Budget leaves household incomes stagnant and people paying more taxes despite public service cuts, Resolution Foundation says

Published

2 years ago

March 16, 2023

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Jeremy Hunt’s budget leaves household incomes stagnant and people paying higher taxes despite cuts to public services, the Resolution Foundation has said.

The think tank, which aims to improve the standard of low and middle-income families, said the chancellor had announced an “impressively broad suite of policies” to encourage more people into work.

However, it said: “Britain’s economy remains stuck in a deep funk – with people supported into work but getting poorer, and paying more tax but seeing public services cut.”

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Here are the key findings of the Foundation’s budget analysis.

Beating the odds on a recession

The UK is forecast to have gone through “the biggest energy and inflation shock since the 1970s, while avoiding a recession, with unemployment peaking at just 4.4%,” the Foundation said.

It compared it to the mid-1970s energy shock which saw a recession with a 3.9 peak-to-trough fall in GDP.

A decline in living standards

However, RF pointed to a “disastrous decline in living standards”, with typical real household disposable incomes on track to remain lower by the end of the forecast in 2027-28 than they were before the pandemic.

“If even the slow growth of the past decade had continued, incomes would still be £1,800 higher than currently projected for 2027-28,” it said.

Taxes on track to hit 70-year high

RF said taxes as a share of GDP are on track to hit 37.7% by the end of the forecast, a 70-year-high and a 4.7% increase since 2019-20, the equivalent to nearly an extra £4,200 for every UK household.

It said despite this the chancellor only has a quarter of the average fiscal headroom of his three predecessors and would not meet the fiscal targets set by Rishi Sunak, Philip Hammond or George Osborne when they were chancellor.

Help for parents

The analysis notes the budget includes the biggest increase in childcare support on record, which it said would encourage more parents to work and make it worthwhile for many to work longer.

RF said under the current childcare system, a single parent of a one-year-old earning the National Living Wage would see their income fall after childcare costs by £370 if they moved from 25 to 35 hours of work a week.

However under the new system the same single parent would receive an income boost of £700.

However, RF said the richest fifth of households are set to gain £180 on average from the extra childcare entitlement, compared to £130 for the middle fifth of households and £20 for the bottom fifth.

More on Budget 2023:
The key points of the budget at a glance

‘An unneeded tax break for wealthy pension savers’

The report was critical of the chancellor raising the annual allowance and scrapping the lifetime allowance for tax-free saving, which it said cost around £1.2bn and were expected to increase employment by 15,000 – a cost of around £80,000 per extra worker.

However, the Foundation said “even those employment gains may be overstated, given that giving very large wealth boosts will actually encourage some people to retire earlier than they otherwise would have done”.

It said someone with a £2m pension pot will have received a tax cut of almost £250,000.

Austerity

RF said the chancellor had chosen to “ignore pressures on public services”, even though unprotected departments face 10% cuts to real day-to-day spending per capita by the end of the budget, raising to 14% if the newly announced aspiration to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP is met over the next parliament.

An investment ‘roller-coaster’

The Foundation said the £28bn three-year increase in investment allowances represents the fifth major corporate tax change in two years, which it said illustrated “the lack of certainty that has frustrated businesses”.

It said: “The policy will deliver a temporary 3% boost to investment, when what Britain actually needs is a permanent 30% boost to catch up with our competitors (France, Germany and the US).”

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‘UK’s underlying challenges remain largely unchanged’

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Jeremy Hunt’s first budget was a much bigger affair than many expected, combining improvements to the dire economic and fiscal outlook with a significant policy package aimed at boosting longer-term growth in general, and the size of the workforce in particular.

“A step change in childcare support stands out.

“But stepping back, the UK’s underlying challenges remain largely unchanged.

“We are investing too little and growing too slowly. Our citizens’ living standards are stagnant. We ask them to pay higher taxes, while cutting public services.

“No one budget could turn that around, but it’s time Britain did.”

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

11 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

14 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

15 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.