Glenda Jackson, Labour Member of Parliament for Hampstead & Kilburn, has expressed her disappointment that the Comprehensive Budget Review has failed to answer vital questions about exactly how the big cuts will affect ordinary people, especially the most vulnerable in our society.

Rt Hon George Osbourne began his 1-hour speech by reassuring the public that he would be protecting the vulnerable. However, he failed to provide a real working solution for low income families and people on employment and support allowance who will now be time-limited to one year. Having already taken £11bn out of the welfare budget, he proceeded to announce another £7bn of cuts today, targeting the most vulnerable in our society.

Despite making broad impressive-sounding pledges of increased funding for the NHS and a new £2.5bn ‘pupil premium’ for disadvantaged children, the reality of the increase for the NHS when inflation and increased population size/life expectancy is equivalent to a 0.1% increase with experts arguing that the NHS requires an increase in 3% just to stand still. It is unclear whether the ‘pupil premium’ will help children of the low income families who may be forced out of their homes because of the new housing benefit cap, and how this will work out in practice.

Reductions in university funding at the same time as increased fees means that despite claims by the Government that they are protecting the future of our children by cutting the deficit, it is our children who will be unable to afford university, unable to find jobs and buy homes with a mere 150,000 new homes to be built across the next four years across the whole country.

Glenda Jackson MP said, “As always, despite claiming that ‘we are all in this together’, it is the most vulnerable in our society who will be suffering the most under this Government”.

The build up to this spending review over the past months has been enormous with the coalition claiming that everything would be answered today, but we are left with more questions than we began with about how these cuts will affect real people and how the economy will survive these drastic measures.