Simon Clarke, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said that today’s Budget will have ‘levelling up’ for the North running through it like “golden thread”.
Really?
Meanwhile Bridget Phillipson, MP for Houghton and Sunderland South commented yesterday that the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak:
“hasn’t even delivered his Budget yet and it’s already falling apart”.
She said:
“We face an urgent cost-of-living crisis. Prices are up in our shops, at our petrol pumps and on our heating bills. Families and businesses are waiting and hoping for the Chancellor to take the action that they need and which our country desperately needs, but the Chancellor hasn’t even delivered his Budget yet and it’s already falling apart.
“In recent days we have read thousands of words about what the Chancellor plans to do, but the silence is deafening on the soaring bills and rising prices facing families and businesses.”
And this comes against a background of increased National Insurance contributions, cuts to Universal Credit and the loss of EU funding to regions like the North East.
People are angry.
A group of North East citizens are protesting in London today. They are displaying placards with messages such as
“Call that levelling up?”
Louise Brown, campaigner from Sunderland said:
“Levelling up might sound like a good plan. It is particularly needed for my area, the North East. However, what we really need is specifics, details, actual numbers and amounts of funding. I am concerned that this will be unclear, hidden and not shared fairly to the regions that need it.”
Interestingly Sunderland has been named as one of the places that will receive ‘levelling up’ funding in the first round.
We will be watching this carefully.
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