Alcohol, fuel and tax: Key announcements from the budget

Published

4 years ago

October 27, 2021

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Here are the key points from Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s budget speech:

• The chancellor says there are “challenging” months ahead, adding that inflation in September was 3.1% and is likely to rise further – the OBR expect it to average 4% over the next year

• Pressures caused by supply chains and energy crisis will “take months to ease”.

• Economy to return to its pre-COVID level at the turn of the year – an improvement on OBR forecasts revealed in March

• Economy expected to grow by 6% in 2022, and 2.1%, 1.3% and 1.6% over the next three years

• In July last year, at the height of the pandemic, unemployment was expected to peak at 12% but the OBR now expect it to peak at 5.2%

• Compared to 2020, wages have grown by 3.4%

• Underlying debt is forecast to be 85.2% of GDP this year

• It will reach 85.4% in 2022-23, before peaking at 85.7% in 2023-24

• It then falls in the final three years of the forecast from 85.1% to 83.3%

• Total departmental spending over this parliament will increase by £150bn, growing by 3.8% a year in real terms

• Spending on healthcare to increase by £44bn to over £177bn by the end of this parliament

• Extra revenue from health and social care levy will go towards NHS and social care as promised

• Health budget will be the largest since 2010, with record investment in research and development, better screening, 40 new hospitals and 70 hospital upgrades

• Mr Sunak says the budget funds an ambition to recruit 20,000 new police officers

• Extra £2.2bn for courts, prisons and probation services, including £500m to reduce the backlog in courts

• Programmes to tackle neighbourhood crime, reoffending, county lines crimes, violence against women and girls, victims’ services, and improved response to rape allegations

• £3.8bn for the “largest prison-building programme in a generation”

• £11.5bn to build up to 180,000 affordable home – 20% more than the previous programme

• £1.8bn to bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use

• £640m a year to help those who are rough sleepers and homeless

• £5bn to remove unsafe cladding from the highest risk buildings, partly funded by a residential property developers’ tax, which will be levied on developers with profits over £25m at the rate of 4%

• £21bn for roads as part of a larger investment in transport

• £2.6bn for upgrades of over 50 local roads

• More than £5bn for road maintenance – enough to fill one million more potholes a year

• More than £5bn for buses, cycling and walking improvements

• HGV levy (previously suspended until August) will now be suspended until 2023

• Vehicle excise duty for heavy goods vehicles to be frozen

• Funding to improve lorry park facilities

• £46bn investment in railways, with an integrated rail plan to be published soon

• £5.7bn for London-style transport settlements in Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, West of England

• £300m for parenting programmes for families, tailored services to help with perinatal mental health

• £150m to support training and development for early years workforce

• £200m for Supporting Families programme which helps families with varied needs

• Over £200m to continue the holiday activity and food programme

• £560m for youth services – enough to fund up to 300 youth clubs in England

• More than £200m to build or transform up to 8,000 community football pitches in the UK

• £2bn new funding to help schools and colleges, bringing total support (some already announced) to almost £5bn

• Restoring per pupil funding to 2010 levels in real terms, equivalent to a cash increase for every pupil of more than £1,500

• 30,000 new school places for children with special needs and disabilities

• New 50% business rates discount for businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors, including pubs, music venues, cinemas, restaurants, hotels, theatres, and gyms

• This will mean any eligible business can claim a discount up to a maximum of £110,000 – a tax cut worth almost £1.7bn

• Mr Sunak says that, together with small business rates relief, this means more than 90% of all businesses in these sectors will see a discount of at least 50%

• An overhaul of alcohol duty, cutting the number of main duty rates from 15 to six – the stronger the drink, the higher the rate

• Small producer relief will extend the principle of small brewers’ relief to small cidermakers and others making alcoholic drinks of less than 8.5% ABV

• Sparkling wines will pay the same duty as still wines of equivalent strength, rather than the 28% they currently pay. Duty will also be cut for fruit cider

• Planned rise in fuel duty will be cancelled, meaning that – after 12 consecutive years of frozen rates, the average car driver will save a total of £1,900

