Labour’s first budget in 14 years, delivered by our first ever female Chancellor, will fix Britain’s foundations and help deliver our promise of change.

Let us be clear, our inheritance is dire. The last government made commitments it didn’t have the money for, it made promises it couldn’t keep and it allowed Britain’s public services to fall to a state of disrepair like we have never seen and as a result, people suffered.

In July, the Treasury published an audit of public spending. This set out a £22bn black hole which had been burned into the country’s finances.

Families and business across Bury South so desperately need to see stability and investment into our public services and that’s what this budget delivers.

As well as an extra £25.6bn in funding for our NHS, there is money to hire 6,500 more teachers, maintaining the fuel duty freeze and temporary 5p cut for 2025-2026, providing £1bn to extend the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments, repairing our crumbling schools and hospitals, building a new generation of affordable homes and tackling homelessness.

The Chancellor announced new support for local authorities such as £500m to fix a million extra potholes a year, funding for 5,000 more affordable homes, the ability to retain funds from properties sold from the right to buy scheme, and £230m to tackle homelessness.

In addition to this, rightly the Chancellor has set out compensation payments for victims of the infected blood and Post Office Horizon IT scandals.

This budget provides for compensation payments in full, at an average cost of £2.3bn a year over six years.

The Chancellor focussed on the people’s priorities, getting us out of the mess the last government left us in.

That means more protection for working people, funding to bring down waiting lists and get our NHS back on its feet, and real investment to rebuild Britain.

​But it also means real help for places like Bury South through long-term investment paired with positive economic growth.

Bury South MP Christian WakefordBury South MP Christian Wakeford (Image: Supplied) Over my term of office, I have made it one of my missions to engage with local businesses.

I know many businesses will welcome the proposal to introduce permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure (RHL) properties with rateable values less than £500,000, alongside 40 per cent relief next year for RHL properties up to a cash cap of £110,000 per business.

We are also freezing the small business multiplier for one year to protect over a million small properties from inflationary bill increases.

Britain is a great country, but for 14 long years it has been run into the ground.

The work of change has begun, and with this budget, Labour is setting out how the serious work of getting Britain back on track can begin.