If Osborne was ambitious for the country and not just himself, his Budget would look very different

Attacks on the self-employed and tax credits are quite simply anti-aspirational

(Reuters)

If George Osborne was ambitious for the country and not just himself, he’d use tomorrow’s Budget to row back on cuts to Universal Credit. By the end of this parliament, these cuts will see 2 million working families lose an average of £1,600 a year. While they’re being phased in, self-employed workers will be hit the hardest.

If you believed the government’s rhetoric, you’d have thought the Tories would be backing Britain’s entrepreneurs but, in reality, they’re systematically chipping away at vital support for the self-employed. In 2012, Tory cuts to tax credits saw 200,000 fewer self-employed people receive in-work support, a drop of a quarter.

Yet the worst is still to come.

We now know that Osborne’s U-turn on tax credits was nothing of the sort. Despite promising to avoid the cuts altogether, millions of families currently on tax credits – including half a million self-employed – will lose thousands of pounds a year as they’re moved over to Universal Credit, starting next month.

Under Tory plans to ‘migrate’ people from tax credits, anyone whose circumstances change won’t receive cash protection and will be thousands of pounds worse off. If earnings drop for three consecutive months, a self-employed worker on tax credits will be moved over to Universal Credit, where their support will be severely rolled back.

Analysis I’ve commissioned from the House of Commons Library suggests that only one in four people who end up on Universal Credit will have their support cash-protected. That means up to 2.3 million workers currently on tax credits face losing out when their circumstances or earnings change.

Self-employed workers face the greatest uncertainty in their income and are at the highest risk of being hit as the cuts are phased in. The threat of having their tax credits stripped away by the Tories will loom large for those who contribute so much to our economy and who represent the fastest growing group of workers in the UK.

As it stands, George Osborne is set to deliver one of the most regressive Budgets in recent times. He is cutting support from low and middle-paid workers while attacking the dignity of disabled people, just so he can fund tax breaks for the rich.

His cuts to Universal Credit are anti-aspirational. They risk dampening productivity, holding the country back and penalising entrepreneurs.

If Osborne was ambitious for the country, not just himself, he’d think long and hard before pressing ahead.