Budget 2023: Who are the winners and losers? How three real households are affected
No matter what’s going on in your life, something in today’s financial statement from Jeremy Hunt will have a real impact on how much money – if anything – is left for you each month to spend on the things you want.
Sky News has analysed the real budgets of three different households to see whether they end up better or worse off.
Linda is going to be better off overall, thanks in part to the continuation of the energy bill price cap, although it might not feel like that, as the government has not extended the Energy Bills Support Scheme.
We’ve not included that in our calculations as it was a planned change rather than anything that came out of today’s announcements.
“We were really relying on that £67 payment, which we’re going to be losing. It’s a lot of money. The cap is good but they’re taking it out with the other hand. I can’t see how I’m going to be better off at all really. I’m gutted,” she told Sky News.
Click here for our budget calculator to see if you are better or worse off
Linda receives a private pension and a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) to help with health issues that forced her to take early retirement in 2017, aged 55.
Linda’s husband Wayne works full-time for an electrical engineering company, and they also receive rent from Linda’s 38-year-old son Anthony, who moved back in last year due to the rising cost of living. Linda also cares for her grandson Jamie for two days in the week, to help out with childcare costs.
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The new energy cap, Linda’s biggest saving, helps all households. When the government first introduced the Energy Price Guarantee it said that at this point it would rise from £2,500 to £3,000, for a typical annual bill, to ease pressure on public funds. It’s now set to stay at £2,500.
Linda is benefiting from an uplift in her disability support payments, however, adding to extra support received last year.
Frozen tax thresholds mean that Linda’s husband will effectively pay an extra £170 in tax next year. As his salary rises with inflation, the amount he can take home before paying tax does not. More on that later on.
Mike ends up worse off overall. He doesn’t mind so much as he’s in a comfortable situation, but was hoping to hear more support for those struggling.
“My concern is not for myself, I’m comfortably off. If fuel bills stay as they are I can survive, if they go up I can take the hit a little bit. People here [in Burnley] on minimum wage can’t afford to heat their homes or feed their kids.
“I was hoping for more support for those people rather than myself. I will rise over the bumps and I have a retirement coming up in a few years.”
Mike owns his own home and is the landlord for two others. He’s comfortable, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune from rising costs.
“Our day-to-day costs have doubled in the last 12 months, fuel costs have gone up 50%. And Liz Truss’s intervention cost me about £60,000 in lost pension pot,” he said.
Like Linda, he benefits from the energy price cap, but he loses out more from the tax threshold freeze. It will cost him more than £300 in real terms over the next 12 months.
Why is the tax threshold freeze so significant? As inflation rises so, typically, do wages. But in real terms, the value of money becomes less.
£10,000 will buy you about 10% less stuff than it did last year, for example.
In the UK you can earn £12,570 without paying tax. Typically that number, and the number at which you start paying a higher rate of tax (£50,270) rise each year to account for the fact that the money is worth less.
They haven’t this year and that affects all taxpayers, but could cost thousands for higher earners. It’s effectively a stealth tax.
Mike’s main concerns around the budget, however, are for those on lower incomes in his area, who he’s seen struggling to pay for the basics or even to feed their children.
“The stabilisation of the tax rate will cost me a bit of money, but I can tighten my belt a bit. People around here like Lianne don’t have more belt to tighten.”
Lianne will end up better off than last year, mainly thanks to the fuel duty freeze. Her husband Damian is also self-employed, he has a removals company so spends a lot on diesel. Once more though, it doesn’t feel like things are getting any easier.
“It’s really testing times, especially being self-employed. I feel we’re always the ones left behind. You’re trying to do well for yourselves but you’re backpedalling all the time,” she told Sky News.
“The government needs to step up and help the working person. Costs are going up and up and up across the board and they make it sound like – because they’re keeping it at a level rate, not increasing it anymore – they’re doing us a favour, but they’re not. People are struggling.”
Lianne and Damian have a four-year-old daughter who started school this year. They won’t benefit from today’s announcement about childcare support.
Before she started school they paid £100 for two days of childcare a week. Lianne had to go part-time with her work because it was unaffordable to pay for more.
What the family lose from the tax threshold freeze is offset by what they gain from an uplift in child benefit, energy prices and fuel prices.
Fuel duty is the amount of tax that the government charges drivers when they buy petrol. When petrol prices started rising the government lowered the amount of tax it gets, per litre, but planned to raise it back again.
The government announced today that they will no longer do that, which is especially important to Lianne’s husband Damian with his driving-intensive job. Raising the duty as planned would have cost the family over £200 more a year.
