Express & Star

Budget 2017: Hopes and fears of families and firms revealed

We can expect a packed Budget tomorrow, with plans to get 300,000 homes a year built, the green light for testing driverless cars and £1.7 billion to improve transport links between city centres and suburbs.

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This will be the big announcement from the Government about where it aims to spend our tax money over the next year, what its priorities are and what that will mean for the rest of us.

But there are growing suggestions that all these grand plans will be particularly short on detail. And that is always where the devil lies.

Chancellor Philip Hammond is under pressure to put in a strong performance in Parliament tomorrow.

He is already in the sights of the pro-Brexit brigade in the Conservative Party who feel he is too gloomy and too keen on a ‘soft’ exit from the EU.

At the same time the Chancellor himself will be keen the avoid the kind of post-Budget fiasco that saw plans for a National Insurance hike for the self-employed proposed in the spring Budget and then dropped after just three days.

A poor performance could see Mr Hammond become another Cabinet casualty – the last thing struggling Prime Minister Theresa May needs right now.

Mr Hammond has talked about getting house building up to 300,000 new homes a year – a rise of 100,000 a year – but he wants to avoid borrowing the tens of billions some in his own party want to see used to fund a massive housebuilding programme. A figure of £5bn might be more realistic.

Express & Star readers reveal their hopes for the Budget

Single man, business owner

Steven Bridgwater, 51, from Dudley

Steven Bridgwater, 51, from Dudley.

“I’ll be looking for more help for people like me running small businesses, and also how the Government can support towns like Dudley and Brierley Hill. We need longer tax breaks, no short-term problem solvers

“As for living at home, I’m happy with the current council tax deduction and don’t spend too much on electricity bills, although I bet it is different for families.”

Family

Darren and Karen Train, with children Chloe, aged 7 and Sophie, aged 4, from Wolverhampton

Karen Train, 36, from Wolverhampton

“I don’t expect anything brilliant from the new budget, hopefully a new stance on the universal credit roll-out.

With thousands of people – single mothers – facing a Christmas without knowing if they can pay their rent, the government is yet again showing how little the poorer voters mean to them.

“It all seems to be aimed a big businesses.

There doesn’t seem to be anything that actually helps families.”

Small business

Paul Kalinauckas

Paul Kalinauckas, Wolverhampton

BCRS is a Wolverhampton company employing just 16 people at its offices on Wolverhampton Science Park.

It is a ