Author: Sally Perry
Budget Report 2010 For The South East
1:43 pm Tuesday, 22nd June, 2010, Isle of Wight
ShortURL: http://wig.ht/26uM
Read More- Island-wide, News, Overseas, Politics
This has been directly sent to VentnorBlog by HM Treasury, so is written in their words – Ed
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer has set out his Budget.
The measures announced will reduce the deficit, introduce a fairer tax system, and encourage an enterprise and growth agenda in the UK.
These steps are based on the Government’s key values of responsibility, freedom and fairness. These measures include:
- To help areas and communities particularly affected by reductions in public spending make the transition to private sector-led growth and prosperity, the Government will create a Regional Growth Fund in 2011-12 and 2012-13. This fund will operate in England only and support proposals from private and public-private bodies that create sustainable increases in business employment and growth.
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Confirmation of temporary increase in the level of small business rate relief (SBRR). Eligible businesses occupying properties with rateable values up to £6,000 will pay no business rates for one year from 1 October 2010. Businesses with rateable values up to £12,000 will receive significant reductions. 58 per cent of properties in the South East have a rateable value of up to £12,000, and will benefit from this measure if occupied by an eligible business.
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The impact of the employer NICs rate rise previously announced will be largely reversed by increasing the threshold for employer NICs by £21 a week above indexation. This will lead to a saving of around £440 million in the South East.
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The Budget 2009 proposal to repeal the special tax rules for furnished holiday lettings will not be implemented. Instead, the Government will consult over the summer on an alternative proposal to ensure the tax treatment of holiday lettings meets EU legal requirements in a fiscally responsible way, which does not penalise UK businesses, by changing the eligibility thresholds and restricting the use of loss relief. This will benefit an estimated 7,800 individuals in the South East who receive an income from furnished holiday lettings.
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The income tax personal allowance for those aged under 65 will be increased by £1,000 in cash terms, taking it from £6,475 in 2010-11 to £7,475 in 2011-12. As a result, the Government estimates that 23 million basic rate taxpayers will benefit by up to £170 each. In the South East over 3 million basic rate taxpayers will gain from this measure.
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Government will uprate the basic State Pension by a triple guarantee of the highest of earnings, prices or 2.5% from April 2011. The Consumer Price Index will be used as the measure of prices in the triple guarantee. However, to ensure the value of a basic State Pension is at least as generous as under the previous uprating rules, the Government will increase the basic State Pension in April 2011 by the equivalent of Retail Price Index. An estimated 1.6 million pensioners in the South East will benefit.
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Government will uprate the standard minimum income guarantee in Pension Credit in April 2011 by the cash rise in a full basic State Pension to ensure the lowest income pensioners benefit from the triple guarantee. 220,000 pensioners currently receive Guarantee Credit in the South East.
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The Government will introduce legislation to waive certain backdated business rates bills, including for some businesses in ports. An estimated 3,000 businesses across England will benefit.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said “The previous Government has left us with a legacy of debt and unsustainable spending, we are taking the decisive action needed to pay for the past and plan for the future.
“That is why today we have set out a comprehensive five year plan to put the British economy back on track. We have made the tough choices needed to get our borrowing down but we have done it in a way that is fair, protects the vulnerable and supports businesses across Britain.”
Image: Crown copyright republished with permission of HM Treasury.
First with the news again. Thanks VB.
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Not quite the first, other island media covered this sooner than vb! buy hey this comment mill be blocked anyway
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What? Just looked at the CP they have Nothing; IWRadio have Nothing; Other sites have Nothing.
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I have been watching it on the BBC, but it’s helpful to be able to look at specifics here. Have you got more to come?
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George Osborne said his top priority is cutting the deficit. But in order to get the deficit down, you need to keep economic growth up and you need to keep unemployment down. You don’t get borrowing down by pulling the plug on support for business, throwing people out of work and stifling economic growth.
The Chancellor delivered a budget that will throw people out of work, hold back economic growth and damage the public services we all rely on – and increased VAT from 17.5% to 20%, so that higher prices will be paid in the shops by everyone, from pensioners to the unemployed
The Tories’ cuts are unfair to families and older people: cuts to the disability living allowance, cuts to help for the jobless, cuts to tax credits, cutting back free school meals, and cuts to Child Benefit, which they have frozen for the next three years.
What the country needed was a Budget to support economic growth, protect jobs and cut the deficit fairly. Instead the Tories gave us a reckless Budget that pulls the rug out from under the recovery.
And they couldn’t have done it without the support of the Lib Dems, who have let down everyone who voted for them in the election just a few weeks ago.
