AS the Labour candidate in the last election I am pleased that the governing party has accepted one of our main arguments and has taken action on low pay. I also welcome their acceptance that their deficit reduction plan was too rapid.

However, as is so often the case with George Osborne, it is all really a ‘con trick’. The recent Budget benefits the better off at the expense of the less well off whatever he and his fans in much of the national press say.

It is welcome that a living wage is to be introduced, but as the Independent Institute of Fiscal Studies has pointed out, three million households will be worse off as a result of the cuts to tax credits. This will affect many in the low wage area of Herefordshire.

The ‘living wage’ announced for next year is below the current living wage being campaigned for and is to be denied to under 25-year-olds. Millions more will be adversely affected in the years to come by the freeze in benefits.

While the working poor pay for the improved minimum wage through cuts to in-work benefits, big companies are compensated by a larger-than-expected cut to corporation tax. This in a week when the Guardian has shown that households pay an average of £3,500 towards corporate grants, subsidies and tax breaks and that these total 40% more than is received in corporation tax.

Our corporation tax rate will be less than half that of the home of free enterprise, the USA.

The Conservatives' real nature is shown by their rise in inheritance tax threshold so those lucky enough to have houses worth more that £1 million need to have no tax paid out of their estate after their death.

The rise in income tax thresholds does nothing for the six million workers already paying no income tax and actually benefits higher taxpayers far more than those at the bottom. This is the why the Tories have been avid adopters of this naïve Liberal proposal.

The final ironic flourish of our Tory chancellor was to claim that Britain deserves a pay rise while announcing a further five years of 1% maximum pay rises for public sector workers.

Britain may well deserve a pay rise but the Budget does not provide it for the majority and there is no action on that other driver of poverty and insecurity in the labour market; zero hours contracts.

ANNA CODA Chairman, Hereford and South Hereford- shire Labour Party, Peterchurch