Jeremy Hunt’s first budget was a sober affair. No fireworks and little rhetoric which is as it should be. There was very little in it for private investors unless you have children or are still putting money into a pension.
The main points to note are that while tax allowances are still frozen, the £1.07 million pension cap is being dropped and the yearly allowance increased to £60,000. These should help highly paid folks such as medical consultants. The ISA allowance will remain at £20,000 for another year.
Fuel duty will remain frozen and the energy price cap will be extended for another 3 months.
Inflation is forecast to fall to 2.9% by the end of 2023 and we will avoid a recession this year after all. This should boost the stock market but hasn’t so far. Perhaps like me investors don’t believe that inflation will fall that rapidly because once it is entrenched and employees demand more in a spiral then it is difficult to stop.
As with all budgets there is lots of tinkering with grants for this that and the other where the Chancellor claims to be responding to public needs but it’s all virtue signalling and mainly a waste of time. For example £200 million to fix pot holes – the Chancellor clearly has no idea how much they cost to repair and the size of the backlog!
At least that’s my view.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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Thank you for the blog a very odd budget almost designed to lose the general election labour already announces they will reverse teg pension give away what madness why can’t to government give something for teg smaller people a small increase in personal allowance and ISA levels would help lots of people