Letter: Guildford Deserves an Honest Debate on Budget Choices

Published on: 2 Dec, 2025
Updated on: 2 Dec, 2025

Zöe Franklin MP and Chancellor Rachel Reeves

From Neil O’Brien

In response to: Guildford’s MP Gives Her Verdict on the Budget

I read Zöe Franklin MP’s comments on the Budget with interest, and I agree with her on one important point: this was a missed opportunity. But not in quite the way she suggests.

Scrapping the two-child benefit cap is being presented as a simple moral test. I don’t think anyone wants to see children grow up in poverty – certainly I don’t. But if we are serious about reducing child poverty in Guildford and across the country, we have to be honest about the drivers: weak growth, high housing costs, low productivity and a tax burden that is now at a post-war high. Simply spending more without a plan to grow the economy faster is not compassion, it’s postponing the bill to our children.

On tax, Ms Franklin rightly criticises the continued freeze in income tax thresholds and the drag it creates on ordinary earners. But she is strangely silent on the core choice that her own party has made nationally for years: every time there is a call for more spending, there is almost never a matching call for restraint elsewhere. You cannot keep promising more money for everything and then express shock when the tax take rises.

I was also struck by her comments on employers’ National Insurance. She is absolutely right that it is a tax on jobs and makes life harder for small businesses and hospitality – I hear this all the time from business owners in Guildford. But again, where is the honesty about trade-offs?

If we cut the jobs tax (which I would strongly support), what spending is Ms Franklin prepared to vote against to pay for it? Or is the answer simply more borrowing and higher taxes elsewhere?

Locally, the picture is even more stark. Our high streets are under pressure from business rates, parking charges, planning delays and uncertainty about the direction of local government.

I would have liked to see Ms Franklin use her platform to talk about making it easier to invest, hire and grow here in Guildford, not just to repeat the national narrative that “the Conservatives left the country in a mess” and Labour now has no choice but to squeeze taxpayers harder.

The truth is that both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are currently offering two versions of a similar approach: high spending, high tax, and a belief that the state is the main engine of prosperity.

I take a different view. If we want higher wages, better public services and less poverty, we need a relentless focus on private-sector growth: backing entrepreneurs, cutting the cost of employing people, simplifying the tax system and giving businesses the confidence to invest for the long term.

By all means let’s debate the detail of this Budget. But Guildford residents deserve a more honest conversation about the basic choice: do we carry on loading more costs onto working families and local employers, or do we finally get serious about growth, productivity and value for money?