Portrait of the Week – 1 November 2018

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Austerity was ‘finally coming to an end’, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in the Budget. He was helped by what he did not call a magic money sapling, in the form of revised estimates of public borrowing in 2018, £11.6 billion lower than forecast. Debt as a share of GDP, from a peak of 85.2 per cent in 2016-17, would still be 74.1 per cent by 2024. Mr Hammond repeated a pledge of an extra £20.5 billion for the NHS over the next five years, with an extra £2 billion a year for mental health services. Councils would get £700 million more for care. The personal tax allowance would rise from £11,850 to £12,500, a year earlier than announced, benefiting 31 million employed people by at least £130 a year. Higher rates would start at £50,000 instead of £46,350. Allowances would in future rise by the rate of inflation. The National Living Wage would rise from £7.83 to £8.21 an hour.

Alcohol duties were frozen, except for wine, up by 7p a bottle, which a trade spokesman curiously described as a ‘hammer blow’. Cigarettes went up by 33p, and would rise in future by inflation plus 2 per cent a year. The Housing Infrastructure Fund would get £500 million, towards the building of 650,000 houses, it was said. Universal Credit was ‘here to stay’, Mr Hammond declared, allocating £1.7 billion to in-work benefits and a billion to tide over new recipients. A tax on UK revenues of technology companies with more than £500 million global revenues would be imposed from 2020. Money was earmarked for potholes and for planting trees. Belfast would get a spare £2 million to help it recover from a fire at Primark.