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, and his last before becoming Prime Minister himself and filling the post with Philip Hammond. It was also the last budget of the Cameron government.

Taxes

 * Alcohol duty was simplified to a flat rate of 25p.
 * The stamp duty threshold was increased to £150,000.
 * The highest rate of income tax was cut to 42.5% in 2018, to be eventually abolished in 2019.
 * The income tax personal allowance was raised to £12,000.

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. With inflation at 3.9%, this meant a real-terms cut of over 11%.
 * 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
Ross Clark, writing in The Spectator, noted that the deficit increased for the third consecutive year in a row, and although tax receipts increased overall, inflation meant that they fell both as a proportion of GDP and in real terms. Clark questioned whether or not the Chancellor was still committed to eliminating the deficit or not, and said that "Osborne is making the same mistakes as Brown did in the 2000s". Former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, among a number of other senior Conservatives, including former Chief Secretary to the Treasury Lord Waldegrave and former Minister of State for Trade and Investment Francis Maude, sent a letter to Osborne shortly after the budget's announcement warning of the increasing deficit and called Osborne's tax cuts "irresponsible" and urged the Chancellor to reverse or abandon them, "lest Britain again face fiscal ruination as in 2009".

The NHS, in a statement issued after the budget, "welcomed" a funding increase of £10bn, 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 2.8% in 2018, and 3.6% in 2019, before falling to 2.9% 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%.