Key points from the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement
Main points from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement today:
- Duty on all alcohol frozen until August 1, 2024
- Employee National Insurance rate cut by two per cent, from 12% to 10%, helping 27 million working people, and to be introduced from January 6, 2024, worth around £450 per year on an average salary
- National Living Wage increased to £11.44 per hour
- Mandatory work placements imposed on long term unemployed, with benefits stopped if they fail to find work after two years
- Full expensing business tax break made permanent
- Class Two National Insurance, for self-employed, abolished, saving the average self-employed person £192 per year
- Small business multiplier frozen for a further year, and the 75% discount on business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses extended for a further year
- Increase local housing allowance to 30th percentile of local market rate, offering £108m of support
- Honour commitment to pensions triple lock in full and increase full state pension by 8.5% from April
- Universal Credit increased by 6.7% from next April
- £50m over five years to increase the number of engineering apprentices, part of 110 measures to support business
- New law to encourage employers to pay into a new employee’s existing pension pot, creating one pension pot for life for workers
- £450m for Local Authority Housing Fund to deliver 2,400 homes
- £4.5bn over five years to attract investment into strategic manufacturing sectors
- More than £500m over two years for AI development
- Three new investment zones in Greater Manchester, West Midlands and East Midlands
- £32m towards ‘busting the planning backlog’
- £7m to tackle anti-semitism in schools and universities
