Yesterday, the Chancellor delivered his trick or treat Halloween Budget. He promised to end austerity, but he didn’t. He promised to help the poorest, instead he gave a tax cuts, which will disproportionately benefit the richest in society.

This Government’s failed austerity agenda has done nothing more than turbocharge inequality in Britain. They have intensified the gap between the super wealthy and everybody else. Over 8 million working adults are now in poverty, and child poverty continues to soar. A staggering £45 billion has been cut from our vital public services, like transport, the NHS and education, and more is yet to come. Councils are at breaking point, and the Chancellor’s announcement that Local Government will receive £650 million extra doesn’t even come close to the £1.3 billion in cuts he is taking out.

Homelessness, job insecurity and wage inequality has grown, and foodbank usage continues to rise, with 1.3 million food parcels handed out last year alone. In Wirral, we have 15 foodbanks, and every day they are getting busier, with 30 tonnes of extra food needed in the first six months of this year.

This Budget tackled none of this.

Benefits are still being frozen for the poorest in our society, whilst the Tories continue to hand out tax cuts to their wealthy friends. Although there was a declaration of the creation of a new digital tax, it will not kick in until 2020, and it’s under the Tories, that the amount of tax paid by tech giants has halved since 2013. The digital tax shows just how unambitious the Government are when it comes to closing tax loopholes. This new tax is expected to raise less than half a billion pounds from the tech behemoths, such as Google, Amazon and Facebook who all have a combined value of over £65 billion and considering Amazon alone has a turnover in Britain alone of nearly £2 billion. The Government’s announcement is laughable.

There was nothing to help the fire service and the police force who have been brought to their knees by this Government. This is a Government that claims it’s tough on crime, but it cares more about potholes than our public safety. And even then, the money allocated to fix potholes was only a third of the actual amount needed.

The Chancellor announced more money to mend potholes than he did for our schools. In Wallasey, 20 out of 26 schools are facing budget cuts and cannot even afford to buy pens, let alone pay teachers. The fact that the Chancellor said this money would ‘pay for the little extras’, just shows how woefully detached this Government are from reality.

There was no mention of the closed libraries, sure start centres and youth clubs, of the thousands of cancelled operations in the NHS. This Budget was the political equivalent of trying to put out a fire with a watering can. Completely and utterly useless.

The Tories have broken Britain, and this Budget was just one more example of them trying to make do, rather than mend.

You can watch a clip of me taking on the Chancellor below ↓or watch my whole speech here.