00:00Chancellor Rachel Reeves today delivered her spring statement and she announced a
00:04series of spending cuts rather than raising taxes. This was not a full budget
00:08but there are still significant announcements. Firstly the Office for
00:11Budget Responsibility halved the UK's growth forecast from 2% in the autumn to
00:171% this year. Rachel Reeves said she was not satisfied with the OBR's forecast
00:23and she will have to take strong action to boost the UK's economy. So let's take
00:28a look at some of the measures. Firstly welfare. Now there were sweeping cuts to
00:32Britain's ballooning benefits system announced a couple of weeks ago. This
00:37included tightening the eligibility for personal independence payments which
00:40are benefits that people with disabilities get. So today we've got some
00:44more details of those cuts. The Office for Budget Responsibility said the cuts
00:48announced a couple of weeks ago would save around 4.8 billion pounds which is
00:52slightly short of the 5 billion pounds the government had wanted. Today the
00:56Chancellor said the universal credit health element which is sometimes known
00:59as incapacity benefit will be cut by 50% and frozen for new claimants. However
01:04universal credit standard allowance will increase from 92 pounds a week to 106
01:10pounds by 2029-30. This is one pound less than expected. Many of the spending cuts
01:18will come from government departments who have all been told to slash
01:21spending by 15%. This is likely to result in thousands of civil servants being
01:26made redundant and losing their jobs. The Chancellor argued that overall the cuts
01:30will save 6.1 billion pounds over the next few years. However capital spending
01:34on large infrastructure projects will not be slashed at all. This is to help
01:40boost economic growth. So for example this week we saw the Lower Thames
01:44Crossing finally gain approval after 15 years of delays. The 8.3 billion
01:49pound project will be going ahead. There will be a crackdown on tax avoiders and
01:54fraudsters the Chancellor said in a bid to save the Treasury billions of pounds.
01:59Hundreds of people will be employed by the DWP to investigate tax claims and
02:06try and dig out fraudsters across the UK economy. There will be an extra 2.2
02:11billion pounds for defence from next April. This will help pay for high-tech
02:15weaponry, upgrading the military base in Portsmouth and refurbishing military
02:20homes. The Chancellor argued that house building was key to economic growth.
02:25Planning reforms currently going through Parliament will help boost home building
02:28across the country and boost the economy at the same time, the Chancellor argued.
02:33The OBR said it believes house building will rise to its highest level in 40
02:37years as a result of the government's reforms. 1.3 million homes will be built
02:42over the next five years, Rachel Reeves said. So what does all this mean? Well the
02:46Chancellor argued that the average British household be 500 pounds better
02:50off after all of these reforms put in place. However there are many protesters
02:55outside Parliament today arguing the benefit cuts are going to hit many
03:00people extremely hard. We've seen charities, health experts and even some
03:05Labour backbench MPs arguing that the government is trying to balance its
03:10books on the back of the poorest in society. However the Chancellor says if
03:13they stick to the plan average living standards will raise twice as fast under
03:18this Parliament as they did in the last.
Comments