• National living wage to increase next year by 6.6% to £9.50 an hour. For a full time worker, that’s a pay rise worth over £1,000

• This move will help more than two million of the lowest-paid workers, Mr Sunak says

• Mr Sunak says his goal is to reduce taxes and the universal credit taper, which reduces financial support as people work more hours, is in his sights

• The rate is currently 63%, so for every extra £1 someone earns, their universal credit is reduced by 63p. Mr Sunak announces plans to cut this by 8 percentage points (from 63% to 55%). This will come into effect “within weeks”

• Work allowances being increased by £500 – combined with the change to the taper, this is a tax cut worth more than £2bn, he says. Nearly two million families will keep, on average, an extra £1,000 a year

Business

Steel tycoon Gupta’s troubles deepen amid Australian probe

Published

12 hours ago

August 28, 2025

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Steel tycoon Gupta's troubles deepen amid Australian probe

Sanjeev Gupta, the metals tycoon whose main British business was forced into compulsory liquidation last week, is facing a deepening probe by Australian regulators into his operations in the country.

Sky News has learnt that officials from the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) last week served Mr Gupta’s Liberty Steel group with a new demand for information about its activities.

Sources said the regulator had also taken possession of a mobile phone belonging to Mr Gupta as part of the probe.

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One insider said that other senior executives at the company may also have had electronic devices confiscated, although the accuracy of this claim could not be verified on Thursday morning.

Both ASIC and a spokesman for Mr Gupta’s GFG conglomerate refused to comment on the suggestion that a search warrant had been produced by the watchdog.

ASIC’s deepening investigation comes a month after it said that three of GFG Alliance’s companies had been ordered by the Supreme Court of New South Wales to lodge outstanding annual reports with it.

It is the latest headache to hit Mr Gupta, whose companies remain under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office in the UK.

Last week, the Official Receiver took control of Speciality Steels UK following a winding-up petition from creditors led by Greensill Capital, the collapsed finance firm.

Mr Gupta remains intent on buying SSUK back, and has assembled financing from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, Sky News revealed last week.

SSUK employs nearly 1,500 people at steel plants in South Yorkshire, and makes highly engineered steel products for use in sectors such as aerospace, automotive and oil and gas.

“[Gupta Family Group] will now continue to advance its bid for the business in collaboration with prospective debt and equity partners and will present its plan to the official receiver,” Jeffrey Kabel, chief transformation officer, at Liberty Steel, said after SSUK’s collapse.

“GFG continues to believe it has the ideas, management expertise and commitment to lead SSUK into the future and attract major investment.”

“The plan that GFG presented to the court would have secured new investment in the UK steel industry, protecting jobs and establishing a sustainable operational platform under a new governance structure with independent oversight,” Mr Kabel added.

“Instead, liquidation will now impose prolonged uncertainty and significant costs on UK taxpayers for settlements and related expenses, despite the availability of a commercial solution.”

Mr Gupta wants to hand control of SSUK to his family in a bid to alleviate concerns about his influence.

One source close to the situation claimed that the ownership structure devised by Mr Gupta would be independent, ring-fenced from him and have “robust standards of governance”.

Behind Tata Steel and British Steel, SSUK is the third-largest steel producer in the country.

Other parts of Mr Gupta’s empire have been showing signs of financial stress for years.

Mr Gupta is said to have explored whether he could persuade the government to step in and support SSUK using the legislation enacted to take control of British Steel’s operations.

His overtures were dismissed by Whitehall officials.

He had previously sought government aid during the pandemic but that plea was also rejected by ministers.

Business

Nvidia beats revenue expectations in boost to AI investment and US stock markets

Published

20 hours ago

August 28, 2025

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Nvidia beats revenue expectations in boost to AI investment and US stock markets

The world’s most valuable company, and first to be valued at $4trn (£2.9trn), beat market expectations in keenly anticipated financial results.

Microchip maker Nvidia recorded revenues of $46.7bn (£34.6bn) in just three months up to July, latest financial data from the company showed, slightly better than Wall Street observers had expected.

