Turning Britain’s budget deficit into surplus was central to Prime Minister David Cameron’s pitch to voters in May’s election and, if achieved, would help the ruling Conservative Party to cut income taxes before the next election due in 2020.
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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.
“From what we have heard today, I think they will feel absolutely betrayed”. This follows on the heels of his last Budget when he announced that there would be a cut in tax relief on mortgage interest for landlords.
The Treasury has also confirmed that a string of measures, as part of Mr Osborne’s original tax credits plan, will still go ahead.
“I’ve listened to the concerns”. Now is the time to back our police and give them the tools to do the job.
“The Met is highly effective at protecting the public, but we can still be more efficient and reduce our costs”.
The government has to seek approval from parliament to breach the cap, potentially setting up an uncomfortable debate on welfare policy.
So one of his plans is to bump up the stamp duty to be paid by people buying a second home to rent out.
The extra billions had given the Chancellor significant “wriggle room” to lessen the cuts on unprotected departments, but Mr Johnson warned the £12 billion of welfare cuts sought by the Chancellor were not being abandoned and would be achieved through the introduction of universal credit. But those protected areas of spending account for well over half of government spending. The Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent agency, estimated that public finances would be $40 billion better off than it had forecast in July.
Rather than phasing the cuts in, as he had been expected to do, Mr Osborne said he said he had decided the “simplest thing” was “to avoid them altogether” – despite that meaning he would miss his own target for overall welfare spending in the early years of this parliament.
Chancellor George Osborne will announce increased spending on housing on Wednesday, saying the government will support private developers and local authorities to encourage the construction of around 400,000 new homes.
And so it was that shadow chancellor John McDonnell made a decision to lighten the atmosphere by taking out a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, quoting from it to tease Osborne about his enthusiasm for doing business with China.
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Commenting on the Chancellor’s claim that child poverty has reduced Brock said: “Child poverty across the country has marginally reduced, but figures consistently tell us that one child in five in Scotland is living in poverty”.
