2018 United Kingdom budget

The 2018 United Kingdom budget was delivered by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the House of Commons on Thursday, 29 March 2018. It was Osborne's ninth as Chancellor of the Exchequer since being appointed to the role in May 2010.

Taxes

 * Alcohol duty was raised by 5%.
 * A number of goods and services were to lose their VAT exemptions
 * To be charged at the full 20% rate:
 * Betting and gaming
 * Bingo
 * Lottery tickets and online lottery games
 * Printed or copied music
 * Maps and charts
 * To be charged at the reduced 5% rate:
 * Books
 * Magazines
 * Newspapers
 * Children's clothes
 * The stamp duty threshold was increased to £400,000.
 * The 40p income tax threshold was raised from £65,550 by £2,450 to £70,000
 * The income tax personal allowance was raised by 3% to £7,642.
 * The IR35 tax system was suspended until further notice.

Spending

 * The benefits cap was lowered in some regions of the UK to reflect differences in average pay, leaving the average benefits cap at £15,670 compared to £17,000 prior.
 * An additional £5bn was allocated to the NHS.
 * Defence spending was raised to £50bn, from £48bn in 2017 (although this saw defence spending fall as a proportion of GDP, from 2.3% to 2.2%).

Responses
The NHS, in a statement issued after the budget, "welcomed" a funding increase of £5bn, but said that "yet more additional spending [would be] necessary to bring about real change".

Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn called the budget "deeply rooted in injustice", whilst Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell contrasted the decision to abolish the highest rate of income tax with the plan to reduce the benefits cap once again.

The OBR predicted that the economy would grow by 2.3% in 2018, and 2.1% in 2019, before falling to 1.9% in 2020, whilst inflation stood at 1.4% and would increase to 1.8% in 2019. Shortly after the budget, the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney raised interest rates to 1% from 0.75%.