Good morning. The day after budget day is normally when the most thorough and considered budget analysis starts to emerge, and rarely has there been more to chew over than there was in Rachel Reeves’s first budget as chancellor – a mamoth, £40bn-tax-raising fiscal reset with huge consequences for Britain for the rest of the decade. Reeves and her Tory shadow, Jeremy Hunt, are doing full media rounds this morning, and the leading budget thinktanks are publishing full studies of what was announced yesterday.
In an interview with BBC Breakfast, Reeves accepted that people would get lower pay rises as a result of her decision to increase employers’ national insurance. She said:
I said that [the national insurance increase] will have consequences.
It will mean that businesses will have to absorb some of this through profits and it is likely to mean that wage increases might be slightly less than they otherwise would have been.
But, overall, the Office of Budget Responsibility forecast that household incomes will increase during this parliament.
That is a world away from the last parliament, which was the worst Parliament ever for living standards.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The Resolution Foundation publishes its full budget analysis.
10.30am: The Institute for Fiscal Studies holds a press conference to present its budget analysis.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 11.30am: MPs resume their budget debate, with Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, opening for the government.
5pm: Voting closes in the Conservative leadership contest. The results will be announced on Saturday morning.
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