• Increasing health spending by 3.9% in real terms over this Parliament – an increase of £41 billion
• Raising the National Living Wage by 6.6% to £9.50, giving a £1,000 pay rise to 2m of the lowest paid
• Increasing core schools funding by over £4.7 billion – ensuring reals terms per pupil funding rises to record
• Freezing fuel duty for the twelfth year in a row, a £1.5 billion tax cut for motorists
• Keeping our country safe – providing £540 million to complete recruitment of 20,000 extra police officers by 2023, alongside cutting crime by more funding for programmes like Safer Streets Fund and County Lines

One year ago, this country was in the grip of the biggest recession in 300 years. Thanks to our Plan For Jobs, we are today recovering faster than our major competitors, more people are in work, and growth is up. But uncertainty in the global economy means that recovery is now under threat.

That is why this Budget and Spending Review delivers a stronger economy for the British people:

• Strengthening our public finances, ensuring debt is falling again, and rebuilding our resilience
• Helping working families meet the cost of living and supporting vulnerable households
• Supporting businesses with post-Brexit tax reforms, tax cuts and incentives to invest
• Delivering stronger public services across all departments
• Driving economic growth – by investing in infrastructure, innovation and skills

This is a Budget which invests in a more innovative, high-skill economy, delivers world-class public services, backs business, helps working families with the cost of living – and levels up every part of the United Kingdom. It is a Budget which provides the foundations for a stronger economy.

Budget shows how the Conservative Government is delivering a stronger economy for people in Essex

Rebecca Harris MP has welcomed the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget and Spending Review, which provides the foundations for a stronger economy in the East of England as the country continues its recovery from the pandemic.

Measures that will benefit the East of England include over £411 million for local roads maintenance over the next three years (enough to fill over 5 million potholes over the next 3 years), over £87 million for smaller transport improvement priorities through the Integrated Transport Block, and a share of £24 billion for strategic road upgrades.

£87 million will also be delivered for five projects through the first tranche of the Conservative Government’s £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund – including £19.9 million to upgrade coastal attractions at Southend-on-Sea.

The Budget also confirmed that five new Community Diagnostic Centres will be built across the East of England in 2021-22, expanding diagnostic capacity across the country whilst targeting investment at areas of deprivation.

The East of England will also benefit from a share of the £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund – focused on helping people into jobs and supporting businesses across the UK – £560 million funding for the Youth Investment Fund and National Citizen Service, and £5 billion for Project Gigabit, rolling out gigabit capable broadband for homes and businesses across the UK.

Other nationwide measures that will benefit people in the East of England include a significant tax cut for low-income families by reducing the Universal Credit taper rate from 63% to 55%, a 6.6% increase in the National Living Wage to £9.50 an hour – giving a £1,000 pay rise to 2 million of the lowest paid – increasing pay for public sector workers, and freezes in fuel and alcohol duty.

Commenting, Rebecca Harris MP said:

“Despite the unprecedented challenges caused by the pandemic, this Conservative Government is getting on with the job and delivering on the priorities of the British people.

“This Budget will make a real difference to people in Castle Point, helping working families with the cost of living, supporting businesses with their recovery, and investing in our public services so that everyone gets the world-class hospitals, schools, and police services they deserve.

“I was elected on a promise to level up and improve opportunity for people in Castle Point – and today’s Budget shows how this Government is delivering on that promise as we build back better.”

Commenting, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said:

“One year ago, this country was in the grip of the biggest recession in 300 years. Thanks to our Plan For Jobs, we are today recovering faster than our major competitors, more people are in work, and growth is up. But uncertainty in the global economy means that recovery is now under threat.

“That is why this Budget and Spending Review delivers a stronger economy for the British people – strengthening our public finances, helping working families meet the cost of living, supporting businesses, delivering stronger public services, and driving economic growth.

“This is a Budget which will level up every part of the United Kingdom. It is a Budget which provides the foundations for a stronger economy.”

