How can cutting tax for the rich be the priority when so many families in Cambridge are struggling with wages frozen, rapidly rising petrol prices, whose sons and daughters face massively increased tuition fees, and who have little prospect of finding a home of their own.

This budget should have used low borrowing costs and the cash stockpiled by Britain’s companies to stimulate a new renaissance in environmentally sustainable house-building -; we have large numbers of sites identified around Cambridge, a rising housing waiting list, yet absolutely no help from the government to get the economy moving. For most Cambridge families whose wages are falling behind inflation, tinkering with the top tax-rate is at best an irrelevance, and stands in stark contrast to the decision to raise the minimum wage by just a meagre 11p. 

Ed Miliband is right to describe it as a ‘millionaire’s budget’ -; a massive tax cut for a very few, while everyone else struggles.