“There will be no cuts in the police budget at all”.
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“This means there will be no losses in tax credits and the suggestion that tax credit cuts have somehow been postponed or transferred into Universal Credit is completely misleading”.
According to analysis from the Resolution Foundation – a think tank aimed at improving living standards – working households who will claim the new universal credit benefit will lose on average £1,000 (US$1,500) in 2020, or £1,300 if the household has children.
The Chancellor’s spending review was widely welcomed as an “end to austerity” and a u-turn on the tax credit cuts that would have left 3.3m families £1,100 a year worse off.
Mr Danczuk said: “Even George Osborne could not ignore the charities, members of the House of Lords and even his own back benches, who all argued that tax credits cuts would be disastrous for working families”.
He said: “I and others have been lobbying the Home Secretary hard in recent weeks with concerns over the levels of cuts to police funding we had been told to expect”. Osborne said they reflect the wisdom of his policy to cut government spending since coming to office in 2010.
Cuts to UC announced in the July Budget are unaffected by the Chancellor’s change of heart on tax credits, he said.
There was delightful moment for campaigners and Conservative MPs after Osborne abandoned the tax credit cuts saying he is not going to phase in the controversial £4.4bn cuts.
“I am glad the Government has listened to us and protected frontline police services”.
There was a deafening roar from the Tory benches as he announced police forces would escape Whitehall cuts and that funding would be protected in real terms. These have prompted the government to constrain its spending for years.
Concluding his speech, Mr Osborne said: “Five years ago, when I presented my first Spending Review, the country was on the brink of bankruptcy and our economy was in crisis”.
The IFS said the cost of the tax-credit U-turn is 3.4 billion pounds in 2016-17.
“The point we are making is the system is still less generous in the long run, so new claimants and claimants whose circumstances change and lose that transitional protection, will lose out in the long run”.
John McDonnell said: “We said this was a smoke and mirror spending review and we were right”.
As Mr Osborne sought to head off attacks from Labour in the wake of the Paris attacks he revealed there will be no cut to the police budget. But the OBR maintains that the United Kingdom accounts will deliver a £10.1 billion surplus in 2019/20 – in fact marginally higher than the £10 billion forecasted in July.
Johnson said this demonstrated that the budget was “not the end of austerity”.
They include the apprenticeship levy on large employers that will raise £3bn, the £1.7bn from a 2% levy on council tax to pay for more social care; and the near-£1bn to be generated by higher stamp duty for second homes and buy-to-let properties.
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He added: “The day after the review, the Tory spin is unravelling”.
