Budget will deliver “urgent relief” for thousands of families in Wales and help rebuild public services
Commenting on the UK government budget announced on 26 November 2025, TUC Cymru General Secretary Shavanah Taj said:
“The Chancellor has delivered urgent relief to thousands of hard-pressed households up and down the country and helped to rebuild our public services.
“Bringing down energy bills and taking action to make work pay will make a real difference to people struggling to get by. Scrapping the two-child benefit cap will help lift 69,000 children in Wales out of poverty. And new investment our public services and infrastructure is much needed.
“The announcement of a new nuclear plant in Anglesey and £10m investment in the semiconductor industry in south east Wales is an important and significant start of delivering the promise of the UK Industrial Strategy.
“The policy decisions announced today will disproportionately benefit those low and middle income households at the sharp end – and tax increases will fall on the wealthiest.
Fourteen years of austerity
“Fourteen years of a UK Conservative government took a wrecking ball to living standards – with pay packets squeezed, child poverty at crisis levels and vital public services left on their knees after years of cuts.
“The UK Labour government is starting to turn the page on that failed Tory era.
“But fixing the mess that the Tories left will take time. We now need to see a relentless focus on affordability and making work pay beyond this Budget.
“That’s how you rebuild the country and show you’re on the side of working people.”
Fair taxes
On fair taxes to fund public services in the long-term, Shavanah added:
“The task of building a better Wales will need years of sustained investment.
“To deliver the vital funds needed to give our country the future it deserves, we need a fair tax system where those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share.
“With a tax on online gambling companies, a mansion tax and increased taxes on dividends and investments, the chancellor has built on the measures she announced last year to make our tax system fairer. But we need to go further in years ahead by continuing to reform and simplify our tax system and ensure that windfall profits are taxed fairly.”
On the need for a review of the OBR, Shavanah said:
“The TUC has consistently called for a root and branch review into the OBR.
“After months of destabilising speculation and the bemusing timing of the productivity assessment, the OBR published the Budget forecast prematurely.
“We cannot continue with the rollercoaster of speculation which surrounds fiscal events – and we cannot afford an unaccountable OBR which holds back growth through its conservative assumptions.”