Budget 2017 live - key points: Tories pivot to public spending in bid to keep out Corbyn
Follow all the latest updates as Chancellor presents his 2017 Budget
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Your support makes all the difference.Welcome to The Independent’s liveblog with coverage of the response to Philip Hammond’s Budget.
The Chancellor was forced to admit that growth and productivity forecasts had been downgraded, with the Official for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicting lower growth than at any time in its history.
It comes after the UK’s finances unexpectedly worsened last month after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said public sector net borrowing – stripping out state-owned banks – jumped by £500m to £8bn in October.
Despite this, Mr Hammond used the Budget to announce a splurge of new investment, including £3bn set aside for preparing for Brexit, an immediate £350m cash boost for the NHS, a £2.5bn investment fund and £500m support for the tech industry. This can partly be seen as a response to Labour's shock performance at the polls earlier this year, which has forced the Tories to do more to address rising anger at inequality, and try to quell support for Jeremy Corbyn.
Follow the 2017 Budget as it happened below
A series of small giveaways had earlier been trailed by the Treasury, including extending discount railcards to 25-30 year-olds from next Spring and tackling overpayments of student loans.
This was a Budget in which Mr Hammond could not afford any major slip-ups. Tory MPs were nervous of a repeat of the excruciating U-turn on a key announcement in the Budget in Spring, where the Chancellor was forced to pull the plug on his plan to raise taxes for the self-employees through increased national insurance contributions after considerable pressure from Conservative MPs.
If there is any repeat of this, Mr Hammond's position in Number 11 will be very precarious indeed.
"The Government is investing in driverless cars after months of back-seat driving in the Government", Corbyn quips.
A decent, if fairly predictable gag. Still, at least he didn't get John McDonnell to hand him a pack of lozenges.
The stamp duty cut will help those who already have a deposit but does little for the majority of young people who do not. In fact, it will actually make things worse for them, because house prices will likely rise as demand increases. As Ben Chu highlights below, the OBR expects the change to push up prices by 0.3 per cent...
Jeremy Corbyn's response to the Budget was one of his most impassioned performances at the despatch box, as he tore into the Tories on a range of issues. May Bulman has the story:
Here’s a first look, from Business Editor Josie Cox, at how investors, economists and other experts from the City and beyond have responded to the Budget:
Well that didn't take long. Philip Hammond's stamp duty cut appears to be unravelling already, as it's pointed out that the OBR analysis of the policy is as follows:
We assumed that a temporary relief would feed one-for-one into house prices, but a permanent one will have twice that effect. On that basis post-SDLT prices paid by first time buyers would actually be higher with the relief than without it. Thus the main gainers from the policy are people who already own property, not the first time buyers themselves"
Campaign group Generation Rent, which represents private renters and young people trying to buy a home, is not impressed with the stamp duty cut either.
It's director, Dan Wilson Craw, says: “This measure might boost home ownership but will do nothing to reduce the fundamental cost of housing. In areas where first-time buyers are competing with investors for homes, no stamp duty to pay will give them more purchasing power. But where they’re competing with each other it just means they have more cash with which to make an offer. The real winners are people with property to sell."
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