But Resolution Foundation Director Torsten Bell said the changes risk undermining the new benefit system and could still leave families worse off.
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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. I hear and understand them”. He and his team, by uncovering a £27bn underlying improvement in the public finances over the next five years, drove last week’s announcements.
She added: “I think they have already cut enough so I am quite pleased that they have decided against their initial proposals”.
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast shows the United Kingdom is expected to narrowly beat its borrowing goal this year and move “out of the red and into the black” in 2019/20 with a slightly higher-than-expected £10.1 billion surplus. In that time costs have gone up with inflation, so the real cut has been considerably more. Now is the time to back our police and give them the tools to do the job.
The news yesterday that there will be no further cuts to police’s spending was met with “considerable relief” by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon.
Not everyone on benefits has been protected by Osborne’s U-turn.
It came following grim warnings of the impact further cuts would have on the ability of forces to respond to Paris-style terror attacks. The effects of austerity will still be felt despite the U-turn on tax credit cuts announced on Wednesday.
Mr Osborne also vowed he would “deliver in full” the unprecedented £12 billion welfare spending cuts included in the Budget.
On Thursday Osborne defended his U-turn after critics said he had bowed to pressure from rebellious Tory MPs and the House of Lords.
Welcoming 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”.
At the IFS’s traditional postmortem into the chancellor’s budget decisions, Johnson said: “This is not the end of austerity”.
– Protecting our economic security – taking the hard decisions to live within our means and bring our debts down.
John McDonnell said: “We said this was a smoke and mirror spending review and we were right”.
The Spending Review was for the most part just that – a review of how taxes are to be spent, rather than how they are to be raised.
The Chancellor also unveiled plans to abolish uniform business rates and allow councils to cut rates in order to attract businesses.
“We are committed to working with our partners to provide as many new affordable homes as we can and this additional government support is welcome”.
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“What is also pleasing is the targeted number of apprenticeships; we need to develop the next generation of locally based, skilled workers in order to prevent a “brain drain” elsewhere and the apprenticeship levy should hopefully encourage this”.
