The state of the Economy

  • As announced by the Prime Minister the Era of austerity is @finally coming to an end’ the chancellor repeated.
  • The growth forecast for 2018 has been downgraded from 1.5% in March to 1.3% with the major impact being due to the poor spring weather.
  • Forecasts for next 4 years have been raised slightly to 1.4% in 2019 and 2020, 1.5% in 2021 and 1.6% in 2022
  • There are 3.3million more people in work since 2010 and it is forecast that there will be 800,000 more jobs by 2022
  • Wages growth is at its highest in nearly a decade
  • Public borrowing in 2018 will be £11.6 billion lower than originally forecast in March
  • Borrowing as a proportion of GDP is set to rise to 1.4% next year
  • Borrowing in the next 5 years to total £31.8 billion, £23.8 billion, £20.8 billion and £19.8 billion
  • Debt as a proportion of GDP peaked at 85.2% in 2016-17 before falling to 83.7% this year and expected to reduce to 74.1% by 2023-24

Personal Tax/Wages

  • The personal allowance (the rate above which people start paying income tax at 20%) will rise to £12,500 in April, a year earlier than originally planned
  • The higher rate threshold (Point at which people will begin to be taxed at 40% for Income Tax and 32.5% for dividend income) will also rise in April from the current £46,350 to £50,000
  • In following years the thresholds will rise in line with inflation
  • National Living Wage will be increased by 4.9% in April 2019 from £7.83 to £8.21 per hour

Welfare

  • Work allowances for universal credit to be increased by £1.7 billion
  • There will be 2.4 million working families with children that should benefit by £630 per year
  • An extra £1 billion is to be set aside to assist welfare claimants to transfer to the new consolidated benefit
  • ‘The system is here to stay’ insists the Chancellor

Health and Education

  • The additional spend of £20.5 billion over the next 5 years for the NHS was confirmed
  • There will be a minimum of £2 billion a year for mental health services
  • New mental health crises centres will provide support in every A & E unit in the country
  • There will be more mental health ambulances provided and a 24 hour mental health hotline
  • An extra £700 million will be made available for councils to provide additional care for the elderly and those with disabilities
  • £10 million for Air Ambulances
  • A one off bonus of £400 million to help schools ‘buy the extras that they need’
  • There will be funding for 10 University Enterprise Zones

Housing and Stamp Duty

  • All first time buyers who purchase shared equity homes of up to £1/2 million will be exempt from stamp duty
  • There will be £1/2 million for the Housing Infrastructure Fund, which is to enable a further 650,000 homes to be built
  • There will be Lettings relief limited to properties where the owner is in shared occupancy with the tenant
  • New partnerships with housing associations in England will deliver 13,000 homes
  • There will be guarantees of up to £1 billion for smaller house builders

Alcohol, Tobacco and Fuel

  • Beer, cider and spirits duties to be frozen
  • Duty on wine to be increased by 8p per bottle in February 2019
  • Tobacco duty will rise by inflation PLUS 2%
  • The price of a packet of cigarettes to increase by 33p immediately
  • Fuel duty to be once again frozen (This is now the 9th year in a row)
  • remote gaming duty will increase to 21% for online gambling and ‘games of chance’ from 2019

Business

  • there will be a new 2% digital services tax introduced on the UK revenues of the big technology companies from April 2020. This will be charged on profitable companies earning global sales of more than £500 million
  • Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) contracts to be abolished and there will be a new centre of excellence to manage existing contracts ‘ in the tax payers interest’
  • The current Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) of £200,000 will be increased for 2 years to £1 million
  • The contribution of small companies to the apprenticeship levy is to be reduced from 10% to 5%
  • Business rates bills for businesses with a rateable value of £51,000 or less will be reduced by 1/3rd over 2 years. this measure is expected to benefit 90% of independent companies reducing their bills by £8,000
  • £900 million is to be provided in business rates relief for small businesses and £650 million to rejuvenate High Streets
  • A new 100% mandatory business rates relief will be available for all lavatories made available for public use, whether publicly or privately owned
  • There will be an extension in the way self employment status is taxed from the public sector to medium and large private compaies from 2020

Transport and Infrastructure

  • There will be a £30 billion package for Englands roads to include repairs to motorways and potholes
  • A 30% increase in infrastructure spending
  • The use of e-passport gateways, which are currently available to Europeans, will be opened up to travellers from USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan
  • Air Passenger Duty to be indexed in line with inflation

Security and defence

  • There will be an extra £160 million for counter terrorism police
  • An extra £1 billion for armed forces to be used for cyber capabilities and the UK’s nuclear submarine programme
  • £10 million is to be provided for veterans mental health care to mark the centenary of the armistice which brought WW1 to an end
  • £1 million for school trips to WW1 battlefields
  • £1.7 million in holocaust education programmes

Environment

  • A new tax on non recycled plastic packaging to be introduced. There will be no tax on takeaway coffee cups but this will be reconsidered if the industry fails to make enough progress
  • £60 million to be provided for planting trees in England
  • £10 million to deal with abandoned waste sites

Brexit

  • There will be an extra £500 million earmarked for preparation to leave the EU
  • If needed the Spring Statement next march could be upgraded to a full budget
  • There will be a commemorative 50p coin to mark the UK’s departure from the EU