Speculation that the Chancellor could reduce the £10 billion surplus target were fuelled by official figures this week that r epresented the worst deficit for any October since 2009.
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Britain plans to increase the number of stealth fighter jets it can launch from aircraft carriers over the next decade and boost anti-terrorism spending by 30 percent, finance minister George Osborne said on Sunday.
In fact, single-person IT firms will not only lose under an anticipated move by George Osborne tomorrow to reinforce attacks he launched against them in July, they also stand to be hit by an expected range of fresh cuts to tech and enterprise.
From April to October central government spending rose by 1.1% to £402.6bn.
TOMORROW’S Autumn Statement and Spending Review was meant to mark the moment Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire became one as the result of a devolution deal.
Tim Hallett, leader of PWC’s government and public sector practice, said Osborne faced “a tricky task next week…to balance the need for short term savings across government while also investing for the longer term”.
He points to statistics which show crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010, despite a 23 percent cut in the interior ministry’s budget since then, and surveys which show stable or rising satisfaction with local services.
“This will be the occasion for the Chancellor to present a gentler transition to lower tax credits in response to the heavy criticism made of his original July Budget plans”, said Brian Hilliard, economist at Socié té Gé né rale.
Separately, the IoD called for safeguards to be announced by the Chancellor in Wednesday’s Autumn Statement on the new apprenticeship levy.
Local government borrowing, responsible for much of the overshoot this year, can be subject to large revisions. This is the big overarching thing to bear in mind about the 2015 Spending Review: it is the moment when Britain embarks on the real austerity. Included in the new batch of deals are HM Revenue & Customs, the Cabinet Office, the offices for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the departments of energy and climate change and work and pensions.
He has promised to set out ways to protect millions of working families from the highly-controversial £4.3 billion welfare squeeze – which was rejected by the House of Lords in a damaging defeat for the Government.
However Mr Osborne said it was right that the police should share the burden of austerity measures.
“The penny will gradually drop for the public”, Priestly said.
The CSR and Autumn Statement will outline how government departments aim to save £20bn over the next four years.
While government coffers usually record a hefty surplus in January that would be able to bring borrowing numbers down again, analysts still foresee the OBR will raise its estimate for this fiscal year’s budget deficit.
Numerous long-term cuts to the income of the working poor will be introduced through reductions to universal credit – which supersedes tax credits – that the chancellor forced through the Commons in a low-profile welfare committee vote last week.
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Mr Osborne is due to be grilled about the round of cuts – and what action he is planning to mitigate the effect of tax credit cuts – when he appears on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show. In contrast to the annual Budget, it’s supposed to be more long-term, and offer us a view of the next five years.
