Budget Special ... Tinkering With Tax Cuts

It was budget day on Wednesday. No rabbit from the hat, no bounce for the dead cat. The Deep State was silent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer presented his Spring budget. It will be his last before the election. An election which could take place as early as May.

It's going to be great. We will be the creative capital of Europe, the next Hollywood, the next Silicon Valley. Not for the moment, the low tax, "Singapore of Europe" but we are still working on that.

National Insurance will be abolished (but not anytime soon). We begin with a with an additional 2% cut, to an 8% rate, beginning in April this year.

Full expensing of leased assets to be included for business tax relief. Capital gains tax for sales of second homes to be cut from 28% to 24%.

We are on track to become the world's next Silicon Valley. We have become Europe's largest film and TV production centre. Studio space in the UK has doubled in the last three years. At the current rate of expansion, we will be second only to Hollywood by the end of 2025.

We are providing more military support to Ukraine than nearly any other country. Our spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP as soon as economic conditions allow, or the Russians invade the Baltic states.

Plans for leveling up continue, more money for Cambridge and Canary Wharf. AstraZeneca to invest £60m to expand their footprint on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Canary Wharf to be transformed into a new hub for life science companies.

Problems in the hospitality sector identified. The freeze on alcohol duty will be extended to April 2025. The 75% business rates discount for pubs will continue.

Fuel duty will be frozen for the thirteenth year in succession. The freeze means fuel duty will remain at 57.95p per litre, as it has since March 2011. The 'temporary' 5p cut on the fuel tax, first introduced in March 2022 by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, will remain in place until March 2025.

The investment needed to modernise NHS systems so "they are as good as the best in the world" will be fully funded by central government. It will cost £3.4 billion and unlock £35 billion of savings, a ten fold payback assuming development costs can be kept under control and we don't use Huawei, Fujitsu or TikTok.

"We will slash the 13 million hours lost by doctors and nurses every year to outdated IT systems. We will use AI to cut down and potentially cut in half, form filling by doctors. We will digitise operating theatre processes allowing the same number of consultants to do an extra 200,000 operations a year." We will also get rid of fax machines and use WhatsApp.