North Swindon MP, Justin Tomlinson, has welcomed the budget announced yesterday by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, in which he set out his plans to lay the foundations for a Britain fit for the future – investing for the long-term while supporting families and businesses and setting a path to a more prosperous Britain.
The key points include:
- Supporting families in their everyday lives, increasing the National Living Wage by above inflation, cutting income tax by raising the personal allowance, freezing fuel duty for the 8th year and investing to support our NHS.
- Building the homes our young people need, setting a target to deliver 300,000 homes per year, reforming planning to unlock land for first time buyers, abolishing stamp duty for over 80% of first time buyers and investing more to take government support for housing up to £44 billion.
- Investing in our NHS. We will provide £6.3 billion of additional new funding for our frontline NHS services on top of our already announced record investment, and fund upgrades to NHS facilities & building.
- Getting Britain ready for Brexit. Investing a further £3 billion on top of the £700 million already committed to prepare Britain for every possible eventuality, and ensure we prosper as we leave the EU.
- Building the New Economy, taking the National Productivity investment fund to £30 billion, investing in emerging technologies like AI and driverless cars, and backing business with a £2.3 billion package on business rates.
The Budget also highlighted the success the Conservatives have had in strengthening the UK’s economy. The UK currently has record high employment, and the Office of Budget Responsibility expects 600,000 more people to be in work by 2022.
Borrowing is £8.4bn less than expected at the Spring Budget, and it is now forecast to be £49.9bn this year. Borrowing is also expected to fall each year to reach its lowest level in 20 years by 2022/2023. This means that the deficit, the amount we have to borrow to cover the gap between what we spend and what we collect in taxes, has fallen by almost £100bn (or 75%) in the seven years since Labour left us with a record budget deficit in 2010.
Once we have eliminated the deficit, we will be able to reduce the country’s debts. The interest alone on this amounts to the same as our schools budget.
Income tax has been cut for over 30 million people, while we have lifted 4 million people out of paying income tax altogether.
One of the key announcements was a rise in the National Minimum Wage, by 4.4% to £7.83. This means full time workers are £2,000 better off since it was introduced. The National Minimum Wage for young people received its largest increase in ten years, rising by 5%. In addition to this, the personal allowance (the amount you can keep before paying any tax) will rise to £11,850 - meaning the typical basic rate tax payer will be £1,075 a year better off compared to 2010. This means a pay rise and a tax cut for the lowest earners in our country.
In recent weeks there have been calls for the Government to address problems with the Universal Credit roll out, in particular the amount of time a claimant had to wait before receiving their entitlement, and the Chancellor announced a £1.5bn package to address these concerns. This money will enable to Government to remove the seven day waiting period, increase the amount of advances available, so that a household can receive a full month’s claim within 5 days. In addition to this, any new Universal Credit claimant in receipt of Housing Benefit, will continue to receive it for two weeks.
The Chancellor reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to solving the broken housing market by abolishing stamp duty for first time buyers on all first time purchases up to £300,000. The exemption will also be available to properties up to £500,000 in high value areas, but will stop thereafter. This means an effective discount of up to £5,000 for a property of £500,000. This will help young people reach the ambition of owning their own home.
The Government is also increasing its investment in house building to £44bn, after announcing a further £15bn increase earlier today. Plans were also unveiled to create ‘Homes England’, which aims to bring together money, expertise, and planning and compulsory purchase powers with a clear remit to facilitate delivery of sufficient new homes, where they are most needed.
The NHS will benefit from an additional £2.8bn of funding to 2019-20, including £350m for this winter and £1.6bn next year, as well as £3.5bn in capital investment by 2022-23. This is in addition to the £10bn more a year for the NHS by 2020-2021 that we are committed to. We will also provide additional funding for agreed nurses pay rises so that patient services are protected.
The Government has already invested £700m for Brexit preparations, and has now set aside an additional £3bn to get Britain ready for the next two years.
Finally, building on the record level of funding for schools and the new National Funding Formula,We are introducing ‘T-levels’ (a Technical qualification equivalent to an A-Level), and we will provide a further £20 million to support further education colleges to prepare for them. We will expand the Teaching for Mastery of Maths programme to a further 3,000 schools; we will provide £40 million to train maths teachers across the country and we will introduce a £600 maths premium for schools, for every additional pupil who takes A-level or core maths. We will also ensure that every secondary school pupil can study computing by tripling the number of trained computer science teachers to 12,000, and we will work with industry to create a new national centre for computing.
Justin Tomlinson MP said: “Our strong economy is not only delivering record employment but also additional money for infrastructure, our NHS, education, support for first-time buyers, small businesses and boosting pay for the lowest earners. We are rightly investing in Britain’s future. ”
Budget Highlights
- From April 2018, the personal allowance (the amount you can keep before paying any tax) will rise to £11,850, meaning the typical basic rate tax payer will be £1,075 a year better off compared to 2010. The higher rate will also increase to £46,350.
- We will cancel the fuel duty rise scheduled for April – keeping it frozen for the eighth consecutive year meaning the average car driver is £850 better off since 2010.
- More measures to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, and non-compliance. This builds on significant action already taken; including securing almost £160bn of tax revenues since 2010, introducing over 100 measures, and making the UK’s tax gap fall to a record low of 6%
- An upgrade to Britain’s economic infrastructure by expanding the National Productivity Investment Fund by £8 billion to invest in rail, broadband, science and innovation – taking the total size of the fund to over £30 billion
- A further £2.3 billion investment in science and innovation, taking spending to its highest level in 30 years. And to support our world leading companies we will increase the Research & Development Tax Credit to 12 per cent.
