Economy Minister Jeremy Hunt visited a nursery after announcing that aid to parents will be doubled. POOL | REUTERS
The budget of the conservative Executive encourages limited growth with an eye on the 2024 elections
15 mar 2023 . Updated at 9:37 p.m.
The United Kingdom will dodge the dreaded recession, albeit just barely and at a very high social cost. The British Government is aware of this and, therefore, has presented a budget that includes more aid to the punished citizen. Some measures with which he hopes to reduce, or at least contain, social discontent in the country, shaken by a wave of strikes. and by the way improve prospects for tories in the municipal elections of May and the general ones of 2024.
The Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) points out that, thanks to the measures adopted, the British economy will not enter a recession this year and will meet the objectives of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to reduce inflation and the debt. Thus, according to his forecast, the economy will begin to grow. “We are following the plan and the plan is working,” said the Minister of Economy, Jeremy Hunt, in the House of Commons.
The budget extends the aid plan to pay the electricity bill, valued at 94,000 million pounds (107,300 million euros), but also includes an additional 25,100 million euros for other subsidies, such as pay for daycare of children between 9 months and 3 years when both parents work. Hunt also announced a reduction in the alcohol tax that will be applied only in the iconic pubs, a measure that he presented as one of the freedoms gained with the brexit.
But not all were tax cuts or aid, the minister also confirmed that the Government will increase corporate tax from 19 to 25% and announced reforms to prevent early retirement, especially for doctors.
Hunt assured that the Government wishes to resolve the existing labor conflicts with the conductors of the trains and the London underground, with the nurses and other health personnel or with the teachers, who this Wednesday staged a new day of strike. However, the minister made it clear that will not make concessions that feed inflationwhich will make it difficult to reach agreements.
Labor leader, Keir Starmer, argued instead that the British economy needs “major surgery” after thirteen years of Conservative governments and dismissed the budget as a “sale” insufficient to reverse the “path of decline” that the country is following.