This is a good budget for Portsmouth people. The personal allowance moving to £10,000 means that 8286 Portsmouth people will be taken out of tax completely in 2014, and 86,732 Portsmouth people will benefit from the tax cut – the majority of our working population. Hard working people will be £700 better off each year. This is important as bills for energy and food have gone up and this should go some way to helping us.
There is other good news for our hard pressed families is that fuel duty continues to be frozen as it has been for the last 3 years. If it had not been frozen, the price would have been 13p per litre more i.e. saving £7 every time you fill up your car. Petrol and diesel are still very expensive but the tax on fuel keeps tax down elsewhere.
One of the biggest boosts to the economy has to be the lowering of corporation tax to 20%. This is now the lowest of the G20 countries and should attract new businesses to set up in the UK and for our own businesses to flourish. Small businesses will especially benefit from the new Employment Allowance which will take £2000 of the national insurance bill for employers. Employers will be able to hire one extra person on £22,400 a year, or four people working full time on the minimum wage, without paying any National Insurance. This should encourage businesses to take on more staff and, along with the apprenticeship schemes that are being widely taken up, should help reduce unemployment.
For parents who want to go out to work, from autumn 2015, the government will offer tax free childcare, meeting 20 per cent of childcare costs for working families with children under 12. Once fully implemented it will be worth £1,200 per child, and so will save a typical working family with two children under 12 up to £2,400 a year. 2.5 million families will benefit including many in Portsmouth. We are also increasing the free entitlement from 12.5 to 15 hours a week of free early education for all 3 and 4 year olds; extending 15 hours of free childcare a week to 40 per cent of 2 year olds from 2014-15; and extending childcare support in Universal Credit to parents working fewer than 16 hours. I am hoping that the City Council will be keeping all the children’s centres as these will be a good way of ensuring that all children receive the hours of childcare support that they need.
Another group who have benefitted and whom I met before the last General election are the Equitable Life pensioners. The Government will make ex-gratia payments of £5,000 to Equitable Life policyholders who bought their annuity before 1992, today’s Budget has revealed. The Government will also make an extra £5,000 available to those on the lowest incomes who are on pension credit. There is no legal obligation to make either of these payments. This is good news but the last government should have sorted it out a long time ago.
Many of our young people are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to get onto the property ladder. Even though house prices in Portsmouth are amongst the cheapest in the South East, this is still the case so I am hoping that Portsmouth people will take up the Government’s proposal to provide equity when buying a new built home. This does pose an issue in Portsmouth where there are few new builds but I hope that some of the flats being built will now become affordable to those who want to get on the ladder.
Lastly, but just as important, the beer duty is no longer rising which is great news for our pubs which have been closing. While I am not a fan of the nanny state, the minimum price on alcohol would have also helped our pubs as cheap prices in the supermarkets are undermining pubs which I believe provide a social place for people to drink safely. At least the government has shown support to our pubs by abolishing the beer duty escalator.
This Government is working hard to make sure that the country is financially solvent again, it will take time but I believe we are on the right course of action.