This year’s Budget was a true test of character for Rishi Sunak — and he managed to fail

Richard Townshend
Anneliese Dodds4 March 2021

Yesterday the country was crying out for a Budget to put the country on the road to recovery. A Budget to right the wrongs of the last decade by rebuilding our economic foundations. Sadly, what we got just papered over the cracks.

It confirmed that Britain has suffered the worst economic crisis of any major economy under the Conservatives. It was there in black and white: our economy was hit harder because the Government failed to get the virus under control.

That’s why we really needed a plan to secure our economy and get Britain back on the road to recovery.

After one of the toughest years in its history, our NHS and key worker heroes also needed support.

Yet there was no plan for the NHS recovery so we can get people the healthcare they badly need. The key workers Rishi Sunak clapped for didn’t warrant a single mention. Nor did social care, schools, teachers, or the need to restore Britain’s high streets after a decade of neglect from the Conservatives.

Instead we got a pay freeze for key workers, a council tax hike that will hit households across the country, and silence on the looming debt mountain facing businesses in a matter of weeks.

Unbelievably, we got a whopping £30.1 billion cut in day-to-day health spending in future years, when the NHS will be struggling with the post-Covid backlog.

We’re far from out of the woods on Covid, but the Chancellor also had nothing to say about fixing support for self-isolation or fixing the broken system of statutory sick pay. A Labour Budget would have put the NHS and social care at the centre of a new settlement to build a country fit for our coronavirus heroes.

It would have had a plan to rebuild the foundations of our economy for the long term, with a relentless focus on supporting jobs across the entire UK, supporting our high streets to thrive, protecting family finances and backing our key worker heroes.

We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic, not go back to the insecurity of the past. But this Chancellor has the wrong priorities and is totally out of touch with what this country needs.

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