A NUMBER of headlines have emerged from George Osborne's Autumn Statement and Spending Review, including the decision not to implement tax credit cuts.
The Chancellor said that having listened to calls for the cuts to be phased in, he decided the simplest thing to do was "to avoid them altogether."
In other news, there will be no real-terms cuts in the police budget, with Mr Osborne saying "now is not the time for further police cuts, now is the time to back our police and give them the tools to do the job.
"The police protect us and we are going to protect the police."
Here are the other key points from this afternoon's announcement:
- Education funding protected in real terms
- Health budget set to rise from £101bn to £120bn by 2020/21
- Housing budget doubled to provide 400,000 new homes
- New 3% surcharge on stamp duty for buy-to-let properties and second homes from April 2016
- Apprenticeship levy set at 0.5% of employer’s wage bill
- Capital spending to rise to £821bn in 2019/20
- Budget surplus of £10.1bn in 2019/20
- £12bn of welfare savings to be delivered in full
- Welfare cap to be breached in first years of parliament
- Loans replace grants for student nurses
- Councils allowed to raise council tax by 2% to go towards social care
- £10bn increase in social education funding
Osborne also set out the borrowing forecast:
- 2015/16 - £73.5bn
- 2016/17 - £49.9bn
- 2017/18 - £24.8bn
- 2018/19 - £4.6bn
- 2019/20 - £10.1bn surplus
Labour's John McDonnell welcomed George Osbourne's u-turn on tax credit cuts, saying the Chancellor "has listened to Labour and seen sense".
The shadow chancellor of the exchequer, who's speech unusually featured an extract from Chairman Mao's Red Book, also welcome the police funding announcement, calling it "another Labour gain and victory."
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