Carers UK Forum

But the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group said that universal credit recipients would barely notice the benefit.

“For many, this is a welcome announcement as it will mean they have more cash in their pockets, however it does little to help those on the lowest incomes.”

It said that under the tax credits system, claimants would see the full benefit of the increase in the personal allowance.

“However, those with incomes above £11,500 who are receiving universal credit will most likely see a reduction in their benefit.

Instead of gaining £70 a year from the increased personal allowance, they will only gain overall by £25.90 as their universal credit will be reduced by £44.10.

In other words, they only gain 37% of the benefit of any increase in the personal allowance.”

Higher rate taxpayers will be £340 a year better off after budget changes to income tax, but lower earners will gain just £70 and those on universal credit just 50p a week, as the chancellor rejected accusations that the well-off do not pay enough tax.

Higher rate taxpayers will be £340 a year better off after budget changes to income tax,

Budget 2017: Stagnant earnings forecast 'astonishing'.

The prediction that average UK earnings in 2022 could still be less than in 2008 is "astonishing", according to an independent economic think tank.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, added that the economic forecasts published in the Budget made for "pretty grim reading".

He highlighted that since 2014 growth in earnings has been "choked off".

"We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth," he said.

"Let's hope this forecast turns out to be too pessimistic."

Mr Johnson was reacting to the productivity, earnings and economic growth forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which were released on Wednesday.

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has said he hopes to prove the bleak economic forecasts released in the Budget wrong.

The chancellor said clarity around Brexit would increase consumer confidence and lead to higher growth in the economy.

On Wednesday, the OBR cut its growth forecast for the UK economy sharply, following changes to estimates of productivity and business investment.

It now expects the economy to grow by 1.5% this year, down from its previous forecast of 2%. It also said growth would be weaker than previously thought in each of the subsequent four years.

The Resolution Foundation says disposable incomes are now expected to be £540 lower by 2023 than forecast in March, largely as a result of weaker pay growth.

It says the UK is on course for its longest fall in living standards since records began more than 60 years ago, with real disposable incomes now set to fall for 19 successive quarters.

Despite high levels of employment in the UK, wage growth has remained stubbornly low.

The latest official figures showed workers' earnings, excluding bonuses, rose 2.2% in the three months to September compared with a year ago.

But they fell 0.5% in real terms when accounting for inflation, marking seven months of negative pay growth, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Britain's debt will not fall to 2008 levels until 2060s, IFS says in startling warning.

Respected thinktank also warns of 'lost decades' without earnings growth in critical analysis of Chancellor Philip Hammond's Budget.

Britain's debt levels will not fall below pre-crisis levels until the 2060s if growth does not improve, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said in a critical assessment of the Budget.

IFS Director Paul Johnson said workers were facing two "lost decades" without earnings growth in response to Chancellor Philip Hammond's statement yesterday.

Despite a £25bn giveaway for housebuilding, tech and the NHS, the IFS said the Budget did not mark the end of the "age of austerity" as it pointed out that other public services outside the NHS will still face 7 per cent cuts in day-to-day spending over the next five years.

Delivering the IFS' post-Budget analysis, Mr Johnson said: “The sort of modest growth rates currently expected imply that if we were to maintain the deficit at the just over 1 per cent of national income projected for the early 2020s, it would take us well past the 2060s for debt to fall to its pre-crisis levels of 40 per cent of national income.

“That assumes no recessions for the next half century.”

Grim forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will amount to a £65bn hit to the economy as GDP per head will be 3.5 per cent lower in 2021 than was forecast less than two years ago, he said.

Average earnings in 2021 look set to plunge to £1,400 lower than forecast in March 2016 - which is lower in real terms than at the time of the financial crash in 2008.

Mr Johnson added: "We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth."

The Chancellor attempted to put a positive spin on progress to reduce net debt and abolish the deficit during his set-piece statement on Wednesday but lagging productivity and Brexit remain major stumbling blocks for the ailing economy.

The OBR's downgrade of growth forecasts for the next five years means Mr Hammond's chances of hitting his target to balance the nation's books by the middle of the 2020s look "remote", said the IFS.

With nearly £12 billion of welfare cuts still to work their way through the system and day-to-day public spending due to be 3.6 per cent lower in 2022/23 than it is now, "this is not the end of austerity, not by a long chalk", said Mr Johnson.

