Key points from Jeremy Hunt’s 2023 Budget

16th March 2023

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has unveiled the contents of his first Budget in the House of Commons.

It had a focus on prompting those who have left their jobs to return to the workforce, and boosting business investment.

Here is a summary of the main announcements:

Cap on amount workers can accumulate in pensions savings over their lifetime before having to pay extra tax (currently £1.07m) to be abolished
Tax-free yearly allowance for pension pot to rise from £40,000 to £60,000 – having been frozen for nine years
Fuel duty frozen – the 5p cut to fuel duty on petrol and diesel, due to end in April, kept for another year
Alcohol taxes to rise in line with inflation from August, with new reliefs for beer, cider and wine sold in pubs
Tax on tobacco to increase by 2% above inflation, and 6% above inflation for hand-rolling tobacco

Energy

Government subsidies limiting typical household energy bills to £2,500 a year extended for three months, until the end of June
£200m to bring energy charges for prepayment meters into line with prices for customers paying by direct debit – affects 4m households
Commitment to invest £20bn over next two decades on low-carbon energy projects, with a focus on carbon capture and storage
Nuclear energy to be classed as environmentally sustainable for investment purposes, with promise of more public funding
£63m to help leisure centres with rising swimming pool heating costs, and invest to become more energy efficient

30 hours of free childcare for working parents in England expanded to cover one and two-year-olds, to be rolled out in stages from April 2024
Families on universal credit to receive childcare support up front instead of in arrears, with the £646-a-month per child cap raised to £951
£600 “incentive payments” for those becoming childminders, and relaxed rules in England to let childminders look after more children
New fitness-to-work testing regime to qualify for health-related benefits
New voluntary employment scheme for disabled people in England and Wales, called Universal Support
Tougher requirements to look for work and increased job support for lead child carers on universal credit
£63m for programmes to encourage retirees over 50 back to work, “returnerships” and skills boot camps
Immigration rules to be relaxed for five roles in construction sector, to ease labour shortages

Office for Budget Responsibility predicts the UK will avoid recession in 2023, but the economy will shrink by 0.2%
Growth of 1.8% predicted for next year, with 2.5% in 2025 and 2.1% in 2026
UK’s inflation rate predicted to fall to 2.9% by the end of this year, down from 10.7% in the last three months of 2022
Underlying debt forecast to be 92.4% of GDP this year, rising to 93.7% in 2024