I had, over-optimistically, hoped for the housing and transport infrastructure investment news we desperately need in Southwark. Building homes creates jobs and the social housing and homes to buy our community needs. We have been waiting for Treasury support for the Bakerloo Line extension too and the Chancellor failed to deliver today: letting down London but also Yorkshire where the trains would be built to run here!

We need an energy infrastructure plan to build the nuclear power stations to serve the UK too but that was also missing from the Government’s plans. A major cost facing families in our community and across the country is energy bills but the Tories remain reliant on oil and gas sadly. Labour’s Green New Deal would help shift this dependency and also mean we could create new and better jobs.

Labour had sought a VAT reduction for households as well as a windfall tax on the massive profits being made from higher energy bills but the Tories fail to understand the crisis affecting so many people and are ploughing on with their tax hike in April – the highest tax in 70 years, despite soaring inflation.

The Chancellor loves a photoshoot more than he does the nitty gritty of what is needed in this crisis and his weak performance today lets down Southwark and the whole country.