Levelling up became little more than a slogan for the Tories but Labour’s Budget hasn’t got things moving at the required pace - Andy Brown

If real progress is going to be made before the next election, then this budget needed to get things moving at pace and scale. It takes time to get projects designed, planned and implemented and for the change they are meant to achieve to become visible on the ground. Without hefty allocations in this budget, it is likely to be impossible to show that improvement is underway before voters pass judgement at the next election.

At best the jury is out on whether enough has been set in motion to respond to legitimate desire for change. At worst it looks like voters have been given desperately little payback for their trust.

Much of the anger of voters stems from seeing huge gaps emerging between the earnings and the lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy and those who are struggling to get by via their own hard work. Tax thresholds won’t be raised until just before the next election so, as wages increase, lower and middle income earners will pay more tax. Much less has been done to prevent tax avoidance by the very wealthy. Taxes on large mansions which can’t be hidden abroad remain astonishingly low.

The urgent need to help people insulate and improve homes to cut their energy costs whilst helping with the fight against climate change received only enough funding to help 350,000 homes. A Chancellor who was serious about the issue would have put serious money into putting solar panels and battery storage into every suitable public building. Tax break incentives to reward those who drill for oil and gas were largely retained whilst hefty funding was provided for costly illusions like carbon capture and fuel duty was effectively cut.

As for rebalancing the economy between the north and the south the important thing to focus on is the financial allocations not the fine words. The money provided in the budget for a new cross Pennines rail link looks unrealistically thin. Owt is, of course, much better than nowt. Sufficient funding and sense of purpose to achieve real quality transformational change would be better still. Bradford will get some station upgrades. What it doesn’t appear to be getting is integration into the route between Manchester and York. Will that line be the fast and efficient linkage we need, or a cut down cheap priced version that fails to kick start sufficient change?

Care is the other huge blind spot in the budget. We have an ageing population and a ballooning cost of caring for them. The last government dodged this issue at every opportunity. Up and down the country local authorities are having their budgets blown out of the water by the relentless rise in the cost of adult social care. Sending just enough cash to fend off the crisis for a while is not going to solve the problem. Providing local authorities with enough investment resources to accommodate people who are currently occupying expensive bed space in the NHS can’t be done on the cheap. We are not likely to get developers to build specialist homes to allow more people to stay in their own communities if the current obsession with weakening planning laws continues to dominate government thinking.

There are, of course, constructive things in the budget. Investment in improved NHS facilities makes great sense as does increased funding for much neglected further education. Enabling local authorities to re-invest any income from homes they sell to tenants is a long overdue reform. Yet why did the Chancellor retain any discounts on the sale price when this deprives councils of enough money to build replacements to help the next generation?

Vision and boldness isn’t easy to achieve at a time when money is in short supply. Yet surely there could have been more of it than we’ve seen.

It may be that the public are in a forgiving mood and will eventually become grateful to this government for starting out tough and imposing austerity before loosening the purse strings before the next election. Having heard the mood of people on the streets during the election campaign I doubt it. Disappointment over the scale of ambition is likely to eat away at this government.

The electorate won’t easily forgive and forget the huge gap between its expectations of change and what is being delivered.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.