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I find it ironic that both Geoff Lumley and Labour’s Harriet Harman chose to describe the budget as reckless.
Recklessness suggests risk taking putting our economic security in jeopardy.
George Osborne has decided to try to reduce the deficit significantly in order to put the UKs public finance back on a secure footing. It will involve some pain for all, some job losses and some shrinking of our GDP. Is that reckless?
How about overspending by £30 billion every year between 2001 and 2008, adding over £200 billion to the national debt? Reckless?
How about overspending by £30 billion every year during a boom period, when you know that you are going to keep spending the same amount if not more during the next slowdown in the economic cycle? Reckless?
Increasing the public sector to an unsustainable 53% of the whole economy……reckless?
Failing to regulate the banks during the boom, overseeing a massive debt bubble and house price bubble….reckless?
It is like a wife going on a 10 year spending spree on the joint credit card, and her husband finding out and cutting up the card, only for the wife to accuse the husband of recklessness!!!!!!!!
Labour’s hypocricy is mind-boggling, and I suggest that Mr Lumley could be accused of the same!
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Geoff, a few specific points……you don’t make many specific points in your post:
“pulling the plug on support for business”….He has reduced corporation tax by 1% for each of the next 4 years, creating certainty for businesses that Britain will become a better place to do business in the future. Also for new start ups outside of the south east there will be no employer NI payments for the first 10 employees. How does that “pull the plub on business”?
“Cuts to tax credits”…… for families earning over £40,000 I believe. Increases in tax credits for those on the lowest incomes.
Increasing the tax fee threshold by £1000 will help the lowest paid workers.
You suggest that he has cut child benefit and then admit that it has been frozen ….contradictory and disingenuous.
You highlight the VAT increase of 2.5%. VAT increased by 2.5% on the first of January this year under Labour (reversing the previous cut). Did the sky fall on your head as a result?
Would you admit that some of these painful cuts would have not been necessary if Labour had not overspent so excessively and disastrously over the last 10 years?
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I doubt there would be much difference between budgets. What id do doubt is that a Labour budget would have taken into considerastion ability to survive the cuts. Yes Tory cuts will affect everybody, but the Rich can afford it, whereas the poor can’t.
Anyclaim that this budget will reduce the deficit is fantasy..we are paying the interest on the deficit, not the deficit itself. We have always had a deficit sinc ethe day banks were invented, sometimes high sometimes low.
The reality is that before the banks crash and the WORLDWIDE recession, the Labour government had reduced the deficit to a record low since the 1992 and that in June this year, the deficit was nowhere near as bad as people imagined (or was reported) In fact between May and June this year it fell by over as billion pounds..and the table of % per head of GDP shows that it was lower than in 1992-1996 period….again not as reported (in this country – was reported everywhere else in the world) or claimed by the new Government.
This recession is being used as an excuse for the Tory-fication of the country
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/files/2010/05/eurodeficits.jpg
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just to take one of your points, yes, increasing the tax threshold by £1000 is good. But then we were told they would increase the threshold to £10k, not just by £1k. Its now about £7k I think, not the £10k the condems promised. Of course they say they will increase it over the course of the next 5 years, but a lot can happen in 5 years…
Generally, it seems a pretty sensible budget in that its trying to reduce the deficit. But how its going about it is questionable. Supporting buisness is good, but to expect it to create jobs is perhaps niave. Companies will look on this as a saving rather than an opportunity to expand. And of course, if no one has the money to buy what these companies are selling, they wont bother employing more people since there wont be an increase in buisness.
The VAT increase is good, but I would have thought a smaller increase would have been better. Increase it by 1% and see if that helps. If it does, increase it more. 2.5% seems a high increase and wont help buisness, it will simply mean people will do without. Prices going up does not mean an increase in revenue, it means people will buy less.
The one thing I totally agreed with was the 2 year freeze on public sector pay over about £21k (or thereabouts). However that should have gone further and set a ceiling for public sector pay of around £50k, and reduced current salaries in line with that. But of course they cant do that, that would mean MPs would have a pay cut… By freezing pay at the level they have, they are punishing average wage earners between £20 to £30k. But nothing new there.
Like any budget, theres good points and bad points, but more bad points I think. I dont think its any better or worse than Labour budgets, but helping buisness does not help people in general and its about time the tories realised that.
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It’s about time we all realized that they are all the same.
When you get cheats like Hazel Blears getting re-elected by the d*ck-heads of Salford, I have lost all interest in politics.
I have started collecting matchboxes, I have a box of Swan already:-)
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