Chancellor George Osborne delivered a booze and bingo bolstering budget as he promised to help ‘makers, doers and savers’ in the House of Commons today.
Cheered by his own side, Mr Osborne delivered his fifth budget announcing income tax cuts, a radical overhaul of the pension system as well as the halving of bingo duty, and a 1p reduction in the cost of beer.
He raised the personal tax allowance – the level at which people start to pay tax – to £10,500 from April 2015. The allowance is already climbing to £10,000 from April.
“The message from this budget is this: You have earned it, you have saved it and this government is on your side,” said Mr Osborne.
In a series of measures designed to help savers, a group who have suffered because of the record low interest rate in the UK since 2009, Mr Osborne announced a merger of the cash and shares ISA into a new single ISA with a limit of £15,000 from July.
He also announced that pensioners would be given control over their pension pots with no draw down limits in an attempt to reduce the need for people to take out annuities.
He was able to deliver some good news from the Office of Budget Responsibility with growth forecast to rise to 2.7% for 2014/15 and the deficit to be turned to a small surplus by 2018/19.
The Chancellor could not help but look satisfied as he announced that Britain was growing faster than any other developed economy in the world and record levels of job creation.
Mr Osborne unveiled plans for a new style pound to make counterfeiting harder and called it a more resilient pound for a more resilient economy.
Responding, Labour leader Ed Miliband accused the government of using ‘the same old Tory trick’ – giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
He called it a budget ‘of the privileged, by the privileged and for privileged’.
“I think it is time we listened to Baroness Warsi and take the Eton Mess out of the government,” he said.
Image courtesy of the BBC via YouTube, with thanks.
