‘One policy. One purpose. One nation.’
This was how the Chancellor ended his Summer Budget speech last week.
It was a Budget that confirms the tax-free Personal Allowance will go up, a National Living Wage will be introduced, and National Insurance bills will be cut.
The tax-free Personal Allowance – the amount people earn before Income Tax is paid – will increase further from April 2016, to £11,000.
This Allowance has continuously increased from £6,475 in 2010, to £10,600 today, and should reach £12,500 by the end of this Parliament.
More than 53,000 people in Crawley are expected to benefit from these changes in 2016, according to estimates from HM Treasury and the Office for National Statistics. 905 people in our town will be taken of paying income tax altogether.
The Allowance has increased since 2010, and the typical taxpayer will be £905 better off than they would have been in 2010/11. 3.8 million people will not be paying any income tax at all.
It's a Conservative majority Government that will, from April 2016, introduce a National Living Wage of £7.20 an hour for over 25s. This is expected to rise to over £9 an hour by 2020.
The new National Living Wage will mean two and a half million people get a direct pay rise. Those currently on the minimum wage will see their pay rise by over a third over the course of this parliament; a cash increase for a full-time worker of over £5,000.
I noted that a number of MPs on the opposition benches in the House of Commons were critical of this move. This was somewhat surprising, as they were all elected on a 2015 Labour manifesto which pledged to ‘increase the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019’.
I was pleased when, in 2014, Crawley Borough Council became the first Conservative-controlled local authority to become an accredited Living Wage employer.
The welfare system is being reformed, to make it fairer for taxpayers who pay for it, while continuing to support the most vulnerable.
This will include a reduction of the household benefit cap to £20,000 (£23,000 in London).
Working-age benefits, including tax credits and Local Housing Allowance, will be frozen for four years from 2016-17, however Maternity Allowance, maternity pay, paternity pay and sick pay are not included in these freezes.
Corporation tax has already fallen from 28% in 2010, to 20% today. I am pleased that this will fall further to 19% in 2017, and to 18% in 2020, benefiting over a million businesses, providing employment to people across the country.
I'm also pleased to see that Crawley companies will have their National Insurance bill cut by a further £1,000 from April 2016, as the Employment Allowance rises to £3,000.
The Employment Allowance gives businesses and charities a cut in the employer National Insurance they pay.
I hope this will see a further fall in the Crawley unemployment rate, currently at 1.6%, having fallen by around third in the last year alone.