Watch as UK economists seem earlier than parliament’s Treasury Committee on Tuesday, 1 April, to reply questions on Rachel Reeves‘s spring statement.
Final week, the chancellor outlined a fresh set of cuts to authorities spending with out elevating taxes, blaming a dramatic slowdown in development.
Ms Reeves confronted a significant setback within the hours earlier than delivering her assertion when the federal government’s official spending watchdog rejected its forecasts for a way a lot its welfare cuts would save. That prompted the Workplace for Price range Duty (OBR) to slash its financial development forecast for this 12 months from 2 per cent to 1 per cent.
She was pressured to go additional than anticipated to fall again inside her self-imposed borrowing guidelines, so set out recent measures to chop the federal government welfare payments.
Modifications set out by the chancellor to beforehand introduced welfare reforms will see the well being component of common credit score minimize in half for brand new claimants after which frozen. Elsewhere, the common credit score commonplace allowance will enhance from £92 per week in 2025-26, to £106 per week by 2029-30. It had beforehand been anticipated to rise to £107 per week by that 12 months.
This week, millions of households across the UK are bracing for yet another wave of price hikes, as payments for vitality, water, council tax, and extra enhance from 1 April.
Dubbed “terrible April,” these rising prices are placing much more strain on family budgets, prompting recent calls for presidency intervention.
Energy bills for thousands and thousands on commonplace variable tariffs will rise by a mean of £111 a 12 months, whereas water bills in some areas will soar by almost 47 per cent.
Council tax will increase may also hit households throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, with some native authorities imposing hikes of virtually 10 per cent. On prime of this, the price of street tax, broadband, and TV licences can be climbing.
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