The company’s performance is seen as a bellwether for artificial intelligence (AI) demand, with investors paying close attention to see whether the hype is overblown or if significant investment will pay off.

Originally a creator of gaming graphics hardware, Nvidia’s chips help power AI capability – and the UK’s most powerful supercomputer.

Nvidia’s graphics processors underpin products such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google.

Other tech giants – Microsoft, Meta and Amazon – make up Nvidia’s biggest customers and are paying large sums to embed AI into their products.

Why does it matter?

Nvidia has been central to the boom in AI development and the surge in tech stock valuations, which has seen stock markets reach record highs.

It represents about 8% of the value of the US S&P 500 stock market index of companies relied on to be stable and profitable.

Strong results will continue to fuel record highs in the market. Conversely, results that fail to live up to the hype could trigger a market tumble.

Nvidia itself saw its share price rise more than 40% over the past year. Its value impacts anyone with cash in the US stock market, such as pension funds.

The S&P 500 rose 14% over the past year, and the tech-company-heavy NASDAQ gained 21%, largely thanks to Nvidia.

As such, its earnings can move markets as much as major economic or monetary policy announcements, like an interest rate decision.

What next?

Revenue rises are forecast to continue to rise as Nvidia said it expected a rise to roughly $54bn (£40bn) in the next three months, more than the $53.14bn (£39.3bn) anticipated by analysts.

This excludes any potential shipments to China as export of Nvidia’s H20 chip, designed with the Biden administration’s export crackdown on advanced AI powering chips in mind, had been banned under US national security grounds.

But in recent weeks, Nvidia and another chipmaker, AMD, reached an unprecedented agreement to pay the Trump administration a 15% portion of China sales in return for export licences to send chips to China.

There were no H20 sales at all to China in the second quarter of the year, the period for which results were released on Wednesday evening.

Previously, 13% of Nvidia’s revenue came from China, with nearly 50% coming from the US.

Market reaction

Despite the expectation-beating results, Nvidia shares were down in after-hours trading, as the massive revenue rises previously booked by the company were not repeated in the latest quarter.

Compared to a year ago, revenues rose 56% and 6% compared to the three months up to April.

The absence of Chinese sales in forecasts appeared to disappoint.

Business

Bonuses to rise for Ryanair staff spotting oversized baggage

Published

23 hours ago

August 27, 2025

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Bonuses to rise for Ryanair staff spotting oversized baggage

Ryanair staff are to get more money for spotting and charging for oversized baggage, the company’s chief executive has said.

Michael O’Leary said he made “absolutely no apology” for catching people who are “scamming the system”.

The reward for intercepting passengers travelling with bags larger than permitted will increase from €1.50 (£1.29) to €2.50 (£2.15) per bag in November, and the monthly €80 (£68.95) payment cap will be scrapped, Mr O’Leary said.

At present, the budget airline allows travellers a free 40cm x 30cm x 20cm bag, which can fit under the seat in front, and charges for further luggage up to 55cm x 40cm x 20cm in size.

Customers face fines of up to £75 for an oversized item if it is brought to the boarding gate.

“I make absolutely no apology for it whatsoever”, Mr O’Leary said.

“I am still mystified by the number of people with rucksacks who still think they’re going to get through the gate and we won’t notice the rucksack”, he added.

Around 200,000 passengers per year are charged bag fees at airport gates.

“We have more work to do to get rid of them”, Mr O’Leary said.

“We are running a very efficient, very affordable, very low-cost airline, and we’re not letting anybody get in the way.”

The airline does not support a European Union proposal to ensure customers get a free cabin bag, he said.

Air fares

After a 7% fall in air fares for the year to 31 March, Mr O’Leary said he expected ticket prices to go back up this financial year.

“We expect to get most of last year’s 7% decline, but not all,” he told reporters in a news conference.

“We have sold about 70% of our September seats, but we have another 30% to sell, and it’s those last fares, what people pay for all those last-minute bookings through the remainder of September, that will ultimately determine what average airfares are.”