快播视频

Responding to the Chancellor's Autumn Budget announced on 30 October 2024, Ben Harrison, Director of the Work Foundation at 快播视频 said:

“The Chancellor set out the defining Budget of this Parliament to restore growth to the economy, stability to the public finances and to make work pay for people across the UK – all set against a highly challenging fiscal backdrop.

Walking a fiscal and political tightrope, with significant tax changes for employers

“The Chancellor attempted to walk a fiscal and political tightrope, committing to raise an extra ?40 billion in taxes while prioritising a 1.5% uplift in investment in public services and more funding for infrastructure and capital projects.

“To fund these increases, the Chancellor confirmed that the threshold at which businesses start to pay National Insurance Contributions will be lowered, which stands to raise an extra ?25bn. The OBR suggests this may suppress the overall rate of employment by 50,000 employees (0.2%) by 2029-30 as organisations find it more expensive to employ people. This may make achieving the Government’s ambition to reach an 80% employment rate even harder to realise.

“While the Chancellor honoured Labour’s election commitment not to raise taxes on working people, continuing the freeze on tax thresholds will bring hundreds of thousands of people into higher tax bands during the majority of this Parliament. The announcement this freeze will end in 2028/29 is welcome, but will be particularly challenging for lower earners who go on to face a higher tax bill.

Action to make work pay but gap between earnings and benefits increases

“There is positive news for low paid workers that the National Living Wage will rise by 6.7% in April 2025. This is firmly above inflation of 1.7% and annual nominal wage growth of 4.9%.

“It is particularly welcome that the national minimum wage for 18–20-year-olds will increase by ?1.40 per hour, representing the largest single increase on record. Young workers (18-24) are twice as likely as other workers to be in severely insecure work, and have borne the brunt of higher living costs such as rising rents in recent years.

“However, a gap between those in-work and those not in the labour market continues to grow. The Chancellor plans to uprate benefits by just 1.7%, and with inflation likely to rise again in the winter as energy prices rise in the winter it may leave jobseekers struggling, and more likely to be pushed into insecure and unsustainable employment to make ends meet.

Getting more people working and tackling economic inactivity

“With 2.75 million people out of the labour market due to long-term sickness, record increases in health and NHS budgets are welcome.

“It is also encouraging to hear the Chancellor commit to an integrated approach across government departments to tackle economic inactivity. Funding for 16 locally led trailblazer projects is positive, and may spark innovation to support more people into work. But to be effective, it is highly likely that more investment over the announced ?240 million will be needed in the future.

“Ultimately we won’t know how effective wider plans to get more people into work will be until we see the detail of the Government’s Get Britain Working White Paper in November.”