MANY of the themes in the latest Budget reflect principles that were laid out in UKIP's General Election manifesto, the only fully costed and appraised policy document during the campaign.

Yet without bold commitments to scrap EU contributions, the HS2 vanity project and significantly reducing foreign aid, the government is not restoring fiscal responsibility to the country at a rate that we find acceptable.

Deficit reduction is still too slow.

The deficit will still be running at £70bn this year, a rate that still continues to rack up debt and interest repayment for us, our children and our grandchildren.

We strongly oppose scrapping the student maintenance grant and replacing it with a loan. Once again this shows a typical Tory adherence to looking after their class and simply fails to recognise why young people from low income backgrounds need financial support in order to compete.

UKIP is broadly in support of welfare reforms and has always supported a benefits cap. While benefits have risen 20 per cent on average, wages have increased by only 11 per cent and this cannot be right.

We are also concerned about limiting public sector pay increases to one per cent a year over the next four years, given the projection of economic growth at more than two per cent per annum.

We feel that this may cause genuine hardship for the lowest paid council employees and would argue that such a pay restriction should be limited to those on the higher level salaries.

We are also disappointed that the personal allowance is still limited to £11,000 as we believe that those on minimum wage should not be paying income tax.

UKIP does though support the increase in defence spending to meet NATO requirements of two per cent of GDP.

However, we have concerns that this figure may include the war pensions bill, meaning that the increase will not be spent on front line services.

– Cllr Richard Leppington, UKIP, Forest of Dean District Council and Gloucestershire County Council.