Budget 2024: The key announcements in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has finally unveiled the budget for 2024. Here are the key points:
This page is being updated, refresh to see more as it’s announced.
• The budget raises taxes by £40bn.
• National Insurance contributions for employers (not employees) will increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15% from April 2025.
The point at which employers start paying NI will fall from £9,100 a year to £5,000 a year. This will raise £25bn per year.
• The lower rate of capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale of assets will increase from 10% to 18%. The higher rate will go from 18% to 24%. CGT on the sale of residential property will also increase from 18% to 24%.
• Tax thresholds will rise, meaning the point at which people pay higher taxes will be increased. These tax bands had been frozen. But this freeze will end in 2028 and the bands will increase at the rate of inflation.
• The freeze on inheritance tax will continue for a further two years until 2030. This means the first £325,000 can be inherited tax-free, rising to £500,000 if the estate is passed to direct descendants, and £1m if it’s passed to a surviving spouse or civil partner.
• From tomorrow the stamp duty surcharge for second homes, or ‘higher rate for additional dwellings’, will increase by two percentage points to 5%.
• Health and employment services for people who are disabled and long-term sick will get £240m in funding.
• The minimum wage for people 21 and over will rise by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour. This is the equivalent of £1,400 a year for a full-time worker. Workers aged 18 to 20 will see their minimum wage increase by 16.3% to £10 an hour.
• People will now be able to earn £10,000 or more while claiming Carers Allowance. This will mean an extra £81.90 for those newly eligible.
• The household support fund will receive £1bn to help those in financial hardship with the cost of essentials.
• A new fair repayment rate will mean Universal Credit claimants who have been accidentally overpaid will only have to pay back 15% of their allowance each month, falling from 25%. This means a gain of around £420 a year for roughly 1.2 million of the poorest households.
• Businesses will get an increase in employment allowance, which will mean 65,000 employers won’t pay any National Insurance at all next year with the allowance growing from £5,000 to £10,500. This will mean more than a million businesses will pay the same or less than they did previously.
• Business rates relief will fall from the current 75% down to 45% for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses.
• The day-to-day NHS budget will increase by £22.6bn. There will also be a further £3.1bn investment in its capital budget.
• This will facilitate 40,000 extra hospital appointments and procedures every week and will include £1.5bn for new hospital beds.
• Local government will receive funding worth “at least” £600m for social care.
• An investment of £5bn in housing, which will increase the affordable homes programme to a budget of £3.1bn.
• In addition, £1bn will be spent on the removal of dangerous cladding, implementing the findings of the Grenfell inquiry.
• Fuel duty will be frozen this year and next, with the existing 5p cut maintained.
• A cut to draft alcohol duty of 1.7%, which could make drinks cheaper by 1p.
• The tax on tobacco will rise at the rate of inflation plus an additional 2%. There will also be an extra 10% on rolling tobacco.
• There will be a new flat rate duty on all vaping liquid from next October.
• VAT will be introduced on private school fees from January 2025 and business rates relief for private schools will be removed from April 2025.
• Some 500 state schools that are old and not fit for purpose will be rebuilt at a total cost of £1.4bn. There will be an extra £300m for school maintenance each year, which will cover dealing with RAC concerns.
• The budget for free school breakfast clubs will be tripled to £30m, in 2025 and 2026. The core budget for schools will also rise by £2.3bn next year.
• An investment of £300m for further education and £1bn for children with special educational needs (SEN).
• The HS2 rail link between Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham has been confirmed. Tunnelling work will also begin on extending the line to London Euston.
• Air passenger duty on private jets will rise by 50%, which is the equivalent of £450 per passenger.
• The energy profits levy on oil and gas companies will increase to 38% until March 2030.
• The annual defence budget will fall below 2.5% of GDP next year – with an increase of £2.9bn for the Ministry of Defence.
• A commitment of £3bn a year for Ukraine for “as long as it takes”.
• Public finances will be in surplus, rather than in deficit, by the 2027-2028 financial year. The government claims this means reaching stability two years earlier than planned.
• The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts UK GDP growth to be 1.1% in 2024, 2.0% in 2025, 1.85% in 2026, 1.5% in 2027, 1.5% in 2028, 1.6% in 2029.
• The OBR expects public sector net borrowing to be £105.6bn in 2025-26, £88.5bn in 2026-27, £72.2bn in 2027-28, £71.9bn in 2028-29 and £70.6bn in 2029-30.
