CHANCELLOR George Osborne’s latest Budget will gift bosses enough for an extra bottle of champagne every week while low-income households are left high and dry, it was revealed today.

Families with one main wage-earner, single parents and unemployed couples with children are likely to see living standards stagnate or drop as a result of Mr Osborne’s plans over the next five years.

But households with two parents working full-time, workers without children and pensioners will typically be better-off by 2020 — a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found.

And Britain’s richest working households, which already rake in £81,300 annually on average, will pocket another £670 a year from tax breaks of £12.88 a week — enough for a discount bottle of bubbly plus change.

By comparison, an out-of-work couple with two children will fall £221 short of what they need every week — adding up to around £11,000 over a year.

Mr Osborne’s raising of the national minimum wage, which is set to reach just £9 an hour by 2020, will be outstripped by cuts to child tax credit and working tax credit.

For an adequate standard of living, parents on low incomes will both have to work full-time, the report adds.

The JRF says this can only be done with more high-quality and affordable childcare, flexible jobs offering good career progression and a greater supply of truly affordable housing.

The stark reality of the Chancellor’s tax and benefit choices was also laid bare today by a TUC analysis.

The poorest fifth of working families, with an average income of just £5,500, will lose £460 a year — the same cost of basic cheap groceries, or school meals (based on £2.50 per day for 190 school days), for a year.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said Tory PM David Cameron needed to explain why the government is robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

“By cutting support for low-paid families, despite a growing economy, the government is shutting them out of the recovery.

“And worse than that, it’s also giving rich households a tax break by taking support away from the low paid.”

lamiatsabin@peoples-press.com