In his Autumn Statement and Spending Review, the Chancellor was yesterday able to dodge his highly-controversial £4.4billion cuts to in-work benefits thanks to an unexpected £27billion windfall.
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“Very significant” government spending cuts will still be imposed before the next general election, an influential think tank has warned.
In a package of measures created to help with housing, Mr Osborne announced a doubling of the housing budget to £2bn a year, to fund 400,000 new affordable homes by the end of the decade, to both buy and rent.
Responding to the announcements made, Lawes said: “We are accustomed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s bi-annual statements including “rabbit out of the hat” moments and today was no different”.
Mr Osborne said that over the course of the Parliament the Government would borrow £8 billion less than previously forecast while spending £12 billion more on capital investment. “The police protect us, and we are going to protect the police”.
County council leader Carl Les said: “While we are always reluctant to raise council tax we will have to consider this step if we are to protect the most vulnerable in our society”.
Mr Hood said: “The things that lose you transitional protection are acquiring or losing a partner – so if I move from being a single to a couple in the system – that loses you transitional protection”.
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. He and his team, by uncovering a £27bn underlying improvement in the public finances over the next five years, drove last week’s announcements.
The highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies stressed that the era of austerity was far from over, with more painful cuts, including on welfare and in Whitehall, to come.
With health, schools, defence and overseas aid all protected, it meant big cuts for other Whitehall departments.
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: “After five years the deficit has not been eliminated and this year it’s predicted to be over £70bn”.
These are the departments whose budgets suffered the most in Osborne’s spending review.
“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”.
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Osborne also revealed plans to extend the small business rate relief scheme to 600,000 companies and create 26 new enterprise zones.
