Summer Budget 2015: National Living Wage to be introduced

Shortly after the chancellor finished his speech in the House of Commons, Ms James tweeted: “New National Living Wage of £9 per hour so needed, making work pay, companies paying less tax can afford to pay more than the minimum wage”.

Meanwhile, most working-age benefits, including tax credits and Local Housing Allowance, will be frozen for four years.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered his second budget of the year today but only his first as Chancellor in a majority Conservative government, despite holding the job since 2010.

Mr Osborne pledged that the government will run a surplus by 2019-20.

‘You only have to look at the crisis in Greece to realise if a country is not in control of the borrowing, the borrowing takes control of the country.’.

Labour said the Chancellor is “trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes” and using the headline-grabbing announcement to gloss over its programme of welfare cuts.

Before the general election David Cameron promised to be building 200,000 homes a year by 2020. “That would especially hit middle-sized companies in areas like manufacturing and agriculture that we want to do more to build up in Britain”, said Osborne.

Banks, meanwhile will have a new 8 per cent tax on profits. Overseas subsidiaries will be excluded from the levy from 2021 too.

Business got a boost with a cut to Corporation Tax to 18 per cent by 2020 and tax relief on National Insurance for small businesses.

The rates of dividend tax will be set at 7.5% for basic rate taxpayers, 32.5% for higher rate taxpayers and 38.1% for additional rate taxpayers.

The first £11,000 of workers’ wages will also go untaxed. A work penalty has been introduced into the tax credit system, and he’s done it in a number of different way…First of all, he’s halved the level at which people can be awarded the full amount of tax credit, going from £6,000 to £3,000.

During yesterday’s Budget, the Chancellor also announced that university student maintenance grants are to be scrapped and replaced by loans – paid back once people earn over £21,000 a year. HSBC, which is the single largest contributor to the tax, is reviewing whether to move its headquarter away from the United Kingdom, citing the levy as one of its main motivations for doing so.

“There is a freeze in fuel tax and a series of other measures which collectively will increase living standards of working people while bearing down on the deficit we inherited and which will be eliminated altogether by 2018”. “This is a reverse Robin Hood budget, taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich”, he concluded.