Lower income households are set to be £500 poorer due to benefit cuts and a weak economic outlook, a thinktank has found.

Living standards are on track to fall over the next five years for the poorest half of households, according to the Resolution Foundation’s analysis of Wednesday’s spring statement.

It said a fall of this scale had only been exceeded historically by the early 1990s recession and the 2008 financial crisis and fallout.

Its analysis was released against the backdrop of a backlash against the chancellor, with Labour MPs among those joining charities in warning that her decision to target welfare spending to bolster the public finances was a mistake.

In its latest assessment of the economy that accompanied her speech, the Office for Budget Responsibility declared that real household disposable income per person was expected to grow from next year to 2029-30, led by stronger wage growth as inflation started to fall.

But the country’s independent fiscal watchdog said a global trade war could reduce economic output by 1%, leaving Rachel Reeves’s small headroom – cash set aside that was created by her spending cuts – at risk of being wiped out for a second time.

She was speaking just hours before Donald Trump revealed plans to target all car imports to the US with 25% tariffs.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, said: “If you are going to have ‘iron-clad’ fiscal rules then leaving yourself next to no headroom against them leaves you at the mercy of events.”

He warned that Ms Reeves could find herself soon at the centre of renewed tax hike speculation ahead of the autumn budget.

Poorest households worst hit

The overall impact of all tax and benefit changes taking effect in this Parliament will reduce the incomes of the second poorest fifth of households by 1.5%, compared to a 0.6% fall for the richest fifth, the foundation found.

The £4.8bn of welfare savings announced by Rachel Reeves will actually result in £8.1bn in cuts, it said.

“After accounting for the £1.9bn boost to the standard rate of universal credit, and the ‘gain’ from not going ahead with scored-but-never-implemented changes to the Work Capability Assessment, cuts to ill-health, disability and carer’s benefits rise to £8.1bn in 2029/30, and will continue to grow over time,” it calculated.

The changes to benefits mean there are “huge holes” in the welfare safety net, and the foundation called for transitional protections to prevent such sharp income shocks.

Ruth Curtice, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “High debt servicing costs, weak tax receipts, and the need to reassure jittery markets meant the chancellor had to announce tax rises or spending cuts in her spring statement.

“She chose to focus the bulk of her consolidation on welfare cuts. These cuts have been justified on the basis of getting people into work, but it is questionable how much of a jobs boost they’ll deliver.

Read more:
Are you better or worse off after the spring statement?
OBR slashes UK growth forecast for 2025

“After all, the bulk of the cuts are to disability benefits which aren’t related to work, and the cuts take effect from 2026, three years before the government’s employment support programme kicks into gear.

“While the OBR’s [Office for Budget Responsibility] outlook for growth today got gloomier, it is far more optimistic about Britain’s medium-term economic prospects.

“The chancellor will hope that reality catches up with the OBR, rather than the OBR falling back to reality, otherwise more tough choices await.”

Ms Curtice added: “The outlook for living standards remains bleak. Britain’s poor economic performance, combined with policies that bear down hardest on those on modest incomes, mean that 10 million working-age households across the bottom half of the income distribution are on track to get £500 a year poorer over the course of the Parliament.”

The Chinese owner of British Steel has rejected a £500m state rescue package in a move which raises fresh doubts about thousands of steel industry jobs.

Sky News has learnt that the offer was made by Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, in a letter sent to Jingye Group on Monday.

The proposal – aimed at facilitating the Scunthorpe-based group’s transition to green steel production – follows years of talks aimed at salvaging the future of the UK’s second-biggest producer.

Money blog: Are you better or worse off after the spring statement?

Sarah Jones, the industry minister, told a committee of MPs on Wednesday afternoon that an offer had been made by the government earlier this week, and it had been rejected by Jingye.

“We are still in talks with them at the moment,” she told the business and trade select committee.

The minister did not disclose the size of the offer, but Whitehall sources confirmed that it was £500m – equivalent to the sum awarded to the larger Tata Steel as part of a £1.25bn package finalised last year.

Government sources said the offer had been calibrated after protracted discussions between ministers, officials and their advisers lasting many months.

However, the £500m package falls well short of the sum that Jingye has been seeking from the government during several rounds of talks since Labour won last summer’s general election.

The Chinese-owned group is thought to have requested £1bn or more from ministers – double the amount handed to Tata Steel, owner of the Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales, last autumn.

The gap between the government’s offer and Jingye’s demands means that thousands of steel jobs could yet be at risk.

British Steel, which was taken over by Jingye in 2020 after a spell in public ownership, employs about 3,500 people at its sites in Scunthorpe, Teesside and elsewhere.

It has been pushing for taxpayer funding to support a transition to green steelmaking by replacing Scunthorpe’s two blast furnaces with cleaner electric arc furnaces.

The rejection of the £500m offer leaves Scunthorpe’s future on a knife edge.

It is unclear whether the government is prepared to increase the amount of money it hands to Jingye, despite Ms Jones’s insistence that discussions are ongoing.

Asked whether British Steel’s blast furnaces would continue operating during negotiations, she said: “Our preference would be for them to keep going; until at the least they have secured the volume of steel imports to keep the mills going.

“Our preference would be that this steel is secured before they close these furnaces.”

Without the injection of funding from government that it had sought, Jingye may argue that its loss-making operations are no longer viable and opt to close the blast furnaces without the financing in place to replace their output.

Reports late last year suggested that nationalisation was an option being explored by ministers.

The government’s proposal comes at a deeply sensitive time for Britain’s steel industry, with fears of swingeing US tariffs exacerbating concerns that the sector’s viability will be put at risk.

