Nothing announced in the budget will help avoid biggest hit to living standards, MP warns

Labour frontbencher Pat McFadden said Rishi Sunak was still continuing to press ahead with a National Insurance (NI) rise despite increasing the threshold.

The Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury called the move a political decision and said it was being made as part of the Tories' plan for the next election.

It comes after the Chancellor announced a cut in fuel duty, an increase in the NI threshold, and extra cash for the Household Support Fund in his statement.

Mr McFadden, speaking to the media after the statement, said: "We're about to be hit with the biggest hit in living standards on record, that's what the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) have said, and certainly the biggest in the post-war period – nothing that was said today will change that.

"This has now become a game of smoke and mirrors with one purpose in mind and one overriding criteria and that is the Tory Party election grid. For six months, we've been told that there needed to be a £12bn rise in NI and if you queried that you were against funding for the NHS and now the Government has done this partial u-turn on it, giving the lie to that argument in the first place.

"He is proposing – uniquely among G7 countries to impose this National Insurance rise on households struggling with energy bills and then to cut tax by roughly the same amount a year or two later just so it chimes with the Tory election campaign.

"Families don't need pain piled onto them now to fit with Boris Johnson's election plans, they shouldn't be asked to pay for this cost and the more I listen to him the more it begged the question: why are you doing this at all?"

The Wolverhampton South East MP went on to say the move was being made in order for Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak to get the public "to be grateful" when the tax is cut in two years' time, chiming in with the next general election.