29th October 2024
It’s all over the news right now, The Chancellor’s Autumn Budget, the first Budget prepared by The Labour party since they started their government in July, There’s a lot of speculation at the moment, and no one will truly know what is going to happen until tomorrow, the 30th October, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves presents it to parliament.
But what is the budget in the first place?
– In it’s basic form, it outlines how the government will use taxes, borrowing, investment and other income, to govern the country and provide the services it needs (such as the NHS, Transport, Housing, Welfare benefits etc)
– As part of it, the Government can (and often do) set out how it will raise these funds and from what source, e.g. making changes to Taxes, National insurance, Borrowing or cost cutting.
So it’s a big deal, and holds the potential for a lot of hope as well as concern.
Here At Money Buddies, we’ve put together a list of the things we would like to see change to alleviate poverty for those struggling the most with it, so here they are in no particular order:
- The end of Under occupancy charge (bedroom tax) as it is only serving to increase evictions through rent arrears, leading to further costs for council’s struggling to rehome those impacted.
- The end of the 2-child benefit cap, which is only serving to push larger families further into poverty and placing children at risk.
- An uplift to the Debt Advice Levy – This is the amount Financial services, such as banks, pay towards the cost of public advice services, currently Utility companies, Landlords and council do not pay into this levy, yet are the main source of debt for those seeking advice (It’s worth noting that while some services don’t pay into it, they do fund their own advice services separately, but the demand still far outweighs the capacity and we need more advisers)
- Rent controls, putting adequate protection in place in the private and social rent arears to cap the maximum profit would help stabilise a lot of budgeting issues for young people as well as those families unable to purchase their own home
- Investment in Public housing, the housing crisis is no secret and essentially, the country needs more homes.
- No changes to council tax rules (e.g. keeping the single persons discount) as removing it may force a lot of single people into debt given the fine line of budgeting at present.
- Tie State pension and NI and Tax thresholds to the Inflation rates, e.g. increasing the Tax-free allowance by the inflation rate each year,
- Tackle energy costs through removal of standing charges and introduce a social tariff for those in “absolute poverty” (less than £18,000 income for the household each year)
- Improve the access to pension credit, the claim forms are unnecessarily complicated, especially for the elderly suffering from health conditions (such as Dementia/Alzheimer’s etc)
- Move from Universal Credit to Universal Basic Income; cease sanctions, remove the impact of earnings under the absolute poverty marker (£18,000)
Of course, the budget can only stretch so far, and it needs to cover a lot, so if we see any of these come up, we will be happy, happier still if we see them all. We will be watching tomorrow and taking notes and will put out our response to it on here after we’ve put our Money Buddies heads together for it.
Sincerely,
Louis Zarins-Brown
Director of Operations