| West Midlands MP Saqib Bhatti says he's receiving letters and e-mails from constituents struggling with the cost of living - and he expects the numbers to increase.
The Conservative MP admits: "I think I will get more. We all have to be very honest about this."
Another Conservative, East Midlands MP Sir Edward Leigh, told the House of Commons the economy is facing challenges from "at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, death from plague and war."
Those are some of the comments after Chancellor Rishi Sunak's Spring Statement, a mini-Budget delivered in the House of Commons. Tory MPs welcomed the statement and the measures it contained, but admit their constituents are still going to struggle.
The problem is that prices are rising faster than incomes. And Mr Sunak's measures may help, but not enough to stop us becoming poorer.
The big Spring Statement announcements
Key measures in the Chancellor's statement yesterday included: - The threshold at which people pay National Insurance will increase by £3,000 to £12,575-a-year. It means 30 million people will pay less - a cut of £330 each on average. As a result, 70% of all workers will have their taxes cut even though the Government is increasing the rate of National Insurance by 1.25%.
- Fuel duty was cut by 5p per litre from 6pm Wednesday night until March next year.
- Employment Allowance will increase to £5,000 from April, which Mr Sunak described as a "new tax cut" worth up to £1,000 for half a million small businesses.
But there's a stealth tax on Midlands workers
Treasury documents show the National Insurance measures will save workers a total of £6bn a year. But they also show that the Chancellor is to gain an extra £35 billion over five years - and £11 billion in 2022-23 alone - by increasing repayments made on student loans.
The payments, of course, are made by graduates, not students. In other words, by working people. And the Government's own impact assessment reveals people in the Midlands and North will be clobbered by the changes.
This is because salaries are lower here than in the south, and people on lower incomes face the biggest increase in payments.
The impact assessment states: "Alongside younger and female borrowers, those likely to see some negative impact with increased lifetime repayments under the reforms ... are more likely than average to have characteristics of white or black ethnicity, from disadvantaged backgrounds, or reside in the North, Midlands, South-West or Yorkshire and the Humber."
Get set for the biggest fall in incomes since record began
The Office for Budget Responsibilty, the Treasury's official watchdog, warned that even after the measures in the Spring Statement, household incomes are to fall in real terms, meaning after inflation is taken into account, by 2.2% in 2022-23.
Office for Budget Responsibilty Chair Richard Hughes said: "This would be the biggest single financial-year fall in living standards since records began 66 years ago."
Mr Sunak's supporters in the Conservative Party admit the next couple of years will be hard. Mr Bhatti, MP for Meriden, in the borough of Solihull, said that when the UK ended Covid-19 restrictions "everything opened up in our economy, other countries followed, and there was global strain on supply chains.
"With the war on Ukraine by Putin, the price of oil has skyrocketed. That has meant we've had something called cost push inflation. The price of things has just gone up, not just in oil but things like wheat and corn and all sorts of raw materials."
Labour wants a windfall tax on energy firms
Labour, both locally and nationally, have called on the Government to impose a windfall tax on energy companies and use the money to cut VAT on fuel.
Ian Ward, the Labour leader of Birmingham City Council, said: "Labour would have introduced a windfall tax on the big profits being made by the North Sea oil and gas companies - with that money used to reduce people's gas and electricity bills."
Meanwhile, Conservatives in Birmingham have been calling on the city council to freeze council tax for the next four years. They say this would save households £125-a-year.
Sir Edward Leigh, MP for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, asked the Chancellor to consider tax relief on the cost of minor operations. He said pensioners are increasingly forced to go private because of long NHS waiting times. |
