The Chancellor announced a series of changes to student loans in his Autumn Statement, including retrospective tweaks that have led to accusations of the government “mis-selling” the loans.
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Following the “no” vote in the House of Lords, Osborne has chose to fully retract his plan to further reduce tax credits.
The National Union of Students calculated that students previously eligible for maintenance grants who took out their full loan entitlement on a three-year course would graduate with debts worth more than £50,000. Although it forecasts a surplus on net borrowing of 0.5 per cent of GDP in 2019-20, it estimates that there is a greater than 40 per cent chance of a deficit then, and a 20 per cent chance of a deficit greater than 2.3 per cent of GDP.
Whilst a number of significant departmental cuts have been announced, with an additional 80,000 public sector jobs are expected to go, funding for NHS, Education and Counter-terrorism is going up.
He added, ‘In the coalition government’s March budget, cumulative cuts to real departmental spending limits were forecast to reach £42bn by 2018/19.
On-trade campaigners have welcomed George Osborne’s announcement this afternoon that small business rate relief has been extended for another year, but renewed calls on the Government to go further.
“We are pleased to see that there will be no cuts to police budgets at this time”. This will fund 400,000 new affordable homes by the end of the decade; affordable to buy, not just to rent.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the freezing of the repayment threshold and other changes would mean a 30% reduction in the portion of unpaid loans, known as the resource accounting and budgeting charge, by 2020, and increase repayments by £3bn.
“That funds the largest road investment programme since the 1970s, for we are the builders”, said Osborne. It is disappointing, however, to see that once again we are in a position of urging the Government to hasten with real and meaningful change to the business rates system and to bring about root and branch reform.
Council tax bills for North Devon households could see a two per cent increase after the Chancellor gave the green light for councils to collect more money to pay for social care. The apprenticeship levy will come into effect in April 2017, at a rate of 0.5% of an employer’s pay bill.
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Some 300,000 people have signed a petition calling for the removal of the Value-Added Tax on sanitary products and the government wants to change European Union law so it can abolish that altogether.
