Sky’s Adam Boulton has tweeted Labour’s “lines to take” on the Budget. Here it is (and below, incase you can’t read it, is the text in full):
Budget response
Topline: Today’s Budget proved that you’re worse off under the Tories with no action to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
The Chancellor boasted about how well things were going, but it was totally out of touch with hardworking people facing a cost-of-living crisis. We need a recovery for the many, not just a few at the top.
- Wages are down £1,600 a year since David Cameron become Prime Minister
- The OBR confirmed that people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.
- They talk about the personal allowance but forget the 24 Tory tax rises introduced by George Osborne.
- Energy bills are up almost £300 since the election.
- George Osborne has overseen the slowest recovery for 100 years, and is forecast to borrow over £180 billion more than planned.
David Cameron and George Osborne can’t deliver a recovery for the many because they stand up for a privileged few.
- They cut the top rate of tax for people earning over £150,000, while everyone else is worse off.
- Bank bonuses are rising again, even though businesses still can’t get the finance they need.
- Since George Osborne boasted about a “march of the makers”, manufacturing, construction, infrastructure investment are all down. Exports are falling not rising.
- Even Michael Gove says that the number of Old Etonians in the Prime Minister’s inner circle is “ridiculous” and preposterous”.
Britain can do better than this. Britain needs a Labour Government to:
- Freeze energy bills until 2017 and reform the broken energy market.
- Put the young people back to work, with a job the young unemployed have to take — paid for by a tax on bank bonuses.
- Expand free childcare for working parents to 25 hours a week for 3 and 4 year olds.
- Cut taxes for 24 million working people on middle and low incomes with a lower 10p starting rate of income tax.
- Cut business rates for small firms and a plan to get 200,000 homes build a year by 2020.
- Balance the books in the next Parliament, in a fairer way including reversing the £3 billion tax cut for people earning over £150,000.
The Budget announced a package for pensioners. Help for savers is welcoma nd we’ll look at the details but:
- People will not forget the Granny Tax.
- The Budget failed to cap pension fees and charges which leave pensioners paying up to £230,000 over their lifetimes.
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