In his budget today, Rishi Sunak cut fuel duty by 5p a litre, raised the threshold at which workers start paying national insurance by £3,000 a year and announced a future 1% reduction in income tax.

But the OBR said almost 3 million more people will be brought into paying income because the income tax threshold has been frozen. Ed Davey said:

This tax bombshell will send a shiver down the spine of families who are drowning in spiralling bills.

Rishi Sunak is trying to swindle the British public by burying the true cost of his disgraceful tax hikes. He has insulted millions of squeezed families across the country by thinking he can hide this in the small print. Rishi Sunak is following Boris Johnson’s lead by not being up front and honest with the country.

Tim Farron was scathing about the fuel duty cut:

Am overwhelmed with a heady sense of nostalgia as we now face the prospect of petrol prices coming down to where they were last Thursday.

— Tim Farron (@timfarron) March 23, 2022

Jardine: Chancellor adding to pain of families

Responding to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Christine Jardine MP said:

Families were looking to the Chancellor to offer them hope, instead he is adding to their pain by refusing to scrap his unfair tax rises.

People seeing the biggest plunge in living standards in fifty years will see through the Chancellor’s spin.

Rishi Sunak has failed to introduce a windfall tax on the super profits of oil and gas producers, which could have raised billions to help people with their energy bills. And he has refused to bring in an emergency cut to VAT, as Liberal Democrats have called for, which would put £600 back into the pockets of the average family.

Dodds: Rural Regions Disregarded Again in Chancellors Spring Statement

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have accused Welsh Conservative MPs and MSs of utterly failing to make their voices heard after the Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his spring statement today.

According to the Welsh Liberal Democrats, the announcement contained nothing of significance to help people in rural areas deal with the cost of living crisis, particularly the extortionate costs of heating faced by those living in rural Wales. Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS said:

Today the Chancellor has given rural regions nothing to help them cope with the crisis my residents are facing in being able to heat their homes. Welsh Conservative MPs are clearly failing to influence the Chancellor despite almost exclusively representing rural parts of Wales.

The cut to fuel duty is welcome, but only will take between £2-£3 off filling your car. It alone does not rise to the occasion. What we would have liked to have seen was the rural fuel duty relief scheme expanded to parts of Wales like Ceredigion, Powys and Gwynedd. We have been calling for this since 2015 but have been blocked by the Conservatives at every point.

More importantly, the Chancellor has refused to introduce a windfall tax on oil and gas companies that we would want to use to double and expand the warm homes discount. Oil and gas companies are making record-breaking profits while the rest of us are suffering.

This is especially true in Mid & West Wales where in some counties up to 23% of households live in fuel poverty.

Finally, the Chancellor made no announcement to protect those reliant on heating oil and LPG. With large numbers of households across rural Wales off the national gas grid, the bare minimum the Government could have announced was a plan to include oil and LPG into the energy price cap or to implement an automatic fuel duty rebate if the price of heating oil reaches over certain levels.

This spring statement has made it abundantly clear that Welsh Conservative MPs are failing to make their rural constituents’ voices heard in an increasingly London and southeast centric Government.

The Chancellor's Spring Statement:

❌Nothing for those off the gas grid
❌No windfall tax or expansion of winter fuel scheme
❌No expansion of the rural fuel relief scheme to parts of Wales

🔵Once again rural Welsh Conservative MPs are failing to make their voices heard

— Jane Dodds AS/MS 🔶🇺🇦 (@DoddsJane) March 23, 2022

Reaction on Twitter

VAT accounts for half of tax paid by the poorest households, compared to 20% of the tax paid by the richest.

The Chancellor should have cut VAT to give families a £600 a year tax cut.@SarahJOlney1 #SpringStatement pic.twitter.com/kILmhYL0EF

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) March 23, 2022

Try as the government might, the British public will see right through the Chancellor's spin.

Per the @OBR_UK, UK households remain on course for the biggest fall in living standards since records began. Today's measures fall woefully short of what's needed. #SpringStatement

— Sarah Olney (@sarahjolney1) March 23, 2022

Households are facing the biggest hit to living standards on record, yet today the Chancellor missed a golden opportunity to introduce an emergency cut to VAT which would have put £600 back into the pockets of working families 🤷#SpringStatement2022 pic.twitter.com/t8HB5bxKPz

— Sarah Olney (@sarahjolney1) March 23, 2022

These financial statements follow a pattern. Chancellor – of whichever party – is backslapped by his own side in the commons and in the media. Headlines are mixed to good for 24 hours. By Sunday something extremely stupid and unpopular emerges.

— Tim Farron (@timfarron) March 23, 2022

Oh wait, childcare costs are spiralling, a quarter of all childen not meeting reading age standard at 11 *pre-pandemic* and there's still £10 billion missing from catch-up funding.

Children and parents always an afterthought, if a thought at all, for Tories #SpringStatement

— Munira Wilson MP 🇺🇦 (@munirawilson) March 23, 2022

Simply pathetic.

A five pence fuel cut will not save a Highland family from poverty when the price of a litre of fuel has risen by five pence since *last week*.

This Chancellor plainly does not understand the pressures facing people up and down this country. It is a disgrace.

— Jamie Stone MP (@Jamie4North) March 23, 2022

Chancellor’s ‘big’ announcement to rise NIC threshold to £12.500 might sound big but makes little actual difference in light of increase in NI and spiralling inflation.

Why not a 2.5% VAT cut or a windfall tax on super profits of gas and oil giants? @LibDems

— Wera Hobhouse MP 🔶 🇺🇦 (@Wera_Hobhouse) March 23, 2022

No acknowledgement of the fact that it's actually more expensive on a day to day basis to be in poverty. #SpringStatement2022 https://t.co/Bhz7B2CJ4v

— Wendy Chamberlain MP (@wendychambLD) March 23, 2022

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