When Budget announcements are made they often hit the headlines and then sink out of sight, with many unaware that anything is happening, even when the provisions or changes come into force.

I have met several constituents who have assumed that the extra money in their pay packet each week has come from some HMRC glitch, rather than the systematic changes that the Government has made to increase our personal tax allowance from just over £6,000 in 2010 to £11,000 that applies from next month.

These changes, noticed or not, have meant that more than 30 million people have kept more of their own money to save and invest, with someone paying basic tax now £900 a year better off than five years ago.

Crucially, it has also meant that the lowest paid in our society have been helped most with more than two million people so far (the majority of them women on low or part-time incomes) being taken out of the tax net altogether.

All of these changes have happened while we have reduced the deficit by two thirds, invested record amounts in our precious public services like the NHS, and seen more jobs created in Britain in the last five years than in the whole of Europe put together!

So I thought it was worth noting another big milestone that will happen next month: the introduction, for the first time ever, of a new compulsory National Living Wage to be set at £7.20 per hour from April 2016 for those over 25, and forecast to reach £9 by 2020.

This will mean that more than two million workers will be better off, with those currently working on the minimum wage seeing their pay rise by a third over this Parliament – an increase for full-time workers of more than £5,000.

The Office of Budget Responsibility has assessed that this will cost businesses one per cent of their profits which the Chancellor will offset by cutting corporation tax to 18 per cent by 2020; and businesses will also benefit from a 50 per cent increase to the Employment Allowance, cutting their national insurance bills, so this is an affordable and long overdue change that should be welcome right across the political spectrum.

It is also a crucial part of our long-term plan to move Britain steadily from a low-wage, high-welfare economy, funded by unsustainable debt, to one where wages are higher, benefits support those in greatest need but don’t trap people into a life on the dole and where business-led growth, not unsustainable government handouts, propels the British economy.