In a damning verdict of Rishi Sunak’s budget, the IFS director today said the chancellor’s plans did nothing to deal with post-pandemic priorities or inequality.
Aligning with Labour’s criticism of the budget, Paul Johnson said today:
“No money to deal with post pandemic priorities. No policies to deal with the inequalities that have opened up over the last year between rich and poor, old and young, more and less well educated. This is a big hole in the chancellor’s and the government’s policies.”
He added that the chancellor’s figures are “too tight to be credible” and that there is “no sense of how social costs of the pandemic will be addressed.”
In his instant reaction to the budget yesterday, Labour leader Keir Starmer slammed the plans as “papering over the cracks” and making no attempt to “rebuild the foundations of our economy”.
Starmer said:
“The central problem in our economy is a deep-rooted insecurity and inequality and this budget isn’t the answer to that. The Chancellor barely mentioned inequality – let alone tried to address it.
So rather than the big, transformative budget we needed this budget simply papers over the cracks. If this had been a budget for the long-term it would have had a plan. A plan to protect our NHS, a plan to fix social care… But this budget is almost silent on those questions.”
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) also criticised the chancellor’s budget as “not enough to restore the UK economy to pre-pandemic levels”. The IPPR says the plans put 750,000 “otherwise viable” jobs at risk by this time next year.
