Responding to the Government’s Spring Budget 2017, Imran has said:

At the Budget the Chancellor could have rolled back the damaging policies of the last 7 years that have kept wages low, created unequal growth and forced unnecessary hardship onto the most vulnerable people in society, and he could have instead pushed policies that would have improved the lives and prospects of all, but he has done nothing but abandon the people who needed this Budget the most.

It presented a clear opportunity for the Government to correct some of the worst aspects of their Welfare Programme through completely lifting the two-child limit, restoring work allowances and lifting the Benefit Cap, all of which would stop thousands of children being plunged into poverty through no fault of their own, and the reluctance of the Government to help these families is nothing more than a mark of shame.

They have also failed the economy in the North, as rather than do more to redress the imbalance between North and South, the Northern Powerhouse was worryingly only explicitly mentioned once throughout the Budget Red Book, with no real announcements on transport infrastructure in the Yorkshire Region, and I am extremely concerned that the Government is shifting focus away from us and back towards natural Conservative territory in the South and Midlands.

Whilst I am glad that the Government have acknowledged at the Budget that there is a huge crisis in social care, it is a crisis of their own making, born out of their £4.6 billion cut to social care budgets in the last Parliament, and the £2 billion that they have allocated will only paper over the cracks, and not address the deep-rooted causes of this crisis.

The Government say they are the party on your side, but this budget shows that if you are down on your luck, they don’t want to know; if you or your family are struggling with social care, they’re not concerned; and if you want to better your prospects, they don’t have your back, so it is time that they address the real concerns that real people are facing, and stop pandering to the top 1% of the country.