Policies

This Budget strengthens our public finances, gets debt falling again, and rebuilds our resilience:

• Our recovery will be stronger than expected – with growth today revised up and unemployment down
• Today’s new fiscal rules require us to only borrow to invest and get debt falling by 2024, as per manifesto
• Our responsible actions to date mean we are forecast to meet these rules, delivering strong public finances
• This also means we are forecast to return to spending 0.7% on overseas aid in 2024

This Budget helps working families meet the cost of living and supports vulnerable households:

• Significant tax cut for low-income families by reducing the Universal Credit taper rate from 63% to 55%
• Raising the National Living Wage by 6.6% to £9.50, giving a £1,000 pay rise to 2m of the lowest paid

• Freezing fuel duty for the twelfth year in a row, a £1.5 billion tax cut for motorists

• Freezing alcohol duty and radically reforming the system to make it simpler, fairer and healthier
• Cutting beer duty by 3 pence in a pint in a pub through our new Draught Relief
• Increasing pay for public sector workers following a period of more targeted pay
• Creating a new half price rate of Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights within the United Kingdom

This Budget supports businesses with post-Brexit tax reforms, tax cuts and incentives to invest:

• Cutting business rates by 50% next year for 90% of retail, hospitality and leisure, and freezing all rates
• Creating a new business rates green/growth tax relief and extending the Annual Investment Allowance
• Reforming our tonnage tax so British merchant ships are rewarded for flying the Union Jack
• Doubling creative industries tax reliefs for our world-leading theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries

• Extending our generous business rates relief for all regional airports in England

This Budget delivers stronger public services across all departments:

• Increasing total departmental spending by £150 billion by 2024: a 3.8% annual real terms increase, the largest real terms increase this century, and record levels of capital investment not seen in 50 years

• Health: 40 hospitals, 50,000 nurses, obesity programme, new elective capital, and record R&D 
• Schools: £1.8 billion for catch-up taking total to £5 billion, per pupil funding at record levels, SEN support
• Early years: new Family Hubs offer, larger Supporting Families programme, and investment in workforce
• Crime: 20,000 police, new programmes in drugs/violence/safer streets and borders
• Justice: £500 million for court recovery, more funding to tackle reoffending, record prison building
• Local government: new £1.6 billion annual grant for LAs and extra funding to deliver social care reforms
• Housing: unlocking brownfield sites and funding to get rough sleeping to lowest levels in a decade
• Environment: £2.4 billion farm support, increasing Nature for Climate Fund, £250m for biodiversity loss
• Place: Levelling Up and Community Ownership Funds, youth clubs, parks, football pitches, culture

This Budget drives economic growth by investing in infrastructure, innovation and skills:

• Infrastructure: roads, rail, broadband, mobile, flood defences, Beeching & intra-city transport deals
• Innovation: £20 billion on R&D, highest ever spend, internationally competitive & more generous tax relief
• Skills: huge uplift in 16-19, T-levels, Institutes of Technology, apprenticeships, bootcamps and numeracy

This Budget strengthens our public finances, gets debt falling again, and rebuilds our resilience:

• Thanks to our economic plan, our recovery will be quicker than expected. The OBR now expects the economy to return to pre-pandemic levels by January, earlier than previously expected. And the long-term damage to the economy is expected to be 2% rather than 3%. Accordingly, they are today revising growth up over the next 5 years, and have revised unemployment down to 5.2% – meaning over 2 million fewer people expected to be out of work than previously thought. And wages are rising: compared to February 2020, they have grown in real terms by 3.4%. As the OBR have commented today, the Government’s plan has proven ‘remarkably successful’.
• But in the face of emerging threats to that recovery, we need to strengthen our public finances. The pandemic left us with the highest borrowing since the Second World War, with debt at almost 100% of GDP. Our public finances are also more sensitive to changes in inflation and interest rates: just a 1 percentage point increase would cost us £23 billion. We are twice as sensitive to changes in rates as we were before coronavirus, and six times as sensitive compared to before the financial crisis. As the Prime Minister reminded us, higher borrowing today is just higher interest rates and even higher taxes tomorrow.
• That is why the Government is today introducing a new Charter for Budget Responsibility, with two new fiscal rules to ensure discipline with the public finances, and which are in line with our manifesto:
  • (1) Underlying public sector debt as a percentage of GDP must be falling
  • (2) The Government should only borrow to invest in capital projects
• Our responsible actions to date mean we are forecast to meet these rules by 2024. Thanks to the difficult decisions we have collectively made throughout the pandemic, we are meeting our new fiscal rules while allowing us to protect ourselves against similar risks in the future. And as well as allowing us to take measures to help working families, today’s forecasts imply that we are projected to return to spending 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid in 2024-5, before the end of the Parliament.

