At A Glance - The Budget

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has revealed the contents of his Budget in the House of Commons today and announced a business tax cut for hospitality industry and scrapped an increase in fuel duty.

He is setting out the government's tax and spending plans for the year ahead, below are some of the key points…

Public Finances And Economy

  • Inflation in September was 3.1% and is likely to rise to average of 4% over next year

  • UK economy is forecast to return to pre-Covid levels by 2022

  • Annual growth set to rebound by 6.5% this year, followed by 6% next year

  • Unemployment expected to peak at 5.2% in 2022, lower than previously predicated 11.9%

  • Wages have grown in real terms by 3.4% since February 2020

  • Borrowing as a percentage of GDP is forecast to decrease from 7.9% this year to 3.3% in 2022

  • Borrowing as a percentage of GDP will then decrease in the next four years to 1.5%

  • Foreign aid spending projected to return to 0.7% of GDP by 2024-25

Taxation And Wages

  • Confirmation business rates will be retained and reformed

  • Universal Credit taper rate will be slashed by 8% by 1 December, bringing it down from 63% to 55%

  • A 50% business rate discount for retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors in England in 2022-23 upto a maximum of £110,000

  • Planned rise in fuel duty to be cancelled as a result of record fuel pump prices in eight years

  • Consultation on an online sales tax

  • National Living Wage to increase in 2022 by 6.6%, to £9.50 per hour

Housing

  • 4% levy will be placed upon property developers with profits over £25m to help create a £5bn fund to remove unsafe cladding

  • £24bn earmarked for housing: £11.5bn for up to 180,000 affordable homes, with brownfield sites targeted for new development

  • £640m per year to address rough sleeping and homelessness

Government Spending

  • Funding will rise by an average of £4.6bn for Scottish Government, £2.5bn for Welsh Government, and £1.6bn for Northern Ireland

  • Whitehall departments will receive rise in overall spending totalling £150bn over the course of this Parliament

  • Levelling Up Fund guarantees £1.7bn will be invested in local areas across the UK

  • Government backing projects across Aberdeen, Bury, Burnley, Lewes, Clwyd South, Stoke-on-Trent, Ashton under Lyne, Doncaster, South Leicester, Sunderland and West Leeds

  • Extra £2.2bn for courts, prisons and probation services

  • Tax relief for museums and galleries will be extended until March 2024

  • Core science funding increase to £5.9bn per year by 2024-25

  • £6bn of funding to help sort out backlogs in the NHS

  • £7bn for transport projects in areas such as Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and South Yorkshire

Children And Education

  • Almost £2bn of new funding to help schools and colleges to recover from the pandemic

  • Schools to receive an extra £4.7bn by 2024-25

  • Schools funding to return to levels in 2010 in real terms - an equivalent per pupil cash increase of over £1,500

  • £300m to be spent on a "Start for Life" parenting programmes, with an extra £170m by 2024-25 promised for childcare

  • A UK-wide numeracy programme will be created to help improve basic maths skills among adults

Travel

  • Financial support for English airports to be increased for a further 6 months

  • Flights between airports in the UK will be subject to a new lower rate of Air Passenger Duty from April 2023

  • From April 2023, new ultra long haul band in Air Passenger Duty for flights of over 5,500 miles brought in

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