Warrington MP attacks budget

MP Helen Jones was swift to attack Chancellor George Osborne’s budget today as “a budget that favours the rich.”
The Warrington North MP said: “The Chancellor’s so called living wage will not be a living wage once tax credits are withdrawn.
“The withdrawal of maintenance grants will make it much more difficult for students from poorer families to go to university.
“The Chancellor has increased the thresholds for inheritance tax which most people do not pay and has allowed people to receive dividends tax free.
“Far from being a One Nation budget it is a divisive budget which hits poorer working families hard.
“I am concerned about the impact the cuts in tax credits will have on my constituents and the reduction of disability benefits is frankly cruel.
“ The worst con is the National Living Wage which isn’t at the rate of the Living Wage and with the proposed tax credit cuts will actually see people up to £2,000 a year worse off.
“ The Northern Powerhouse is a powercut with no reinstatement of rail electrification.”
The budget included an increase in the inheritance tax threshold to £1m for married couples by 2017.
Working-age benefits will be frozen for four years – including tax credits and local housing allowance, but excluding maternity pay and disability benefits.
Maintenance grants for students – paid to students with family incomes below £42,000 – will be scrapped and converted into loans from 2016/17.
Housing benefit for under-21s will be scrapped.
But there will be an 18 per cent cut in corporation tax by 2020.
The Government is making a commitment to meeting the Nato target of spending two per cent of national income on defence.
Fuel  duties are to be frozen for the rest of this year.
New cars will not need an MOT for the first four years, instead of three as at present and the new car tax bands will have a standard change of £140.
As expected, there will be fresh clampdown on public sector pay, which will be limited to one per cent a year for the next four years.
Jim Duffy, founder and chief executive of Entrepreneurial Spark – the largest free business accelerator in the world – said he believed reductions to Corporation Tax rates over the next five years will help position the UK as a great place to start a business.
“Corporation Tax at 20 per cent has hindered the growth potential of start-ups across the UK. The real business of building on the economic recovery comes down to the UK’s army of small businesses and entrepreneurs, who account for almost all the new jobs being created. Small but well-targeted measures such as this that help and encourage the work of this group have been shown to pay off many times over through higher tax receipts and lower unemployment in the long term as businesses thrive and grow. We are delighted to hear that the Chancellor has listened to calls for Corporation Tax reform.”