• Consumer price index (CPI) inflation will hit 2.5% this year, according to OBR forecasts. Next year it will rise to 2.6% before falling to 2.3% in 2026, 2.1% in 2027, 2.1% in 2028 and 2% in 2029. It’s the goal of the Treasury to bring inflation down to 2%. The Bank of England has raised interest rates to bring the rate of price rises to 2%.
• The price of soft drinks will rise, with an increase to the drinks levy in line with inflation every year. Nearly £1bn a year will be raised thanks to the measure.
• All government departments will have their budgets reduced by 2% next year. This will be achieved by “using technology more effectively and joining up services across government”.
Negotiations to reset the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU are going “to the wire”, a Cabinet Office minister has said.
“There is no final deal as yet. We are in the very final hours,” the UK’s lead negotiator Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
On the possibility of a youth mobility scheme with the EU, he insisted “nothing is agreed until everything is”.
“We would be open to a smart, controlled youth mobility scheme,” he said. “But I should set out, we will not return to freedom of movement.”
Politics latest: PM outlines ‘benefits’ for UK from closer EU ties
The government is set to host EU leaders in London on Monday.
Put to the minister that the government could not guarantee there will be a deal by tomorrow afternoon, Mr Thomas-Symonds said: “Nobody can guarantee anything when you have two parties in a negotiation.”
But the minister said he remained “confident” a deal could be reached “that makes our borders more secure, is good for jobs and growth, and brings people’s household bills down”.
“That is what is in our national interest and that’s what we will continue to do over these final hours,” he said.
“We have certainly been taking what I have called a ruthlessly pragmatic approach.”
On agricultural products, food and drink, Mr Thomas-Symonds said supermarkets were crying out for a deal because the status quo “isn’t working”, with “lorries stuck for 16 hours and food rotting” and producers and farmers unable to export goods because of the amount of “red tape”.
Asked how much people could expect to save on shopping as a result of the deal the government was hoping to negotiate, the minister was unable to give a figure.
Read more:
What could a UK-EU reset look like?
Starmer’s stance on immigration criticised
On the issue of fishing, asked if a deal would mean allowing French boats into British waters, the minister said the Brexit deal which reduced EU fishing in UK waters by a quarter over five years comes to an end next year.
He said the objectives now included “an overall deal in the interest of our fishers, easier access to markets to sell our fish and looking after our oceans”.
Turning to borders, the minister was asked if people would be able to move through queues at airports faster.
Again, he could not give a definitive answer, but said it was “certainly something we have been pushing with the EU… we want British people who are going on holiday to be able to go and enjoy their holiday, and not be stuck in queues”.
PM opens door to EU youth mobility scheme
A deal granting the UK access to a major EU defence fund could be on the table, according to reports – and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has appeared to signal a youth mobility deal could be possible, telling The Times that while freedom of movement is a “red line”, youth mobility does not come under this.
The European Commission has proposed opening negotiations with the UK on an agreement to facilitate youth mobility between the EU and the UK. The scheme would allow both UK and EU citizens aged between 18 and 30 years old to stay for up to four years in a country of their choosing.
Earlier this month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Phillips a youth mobility scheme was not the approach the government wanted to take to bring net migration down.
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Return to customs union ‘remains a red line’
When this was put to him, Mr Thomas-Symonds insisted any deal on a youth mobility scheme with Europe will have to be “smart” and “controlled” and will be “consistent” with the government’s immigration policy.
Asked what the government had got in return for a youth mobility scheme – now there had been a change in approach – the minister said: “It is about an overall balanced package that works for Britain. The government is 100% behind the objective of getting net migration down.”
Phillips said more than a million young people came to the country between 2004 and 2015. “If there isn’t a cap – that’s what we are talking about,” he said.
The minister insisted such a scheme would be “controlled” – but refused to say whether there would be a cap.
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‘It’s going to be a bad deal’
Shadow cabinet office minister Alex Burghart told Phillips an uncapped youth mobility scheme with the EU would lead to “much higher immigration”, adding: “It sounds very much as though it’s going to be a bad deal.”
Asked if the Conservatives would scrap any EU deal, he said: “It depends what the deal is, Trevor. And we still, even at this late stage, we don’t know.
