British companies now face uphill struggle after budget of more tax, more borrowing and more spending
More tax, more borrowing, more spending. This was a big budget by every measure, but will loom largest for businesses that will bear the brunt of the revenue raising.
Around £25bn of those tax rises will come from the 1.2 percentage point increase in employer national insurance contributions to 15%. This is a muscular hike even if it is in the middle of the speculated 1 percentage point to 2 percentage point range under consideration, and so could have been worse.
Accompanied by a 6% rise in the minimum wage and new employment rights legislation forecast to add £5bn to costs, businesses will be doing much of the heavy lifting demanded by Labour’s economic plan.
By contrast, there are no direct changes to personal taxes, and even a measure of good news, if that can be defined by the absence of the bad.
Money latest: What the budget means for you
Today’s budget marks Labour’s first since 2010
Tax thresholds will once more rise in line with inflation from 2028, after the chancellor decided not to extend the freeze for two years, forgoing the £9bn in the process.
Conversely, fuel duty remains frozen, and discounted. Rachel Reeves may be the first female chancellor, but she is just the latest to blink first when confronted by the motoring lobby.
None of which means that “working people”, or taxpayers who happen to be employees if you prefer, will feel no pain from this budget.
Businesses large and small have warned they will have to find some of a projected 2% rise in payroll costs from staff, either from lower pay settlements, profits or fewer hires.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) concludes it will be all three, stating: “We assume this lowers real wages and profits, and workers and firms reduce labour supply and demand in response, reducing labour supply by around 50,000 average-hours equivalents.”
The OBR forecasts that growth will also slow from its March budget assessment, levelling off at 1.6% in five years’ time, below the pre-financial crisis long-term average and probably not enough to satisfy Sir Keir Starmer’s mission to be the fastest growing economy in the G7.
Read more from the budget:
The key announcements
Chancellor looks to raise £40bn in taxes
Minimum wages to go up by almost 7%
‘It’s a definitively Labour budget in terms of big tax and big spend,’ Rigby says
Labour’s promise for this budget extends beyond the five-year single election cycle, however. They argue the extra borrowing for investment, and improvement in public services that will come from extra spending, should be judged over the longer-term.
The dividends from today’s pain will be felt in improved public services, a healthier and better-paid workforce, including those returning to employment.
If that sounds fanciful on a day for the cold judgment of Treasury spreadsheets, it should be said Labour’s plan reflects economic orthodoxy.
From the greybeards advising Ms Reeves, including former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, to the IMF annual meeting in Washington last week, there is a consensus.
Public investment is a priority of boosting productivity and thus lifting the UK and a dozen developed nations like it out of stagnation.
The price of securing the market confidence necessary to deliver it is higher taxes and spending restraint, visible in the still-tight 1.5% settlements announced for the public sector.
Ms Reeves has swallowed that orthodoxy whole, and the UK is now set on a profoundly different economic course to that of the last 14 years.