Politically and economically speaking – the news is just about all bad for the government. But it’s not as bad as it will be for households as the cost of living crisis starts to strangle the life out of disposable incomes in the coming months.

Even Boris Johnson has gone as far as admitting that the government “needs to do more” to help struggling families in the wake of Rishi Sunak’s spring statement yesterday. Report after report from charities and think tanks have criticised the government – especially the Chancellor that has failed to effectively stem another 1.3 million people from being pushed into absolute poverty next year.

The chancellor defended the package of support offered to poorer households, including a 5p cut to fuel duty and increasing the threshold at which people start paying national insurance from £9,568 to £12,750. But, given the additional money pouring into the treasury coffers as a direct result of the very thing hurting household incomes – namely inflation – Sunak is facing considerable criticism for his actions.

Some of Britain’s most high-profile economic think tanks have scorned Rishi Sunak’s tax-cutting claims. They concluded that the vast majority of working people will be paying more in taxes on their incomes under the chancellor’s policies.

Sunak said – “The track record of this government and of previous Conservative governments in tackling inequality and poverty is very strong,” he told Today on BBC Radio 4. Not so, says the Inequality Trust. It reports that since 1979 the process of narrowing inequality has reversed sharply. Not only that but “rising inequality has seen a dramatic increase in the share of income going to the top, a decline in the share of those at the bottom and, more recently, a stagnation of incomes among those in the middle.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said Sunak’s latest announcements of raising the national insurance threshold, cutting 5p off the duty on a litre of petrol and then promising a 1p reduction in the basic rate of income tax in 2024 “do not measure up to the rhetoric”.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said: “Sunak continues, despite his rhetoric, to be a chancellor presiding over a very big increase in the tax burden. What he did yesterday was not enough even to stop the expected tax burden rising yet further.”

The Resolution Foundation worked out that inflation on household incomes meant that seven in every eight working people would effectively see tax increases rather than cuts. The reality is what does disposable money actually buy at the end of the month.

The Resolution Foundation calculated that only people with incomes between £11,000 and £13,500 would pay less in taxes on their incomes from all the measures outlined by the chancellor. And they spelled it out so there was no ambiguity about the losers in the cost of living crisis. “Of the around 31mn people in work, around 27mn will pay more in income tax and NI in 2024-25 thanks to changes announced since Rishi Sunak became chancellor.”