The Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report was a sensible and proportionate response to the situation we are in. It continued the work of minimising the recession’s impact on unemployment and thereby keeping down the overall cost of economic recovery. It stimulated demand in the economy, righted some unfairness and continued the battle against climate change.

I was particularly pleased to see that up to a thousand High Peak families with primary age children who do not qualify for free school meals will get them from next year. This is particularly important as when someone who is unemployed goes into low paid work they can be worse off simply by having to pay for school meals. This measure makes that far less likely.

The control over bankers’ bonuses is also welcome. Bonuses up to £25,000 will not be affected, but above that a bank will have to pay the government 50p for every pound of bonus their employees receive. This is curbing an excess that people wanted to see.

After the success of the car scrappage scheme, the boiler scrappage scheme is timely. If you upgrade your central heating boiler to a modern, more efficient and climate-friendly model you could get £400 back from the taxman, saving money all round.

Our plans will allow us to halve the nation’s deficit while protecting our top priorities: the NHS, schools, childcare and the police. Cutting other spending too early and too deeply would put the recovery at risk.

We have decided to leave inheritance tax as it is, affecting just the richest three families in every hundred. There is no giveaway of £200,000 to each of the 3,000 wealthiest estates as others would do. That would typically benefit just the five richest families in High Peak. Helping the richest few is not our priority now and nor should it be in the future.