Budget 2015: Harriet Harman says families will still suffer
- Published
Harriet Harman said the Budget "will make working people worse off"
Working families will still suffer despite George Osborne's Budget pledge of a National Living Wage, Labour says.
The party's acting leader Harriet Harman said the government's rhetoric was "liberated from reality".
She said her party would give "serious consideration" to some measures and be a "different kind of opposition".
She accused the Tories of "ducking" out of a decision on expanding airport capacity and said apprenticeship numbers were "stagnating".
Mr Osborne's first Budget of the Conservative government included a freeze on working-age benefits for four years, a pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defence and a four-year cap on public-sector pay rises.
'Northern power cut'
He also introduced a new National Living Wage which would rise to £9 an hour by 2020.
In her response, Ms Harman said she would resist the temptation to "oppose everything the government does".
She said Labour supported measures including lowering the welfare cap and would have made cuts to unprotected departments had it been in power.
In a reference to the cheering on the Conservative benches when the living wage was announced, she said: "Clearly what honourable members do not understand is that even with the higher national wage that he's announced it will not be enough for a family to live on because of the cuts in tax credits."
She also criticised the government for delaying the electrification of the railway line between Manchester and Leeds, saying: "The great Northern Powerhouse is starting to look like the great Northern power cut."
Labour would support the raising of the 40p tax threshold and the lifting of the personal allowance but would study the detail of both measures, she added.
Speaking to BBC News, shadow chancellor Chris Leslie questioned whether the measures prioritised by the chancellor would boost productivity.
He said "manifesto promise after manifesto promise" was being "thrown out" by the Conservatives.
"They won an election in some respects on a false prospectus," he added.