Commenting on today’s ‘Summer Budget 2015’, Newcastle North MP and Shadow Treasury Minister, Catherine McKinnell, said:

‘A Labour Budget today would have focused on working people – supporting those on middle and low incomes, and taking the steps needed to ensure Britain can become a more productive, higher earning economy.

‘Instead, the Chancellor’s cuts to tax credits will hit millions of families across the country – with some 21,400 children from working families across Newcastle alone currently benefiting from this support.

‘What our region needed from George Osborne was a real plan to deliver the better paid, sustainable jobs of the future. All we got was more flannel from Osborne about his Northern Powerhouse which still doesn’t appear to even acknowledge the North East exists.

‘By continuing to insist on a directly-elected Mayor for an entire region, the Chancellor is holding up the devolution of funding and powers the North East wants and needs.

‘People are rightly cautious about one person having powers over an area stretching from the Scottish Borders to North Yorkshire, and insisting our region sets up another tier of government regardless of public support is a shabby way to do politics.

‘It can’t be right for Cornwall to be given devolution without a Mayor, but the North East is being forced into having one.’