Category Archives: Budget 2020

Jobs, health and climate: what Australians want the budget to pay for

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With the economy in a Covid crisis, we ask people across states, sectors and stages of life where their priorities now lie

Australians are hoping to see extended financial support for workers in industries crippled by Covid-19 restrictions, as well as policies to make renewable energy cheaper and more accessible.

While the government has indicated job creation will be at the centre of Tuesday’s federal budget, Guardian Australia spoke to Australians across several states, sectors and stages of life about where they want the government to spend money.

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Budget 2020: Sunak’s plans for current spending ‘nothing like as generous as they appear’, says IFS – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

These are from the Telegraph’s Gordon Rayner.

Sources in Scotland insist Sturgeon's announcement of ban on gatherings of 500+ from Monday is a "UK-wide" policy. This morning Westminster sources were steering away from crowd bans. Has Sturgeon jumped the gun on something Boris was going to announce next week?

(Sturgeon is not averse to stealing people's thunder to make it look as though she is the one doing all the leading)

The Scottish Green party has cancelled its spring conference, which was due to take place on Saturday 28 March, because of the coronavirus outbreak after the number of cases declared in Scotland jumped to 60 on Thursday.

Ross Greer MSP, a co-chair of the party’s executive, said:

Due to the ongoing coronavirus situation the Scottish Greens executive committee has today taken the decision to cancel our upcoming conference. The health and wellbeing of our members and the public is our primary concern and it is with that in mind that we have taken this decision.

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Budget 2020: read the small print on spending pledge, urges IFS

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Thinktank praises Covid-19 response but says ‘splurge’ relies on already announced plans

Rishi Sunak’s first budget is not as generous as it seems and will leave many Whitehall departments worse off than they were before the spending squeeze began in 2010, according to Britain’s foremost economics thinktank.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the chancellor made the budget sound more substantial than it was, while relying on previously announced spending plans.

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Budget 2020: UK to launch £800m ‘blue skies’ research agency

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Brainchild of Dominic Cummings will seek to return Britain to its ‘pioneering scientific roots’, says chancellor

The government will pump at least £800m into a new “blue skies” science research agency as part of a series of pro-business measures designed to boost Britain’s competitive edge.

The UK agency, the brainchild of Boris Johnson’s closest political adviser Dominic Cummings, will fund “high-risk, high reward science” and will be modelled on theAdvanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the US.

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Budget 2020: Rishi Sunak turns on taps with £30bn splurge

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Chancellor announces £12bn to fight coronavirus and £18bn on ‘levelling up’ in reversal of Tory orthodoxy

Rishi Sunak ditched a decade of Conservative economic orthodoxy on Wednesday and claimed the Tories were now “the party of public services,” as he turned on the spending taps with a £30bn package that leaves Britain on course to have a bigger state than under Tony Blair’s Labour governments.

On a day when the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a global pandemic, the chancellor announced £12bn to buttress the economy against the immediate threat of recession and a further £18bn to deliver on Boris Johnson’s election pledge to “level up” the UK.

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A budget for social infrastructure | Letters

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Eighteen signatories call for spending rules to be shaken up to benefit care services and marginalised groups. Plus Jeremy Beecham says local government is in dire need of a funding injection

We welcome the government’s commitment to level up disadvantaged areas of the UK in this week’s budget. We also welcome suggestions that the chancellor is considering including spending on social infrastructure such as health, education or care as a form of infrastructure investment.

Most of the time when we think of infrastructure we think of physical infrastructure like roads, railways and hospital buildings, but a broader definition of it would include social infrastructure like NHS salaries, training, personal assistants for those with disabilities and childcare workers. The government has promised to spend in these areas, but is restricted by its own rules about what it can and can’t borrow money for. It can borrow to invest but not to “just spend”.

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Budget 2020: chancellor plans to finally end tampon tax

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The 5% rate on sanitary products will end. Rishi Sunak also plans to ensure banks keep circulating cash

The chancellor will announce the abolition of the “tampon tax” in next week’s budget, marking the successful conclusion to a 20-year campaign by women’s rights activists.

Tampons and other women’s sanitary products currently have 5% VAT added to their price, but this will be scrapped, saving the average woman £40 over her lifetime. The tax will end when Britain leaves the EU at the end of December.

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Sunak must rethink budget to deal with coronavirus threat, say experts

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Former advisers and ministers say outbreak makes job for chancellor harder

Chancellor Rishi Sunak will have to rethink key parts of the budget next week because of growing fears that the spread of the coronavirus will trigger a global economic downturn, economists, former government ministers and advisers have warned.

Related: Britain’s economy dangerously exposed as coronavirus fear grips global markets

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New chancellor Rishi Sunak sticks to 11 March budget date

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The 39-year-old has three weeks to sort out programme after Sajid Javid’s exit

The budget will go ahead on 11 March, the Treasury said on Tuesday, forcing the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to piece together a fresh tax and spending programme over the next three weeks.

A delay was expected after Sunak’s predecessor, Sajid Javid, abruptly quit his job after a demand by Boris Johnson that he sack his advisers and replace them with a team jointly managed with No 10.

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