Labour have released regional figures showing how the average earner in Yorkshire and the Humber will see their earnings fall by £1,170 in the next year alone, relative to inflation, under the new plans announced by the Chancellor in his Spring Statement this week.

The party heavily criticised the Chancellor after it emerged that not only would working people still be hit with the biggest tax burden since the 1940s – but that living standards look to plummet at the fastest rate seen since records began.

Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves called on the government to scrap the damaging, unfair National Insurance rise, and to choose a one-off windfall tax on oil and gas producer profits instead – to take up to £600 off the energy bills of households struggling with the rising cost of living crisis.

Minesh Parekh, Labour and Co-operative candidate for Crookes and Crosspool said:

“The Chancellor failed to deliver a Spring Statement that supports working people. And now we’ve learnt that workers in Sheffield are facing a sharp squeeze on their wages, losing £1,170 from their pay packet in the next year alone.

“The Spring Statement was the chance for the Chancellor to scrap his unfair tax hike on working people and on businesses, introduce progressive taxation against oil and gas producers, build for a retrofitting programme to decarbonise housing, and concretely tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

“In failing to do any of these, the Chancellor made the wrong choices for Sheffield and our country.

“But locally we are fighting back to support residents. Labour councillors are increasing hardship support and doing what they can to reduce bills for council tenants, including investing in renewable energy and retrofitting homes to reduce dependence on expensive fuels”

Further information:

The OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook, published alongside the Chancellor’s spring statement, reveals that forecast average earnings growth is expected to fall well short of forecast inflation in both 2022 and 2023. Cumulatively over that period, the OBR forecast that earnings will fall by 3.5% relative to inflation. That means the real value of earnings will decline.

https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/CCS0222366764-001_OBR-EFO-March-2022_Web-Accessible-2.pdf Table 1.1 (Page 12)

The Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings provides information on the average pay of full-time workers in 2021 for each region and nation of the United Kingdom.

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/ annual survey of hours and earnings  – resident analysis, mean gross annual pay for full time workers. Applying the figure of -3.5%, the forecast fall in real earnings between 2021 and 2023, to these figures provides a forecast of the fall in average pay in each region and nation, relative to inflation.