Imran Ahmad Khan: Budget shows 'the Government has kept faith with Yorkshire'

Wakefield MP Imran Ahmad Khan said with the economic impact the pandemic had caused, if there was ever a case for a Government to understandably renege on manifesto promises, it would be now.

“We all know that for so long that the North and particularly West Yorkshire has been neglected,” he said.

But he said the region had been placed at the centre of the Chancellor's interventions today, and Mr Ahmad Khan’s constituency - a key part of the Red Wall which the Tories shattered in 2019 when the seat flipped from Labour - had received more than £30m as a result of the Budget.

And although he said more state invention had been necessary at a time of national crisis, he was reassured the traditional Conservative values of small Government would soon return.

“I strongly believe that the best route to long term economic growth is through liberalising regulations and introducing lower taxes,” he said. “Through these policies I believe that we can make the UK the most attractive destination for overseas investment, and the best place in the world to do business.”

He said “those usual go-to Conservative beliefs have had to take a backseat temporarily” as “only the state has the mechanisms and the heft to deliver in times of crisis”.

However he added: “Unlike Labour and the socialists who think they know better than the citizen how to spend his money, we can guarantee as Conservatives, and as soon as this Conservative Government delivers us of this pandemic, that the state will be rolled back again, and that freedom and free trade and lower taxes and a free market economy will drive forward our growth.”

He added: “As a Yorkshireman born and bred, I’ll tell you like all my other sensible Yorkshire men and women, we know that we are the best folk to determine how to spend the money in our pockets, not the Government, not the state."

He added that while Mr Sunak was "a very bright chap it was "being a honorary Yorkshireman where he got his nous in understanding the pounds, shillings, and pence, so all in all we in Yorkshire can be very confident of this Budget, which is a Budget for Yorkshire, by Yorkshire”.

Mr Ahmad Khan said among the new Tory MPs across the country, there was praise for today's announcements.

“Everybody seems to be really delighted, and not just across the North," he said. "In my new intake 109-ers there seems to be much delight, I think the general feeling is Rishi’s pulled a blinder, and you saw Sir Keir struggling like a drowning man with these hopeless attempts at humour as he was trying to find his feet because he had nothing to go at.”