He said: "The figures published yesterday imply yet one more year of spending restraint.

"As the years go by, the end of austerity keeps slipping out of view."

Low GDP growth will impact on Britain's ability to pay off its national debt, said Mr Johnson.

The OBR's decision to downgrade projected annual productivity growth from 1.7 per cent to 1 per cent was "as likely to be too optimistic as to be too pessimistic", he said.

Benefit freeze to stay for working people costing typical family £300 a year.

Tories accused of using royal engagement to bury bad news as welfare freeze remains for another 12 months from April.

Millions of people will have their benefits frozen for another 12 months from April in a move that will cost a typical working family with two children about £300 a year.

Caroline Dinenage, a work and pensions minister, confirmed that the benefit freeze for working age people will remain in place, while the state pension and some other benefits will increase by the rate of inflation at 3%.

The freeze, which has been in place since 2015, means a real-terms cut in income for millions of people because of rising living costs.

Before the budget, the Resolution Foundation thinktank calculated that a typical working family with two children would lose £315 a year as a result of the policy, while the Institute for Fiscal Studies found benefit entitlements would be lower by an average of £450 per year for 10.5m households affected by 2020.

Those on the minimum wage in receipt of benefits will see at least part of the cut offset by a higher wage rate of £7.83 per hour from April.

But the freeze will still bite for millions of people in a move that saves the Treasury about £1.9bn next year.

Philip Hammond had been facing calls to scrap the four-year benefit freeze promised by George Osborne in 2015 but he did not overturn the policy at last week’s autumn budget.

The freeze – affecting benefits including tax credits, child benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, part of employment and support allowance and universal credit – was then confirmed in a written statement to parliament on Monday morning at a time when media attention was focused on the announcement of the royal engagement.

Debbie Abrahams, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said it showed the prime minister has “failed to make good on her promise to help those struggling to get by, at a time when Britain is facing an unprecedented two lost decades of earnings growth”.

“By continuing to freeze working-age benefits when inflation is soaring, the government is subjecting 10.5 million households to an average cut of £450 a year,” she said.

“The government should end the freeze on social security to support those with the least in our society and lift people out of poverty.”

Stephen Lloyd, the Liberal Democrats work and pensions spokesman, added: “The Tories seem to be shamelessly using the royal engagement to bury bad news. Millions of hard-pressed families are set to be pushed over the edge into poverty by these cruel cuts.”

Charities and thinktanks have been warning that the impact of the cut will be severe for many households.

The Joseph Rowntree foundation has predicted the freeze is set to drive almost half a million more people into poverty by 2020.

After the budget, Torsten Bell, director of Resolution Foundation, said the chancellor had “made the wrong call to press ahead with a damaging freeze on benefits” as the outlook for family finances is worsening.

NHS plans to ration care access in bid to force through extra funding.

Board meeting will discuss plan to ration and delay patients’ access to care after receiving less than half the amount called for in this year’s budget.

NHS bosses are to meet to discuss plans to ration and delay patients’ access to care, which could set them on a collision course with ministers over health funding.

NHS England’s board will publicly debate what the service will and will not be able to afford to do next year after Philip Hammond gave it less than half the extra money it said it needed.

Thursday’s meeting comes amid unprecedented tension between the organisation’s chief executive, Simon Stevens, and Theresa May and Philip Hammond. Stevens antagonised both of them with a dramatic pre-budget plea that treatment waiting lists could spiral and mental health and cancer care be hit unless the NHS received a £4bn boost in last week’s Budget. The chancellor awarded it just £1.6bn extra.

NHS England responded by declaring that their board meeting would kickstart “the difficult debate about what it is possible to deliver for patients with the money available”. It hopes that the possibility of denying more patients drugs or surgery or making them wait longer for routine operations will force ministers to find more than the £1.6bn to help avoid hospital and GP services from deteriorating badly.

But a coalition of 160 health and care charities has warned NHS England that its plans to shrink the amount of care provided are undemocratic and “unfair”.

Patients’ health will suffer if NHS chiefs press ahead with their plans, claims National Voices in a sharply worded rejection of the proposals. It has written to Stevens protesting that NHS England is acting beyond its powers by considering the plan.

