Worcester MP gives reaction to budget

Extra free childcare and support for energy bills have been revealed in the government’s latest budget.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that free childcare of 30 hours a week would be expanded to cover one and two-year-olds as part of the government’s spring budget– but the scheme would only be fully in place by September 2025.

The chancellor also revealed that £94 billion would be set aside to help with the cost of living and defence spending would increase by £11 billion.

Energy bill subsidies which limit typical household energy bills to around £2,500 will be extended for three months until July – when the government believes energy prices will have dropped.

Inflation is also expected to drop from its current level of 10.1 per cent to 2.9 per cent by the end of 2023 and independent forecasts have said that the country will not enter a ‘technical’ recession this year.

Worcester MP Robin Walker said the extra subsidised childcare could be “game-changing” but the city’s Labour parliamentary candidate Tom Collins savaged the government’s announcement calling the chancellor’s plans a “budget of no-hope.”

Speaking in the House of Commons after Jeremy Hunt’s announcement, Worcester MP Robin Walker said the billions promised by the government to help with the cost of living was “not to be sniffed at.”

Mr Walker, who announced earlier this month that he would be standing down as the city’s MP at the next general election, also welcomed the ‘game-changing’ addition of 30 hours a week of free childcare in the budget.

“Actually widening the offer to cover 30 hours for one, two, three and four-year-olds could be ‘game-changing’ but it will only be game-changing if we make sure the sector is properly funded,” he told MPs.

Mr Walker was also asked about the lack of NHS funding in the budget and the ongoing crisis at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester – where Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors found that huge handover delays outside the county’s hospitals are putting patients further at risk.

Mr Walker said extra funding announcements “weren’t really needed” in Wednesday’s spring budget after the government agreed to spend £15m to double the size of Worcestershire Royal’s A&E in 2021.

Mr Walker, who chairs the parliamentary education select committee, also pushed for chancellor Jeremy Hunt to make a “big contribution” to fund places at the University of Worcester’s new Three Counties Medical School in the city’s Hylton Road.

A cap on funding by the Treasury means that no government funding is currently provided for trainee doctors at the new school.

Tom Collins, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Worcester, criticised the government’s budget calling it a “budget of no hope.”

He said: “Will people feel angry? Will people feel frustrated by this budget? I think people will feel numb because we have spent so long being angry and frustrated at what this government is doing and they have just said that they are going to carry on doing the same.

“It’s a budget of no hope and actually what need is a vision of hope for the future. We need leadership, we need ambition and we need investment.”