Thank you for contacting me following last week’s shameful budget, which brought into the light our new Prime Minister’s true colours.  This is a Government who holds its population in utter contempt, while focusing its attention instead on their apparent ideological mission of making the rich even richer. 

In my view this budget is a reckless gamble, which will cost working people and families across South Yorkshire dearly. This is not a plan for growth, but a plan to reward the already wealthy through abolishing the top rate of income tax. A return to the trickle down of the past, not a brave new future.

In the past 12 years of Tory Government all we have to show for their efforts is low growth, low investment, low productivity and now the lowest consumer confidence since records began.  The only things that are going up are inflation, interest rates and bankers bonuses. 

The Chancellor has made clear what his priorities are. The reality of this budget is that it will help, above all else, bankers and those earning over £150,000. At the same time these tax changes mean a nurse will be paying almost the same marginal tax rate as a millionaire. It is farcical to expect anyone to believe this is a sensible decision during the current cost of living crisis.  

For years the Tories have failed to repair our broken housing market, with over one million people waiting for a council house, record low levels of new social homes being built and more people each day are becoming stuck in the Private Rented Sector. 

The solution offered by the budget is to raise the thresholds for the value of properties exempt for stamp duty.  This fails to address any of the issues within the sector, in fact it will only work to encourage the purchase of additional homes and further reduce availability of affordable housing. 

I absolutely agree that It is critical that we support first time buyers. However the changes to threshold for first time home buyers won’t help most, as the average cost of first time homes is just over £250,000. On average only first time buyers in London will see any benefit from this policy further highlighting the Tories naivety about the economy outside of the London bubble. 

I was pleased to see that the Government has finally seen reason and has followed Labour’s lead by taking the decision to freeze the energy cap.

Unfortunately instead of introducing a windfall tax on the soaring profits of oil and gas companies, the Tories have chosen to unnecessarily increase our public debt. Therefore asking future generations to pay off this debt, just as interest rates are rising. All the while they leave tens of billions of pounds of energy giants profits untouched. 

While the Chancellor talks about the hypothetical impacts of his policies, we have immediately seen the real world impacts. As a direct result of these policies the pound has fallen to its lowest rate since 1985, while borrowing has risen to the highest level since 2008. 

To make matters worse the Bank of England has responded by raising the base interest rates to 2.25%, with warnings of further increases. According to recent reports this could reach as high as 5% to match borrowing. This means hard working people across the country will now face hundreds of pounds a month extra on their mortgages and will make buying a new home even more costly for first time buyers. 

It has never been more clear that this is a Government we can no longer afford. They may claim to be offering a solution to this cost of living crisis, but all of the evidence would suggest instead that they have become a driving force of the crisis. 

A Labour Government would  completely reject the notion of trickle down economics and instead would seek to power the economy everywhere. This means growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out, where all people can contribute to our economy and enjoy the benefits of prosperity. 

I have been really proud of the bold package of policies that have been announced during this year’s conference. We have committed to turning the UK into a growth superpower, through our Green Prosperity Plan. The plan will create one million new jobs in towns and cities in every corner of the country, as well as bring down energy bills, raising living standards and ensuring Britain shows global leadership in tackling the climate crisis. 

Liz Truss has been in office less than a month and has already lost control of the economy and Sheffield is paying the price for a Government that is staggeringly out of touch. 

However, this crisis was not inevitable and there is still time to safeguard the most vulnerable.  I can assure you that I will be holding this Government to account for its failures and pressuring them to enact the necessary policy changes to reduce the fallout from this crisis.