While agreeing with NHS chiefs that the budget gave the service too little extra money, the umbrella group urges them not to proceed with the plans.

In the letter, National Voices chief executive Jeremy Taylor tells Stevens that his members, which include Macmillan Cancer Support, Diabetes UK, Mind and the British Heart Foundation, are “concerned about these statements” by Prof Sir Malcolm Grant and Prof Sir Bruce Keogh.

Keogh tweeted after the budget last week that: “Budget plugs some, but def not all, of NHS funding gap. Will force a debate about what the public can and can’t expect from the NHS. Worrying that longer waits seem likely/unavoidable.”

Taylor also tells Stevens that: “NHS England and local commissioners arguably have no mandate to make significant reductions to the NHS offer. This is properly a matter for ministers and parliament.

“No political party proposed such reductions in their general election manifesto and nobody voted for such.”

NHS England’s plans – designed to embarrass the government and force it to provide more cash – will make rationing of NHS care even more common, he adds.

“Without a different approach, we think the most likely scenario will be a wave of piecemeal, short-termist rationing decisions, taken behind closed doors, with people not listened to, and outcomes which may be unfair, cause harm, or reinforce existing injustices and inequalities.”

Senior NHS bosses have privately voiced concerned at the wisdom of NHS England’s “confrontational” tactics, though others believe Stevens is right to highlight the effects of the NHS’s budget rising at only about 1% a year when demand for care is growing at 4%.

The board will also ratify plans first unveiled earlier this year to stop prescribing 18 “low value” drugs and treatments, including those to help treat acute pain, constipation, head lice and ringworm.

NHS England has also been looking at other drugs that it could stop paying for and also some forms of surgery that are not deemed clinically effective enough to warrant the expense of performing.

The organisation will not produce a list of new restrictions and longer waiting times. They see it as “the beginning of a conversation about what the NHS can and can’t afford to do”, because the government has failed to properly fund it.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, a health minister during the coalition years, said that NHS England’s stance poses “a political risk for the government. The public is very clearly on Stevens’s side on this”.

The thinktank’s senior economic analyst, Adam Corlett, said: “While the prime minister this week repeated her claim that austerity is over, significant cuts in support for millions of low-income families are set to continue next year as a result of the ongoing freeze in working age benefits.

“The budget represents a last chance to cut short the benefit freeze. Scrapping it would send a strong signal that, from the perspective of low-income families, the government is committed to ending austerity.”

UK economy heading for worst year since crash, say economists.

Forecasting body blames growing risks of no-deal Brexit as it downgrades estimate.

The British economy is heading for its worst year in almost a decade amid the growing risks from no-deal Brexit, according to a leading economic forecaster.

After official figures revealed zero growth in GDP in August, the EY Item Club said the economy would struggle to recover in the final months of the year owing to the increasing likelihood of Britain crashing out of the EU in less than six months’ time.

The group of economists, which is the only non-government forecasting organisation to use the Treasury modelling of the economy, said it had downgraded its growth forecast for this year and next as a consequence.

It forecast growth of 1.3% for the whole of 2018, down from a previous estimate of 1.4%. This would be the worst annual period for growth since the financial crisis. It also downgraded the outlook for the second quarter running.

Unpaid carers face " Benefits cliff edge " under universal credit, say MPs.

The Work and Pensions Select Committee has warned that many of the UK’s 6.5 million carers face losing almost £65 a week under Universal Credit, with MPs urging the UK Government to remove the “cliff-edge” that will deter carers from looking for work or increasing hours worked.

Under the new system, which sees a number of existing social security benefits and tax credits replaced with a single payment, family carers face losing eligibility for Carer’s Allowance if they earn more than £120 a week.

MPs claim this is “a clear contradiction to Government’s stated aims of ‘making work pay’“, with those affected immediately missing out on £64.60 per week in Carer’s Allowance as soon as they exceed the £120 a week earnings threshold.

Those affected also face the enviable decision of having to choose between losing Carer’s Allowance or losing free childcare for their three or four-year-old, the cross-party Committee says, because Universal Credit rules require them to work a minimum 16 hours a week.

The Committee argues that whilst the roll-out of Universal Credit still has a way to go, it may disincentivise work for carers unless ministers recognise the problem and make changes.