This Budget helps working families meet the cost of living and supports vulnerable households:

• Cutting tax for low-income families by reducing the Universal Credit taper rate. To make sure work pays, and to help the lowest-income families in the country, the taper rate will be cut by 8 pence, taking it down from the current 63p to 55p. The Government is also increasing the Work Allowance by £500; taken together, this is a tax cut for 2 million low-income families worth £2.2 billion next year, or an extra £1,000 in their pocket. And we will introduce this no later than December 1st. This has been advocated by the Resolution Foundation, TUC, Centre for Policy Studies, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Centre for Social Justice. As an example, a single mother of two working full-time on the National Living Wage will be better off by around £1,200 a year – while a working couple with two children, both paid the National Living Wage, one working full-time and one part-time, will be better off by £1,800 every year.
• Increasing the National Living Wage by 6.6% to £9.50. A Conservative Government introduced the NLW in 2016. The Government is implementing the recommendations of the independent Low Pay Commission, raising the pay of 2 million of the lowest paid workers; someone on the NLW will see an annual salary increase of £1,000. We are also increasing public sector pay following a period of more targeted pay.
• Freezing fuel duty for the twelfth year in a row. Due to rising global oil prices, the average cost of filling up the typical family car has gone up by £3.40 in the last eight weeks alone. Today the Government is freezing fuel duty for the twelfth year in a row, a £1.5 billion tax cut, meaning the average driver has saved £1,900 since 2010.
• Radically simplifying alcohol duty to make the system fairer. As a result of leaving the EU, we are now able to reduce the number of alcohol bands from fifteen to just six, based around taxing alcoholic content. The Government is also introducing a new Small Producer Relief so small cidermakers are incentivised to grow larger. The Government is cutting the price of English sparkling wine and prosecco by as much as 64 pence, and cutting the tax on draught fruit ciders by 20%. And until this new system is in place, we will freeze all alcohol duties for the third year in a row, including for whisky – a tax cut for families worth £500 million every year.
• Boosting pubs by cutting beer duty. The Government is also introducing a new Draught Relief which will apply a new, lower rate of duty on draught beer and cider – cutting duty by 5%, the biggest cut to cider duty since 1923 and the biggest cut to beer duty for 50 years. This will boost British pubs by nearly £100 million a year – and means a permanent cut in the cost of a pint by 3 pence.
• Creating a new lower rate of Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights within the UK. Currently, flights within and between the four nations of the UK pay the same duties as international flights. From April 2023, flights between airports in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be subject to a new lower rate of APD than international flights, cutting duty by half for 9 million passengers. The Government will also introduce a new ultra long-haul band for the 5% of passengers travelling the furthest.
• These build on steps the Government has already taken to help people with the cost of living. We have already put in place a £500 million Household Support Fund to help vulnerable families across the country this winter.

This Budget supports businesses with post-Brexit tax reforms, tax cuts and incentives to invest:

• Cutting business rates by at least 50% next year for 90% of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses – and freezing all rates. Any eligible business – such as pubs, gyms, cinemas, restaurants and hotels – can claim a 50% discount on their bills, up to a maximum of £110,000 per business. Taken together with Small Business Rates Relief, that’s a business tax cut worth £7 billion for over 700,000 eligible businesses – the biggest business rates tax cut in 30 years, and which comes on top of the £16 billion of support we have put in place throughout the pandemic. And we are cancelling next year’s planned increase in the business rates multiplier – a tax cut itself worth £4.6 billion.
• Creating new business rates reliefs to incentivise improvements and green investment. As called for by business organisations, these reliefs represent a new £750 million tax cut on investment. And to further support investment the Government is extending the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance for a further 15 months.
• Reforming the tonnage tax. Previously as a member of the EU, ships could qualify for special treatment in the British tax system while sailing under the flag of another country. Now we have left the EU, our tonnage tax will – for the first time ever – reward companies for adopting the flag of the United Kingdom.
• Doubling tax reliefs for the creative industries sector. On top of the £850 million the Government is providing for the creative industries sector over the next five years, we are also extending tax relief for museums and galleries by another two years to the end of March 2024 and doubling the tax reliefs for orchestras, theatres and museums from midnight tonight until April 2024 – a tax cut for culture worth almost £250 million.

