2015 Spring Budget: Briefing

Key Findings

• Tax giveaways since 2010 such as successive rises in the personal tax allowance and cuts in duties together will cost nearly £20bn a year – the majority of which will go to men. Yet spending on welfare and public services, which benefit more women, would be further cut by about £21bn during the next parliament.
• Sweeping reforms in pensions and savings do little to help women with low incomes and increase risks of poverty for many pensioners in the future, especially women on low annuities.
• Further financial help to potential home buyers does little to address the low stock of affordable homes and may be absorbed by rising prices while no plan for substantial building of social housing was announced.
• The £7bn annual cuts in corporation tax were accompanied by rise in private sector employment but with stagnating wages, especially in the care occupations, and rising household debt, the economic recovery seems ever more fragile and imbalanced.
• Investment in infrastructure and regional development is skewed towards physical rather than social infrastructure, and will create fewer jobs for women.

See the full briefing here.