The Chancellor, who again used the well-worn phrase “we are fixing the roof while the sun is shining”, said “sound public finances are not the enemy of sustained growth – they are its precondition”.
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While millions of low-paid families will not now see their benefits cut in April, the relief for many will be temporary point out Labour, with tax credits due to be phased out by 2018 in place of Universal Credit.
So one story is that the police and the foreign office, for example, were spared expected cuts because there were modest changes to forecasts. “This is not like the friendly, flexible fiscal target of the last parliament”, IFS director Paul Johnson said at a presentation. “Now is the time to back our police and give them the tools to do the job”.
UK Chancellor George Osborne made the decision to make a U-turn on the benefit cuts in the UK, created to hit the poorest working families.
“I have always been an advocate for fairer school funding and am delighted that the schools budget has been protected in real terms”.
Mr Johnson also reiterated the IFS’s call that there was an “increasingly urgent need” to work out the fiscal framework for greater powers for Holyrood, saying “we still don’t know how devolution to Scotland is actually going to work”.
“We said this was a smoke-and-mirrors spending review and we were right”.
Mr Hood said the transitional protection meant that there could be “potentially very different amounts of benefit” for people in similar circumstances, depending when their universal credit claim started.
Fortunately for Osborne, the Office for Budget Responsibility recently forecast that the Government would have to borrow £8 billion less than had been originally predicted over the course of this Parliament. The Scottish party continually pushed for the Conservative Government to change the plans, plans that they had previously promised not to make so the party would be elected in as a majority government. The Chancellor confirmed plans to double the housing budget with spending partly funded by new rates of Stamp Duty that will be 3pc higher on the purchase of additional properties like buy-to-lets and second homes.
Chris Hayward, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Resources, wrote to Chancellor George Osborne in advance of the Spending Review on Wednesday 25 November, to outline the huge financial challenge facing Hertfordshire County Council.
“This is not the end of austerity”, said Mr Johnson. Many believe that this is where Osborne is planning on making the savings instead.
Figures compiled by the House of Commons Library show women are still being hit three times harder than men by changes to welfare spending and taxation, despite the tax credits U-turn. We are ready for whatever storms lie ahead’.
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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.
