Spring Budget Live: Jeremy Hunt's budget announcement, expected changes to Windfall Tax and National Insurance
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That's all folks
That's it from me, after a Spring Budget that was a bit of a blank space when it came to new announcements.
It's a bad day for the Scottish Tories, who are in for a cruel summer of defending a policy they previously condemned, unless the election is before then. If you're ready for it?
Budget at a glance: What measures did the Jeremy Hunt announce?
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s package of measures was billed as a “Budget for long-term growth”, but is set against the backdrop of the UK’s struggling economy, which slipped into a technical recession at the end of 2023. Here is a summary of what was announced.
Read more here.
Oath breaker
Labour welcomed the cut to national insurance, but claimed Rishi Sunak had broken a promise to cut income tax.
Sir Keir Starmer said: “Because we have campaigned to lower the tax burden on working people for the whole Parliament, and we won’t stop now, we will support the cuts to national insurance today.
“But I noticed this in 2022 when the Prime Minister was chancellor, he made this promise: ‘I can confirm in 2024 for the first time the basic rate of income tax will be cut from 20 to 19 pence’.
“Having briefed that all week, that an income tax cut was coming, that promise is in tatters today.”
Con artist
Sir Keir Starmer has said tax cuts in the Budget are a “Tory con”.
The Labour leader told the Commons: “If only it weren’t so serious, because the story of this Parliament is devastatingly simple: a Conservative Party stubbornly clinging to the failed ideas of the past, completely unable to generate the growth working people need, and forced by that failure to ask them to pay more and more, for less and less.
“And as the desperation grows they torch not only their reputation for fiscal responsibility but any notion that they can serve the county, not themselves.
“Party first, country second while working people pay the price.”
A mora(y)l quandary
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross has said he is “deeply disappointed” at the extension of the windfall tax in the spring Budget, announcing he will vote against the measure.
In a statement after the Budget was laid out in the Commons, Mr Ross said: “while I accept the Chancellor had some tough decisions to make, I’m deeply disappointed by his decision to extend the windfall tax for a further year.
“The SNP and Labour have abandoned 100,000 Scottish workers by calling for the taps in the North Sea to be turned off now.
“Although the UK Government rightly oppose this reckless policy – and have granted new licences for continued production in the North Sea – the budget announcement is a step in the wrong direction.
“As such, I will not vote for the separate legislation needed to pass the windfall tax extension and will continue to urge the Chancellor to reconsider.”
Division? In this economy?
The SNP have just forced a division on the immediate tax changes, which breaks convention, it usually goes through on the nod.
The Government obviously wins, suggesting this might have just been about delaying Starmer, rather than anything substantial.
Election stations
There had been some murmurings that the Budget would contain some big rabbit ahead of an early election, but given how everything in that was briefed out previously, I'd say we are indeed looking at Autumn.
Mr Hunt might fancy another go..
Use your Ed
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey trashes the Budget.
He says: “This is a bottom-of-the-barrel Budget from a Conservative government that has given up on governing.
"Rishi’s recession is being followed by Hunt’s hangover, with years of unfair tax hikes while local health services are stretched to breaking point.
“This Budget had nothing to offer for people seeing their mortgage soar due to Conservative chaos or being left waiting for months in pain for NHS treatment.
“The public will see this for what is: a desperate last throw of the dice by a Conservative government that has neglected the NHS, trashed the economy and overseen a record fall in living standards. It couldn’t be clearer that we need a general election now so voters can finally kick this tired and out-of-touch government out of office.”
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