by Daphne Liddle
PHILIP HAMMOND, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered his first
Autumn Bud
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| protesters in Parliament Square on the day |
In spite of this and general falling income from taxes, Hammond granted
businesses another fall in corporation tax from 20 per cent to 17 per
cent. He admitted this was significantly lower than in other G20
countries and effectively prostituting Britain to international business
as a tax haven.
He has also followed his predecessors in raising the threshold at which
workers start to pay tax. As ever, this was claimed to be a great boon
for the low paid. But these rises in thresholds work their way up
through the earnings levels and benefit the wealthy far more than the
poor — another hidden gift to the rich.
He praised his colleagues in Government for record levels of employment,
a fall in the numbers of benefit claimants and “the lowest ever number
of children being raised in workless households” but did not mention
that this reveals that the growing numbers of families with children
queuing up at food banks are increasingly people in work on wages that
are too low to live on.
He did not mention the changes to Universal Credit that are looming but
praised the system of “making work pay” that had been introduced by
Labour. It is a system that benefits employers and allows them to pay
scandalously low wages while the taxpayers put bread on the tables of
those workers.
He admitted that productivity rates in Britain are low compared to other
industrial countries, meaning that workers here have to work longer to
create the same amount of wealth. And he admitted that this was due to
low wages and poor investment in industry.
Hammond said: “Raising productivity is essential for the high-wage,
high-skill economy that will deliver higher living standards for working
people. I can announce today a new National Productivity Investment
Fund of £23 billion to be spent on innovation and infrastructure over
the next five years,” thus stealing an idea from Shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell.
He raised the minimum wage from £7.20-an-hour to £7.50 — a rise of over
£500-a-year for a full-time worker. But he now calls it the living wage.
That term originally meant a wage not merely to scrape by on but to
live a decent life with access to leisure and cultural activities, not a
wage that leads to record household debt levels, chronic stress and the
need to resort to food banks.
Nor did he mention the levels of Employment Support Allowance — with
planned cuts put on hold from a unanimous House of Commons vote last
week, which alas, had only an advisory status. So presumably the planned
cuts will go ahead. But he did say there would be no further welfare
cuts during this Parliament.
He acknowledged we have a housing crisis and announced plans to make a
lot more public land available for building houses — by selling it off
to private developers to build “affordable” homes. The enclosure
movement continues.
Hammond also plans to extend the right-to-buy to housing associations — a
move that will sink many of them as their tangible assets, against
which they borrow, start to disappear. Over all, these measures will
increase the housing crisis.
One odd pledge he made was to provide a £7.6 million grant for the
restoration of Wentworth Woodhouse, a stately home near Rotherham in
South Yorkshire, that is said to have been the inspiration for Jane
Austen’s Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. He claimed it was threatened by nearby opencast mining authorised by a previous Labour government.
If he thought this would make the population of the North of England
feel less neglected by Government spending, the Tory leadership is even
more out of touch with this planet than we suspected.
Hammond finished by saying this would be his first and last Autumn
Budget Statement — from now on there will be just one full Budget every
year, which will be in the autumn. There will be a Spring Statement
every year but this will reiterate and update changes made in the full
Budget but not introduce any significant changes.
