Claire Perry, MP for Devizes - Budget is welcome, but don’t forget about rail line (From This Is Wiltshire)

After digesting yesterday’s Budget and what it means for us locally, here is my initial response.

Dear Chancellor. We are glad that you managed to keep your voice to deliver this year’s Budget as it had many good things in that we welcome, especially the cuts to corporation tax and huge reduction in employer National Insurance costs that will mean more private sector jobs.

With inflation going up and wage growth subdued, it was great to hear that you will raise the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 by next April, which will mean on average that our local families pay £700 a year less in tax than they did in 2010 and almost three million people across the country (who are Britain’s lowest earners) will pay no tax at all, including more than 4,000 people in the Devizes constituency.

We need our cars in rural Wiltshire so once again your freeze in fuel duty will be a great help.

For an average local driver this means a tank of petrol is £7 cheaper than it would have been if you had carried out all of the fuel duty rises proposed by the last government.

For working parents, the tax-free childcare package worth up to £1,200 per child will be very welcome (although we would have liked it introduced a bit earlier).

We love our local pubs in Wiltshire and are proud to be known as ‘Wadworthshire’ after our famous local brewery and so many of us raised a glass to celebrate the cut in beer duty you announced – we have campaigned hard for this.

I have suggested (not entirely seriously) that we rename one of our famous dray horses after you, but my constituents said they would rather stick with Prince, Monty and Max, if you don’t mind.

Many of us have also campaigned for help for those whose savings were wiped out by the Equitable Life debacle and it was great to hear that there will be more financial support for those affected.

Finally, we all know that it is terribly hard for local young families to get on the housing ladder and that we are simply not building enough housing.

The £3.5 billion you have allocated as Help to Buy is therefore very welcome.

Now, if you will just agree to pay for the electrification of our rail line to Westbury so we can get faster direct train links to London then we might declare ourselves satisfied.