It was a boring Budget with very little meat to cheer the Chancellor's supporters. In the midst of one of the bleakest week's for Labour, their great hope for the future made a plodding presentation of his Budget.
I welcome the modest (1%) increased funding for schools to improve teacher ratios, and measures to reduce the skills gap. Skill shortages emerged as a problem which is getting worse for two thirds of respondents to my pre-Budget survey of businesses within the Ludlow constituency. It will be important to ensure that this education funding reaches our schools in Shropshire where pupil rolls are forecast to decline over the next five years. The extension of free Further Education up to the age of 25 is fine if you have access to somewhere to learn: Bridgnorth College closed down last year, so I am sceptical what this will mean in practice.
But there is little in this Budget which helps my constituents:
• Pensioners have been duped. The £200 payment made to pensioners before the election to help with council tax bills has been abolished. It was the centre-piece of his Budget last year and not mentioned in his Budget this year. There was no mention of the Turner Commission into pensions reform with no measures to implement its proposals nor to restore incentives to save.
• There was no mention of the NHS at all. For years the Chancellor made the NHS his priority. Now it is in financial crisis nationally, and especially in Shropshire, he simply ignores its existence.
• Free national bus travel for pensioners and the disabled is fine, but there are few scheduled services in my constituency. The free travel concession on local scheduled bus routes coming in next month is already threatening the vital community travel schemes which are a lifeline to most of the pensioners and disabled in the Ludow constituency where 9 separate schemes may struggle if the concession is not extended to them.
• The Chancellor positioned this as a "green" budget with environmental measures, but the proportion of taxes raised by environmental taxes has fallen from 6.4% to 6.2%. The Climate Change Levy will (according to the Red Book) raise less revenue in the next three years after the changes he announced.
Friends of the Earth responded by saying: "Gordon Brown's latest Budget will do little to tackle the huge challenges posed by climate change".
The measure to subsidise home insulation in 250,000 houses is welcome, but there was nothing new to boost the badly-run and reduced funding grant system for householders to install energy efficiency equipment. These grants have supported local alternative energy businesses in Shropshire with proven carbon-reducing technologies, which companies are now facing real difficulties from the botched replacement of the Clear Skies funding programme.
Increases in Vehicle Excise Duty for 4x4 vehicles is no help to many of those who live in the remote rural areas in much of the Bridgnorth and South Shropshire areas. Last week's snow meant for many that unless you had a 4x4 you did not leave home.
• Nor did Gordon Brown mention the fact that overall taxes are going up in this Budget. Tax as a proportion of GDP has been revised up from 40.7% to 41% by 2010/11. It adds £5.5bn to Britain's tax bill - already the highest ever - over three years. Of this £5.5bn, £4.8bn was not even contained in the Budget measures announced today.
• Despite the tax hike, Brown is borrowing more over the next six years, revising his figures for net debt up to £175 billion over the next six years - £7,000 per family. The current deficit for next year almost doubled from £4bn to £7bn.
