Many working people had a shock last week when the Chancellor delivered her budget.
Taxes have increased by almost £40 billion and the overall tax burden will rise to the highest level in our country’s history.
Living standards are expected to get worse. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that the average family will be £770 worse off in real terms by October 2029 compared to today.
Labour’s employer National Insurance increase is nothing but a tax on jobs and wages of working people.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) confirms that “growth in wages and salaries and profits are constrained by the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs)”.
Mortgage rates will be higher. The OBR states: “Compared to our March forecast, mortgage rates are around 0.3 percentage points higher on average over the forecast, driven by our higher forecast for Bank Rate”. Stamp duty bills are also going up.
It is hard to imagine anyone who works harder than farmers. Up while many of us are still sleeping, out in all weathers, and few days off if any at all.
Tom Bradshaw, President of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), has said that “This budget not only threatens family farms but will also make producing food more expensive”.
I know many people care about the countryside and prefer to buy British in the shops. If farms struggle financially and are sold off for development, this will mean the country is more dependent on importing food from abroad. Imported food means produce travelling greater distances and more carbon emissions, at a time when we are trying to reduce our emissions. It also means less food security – our food supplies impacted by wars, piracy and hostile nations.
The increase in NICs will also affect the budgets of charities, GPs, hospices, and private care homes.
One Wokingham charity providing care for the elderly has got in touch with me with their concerns. The potential positive of increasing the minimum wage, when combined with the increase in NICs, will be lethal, leading to a sharp rise in running costs.
These impacts don’t just hit these organisations. They affect older people, the ill, those needing end of life care – and all those people who love and care for them. In short, they affect all of us.
Labour made clear commitments not to raise taxes on “working people” before the election. They told us how that it would be the wealthiest bearing the burden of Labour’s political priorities. But the people and organisations I’ve talked about here aren’t multi-billion pound, multi-national corporations. Farmers are providing vital services for very little profit, and in the case of charities, for no financial gain at all.
Since the Budget, we’ve been forced to sit through the indignity of Labour Ministers and MPs twisting and turning their previous commitments and comments every possible way. They attempted to claim the OBR would back their spurious claims of a £22 billion financial black hole left by the previous Government, only for the OBR to refuse to endorse this. They’ve tried to make us believe that while they did promise not to raise taxes on working people, actually this meant a whole series of exceptions and caveats. In other words, they deliberately chose their words so they could put up taxes anyway.
The British public have seen through this. According to YouGov, 47% of people think increasing NICs is the wrong thing to do at this time. Meanwhile, just 7% of people think they and their families will be better off as a result of the Budget.
Labour have chosen higher taxes that will hit the least well off and higher government spending over growth. This is not what the country needed, and it’s people like those of us living in Wokingham Borough who will suffer.Pauline Jorgensen is the leader of Wokingham Conservatives
