Last week, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced her budget, which didn’t include a penny of support for areas affected by recent flooding and instead included a series of hidden tax rises to pay for an increase in welfare, including removing the two-child cap on benefits.

I was surprised the Budget didn’t include any money for areas affected by Storm Claudia. This is all the more surprising when our local MP is Keir Starmer’s closest ally, his Parliamentary Private Secretary – effectively a gatekeeper role for the Prime Minister. Our MP should be using her influence in the heart of government to deliver for Monmouthshire residents.

Instead of measures to encourage economic growth that could help increase revenues to fund public services and reduce taxation, the Chancellor is pursuing a purely high tax, high debt, high public spending approach, which the Office for Budget Responsibility has said will have no meaningful impact on growth.

Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Catherine Fookes all promised before the election there would be no tax rises on working people. According to OBR forecasts, 5.2million of the lowest paid will begin paying income tax by 2030 because income tax bands are being frozen. A further 4.8million will become higher rate taxpayers because rates won’t keep pace with inflation, which has increased significantly since July 2024 as a result of the UK Government’s financial mismanagement.

Taxes, largely paid by working people, will increase to pay for an exorbitant rise in benefits. Only a few months ago Keir Starmer was proposing to cut welfare by bringing forward a new bill. He was forced to abandon it by Labour MPs and is now claiming it’s his ‘moral mission’ to increase welfare dependency. Removing the two child benefit cap means that many larger families can earn more living off benefits than going out to work. This is a disgrace and gives people no incentive to go and do a day’s work.

As if that isn’t bad enough, the Chancellor and Prime Minister have deliberately misled the public about the reasons for their tax rises. It has also emerged that even the Cabinet was kept in the dark about the state of the public finances. This meant many cabinet ministers were sent out on the airwaves defending Labour’s aborted plan to increase income tax by 2p in the pound. No politician should treat the public with such contempt. The Chancellor’s days may be numbered.