Wow is he putting £45k a year into his pension?!
Sorry, I replied to Richard above, but doesn’t link.
That was meant in relation to the childcare savings.
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Typical that my youngest is starting school in 6 months and that after paying childcare for 3 kids over 8 years it’s now going to be mostly free!!!
Not only would it have saved us many thousands of pounds, we would have also made many thousands more with the Mrs able to work.
This is definitely a good thing for many people, but the timing sucks for me!!!
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It would save a lot of my friends that if it weren’t for the fact that their children are all over 1 years old, so they’ll never benefit.
It’s still a very good policy and much overdue.
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It is a good policy, there is however a massive supply problem, especially at the really young ages, where tweaking ratios won’t make a massive difference. Unless the places are there the policy fails at first contact. The only way the current free 30 hours for 3/4 year old works is that nurseries could charge a lot to parents of 0-3 years olds. You also need more then 30 hours in a week from a nursery, so be interesting to see what nurseries charge for the ‘wrap around’.
Oh to add, this is probably the same as what happens with 3-4-year-olds, where you get the support for 38 weeks a year, which means the funding is split out across a year to make it 52, then it only kicks in at the next term after the kids birthday (so a 9-month-old in October, would probably only get support from January the following year)
As for the wider budget, he didn’t mention the whacking great tax rise in 2 weeks as thresholds are frozen…
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Rumours going round that Credit Suisse about to go pop
Indeed.
So there is quite a bit in it you do like.
The default position for many people (and I’m not aiming that at you @l33t - just using the same reply) is to not like it because of political persuasion? I wish people, no matter of political persuasion, could have more balanced views.
The childcare thing will save people literally thousands of pounds per year as mentioned by others. It will have zero benefit for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it is a good thing.
Agreed!
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This through and through. I’ve spoken to a few friends who will benefit greatly from the childcare announcements. It’s too easy to just dismiss a Conservative budget. It’s entirely possible for a positive thing to come out!
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Fourth Chancellor in a year. A couple of decent things in the budget for some doesn’t stop the 
of 
of this government.
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If anyone should be upset here, it’s the conservative back benches. This is a high tax, big state budget with additional support for lots of people built in.
You can tell it wasn’t too bad because the Telegraph hates it.
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I can agree with this while also thinking there are positive aspects to something. I think that balanced approach just allows more room for actual debate on things.
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Nuance and balance? On the internet? In 2023??!!
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I just worry that we spend more time arguing over just whether we “should be allowed to agree” with an issue or coming across as on the “right side” more than actually discussing the issues at hand. Not suggesting that’s happening here, but I really don’t care if I’m agreeing or disagreeing with the “right people”, I have a different opinion on different issues that don’t necessarily fit into “Tory = Bad, Labour = Good” boxes.
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I think the budget is fine. It was never going to please everyone. Hunt is a reasonable man, trying to do the best he can.
It’s the right wing of the Tory party that all the inarguably bad policy is coming from.
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Yes, this is all about the next election.
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That said, I do think Starmer has a point about managed decline. We remain the only G7 country where the economy is smaller than it was pre-pandemic and there are still sizeable productivity impacts from Brexit. Key sectors like agriculture and construction are having very bad years.
The childcare changes are sensible and very necessary. The pension lifetime allowance changes - less so, more a giveaway to their core voters than something that will meaningfully impact the economy. The tax rises and relatively small spend this year make this an austerity budget at a time we really could do with more spend, not less.
Overall having read it all this morning, I don’t think it’s a great budget and I’m not convinced it will help us recover our poor economic performance.
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Obliquely connected to the Permacrisis, but tax–related nonetheless:
Somewhat annoyed by my borough council which doesn’t seem to carry forward the request to pay council tax over 12 months (as opposed to the usual ten months); I had requested that last year to even out (and lower) my monthly payments.
Automatically back to ten payments, annoyingly.
Any ideas why the SNP were hiding these figures?
Because it’s the SNP? They have form for it.
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