Prices are still significantly higher than they were before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however.
“People are already at breaking point. For people on the borderline, if things get any worse I dread to think what’s to come,” Lianne added.
Follow more of Sky News’s reaction to the budget on our live page.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk
Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.
Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.
Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”
Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.
After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.
“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.
“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”
Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown. Pic: Robert Mulhern
Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.
Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.
He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”
The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.
Read more:
What happened to the Brink’s-Mat gold?
Kenneth Noye, left, and Stephen Cameron
Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.
“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”
The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.
“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.
“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”
The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.
A Sky News podcast told the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist in 2019
I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.
“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.
He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.
“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.
“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”
He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.
Oasis have reunited on stage for the first time in almost 16 years – with brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher sharing a high five and the briefest of hugs as they closed a performance that for fans was more than worth the wait.
After the split in 2009, for many years Noel said he would never go back – and for a long time, as the brothers exchanged insults through separate interviews (and on social media, for Liam), it seemed pretty unlikely to ever happen.
But now, here they are. As they walked out on stage at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, all eyes were on the Gallaghers for a sense of their relationship – dare we say it, friendship? – now after all these years.
There was no reference to their fall-out or making up, but the gestures were there – lifting hands together as they walked out for the first time.
The headline “OASIS REUNITED” was shown on stage at the gig. Pic: PA
Fans at the Oasis gig. Pic: PA
Headlines and tweets of speculation and then confirmation of the reunion filled the screens as the show started. “This is happening,” said one, repeatedly.
In the end, it was all about the music.
Liam has received criticism in the past for his voice not being what it once was during his solo or Beady Eye performances, but back on stage with his brother tonight he delivered exactly what fans would have hoped for – a raw, steely-eyed performance, snarling vocals, and the swagger that makes him arguably the greatest frontman of his day.
This was Oasis sounding almost as good as they ever have.
Fans sang along and held up their phones to film as Oasis performed. Pic: PA
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Oasis: ‘It’s good to be back’
They opened with Hello, because of course, “it’s good to be back”. And then Acquiesce, and those lyrics: “Because we need each other/ We believe in one another.”
The song is said to be about friendship in the wider sense, rather than their brotherly bond and sibling rivalry, but you can’t help but feel like it means something here.
Over two hours, they played favourite after favourite – including Morning Glory, Some Might Say, Cigarettes & Alcohol, Supersonic and Roll With It.
Liam Gallagher as Oasis takes to the stage in Cardiff. Pic: PA
In the mid-section, Liam takes his break for Noel to sing Talk Tonight, Half The World Away and Little By Little; the tempo slows but there is by no means a lull, with the fans singing all his words back to him.
Liam returns for hits including Stand By Me, Slide Away, Whatever and Live Forever, before sending the crowd wild (or even wilder) with Rock And Roll Star.
Noel Gallagher performing on stage. Pic: PA
An Oasis fan is pointing at the stage during the gig. Pic: PA
When the reunion announcement was made last summer, it quickly became overshadowed by the controversy of dynamic pricing causing prices to rocket. As he has done on X before, Liam addressed the issue on stage with a joke.
“Was it worth the £4,000 you paid for the ticket?” he shouted at one point. “Yeah,” the crowd shouts back; seemingly all is forgiven.
After Rock And Roll Star, the dream that very quickly became a reality for this band, Noel introduced the rest of the group, calling Bonehead a “legend”.
Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs of Oasis. Pic: PA
Liam Gallagher carried a tambourine in his mouth during the concert. Pic: PA
Then he acknowledges all their young fans, some who maybe weren’t even born when they split. “This one is for all the people in their 20s who’ve never seen us before, who’ve kept this shit going,” he says before the encore starts with The Masterplan.
Noel follows with Don’t Look Back In Anger, and the screens fill with Manchester bees in reference to the arena bombing and how the song became the sound of hope and defiance for the city afterwards.
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‘I’d have paid £10,000 to see them’
Two fans sat on their friends’ shoulders as Oasis performed. Pic: PA
During Wonderwall, there’s a nice touch as Liam sings to the crowd: “There are many things I would like to say to you, but I don’t speak Welsh.”
It is at the end of Champagne Supernova, which closes the set, that it happens; Noel puts down his guitar, and they come together for a high-five and a back-slap, a blink-and-you’d miss it hug.
Read more:
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“Right then, beautiful people, this is it,” Liam had told the crowd as he introduced the song just a few minutes earlier. “Nice one for putting up with us over the years.”
From the roar of the audience, it’s safe to say most people here would agree it’s been worth it.
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