to additional pressures on living standards and hard-working, hard-pressed families.
Speaking during the Budget debate, Richard Thomson MP said:
“Reacting to the Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that over the next 5 years real household disposable income is expected to grow by just 0.8% per year, well below the historical average. Bear in mind that wages in real terms are still struggling to rise above where they were before the financial crash in 2008.
“The Chancellor spoke about the importance of the first 1000 days of a child’s life which makes it all the more extraordinary that in each year of a child’s first 1000 days on this earth, the UK Government will potentially be taking £1000 away from its family by withdrawing the universal credit uplift.
“In Scotland, that will mean 20,000 children drawn into poverty and thousands more drawn into hardship, undermining the impact of the Scottish Government’s Scottish Child Payment to families. Those who are earning at the taper will still lose out to a far greater extent for every additional £1 than any objective analysis would suggest they should.
“The costs of energy are soaring, the triple lock on pensions has been removed and we have seen a 1% hike in national insurance, which breaks a Conservative party manifesto commitment and will bake in geographical and generational inequalities for many years to come, but it has all been made many, many times worse by the rising inflationary pressures as Brexit shortages begin to bite. We are seeing what I believe is the most concerted attack on living standards and hard-working, hard-pressed families.
“The Chancellor or the Government could have announced measures, and not necessarily even fiscal or economic measures; simply allowing more workers to come to the UK to fill the shortages we are seeing in certain sectors would have been hugely beneficial in counteracting the adverse impacts that we are seeing in our supply crisis.
“As supply chains continue to be stretched to breaking point, this is a crisis that can only worsen and lead us into a winter of discontent.”
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