‘A budget that doesn’t care about the poor-Tory answer ‘get a job’-Angelina Leatherbarrow.

Rush Green and Crowlands prospective Councillor Angelina Leatherbarrow today shares her response to the spring budget.

The budget yesterday just reiterated what we already know about this Conservative government. They don’t care about the poor or the vulnerable. 

The Chancellor had a chance to lean into the cost of living crisis and the cost of energy crisis we are facing. Instead, he has stuck with his National Insurance tax hike on working families and cut Vat on fuel that just brings it back to what it was last week.  Families who are on the brink of falling into catastrophic poverty through no fault of their own have been cut adrift as inflation reached a 30 year high. 

Inflation going through the roof has two impacts that weren’t mentioned yesterday. The cost of food, clothes and other essentials will keep going up, so what little money we do have, won’t go as far to meet our needs. But inflation also means that the money the government gets from VAT will go up too. The treasury will receive over £30billion that it wasn’t expecting so where is that being spent? 

Fuel giants are giving their shareholders billions of pounds worth of dividends from their profits, whilst families here in Romford will be dreading a winter where they will have to decide between freezing or starving. This is 2022 and we are the 6^th richest country in the world. 

I will scream if I hear one more Tory saying that the best way to avoid poverty is getting a job. 40% of universal credit claimants are in work.  In work poverty is a term that should have been assigned to history with Victorian workhouses, but here we are. There is no link in Tory Britain between how hard you work and how much wealth you have. Our hardest workers, Nurses, Carers, Service staff are using food banks.  Labour would bring forward a windfall tax which would generate over £3billion to help families keep their heads above water.  There’s no hiding behind the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. No doubt they have added to the difficulties we are facing but this crisis has been on a slow boil for years. Other countries are doing more to protect their people, France for example has set a 4% cap on fuel prices. Whilst ours go up by 54% (so far) . Poverty is a political choice and those elected to represent us are making bad choices.