York politicians have been delighted and infuriated by the budget, depending as you’d expect on their party affiliation.
While a Labour MP hailed it as “hugely positive” for the city, the Conservatives’ leader condemned it as “terrible for virtually all”.
The cheerleaders first. Luke Charters was elected the first Labour MP for York Outer during their landslide win in May.
“This was a hugely positive budget for York,” he said. “So much of this is going to benefit and improve public services in York.
“The uplift of the schools budget, getting the specialist teachers in, extra money for York Hospital so that we can have extra beds and more diagnostics, so we can bring waiting lists down.
“Transport – hugely positive. A fully funded York to Manchester TransPennine route, that was in there as well.”
He didn’t think York’s small business sector needed to worry about the hikes in National Insurance contributions.
“If you’re a smaller business and you employ two, three or four people on the national living wage, you as an employer won’t pay any national insurance at all.
“The vast majority of the tax raising for natural insurance on employers comes from those that employ more than 250 people.”
Mr Charters also hailed the “£5 billion extra for affordable housing”. And after visiting Applefields School in York, he was particularly pleased with an increase in the spending on education for students with special educational needs.
‘Entirely vacuous’
However, York’s Conservative Group has criticised today’s budget for being a clear break of Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase National Insurance and a budget which will hit economic growth by raising the cost of employing people.
Group leader Cllr Chris Steward said: “The budget is a terrible one for virtually all. Labour’s ‘growth’ rhetoric has been shown to be entirely vacuous and by hiking taxes on business growth will suffer.
“Labour has tied itself in knots on the definition of ‘working people’ but aside from the highest paid civil servants, who are protected, this budget seems to hit anyone seeking to work hard and do the right thing.”
Cllr Steward added: “At the General Election we said Labour would be hiking taxes and they denied it but only ruled out a few they are now clearly going back on even some of those – notably National Insurance.
“There are of course some things we would welcome – such as the increase in defence spending and what is promised to be a ‘significant real terms increase’ in funding to local councils, but as ever with Labour the devil will be in the detail.
“Additionally we very much support the plans to stop what the chancellor called the effective amnesty for low value shop lifters.
“However ultimately whether people run a small business, want to pass assets to their children, or just go on holiday this is a budget that will cost virtually everyone a lot more and if that is not just directly from their pockets, it will also be in higher interest payments as the chancellor redefines how the government counts debt which will see ever more borrowing and interest payments.”