Budget 2024 - live: Hunt and Starmer ‘in conspiracy of silence’ as Britain faces hardest five years since WWII
‘We could be in for a rude awakening’ after election, says head of top economic think tank
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Your support makes all the difference.Both the Conservatives and Labour are engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” about what will happen to the public finances after the election, the head of a leading economic think tank has said.
Responding to the spring Budget, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said both parties were not being straight about the “scale” of the trade-offs they will face after voters go to the polls.
“They, and we, could be in for a rude awakening when those choices become unavoidable,” he told a press conference on Thursday.
Mr Johnson also warned that the UK was facing its most difficult period financially since the Second World War.
“The combination of high debt interest payments and low forecast nominal growth means that the next parliament could well prove to be the most difficult of any in 80 years for a chancellor wanting to bring debt down,” he said.
Hunt ‘understands local concerns’ after Scottish Tory leader ‘deeply disappointed’
Jeremy Hunt said he “understands there are local concerns”, after Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said he was “deeply disappointed” that the Chancellor extended the windfall tax on oil and gas firms.
Mr Hunt said: “We’ll be engaging with the oil and gas industry to talk about those concerns.
“Given that high energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine have lasted much longer than anyone predicted at the time, I think it’s fair that the oil and gas industry should make an additional contribution to the amount of money that we have been having to spend on cost-of-living support.”
Northern Ireland remains ‘fiscally constrained’ following Budget, says deputy First Minister
Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly said the region remained in a “fiscally constrained position” following the Budget.
She said: “I understand there’s probably about £99 million-worth of additional benefit for Northern Ireland.
“We have set out the big challenges we have in terms of our public sector transformation, the waiting lists, issues around special educational needs. Of course we will have fiscal responsibility as we address that, and we want to deliver.
“But to deliver on those things will require investment, it does require resources.
“So, while we welcome the money we also emphasise that we will continue in a fiscally constrained position in Northern Ireland.
“That will require some difficult decisions to be made.”
Budget will hit pensioners badly, experts say
Jeremy Hunt’s 2p National Insurance cut will ‘sting’ pensioners, say the Telegraph.
Those living off their pensions will now have to pay more tax on their private savings as employees pay less national insurance.
Those over 66 do not pay NI and will be left out of around £900 personal taxation giveaways, according to the paper.
MP calls no compensation for those affected by Post Office and blood scandals a ‘disgrace’
Labour MP Kevan Jones (North Durham) said the Government “are a disgrace” for not allocating money for compensation schemes for sub-postmasters or those affected by the contaminated blood scandal in the Budget.
He told the Commons: “There is no extra money being put into the Budget for the new schemes and scandalously, that no money has been allocated for the contaminated blood victims either. Now that is cynical. That is about just kicking this into the election.”
He added: “The Government have a moral duty to both those people and need to put money aside for that.”
Jeremy Corbyn criticises Hunt for not mentioning social care ‘crisis’ in Budget
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has criticised Jeremy Hunt for not mentioning the social care “crisis” in his Budget.
Speaking in the Commons, the Independent MP for Islington North said: “Whilst the Chancellor said a great deal about the NHS, he didn’t mention social care at any one point in his speech.
“It is a crisis that there is, for so many, so many families are devastated by the costs of social care and so many women have to give up their jobs, their careers, and their hopes because they have to care for elderly relatives, or those with profound disabilities.
“We can do so much better in this country than we’re doing, and so this Budget to me is not welcome at all, it is a huge missed opportunity.”
Mr Corbyn also called for the “immoral and disgraceful” two-child benefits policy to be abolished, adding: “It would not be madly expensive to end that policy and it would take 250,000 children out of poverty.
“It would cost £1.3 billion. When the Chancellor announced that the non-dom abolition – which I agree with – would free up more money for tax cuts for the future, that could have been used to end the two-child policy, a very neat synchronisation of two policy changes.”
Budget backs cutting edge plans to send police drones to emergency scenes
Police use of drones as first responders was one of the more eye-catching measures that will affect law enforcement in the Budget.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he would prioritise schemes that will save money in the next five years, pledging £230 million for new technology including increased used of video calls and drones.
Plans for trials where drones are used as first responders to the scene of emergencies were unveiled by police chiefs in November, with the firsts tests due to be carried out in Norfolk in the coming months.
Margaret Davis reports:
Budget backs cutting edge plans to send police drones to emergency scenes
Plans were set out for £230 million to support new technology that also includes increased use of video calls.
Charity ‘disappointed’ Budget did not mention domestic abuse services funding
A domestic abuse charity has said it is “disappointed” there was no mention of funding for lifesaving domestic abuse services in the spring Budget.
Abigail Ampofo, Interim CEO of Refuge, said: “Refuge is disappointed, but sadly not surprised that despite the Government’s focus on providing better public services, there was no mention of funding for lifesaving domestic abuse services in the Spring Budget delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, today.
“Ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday, it is devastating that women were yet again overlooked, with no new long-term sustainable funding commitments for frontline domestic abuse services from the Government.
It comes after Refuge, in coalition with four other leading VAWG (violence against women and girls) organisations, said it issued a letter to the Chancellor earlier this week, urging the inclusion of £427 million for specialist domestic abuse services in the Budget.
Fuel duty freeze extended in Budget in boost to motorists
Jeremy Hunt has handed a Budget boost to motorists as the chancellor opted to keep fuel duty frozen for the 14th year in a row.
In a move expected to cost the Treasury around £5bn, Mr Hunt once again extended the 5p cut in fuel duty introduced by Rishi Sunak in 2022 as wholesale prices soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Despite an unforgiving economic landscape, the chancellor is under pressure to entice voters with tax giveaways ahead of this year’s general election, with recent polling putting the Conservative Party’s popularity at a 45-year low.
Andy Gregory reports:
Fuel duty freeze extended in Budget in boost to motorists
Jeremy Hunt is seventh Tory chancellor in a row to keep fuel duty frozen as he unveiled his spring statement
Opinion | This was a nakedly political Budget – and it won’t save the Tory party
People view the government as taking with one hand and giving back a little bit of it with another – Andrew Grice warns that the Conservatives have run out of time to change the course of public opinion.
“Jeremy Hunt’s Budget won’t save the Conservatives from election defeat,” he writes. “We don’t need a crystal ball to tell us that because we can read the book: the first two percentage point cut in national insurance, in the autumn statement last November, didn’t dent Labour’s commanding lead in the opinion polls. Nor will today’s repeat.”
Opinion | The harder Jeremy Hunt tried to be funny and normal, the weirder he became
If the chancellor hoped his Budget jokes and policies would go down a storm, he was sadly mistaken, writes Joe Murphy.
Joe says: “Hunt’s campaign to look normal started after breakfast with a jog with his labrador, and posting a video of himself saying: ‘I hate watching myself on TV.’ But then he just blurted out “Great budgets change history”, which is the kind of thing only weird people say.
“Normal people don’t have this exaggerated sense of destiny. Only people descended from 17th-century colonial administrators assume that, like Luke Skywalker, they were born to change the future. (Hunt’s ancestor was Sir Streynsham Master, who ran Madras for the East India Company and imposed licences on taverns and theatres.)”
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