RISHI SUNAK’S spring budget was condemned as racist because it will hit black communities harder.

The Treasury once again failed to publish an equalities impact assessment detailing how the Chancellors’ announcements would impact on discriminated groups.

Campaigners said past budgets were proven to have a disproportionate effect on African and Caribbean communities – and all the indications were that today’s spring statement would have similar outcomes.

The Chancellor did not announce any rise in benefits. They are scheduled to rise by 3.1% in April despite inflation being more than double that figure and on course to reach 10%.

Black communities are twice as likely to be in poverty compared to white people, and Sunak’s failure to restore the £20 Universal Credit uplift or raise means-tested benefits are sure to hit black families already struggling to cope in the cost of living crisis.

Fuel bills have been soaring by as much as 300% which looks set to hit black families hardest, particularly single parent households.

Labour MP Clive Lewis said the budget was “the racism that dare not speak its’ name.”

He told The Voice: “This budget, whether the chancellor intended or not, has a racist component to it in the sense that it is disproportionately going to impact on black people and people of colour.

“I would like to see what the impact assessment is on those groups. But as ever, it is likely to disproportionately impact on them. So again, this government doesn’t really give a damn about those communities. We know that.”

An investigation by the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has found the government guilty of ‘cumulative discrimination’ by adding layer-upon-layer of unfairness onto communities with tax and spending decisions that further disadvantages them each time the Chancellor delivers his budget.

The Treasury told The Voice that an equality impact assessment for the spring statement was in the distributional analysis, but that document has no mention of the impact on black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, or women and the disabled.

Ministers are accused of now hiding the facts rather than dealing with the institutional racism that is ‘hard-baked’ into their budgets.

Sunak’s decision to cut fuel duty but not to offset rising public transport costs will disadvantage black communities as 40% do not own a car, compared to just 17% of white people who have no car.

Lewis added: “For a lot of people, this budget is going to be very bad news. And I’m afraid I really do feel people haven’t quite grasped the scale of the crisis that’s approaching us.

“People are going to probably, on average, see a £1,300 increase to their energy bills. And what you’ve got is a tax cut off an income tax cut that kicks in, in two years time.

“People have to pay their bills this year, tomorrow, today, they haven’t got two years to wait. If you’re on any kind of benefit, or you’re a poor pensioner, you’ve been shafted today, there was literally nothing in there for you.”

Multi-millionaire former banker Sunak, the richest MP in Britain who is married to the heiress of a billionaire, resisted new changes to help the poorest, insisting that he had already done enough with the energy bill loan and a £150 Council Tax rebate that is unlikely to cancel out local tax rises.

The Chancellor raised the tax threshold to £12,500 but the Resolution Foundation thinktank pointed out that the poorest 10% will not benefit as they are already below that threshold, and half of the gains go to the richest in society.

Dr Miatta Fahnbulleh, Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation thinktank, told The Voice: “The spring statement is breathtakingly disappointing. I think against the biggest squeeze we’ve seen on household incomes for 50 years, the fact that the Chancellor chose not to act to help families at the sharp end, those on low and modest incomes, is actually quite shocking.

“Half of black households are in poverty, so if the Chancellor had given a Universal Credit uplift of £20 uplift, that would essentially give “1,000 pounds a year to help families cushion some of the price rises. But instead it was taken away. 

“And then on top of that, benefits are only being updated by 3%, despite the fact we know that inflation is going to be rising by 8%. That is a huge cut to the living standards of the poorest households, which tragically, there is high representation amongst black and black households.”

The Voice is waiting for a Treasury response after pointing out that the document they claimed contained an equalities impact assessment did not.