“The government can’t tell us whether everyone will be able to come. They can’t tell us how old the young person is. They can’t tell us what benefits they would get.
“So I think when people hear about a youth mobility scheme, they think about an 18-year-old coming over working at a bar. But actually we may well be looking at a scheme which allows 30-year-olds to come over and have access to the NHS on day one, to claim benefits on day one, to bring their extended families.”
He added: “So there are obviously very considerable disadvantages to the UK if this deal is done in the wrong way.”
Jose Manuel Barroso, former EU Commission president, told Phillips it “makes sense” for a stronger relationship to exist between the European Union and the UK, adding: “We are stronger together.”
He said he understood fishing and youth mobility are the key sticking points for a UK-EU deal.
“Frankly, what is at stake… is much more important than those specific issues,” he said.
Retired artist Ed Suman lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency earlier this year after falling victim to a scam involving someone posing as a Coinbase support representative.
Suman, 67, spent nearly two decades as a fabricator in the art world, helping build high-profile works such as Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog sculptures, according to a May 17 report by Bloomberg.
After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC) and 225 Ether (ETH) — a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.
He stored the funds in a Trezor Model One, a hardware wallet commonly used by crypto holders to avoid the risks of exchange hacks. But in March, Suman received a text message appearing to be from Coinbase, warning him of unauthorized account access.
After responding, he got a phone call from a man identifying himself as a Coinbase security staffer named Brett Miller. The caller appeared knowledgeable, correctly stating that Suman’s funds were stored in a hardware wallet.
He then convinced Suman that his wallet could still be vulnerable and walked him through a “security procedure” that involved entering his seed phrase into a website mimicking Coinbase’s interface.
Nine days later, a second caller claiming to be from Coinbase repeated the process. By the end of that call, all of Suman’s crypto holdings were gone.
Related: Bitcoin breaks out while Coinbase breaks down: Finance Redefined
Coinbase suffers major data breach
The scam followed a data breach at Coinbase disclosed this week, in which attackers bribed customer support staff in India to access sensitive user information.
Stolen data included customer names, account balances, and transaction histories. Coinbase confirmed the breach impacted roughly 1% of its monthly transacting users.
Among those affected was venture capitalist Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital. There is no indication that his funds were accessed, and Botha declined to comment.
Coinbase’s chief security officer, Philip Martin, reportedly said the contracted customer service agents at the center of the controversy were based in India and had been fired following the breach.
The exchange has also said it plans to pay between $180 million and $400 million in remediation and reimbursement to affected users.
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United Kingdom crypto companies will need to collect and report data from every customer trade and transfer beginning Jan. 1, 2026 as part of a broader effort to improve crypto tax reporting, the UK government said.
Everything from the user’s full name, home address and tax identification number will need to be collected and reported for every transaction, including the cryptocurrency used and the amount moved, the UK Revenue and Customs department said in a May 14 statement.
Details of companies, trusts and charities transacting on crypto platforms will also need to be reported.
Failure to comply or inaccurate reporting may incur penalties of up to 300 British pounds ($398.4) per user. The UK Revenue and Customs department said it would inform companies on how to comply with the incoming measures in due course.
However, UK authorities are encouraging crypto firms to start collecting data now to ensure compliance readiness.
The new rule is part of the UK’s integration of the Organisation for Economic Development’s Cryptoasset Reporting Framework to improve transparency in crypto tax reporting.
The changes reflect the UK government’s aim to establish a more robust regulatory framework that supports industry growth while ensuring consumer protection.
Related: Bitwise lists four crypto ETPs on London Stock Exchange
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves also introduced a draft bill in late April to bring crypto exchanges, custodians and broker-dealers within its regulatory reach to combat scams and fraud.
“Today’s announcement sends a clear signal: Britain is open for business — but closed to fraud, abuse, and instability,” Reeves said at the time.
A study from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority last November found that 12% of UK adults owned crypto in 2024 — a significant increase from the 4% reported in 2021.
UK’s approach contrasts with EU’s MiCA
The UK’s move to integrate the crypto rules into its existing financial framework contrasts with the European Union’s approach, which introduced the new Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation framework last year.
According to the MiCA Crypto Alliance, one key difference is that the UK will allow foreign stablecoin issuers to operate in the UK without needing to register.
There will also be no cap on stablecoin volumes, unlike the EU’s approach, which may impose controls on stablecoin issuers to manage systemic risks.
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