Summary of Budget 2020: Key points at-a-glance

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Chancellor Rishi Sunak has delivered his first Budget in the House of Commons, announcing the government’s tax and spending plans for the year ahead.

Here is a summary of the main points.

Coronavirus response

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• £5bn emergency response fund to support the NHS and other public services in England
• All those advised to self-isolate will be entitled to statutory sick pay, even if they have not presented with symptoms
• Self-employed workers who are not eligible will be able to claim contributory Employment Support Allowance
• The ESA benefit will be available from day one, not after a week as now
• £500m hardship fund for councils in England to help the most vulnerable in their areas
• Firms with fewer than 250 staff will be refunded for sick pay payments for two weeks
• Small firms will be able to access “business interruption” loans of up to £1.2m
• Business rates in England will be abolished for firms in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors with a rateable value below £51,000

• Sunak unveils £30bn package to combat coronavirus
• Business rates scrapped for shops and cafes

Personal taxation, wages and pensions

• The tax threshold for National Insurance Contributions will rise from £8,632 to £9,500
• The move, first announced in November, will take 500,000 employees out of the tax altogether
• Those earning more than £9,500 will be, on average, £85 a year better off
• 5% VAT on women’s sanitary products, known as the tampon tax, to be scrapped
• No other new announcements on income tax, national insurance or VAT
• Tax paid on the pensions of high earners, including doctors, to be recalculated

• Budget 2020: What it means for you
• The chancellor’s very large cheque book

Alcohol, tobacco and fuel

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• Fuel duty to be frozen for the 10th consecutive year
• Duties on spirits, beer, cider and wine to be frozen
• Tobacco taxes will continue to rise by 2% above the rate of retail price inflation
• This will add 27 pence to a pack of 20 cigarettes and 14 pence to a packet of cigars
• Business rate discounts for pubs to rise from £1,000 to £5,000 this year

• Cocktail of measures for drinkers unveiled

Business, digital and science

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• System of High Street business rates to be reviewed later this year
• Firms eligible for small business rates relief will get £3,000 cash grant
• Entrepreneurs’ Relief will be retained, but lifetime allowance will be reduced from £10m to £1m
• £5bn to be spent on getting gigabit-capable broadband into the hardest-to-reach places
• Science Institute in Weybridge, Surrey to get a £1.4bn funding boost
• An extra £900m for research into nuclear fusion, space and electric vehicles
• VAT on digital publications, including newspapers, e-books and academic journals to be scrapped from December

• VAT scrapped on ebooks and digital newspapers
• Chancellor pledges big increase to research spend

Environment and energy

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• Plastic packaging tax to come into force from April 2022
• Manufacturers and importers whose products have less than 30% recyclable material will be charged £200 per tonne
• Subsidies for fuel used in off-road vehicles – known as red diesel – will be scrapped “for most sectors” in two years’ time
• Red diesel subsidies will remain for farmers and rail operators
• £120m in emergency relief for English communities affected by this winter’s flooding and £200m for flood resilience
• Total investment in flood defences in England to be doubled to £5.2bn over next five years
• £640m “nature for climate fund” to protect natural habitats in England, including 30,000 hectares of new trees

• Budget gets mixed reaction on green issues

Transport, infrastructure and housing

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• More than £600bn is set to be spent on roads, rail, broadband and housing by the middle of 2025
• There will be £27bn for motorways and other arterial roads, including new tunnel for the A303 near Stonehenge
• £2.5bn will be available to fix potholes and resurface roads in England over five years
• Further education colleges will get £1.5bn to upgrade their buildings
• £650m package to tackle homelessness, providing an extra 6,000 places for rough sleepers
• Stamp duty surcharge for foreign buyers of properties in England and Northern Ireland to be levied at 2% from April 2021
• New £1bn fund to remove all unsafe combustible cladding from all public and private housing higher than 18 metres

• Get Britain building, says Sunak on infrastructure

The state of the economy and public finances

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• Economy predicted to grow by 1.1% this year, revised down from 1.4% a year ago
• The figure, which does not take into account the impact of coronavirus, would be the slowest growth since 2009
• Growth predicted to rebound to 1.8% in 2021-22, 1.5% in 2022-23 and 1.3% in 2023-24
• Inflation forecast of 1.4% this year, increasing to 1.8% in 2021-2022
• Government to borrow £14.6bn more this year than previously forecast, equivalent to 2.1% of GDP
• Total additional borrowing of £96.6bn forecast by 2023-2024 to pay for spending commitments
• Debt as a percentage of GDP forecast to be lower at end of current Parliament than now

• UK growth ‘to be slowest since 2009’
• Borrowing surge to fund ‘significant’ spending plans

Nations and regions

• An extra £640m for Scotland, £360m for Wales, and £210m for Northern Ireland.
• Treasury’s Green Book rules to be reviewed to factor regional prosperity into spending decisions
• Treasury to open new offices in Wales and Scotland and civil service hub in the North of England, employing 750 staff
• New £1.8bn devolution deal for West Yorkshire, with elected mayor for region
• Universities outside the south east of England to get lion’s share of extra £400m R&D funding
• £800m for two carbon capture and storage clusters, creating 6,000 new jobs in Teesside, Humberside, Merseyside and Scotland