• Widening our generous business rates relief for regional airports across England. In January, the Government introduced the Airport & Ground Operations Support Scheme (AGOSS) to support English airports with fixed costs such as their business rates. The Government is today extending this support by a further six months, equivalent to a full business rates holiday for almost all regional airports.
• A fair corporation tax rate on banks. Financial services are one of our most important industries, employing over 1 million people, two thirds outside London. The Government is retaining a corporation tax surcharge of 3%, meaning that the overall corporation tax rate on banks will, in 2023, increase from 27% to 28% – higher than the standard 25% paid by others. We are also raising the annual allowance to £100 million to support competition, consumers and challenger banks.

This Budget delivers stronger public services across all departments:

• The Government is increasing total departmental spending over this Parliament by £150 billion. That’s the largest real terms increase this century, with spending growing by 3.8% a year in real terms. There will be a real terms rise in overall spending for every single Government department. And public sector net investment as a share of GDP will be at the highest sustained level for nearly half a century.
• Health - Resource spending on health services will increase from £133 billion at the start of the Parliament to over £177 billion by the end – an increase of over £44 billion. The Government will deliver 40 new hospitals, 70 hospital upgrades, 100 new community diagnostic centres, 50,000 more nurses, 50 million primary care appointments, record investment in R&D, obesity programmes, end mental health dormitories and invest significant capital in operating theatres to help catch up on elective backlogs.
• Schools - On top of the £14 billion the Government announced in 2019, we are now committing another £4.7 billion per year by 2024 to lift real terms per pupil spending to historic 2010 levels – a cash uplift of over £1,500 per pupil. The Government is also tripling the annual spending on Special Educational Needs places, and providing another £1.8 billion to take the total for schools catch-up funding to almost £5 billion.

• Children and early years - The evidence shows that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life are the most influential on their health, wellbeing, and opportunities throughout the rest of their lives. That is why the Government is providing: £300 million for a new Start for Life offer, programmes for new parents, a new network of Family Hubs, an extra £170 million for childcare providers, £150 million to support training and development for the early years workforce, and an extra £200 million for the Supporting Families programme.
• Crime and justice – The Government is funding 20,000 new police officers; providing an extra £2.2 billion in courts, prisons and probation services, including £500 million to clear court backlogs; funding programmes to tackle neighbourhood crime, reoffending, county lines, and violence against women and girls; and committing £3.8 billion over the next three years to the largest prison-building programme in a generation.
• Local government - Councils will receive a new annual grant of £1.6 billion on top of their funding to implement social care reforms, allowing them to keep council tax increases at the lowest levels in years.
• Housing – The Government is  today providing a multi-year settlement for housing worth nearly £24 billion – including £11.5 billion to build 180,000 new affordable homes, the largest cash investment in a decade. We are also investing an extra £1.8 billion to bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use, meeting our commitment to unlock 1 million new homes. The Government is also confirming £5 billion to remove unsafe cladding from the highest risk buildings, partly funded by the Residential Property Developers Tax, to be levied on developers with profits over £25 million, at a rate of 4%.
• Homelessness and rough sleeping. Even though the Government has reduced rough sleeping by one-third, we must go further. Today’s additional funding of £640 million a year represents an 85% increase compared to 2019, enough to make sure fewer people are sleeping rough than at any time in the last decade.
• 103 areas of the UK are benefitting from the first round of the £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund. The Government is allocating a total of £1.7 billion across the United Kingdom, from projects such as regenerating town centres in Stoke and Bury to new transport infrastructure in Pontypridd and Paisley – investing £171 million in Scotland, £121 million in Wales, and £49 million in Northern Ireland. We are also funding the restoration of railways in Stocksbridge and Darlington through the Beeching fund, and saving a pub in Suffolk and a football ground in Portsmouth through the Community Ownership Fund. The Government is also investing more in local services which people rely on: £560 million for youth services over the next five years to fund 300 youth clubs in England, over £200 million to build or transform up to 8,000 community football pitches, funding for over 100 new pocket parks, and £850 million for museums, galleries and creative industries.

