Balancing the books at the expense of the poor | Brief letters

Threshold freeze | Two-child limit | Badenoch’s vitriol | Cost-cutting at Christmas | Office for Budget Irresponsibility?

I am absolutely disgusted and so disheartened that a Labour government is freezing personal tax allowances for a further three years. We’re all well aware that books have to be balanced, but we all know that freezing tax allowances disproportionately affects lower earners. Add to this the inflation increase over the last few years and it’s surely careless at best and heartless at worst. I’d like to say “unbelievable”, but it’s not, is it?
Su Hardman
Woodbridge, Suffolk

• Is it mansplaining to point out that Rachel Reeves could have scrapped the two-child limit and the benefit cap – “rape clause” and all – in her first budget as the UK’s first-ever female chancellor? It’s not a matter of gender; more one of having the political will to get rid of a deliberately cruel Tory policy at the earliest opportunity.
Derrick Cameron
Stoke-on-Trent