RISHI Sunak’s spending review this week revealed just how far the UK Government is from reality on the ground.

This was a set of public spending plans which he pitched as being about “jobs and public services” but contained measures to keep wages down, widening inequality even further.

This pandemic has hit those with insecure incomes and housing worst, and thanks to the Chancellor, the public sector workers who have kept things going during the pandemic are the ones who will pay for its economic fallout with an effective pay cut.

What Sunak’s single-year spending review tells us it that his is a government that’s willing to clap key workers from their doorsteps, but not even to protect the value of their pay.

Even the modest flat rate increase of £250 for low earners will amount to barely a 1% rise for many of them. This is a slap in the face for many people who have worked tirelessly to keep us all safe and maintain critical services during the pandemic.

The Chancellor’s attempt to justify this by pointing to poverty pay in the private sector, while still refusing to mandate a real Living Wage, is indefensible.

The reality is that what the UK Government calls a “national living wage” is nothing of the sort. Often those on poverty wages are also in insecure jobs or contracts too, so are already facing an uncertain future.

If you worked in a pub in Glasgow, for example, and your hours have been reduced to zero and you are worried about how you will pay your rent, there was no comfort in the Chancellor’s statement.

It’s little wonder there has been such a welcome increase in trade union membership amongst those who work in hospitality in Scotland.

It is these workers who have been living week-to-week, wondering how lockdown restrictions will impact on their income. Thousands of them lost their jobs unnecessarily because employers decided to offload experienced workers instead of using the furlough scheme. These are the workers who have been sometimes told to come in to work when they’re waiting for test results, or to switch off the Scottish Government’s contact tracing app in an attempt to prevent absences from those having to self-isolate.

When hospitality businesses have been closed because of local restrictions at level 4, many workers have had to live on 80% of poverty pay, with no tips.

For them, a 2% uplift in the minimum wage is an insult. Where is the action to lift them out of poverty and instruct their employers to keep them safe?

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak slammed for ‘deplorable’ cut to aid that may cause ‘100,000 deaths’

And the Chancellor’s betrayal of the most vulnerable isn’t restricted to those struggling in this country. The decision to cut the international development commitment, breaking a promise the Chancellor stood for election on just a year ago, tells us everything we need to know about the selfish, insular values of Brexit Britain and its right-wing architects.

Even while saying it’s too soon for fiscal consolidation, Rishi Sunak is choosing to raid cash from programmes which support the most vulnerable people on our planet.

He’s doing these things while refusing to increase tax on the super-rich or the corporations who have seen their wealth and profits increase hugely during the pandemic.

There are some who have made an enormous amount of money during this difficult time. Supermarkets and online shopping giants like Amazon have posted record profits and can easily afford a windfall tax to support those less fortunate.

Meanwhile, more than a billion pounds of outsourced government contracts have gone to firms run by the friends and donors of Tory MPs in the last eight months.

More than £10 billion of contracts were awarded without competition by the UK Government for things like vital protective equipment and England’s contact tracing app. The English public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that companies with links to politicians were given preference.

Some people call that cronyism. I call it corruption. Either way, it makes the Government decision to place the economic burden of the pandemic on workers’ shoulders even more galling.

There is a direct impact on the Scottish Parliament from the Chancellor’s plans too. His decision to delay the full UK Budget once again forces Scotland to set its own tax and spending plans before he does. The fact that one government can do this to another within the UK underlines how inadequate our current constitutional strait-jacket is.

It will be down to the Scottish Government to produce a budget which makes creative use of our devolved powers to address the ways in which the pandemic has worsened inequality. People with low and precarious incomes need more support, and this must be an urgent priority when MSPs debate Scotland’s Budget.