Union leader in West Midlands says Chancellor's Budget was a missed opportunity

What a missed opportunity this budget was for working people here in the Black Country.

It’s staggering to think that wages across the the metropolitan boroughs of the West Midlands are still £768 less per week today than they were back in 2008. 16 years of decline.

Insecure work has soared. And a stagnant UK economy is leaving us all worse off.  A painful and wasted decade and a half.

Quite frankly our region is creaking, with working people working harder, longer and getting less. The system is broken. And this budget was a missed opportunity to start to fix it.

There was nothing on offer in this budget to give hope to the workers denied pay justice due to the failed outsourcing of public services. Just look at the brave fight by the Mitie healthcare workers at Dudley Group of Hospitals. Denied the pay rise given to NHS workers by the greedy outsourcing giant Mitie, they are now having to take strike action to secure pay justice.

The Dudley dispute is symptomatic of the wider problem of privatisation of public services, with the losers being both the workforce with poorer terms and conditions and the public through declining services.

With no help from the Chancellor, it’s now down to the unions and the Black Country public to demand fair pay for the Dudley healthcare workers. All workers in our NHS should be treated the same.

And the Chancellor today shockingly neglected public transport. We all know about the disastrous abandonment of the HS2 project, cutting off our link to Manchester and the north. But 14 years of funding cuts have also devastated our bus network – the form of public transport most relied on by working people. We needed this budget to outline a plan for investment in our network. But, alas, another missed opportunity.

We in the region now need to ask the candidates for Mayor whether they’ll back a form of bus franchising (as in London and Manchester), push for greater investment, or will they continue with the current broken model? What is good enough for London and Manchester is surely good enough for us?

Let's face facts. Our school buildings are falling apart. The NHS has record waiting lists. And the Government’s long-promised plan to make sure that high quality social care is accessible and affordable for families never materialised.

The headline measure of the budget for workers is a cut to national insurance. Of course, families will welcome any action that eases the pressure on their finances. But pre-election tax cuts can’t make up for years of falling living standards – especially with the economy in recession and billions of pounds of public service cuts to come.

No one wants tax cuts at the expense of their local services. We need a proper long-term plan to raise wages for everyone and to restore public services.

For example, we now have record numbers of people not working due to ill health, with over a quarter of all workers in the West Midlands, some 216,000 people, unable to work. But if we invest in the NHS to bring down waiting times and improve access to modern therapies, more people can get back to work.

And if we invest in modern industry, infrastructure and skills, we can compete more effectively in the global economy. This will protect jobs with major employers from being moved overseas. And it will help our local business thrive by enabling them to become more productive.

That’s what we hoped to see in the budget. Because time has told us that cuts are a false economy. So the corner has not been turned yet for working families wanting a stronger economy, higher pay and restoration of their public services.

In an election year the Chancellor has outlined his vision – more of the same. Further decline in our public services, second class transport and the continuance of a broken economic system.

The West Midlands deserves better.