This Budget drives economic growth – by investing in infrastructure, innovation and skills:

Infrastructure

• Investing £100 billion in our infrastructure – record sums for our roads, railways and broadband. To connect towns and cities together, the Government is investing £16 billion on roads and £35 billion on railways – including local schemes such as £2.1 billion for over 50 local roads upgrades, £5 billion to fill 1 million potholes a year, and funding for buses, cycling and walking worth more than £5 billion.
• Helping people get around more easily within cities. Through our City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, the Government is providing £5.7 billion in Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Tees Valley, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands and the West of England to boost local transport connectivity.

Innovation

• Boosting innovation by investing in our world-leading research and development sector. The Government will maintain our target to increase annual public R&D investment to £22 billion (reaching it in 2026-27) and we will spend £20 billion a year by 2024-25 – a cash increase of 50% – taking total public investment in R&D including our tax reliefs to 1.1% of GDP, up from 0.7% in 2018, and well in excess of the OECD average of 0.7%.

• Fixing our research and development tax reliefs so they are fit for purpose. Figures show that the UK spends the second highest on R&D tax reliefs in the OECD, yet the amount UK businesses invest in R&D is less than half of the OECD average. That is why the Government is expanding the scope of the reliefs to include cloud computing and data costs, and will redesign the tax relief to incentivise businesses to do more research and development here in the UK, rather than British taxpayers subsidising activity abroad.
• Funding our path to a greener economy through our Net Zero Strategy. Our ambitious Net Zero Strategy is an innovation strategy: it commits the Government to new nuclear, hydrogen, heat pumps, offshore wind, carbon capture and storage, electric cars, cleaner planes, zero-emissions vehicles and other innovative industries to create jobs and cut carbon – and is funded with £30 billion. This week, the UK Infrastructure Bank announced its first investment: £107 million for an offshore wind project in Teesside.
• Encouraging enterprise and ideas by backing business. On top of measures such as Help to Grow and the Future Fund, the Government is today consulting on changing the regulatory charge cap for pensions schemes, unlocking institutional investment while protecting savers. The Government is increasing regional financing to help businesses innovate and grow, and providing £1.6 billion for the British Business Bank to expand the UK wide Regional Angels Programme and establish new Regional Funds. Our new £1.4 billion Global Britain Investment Fund will also invest with companies in projects around the UK, in sectors like life sciences.
• Making our visa system for international talent the most competitive in the world. The Government is confirming the eligibility criteria for our new Scale-Up Visa, to help make it easier and quicker for fast-growing businesses bring in highly-skilled individuals. And the Government is announcing a new Global Talent Network operating in places like Silicon Valley and Bangalore, to work with UK businesses and research institutes to actively find, attract and relocate the best global talent and entrepreneurs in key science and tech sectors.

Skills

• Boosting skills to turbocharge productivity across our country. If we want to build a stronger economy, spread opportunity, and raise wages, we need to do more to boost people’s skills. That is why the Government is today increasing overall skills spending by £3.8 billion over the Parliament – a real terms increase of 26%. This includes more hours learning for 16-19, taking us to levels seen by high performers like Sweden, expanding T Levels, more traineeships, building Institutes of Technology, funding the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, upgrading our further education college estate, quadrupling the number of places on our skills bootcamps, and spending record sums on apprenticeships by the end of the Parliament.

• Tackling poor numeracy through ‘Multiply’. Over 8 million adults in England have numeracy skills lower than those of a 9-year-old, which costs individuals up to £1,600 a year in lost earnings and means they are twice as likely to be unemployed. That is why the Government is announcing a new, UK-wide numeracy programme: Multiply, investing £560 million to improve the basic maths skills of over half a million adults.

Policy Paper

To view the Budget and Spending Review in full and all supporting and related documents, please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-and-spending-review-2021-documents.