I will come on to say something about that, but as my husband is an A&E consultant I am all too familiar with these issues. As the IFS said, it was a golden
“sledgehammer to crack a very small nut”.
The realities facing our public services are not addressed in this Budget.
It is another Tory Budget so divorced from reality that it exposes, once again, who the party in government is really for—tax cuts for the wealthiest, tax hikes for the rest. The last Tory Budget had a cut to the 45p top rate of tax; this Budget has a pension tax cut for the top 1%. Government Members might groan and wail, but that is the reality.
Wealth managers already see the Budget as a bonanza, and not only a huge tax break for the super-wealthy but an inheritance tax wheeze for the super-rich too, with one wealth adviser describing it as
“a great opportunity for tax-free growth.”