Whilst spring may have sprung outside, the mood in the chamber following the chancellor’s financial statement this week was anything but sunny.

An unwelcome headline from the Spring Statement was the UK’s downgraded growth forecast - slashed to a meagre 1 percent. In simple terms, the financial buffer the chancellor had last year has effectively been wiped out by the revised projections, meaning deeper cuts. This time, it was welfare that bore the brunt.

It has been a mixed bag of announcements. I welcome the clarity on how we get to 2.5 percent defence spending by 2027, although cutting international development so much to fund it does also have material downsides.

Since Covid, there has been a significant increase in the number of people not working because of long-term sickness. It is right that we need to encourage and support more people back in to work.

I appreciate that the Government wants to make sure the system doesn’t encourage people to leave the labour market if they may be able to work. I share that aim. But the scale of the cuts to incapacity payments will have adverse effects too.

It will be the restrictions on eligibility for the ‘daily living’ part of Personal Independence Payment (commonly known as PIP) – which is not to do with whether you are in work or not – which will be among the most controversial. There are some 2,800 people in the East Hampshire constituency currently in receipt of PIP.

Although no new tax changes were announced, the looming impact of increased employers' National Insurance Contributions and business rate rises from next month is cause for concern. The combination of worsening growth prospects and increased cost of employment is not a good one.

To make matters worse, legislation coming down the pipeline, including the Employment Rights Bill, feels anything but pro-business. The likely effects of that bill are not yet fully reflected in Office of Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecasts.

Moreover, there are some fears the OBR’s growth projections could anyway be, if anything, too optimistic. Some other forecasters expect lower growth this year.

It’s tempting to point to global changes and the spectre of tariffs as cause for the UK’s sluggish GDP, and this was indeed a narrative deployed at the Spring Statement. Yet the reality is that business confidence has been hit since the chancellor’s budget last October – before the change in administration in the White House.

Although in East Hampshire we are a little insulated from the unemployment risks because of having low levels to begin with, we need the government to recognise that ultimately it is businesses, including the small businesses, that are central to our local economy, that drive the growth we all want – and need – to see.