CHANCELLOR George Osborne has delivered his first Budget now. Here are the key highlights at a glance.


TAX AND DUTY

• National Insurance threshold rises by £21 next year.

• Corporation tax of 28 per cent cut next year by one per cent and each year afterwards to 24 per cent.

• Planned tax relief for the video games industry cancelled.

• Bank levy introduced from January to generate £2 billion a year.

• Green investment bank planned and investment in digital infrastructure.

• Planned landline duty to be abolished and private broadband expansion encouraged.

• VAT to rise to 20 per cent from January 4.

• No new duty increase on tobacco, alcohol or fuel.

• Cider duty rise reversed.

• Council tax to be frozen for a year.

• “Unfair” capital gains tax reform: Higher rate taxpayers to pay 28 per cent.

• The ten per cent CGT rate for entrepreneurs extended to the first £5 million of lifetime gain.

• Personal tax allowance raised to £7,475 from April 2011.

• Higher rate income tax threshold frozen.


WELFARE AND BENEFITS

• Welfare spending rises to be in line with consumer prices, not retail prices.

• Tax credit payments to families earning more than £40,000 to be reduced.

• Health in pregnancy grant to be scrapped.

• Child benefits to be frozen for three years.

• Disability benefits to be reassessed.

• Housing benefit in “dire need of reform”. Maximum limits reduced to £400 a week for a house.


PENSIONERS AND FAMILIES

• “Lasting help” for pensioners, with a link to earnings restored from next April or a 2.5 per cent rise, whatever is greater.

• Additional support for families in poverty. Child element of child tax credit increased by £150 above inflation.


SPENDING

• Public expenditure to rise from £637 billion this year to £711 billion by 2015/16.

• No further reductions in capital spending in this Budget.

• The Government will look at how to dispose of its shareholding in air traffic body Nats, the student loan book will be sold and the future of the Tote will be resolved.

• Queen’s Civil List remains frozen at £7.9 million for this year.

• Government departmental spending to be cut by 25 per cent.


ECONOMY

• Structural deficit should be in balance by 2015/16.

• Inflation target remains at two per cent.

• Growth predicted to be lower than forecast at 1.2 per cent this year.

• Spending reductions, not higher taxes, the best way to reduce the deficit.

• Borrowing to fall to 1.1 per cent of GDP by 2015.

• UK not joining the euro in this Parliament.


PAY AND PENSIONS

• Two-year pay freeze for the public sector, but £250 pay rise for those earning under £21,000.

• Public service pensions to be investigated.