Author Archives: The Voice

Ed Davey has described Rachel Reeves’ budget as a failure. He said:

This was a botched Budget delivered by a Chancellor who has diagnosed the disease, but refuses to administer the cure.

This Government has chosen to reject the single biggest thing it could do to turbocharge economic growth and repair the £90 billion Brexit black hole.

Labour was elected on a promise of tackling the cost of living crisis and growing the economy – and this is the second budget where it’s failed to do either.  For millions of people struggling with higher bills, all this budget really offers is higher taxes.

David Chadwick, our Welsh MP, had this to say:

This is yet another budget that fails to deliver the structural changes needed to deliver for the people of Wales.

My constituents will be bitterly disappointed in the lack of help for the cost-of-living crisis and the failure of the Government to listen to Liberal Democrat calls to make energy bills cheaper and cut VAT for hospitality businesses.

Rural communities have been left abandoned again, with Labour’s refusal to compromise on the family farms tax set to cause devastation to the entire wider supply chain.

The Government has deliberately turned its back on the single most effective step it could take to kick-start growth and fill the £90 billion Brexit-shaped hole in the public finances. No wonder our public finances are in such a rough state.

He made further comments on the lifting of the two child benefit cap, which we opposed from the start:

This is a commendable move that will go a long way to addressing Wales’ sky-high child poverty levels, which are amongst the highest in Europe and something the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on since 2017.

But this could have been done much sooner; thousands of Welsh Children have been dragged into poverty due to the Conservatives and Labour’s refusal to do this sooner.

This must be the start, rather than the end, to reducing child poverty in Wales, with the level of children in poverty almost stagnant since Labour started running the Welsh Government in 1999, we will need further action.

That is why we are calling on the Welsh Government to introduce 30 hours of funded childcare per week for every child in Wales aged between 9 months and 4 years old.

And he welcomed the release of the investment reseerve of the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme back to its members. This will not cost the public purse anything but will make a massive difference to the lower paid staff in particular – the office staff and the nurses, for example, who are its members and are mostly women. In fact, it will bring a gain in taxes.

He has been really active on this issue since he was elected last year: