Autumn statement: brill for builders, perturbing for pensioners
Most of the measures in this statement are at best likely to have at best, a neutral impact on rural areas – that is unless you like big spending on stately homes. This article announces house building but with no plans to specifically target rural communities, more investment in Whitehall civil services whilst the local public sector, particularly local government continues to decline, and a long term diminution of income guarantees for pensioners. This humourous review tells us:
GOOD NEWS FOR …
Builders
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) called Hammond’s spending on infrastructure “modest”. But an extra £2.3bn infrastructure fund for a promised 100,000 new homes is good news if you know how to build a wall or lay sewage piping, or employ lots of people who do.
See also the promises of funding for 40,000 extra “affordable” homes, a new road linking Oxford and Cambridge and more broadband fibre installation in homes and businesses.
Jane Austen fans
A niche demographic, perhaps, but every vote counts. The most conspicuous rabbit Hammond pulled from his hat was £7.6m to “save” Wentworth Woodhouse, described by the chancellor as “one of the UK’s most important historic houses”.
Civil servants
Hammond is setting aside £412m to help Whitehall wonks “strengthen trade policy capacity” and “support the renegotiation of the UK’s relationship” with the EU in the run-up to Brexit.
Drivers
To cheers, Hammond announced he would “stand on the side of the millions of hardworking people” by cancelling the rise in fuel duty. The fact that this is the seventh year in a row in which the government has done so may lessen the surprise somewhat, but the chancellor boasted this would save the average driver £130 a year.
Motorists may also be cheered by the £220m to help solve traffic “pinch points” on strategic roads and a commitment to resurface 80% of the strategic road network.
BAD NEWS FOR …
Letting agents
It couldn’t happen to a more popular bunch. Shares in some of Britain’s biggest estate agencies plummeted in response to the chancellor’s move to ban “as soon as possible” the large fees charged by agents when letting properties to new tenants.
Gym bunnies
If your gym membership is through your job, that is. To “promote fairness”, the government is ending the tax and national insurance breaks available for a range of workplace benefits, including gym memberships, phone contracts, computers and private medical insurance contributions.
Pensioners
What seemed like a promise was really more of a threat. Pensioners have benefited since 2010 from the so-called “triple-lock”, a guarantee that the state pension will go up every year by either inflation, the average rise in earnings or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. Hammond vowed the government would “meet our pledge” to protect pensions until 2020; after that, however, it will need to look at “the challenges of rising longevity and fiscal sustainability”. Which sounds awfully like a warning.
Whiplash
Everyone’s favourite soft-tissue neck injury has been quite the thing over the past decade, during which time claims to car insurers have soared by 50%, costing them about £1bn a year and motorists around £40 each in increased premiums.
This, the government says, is “unacceptably high”. What’s more, it doesn’t – shock! – believe all the claims are genuine. It’s looking at scrapping or capping the right to compensation. Insurers have promised to pass on the savings, according to the government. No, honestly, they really will.