Rachel Reeves responds to the Budget

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, responding to the Budget, said:

“This Budget makes the Chancellor’s out-of-touch priorities clear. 

“As he hits working people with the highest sustained tax burden in peacetime, he’s giving a tax cut to bankers who like to take short haul flights while sipping champagne. 

“After taking £6 billion out of the pockets of some of the poorest people in this country, he is expecting them to cheer today at being given £2 billion to compensate.

“In the long story of this Parliament, never has a Chancellor asked the British people to pay so much for so little, loading the burden on working people with tax rises and wasting billions of pounds of taxpayer money. 

“There is another way. Labour would put working people first.

“We’d use the power of government and the skill of business to ensure the next generation of quality jobs are created right here, in Britain.

“We’d tax fairly, we’d spend wisely and after a decade of anaemic growth we’d get Britain’s economy firing on all cylinders.”