Earlier this month, Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, called on ministers to designate steel as critical national infrastructure: “Our government must act decisively to protect the steel industry and its workers following the announcement of US tariffs.

“This is a matter of national security.

“Given the importance of steel to our economy and our everyday lives it is vital it is designated as critical national infrastructure and rules are introduced to ensure that the public sector always buys UK produced steel.”

Last month, Mr Reynolds published the government’s Plan for Steel consultation, which will include up to £2.5bn in funding for the industry, in line with a commitment in last year’s Labour election manifesto.

“The UK steel industry has a long-term future under this government,” he said.

“Britain is open for business, and this government has committed up to £2.5bn to the future of steel to protect our industrial heartlands, maintain jobs, and drive growth as part of our Plan for Change.”

During the same month, Mr Reynolds held further talks with Jingye Group’s boss, Li Huiming, in the latest chapter of a negotiation which has been dragging on for more than two years.

British Steel was bought by Jingye the year after it was placed into compulsory liquidation.

The company had been owned by private investment firm Greybull Capital.

British Steel declined to comment, while the Department for Business and Trade has been approached for comment on the details of its offer to Jingye.

Rachel Reeves has delivered her much anticipated spring statement today.

The chancellor’s statement is not a formal budget – as Labour pledged to only deliver one per year – but rather an update on the economy and any progress since her fiscal statement last October.

Ms Reeves told MPs “the world has changed” since her first budget just under five months ago, and that was to blame for the string of cuts and downgrades she outlined in the Commons.

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But critics have said today’s update is a direct consequence of her decisions since taking office in July.

Here are the key takeaways from the spring statement:

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has halved the UK growth forecast for 2025 from 2% to 1%, Ms Reeves said, adding that she was “not satisfied with these numbers”.

She explained that the government’s budget will move from a deficit of £36.1bn in 2025-26 and £13.4bn in 2026-27, to a surplus of £6bn in 2027-28, £7.1bn in 2028-29 and £9.9bn in 2029-30.

While the short-term growth forecasts appear gloomy, the chancellor said the OBR predicts the economy will be “larger” by the end of the forecast compared with the time of her first budget as a result of her decisions.

The OBR expects output to grow 1% in 2025, by 1.9% next year, 1.8% in 2027, 1.7% in 2028 and by 1.8% in 2029.

On living standards, real household disposable income per person is expected to grow by an average of around 0.5 percentage points a year from 2025-26 to 2029-30, led by stronger wage growth and inflation starting to fall later in the forecast period.

Ms Reeves said disposable income will “grow this year at almost twice the rate expected in the autumn”, adding: “Households will be on average over £500 a year better off under this government.”

The chancellor announced further welfare cuts after being told the reforms announced last week will save less than planned – £3.4bn instead of £5bn.

Among the latest changes to welfare spending, Ms Reeves said the universal credit health element would be cut by 50% and frozen for new claimants rather than rising in line with inflation.

However, the universal credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in 2025-26 to £106 per week by 2029-30. The changes will mean a further 150,000 people will not receive carer’s allowance or the carer element of universal credit, according to the government’s own impact assessment.

The OBR has estimated the new welfare savings package will save £4.8bn.

Cuts to welfare will mean 250,000 more people – including 50,000 children – will be pushed into poverty by 2030, the government’s assessment predicts.

Separately, 800,000 people will not receive the daily living component personal independence payment (PIP) – due to tightening eligibility rules.

The chancellor pledged to “boost Britain’s defence industry and to make the UK a defence industrial superpower”.

She confirmed the government’s pledge to spend 2.5% of GDP by 2027.

The Ministry of Defence will get an additional £2.2bn next year, the chancellor said, which will be spent on new high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth, and refurbishing military family homes, among other things.

The commitment is fully funded, with cash coming from Treasury reserves and also from the decision to slash foreign aid funding.

Ms Reeves said the statement does not contain any further tax increases, but highlighted work that needs to be done to tackle tax evasion.

She announced steps to crack down on tax evasion, saying that the government will increase the number of tax fraudsters charged each year by 20%.

She says that reducing tax evasion will raise an extra £1bn for the economy.

On departmental budgets – which dictate how much different parts of government can spend until 2030 – Ms Reeves said she aims to make the state “leaner and more agile”.

The chancellor also confirmed that a voluntary redundancy scheme is set to launch for civil servants, saying this will deliver £3.5bn in “day-to-day savings by 2029-30”.

Government spending will now grow by an average of 1.2% a year above inflation, compared with 1.3% in the autumn.

Planning reforms will see house building reach a more than 40-year high by 2030, the chancellor said.

She said the OBR has forecast that the government’s reforms to cut planning red tape will boost house building by 170,000 over the next five years, to 305,000.

This would put the government on track to add around 1.3 million to Britain’s stock of homes in the UK, a rise of 16%, by the end of Parliament.

However, it will fall short of its initial target of 1.5 million houses, the OBR warned, adding that planning reforms will only increase the overall housing stock by 0.5% by the end of 2030.

How have the markets reacted?

The reaction of financial markets to a fiscal event is important, particularly as a poorly received speech can add to government borrowing costs on the bond markets.

The good news for the chancellor here is that yields – the premium demanded by investors to hold UK government debt – dipped slightly in the wake of her remarks.

The yield for UK 30-year bonds, known as gilts, eased by almost 0.1 percentage points to 5.283%.

Similar, but smaller, declines were seen for their 10 and two year counterparts.

The only other market reaction to speak of was a dip in the value of the pound which lost three tenths of a cent against the dollar and the euro.