UK To Invest £1.1 Billion In Transport Networks

But the statement painted a grim picture of the UK’s financial prospects as a whole, with the economy to lose nearly £60 billion over the next five years due to the result of June’s referendum and Mr Hammond also admitted a commitment by previous chancellor George Osborne to achieve a budget surplus by the end of the decade would not be met.

Fuel duty will be frozen for the seventh year running. We expect the pound’s fall to add nearly 2 per cent to the level of consumer prices over the next two years, relative to our March assumption.

The economy would grow 2.1% this year, faster than the 2% forecast in March, Hammond said as he unveiled a new outlook from the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

“And I will also relax restrictions on government grant to allow providers to deliver a wider range of housing types”, Mr Hammond says.

What he called the UK’s “shocking” productivity gap, when compared with the likes of Germany, France and Italy, would be tackled with a new £23blln fund.

“We need some kind of reassurance that will enable us to trade profitably with other countries and build and attract foreign investment”.

While viewed as a government attempt to let up after years of austerity triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis, Hammond confirmed he had abandoned predecessor George Osborne’s aim of a budget surplus by 2019/20.

But it has now kept migration estimates at the same level it was predicting in March, adding £18.1 billion of borrowing over the next five years.

He said the slowdown was due to “lower investment and weaker consumer demand, driven, respectively, by greater uncertainty and by higher inflation resulting from sterling depreciation”.

Nearly half of the extra bill was blamed on the cost of Brexit.

The money will be allocated to the Scottish Government over the five years through to 2020-21, as a result of increased infrastructure spending announced in the Autumn Statement.

Changes to Universal Credit – the flagship single payment being rolled out across the United Kingdom – will reduce the “taper rate” from 65% to 63%.

A reduction in the rate at which benefits are withdrawn from people when they start work.

“Even people doing quote unquote ‘the right thing, ‘ find that they can’t escape”, said Matthew Whittaker, chief economist of the Resolution Foundation.

“It’s also good to see an end to agents’ letting fees”.

It said it had found it hard to factor in the impact of Brexit on economic growth because of scant information provided by the Government.

Responding to Mr Hammond in the Commons, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Autumn Statement placed on record the “abject failure of the last six years”.

“Despite increasing borrowing elsewhere, the Chancellor has left the big welfare cuts intact and chosen not to provide significant support for the just managing families that Theresa May has rightly said she is focused on”, he said.