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.

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It’s spring statement day – a bigger day than the Treasury probably ever wanted it to be – but definitely not a budget.

With Chancellor Rachel Reeves on course to break her own fiscal rules, she’ll lay out how she intends to find billions of pounds of extra savings.

At the eleventh hour, it looks like welfare cuts will be tougher than first thought – with a hit on universal credit.

Sam and Anne outline what the calculations are likely to be and how the chancellor will handle the day.

And beyond today – if there’s no glimmer of growth by the end of the year, how would she approach the autumn budget? Could that be where raising taxes is the only option?

Assisted dying may not available in England and Wales until at least 2029 after MPs approved an extension of the rollout period.

An initial two-year “backstop” will now increase to four years after the change was proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

Ms Leadbeater said she was disappointed to propose the extension and acknowledged the “upset” felt by some supporters of the bill, but said it was “more important to do this properly than to do it quickly”.

The four-year delay, passed by the committee scrutinising the legislation, now means the law is unlikely to be operational until at least 2029 – the year by which the next general election must take place.

After the vote in the early hours of Wednesday, Ms Leadbeater said the bill will come back to the Commons in a “safer, fairer, and more workable” form.

MPs on the committee also voted for assisted dying to be available free on the NHS.

One MP said the extension of the backstop risked the bill being abandoned.

Tom Gordon, a Liberal Democrat MP, told The Guardian that “delaying implementation risks pushing it beyond the next election, where it could be abandoned altogether”.

“We have thoroughly scrutinised and strengthened this bill, ensuring it is safe and robust. Every extra year means more unnecessary suffering for those who cannot afford to wait,” Mr Gordon said.

The charity Humanists UK, which backs the assisted dying bill, said it regretted the delay.

Its chief executive Andrew Copson said: “Many other countries already have safe assisted dying laws and none of them has taken more than 19 months to implement them, apart from one that was subject to a court challenge.

“So it really shouldn’t have to take four years for the one here. If it does, people who need this change in law will continue to die in ways not of their choosing.”

But Conservative MP Danny Kruger argued that the bill was a fundamental change to the founding principles of the NHS, which he said would become the “national health and assisted suicide service”.

Read more:
What is in the legislation?
Assisted dying is the biggest societal change in 50 years

The overnight vote marks the end of two months of committee scrutiny, and the bill is likely to return for a debate and vote by all MPs in the coming months.

Opponents of the bill have warned that people could be put under pressure to end their lives.

But supporters have said the law will allow people suffering with difficult illnesses the choice over when to end their lives.

Last month, Ms Leadbeater removed a key safeguard that said every assisted dying case must be scrutinised by a High Court justice.

Citing concerns this could overwhelm the court system, Ms Leadbeater instead proposed that cases will be reviewed by panels including a senior lawyer, a psychiatrist, and a social worker.

The bill would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales who are expected to die within six months to request assistance from a doctor to end their life.

MPs initially voted in support of the bill in November, with 330 MPs supporting it and 275 rejecting it.

Meanwhile, the Isle of Man’s parliament became the first part of the British Isles to pass assisted dying legislation.

Its assisted dying bill will be sent for royal assent, having had its final reading by members of the legislative council on Tuesday.

The bill, for adults resident on the island for five years who have a terminal illness with a life expectancy of no more than 12 months, could formally become law later this year with an assisted dying service potentially in place by 2027.