Jeremy Corbyn Labour Leader
A lot will be no better off and the misery many are in continues.
Caroline Abrahams, AGE UK
The budget’s failure to acknowledge the enormous social problems facing social care is desperately short-sighted and can only result in the numbers of older people going without the care they need – already disgracefully at more than a million in England – ratcheting up.
David Blanchflower, Former Bank of England Rate Setter
This Budget’s big news was the slashing of growth forecasts for many years to come. The Government has been fooling everyone that their austerity policy designed to hurt working people wasn’t a disaster.
Now the evidence is in, its reckless, disastrous austerity has failed. In 2010, the Tories said the deficit would balance by 2016. It hasn’t. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts still look too optimistic, in my view. Brexit is scaring firms away from hiring and investing. Jobs are already leaving Britain as a result. Business confidence is on a knife edge. We have been the slowest growing economy in Europe this year. And the budget did nothing to improve the living standards of ordinary working people.
Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers
It is disappointing that the Government has not been able to give the NHS all that it needed to deal with rising demand, fully recover performance targets, consistently maintaining high quality patient care and meet the NHS’s capital requirements. Tough choices are now needed and trade-offs will have to be made.
John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor
This was a ‘nothing has changed’ Budget from an out-of-touch Government with no idea of the reality of people’s lives or a plan to improve them.
The Tories could have shown they understand the emergency in our public services and the pressures facing working families. But they failed. Instead, we got a continuation of austerity … and more gimmicks, such as driverless cars. Austerity is failing. Economic growth it is the lowest it has been since the Tories came in, with growth and wage forecasts revised down in every year of the forecast. There was no meaningful funding for our schools and nothing to address the crisis in our NHS or local government. On Universal Credit all the Chancellor could offer those in debt was more debt – while giving billions in tax giveaways to big business and the super-rich.
Michelle Mitchell, of the MS Society
The fact there is no more money for social care is alarming. The system desperately needs money now. Already one in three people with MS are struggling without the proper care they need.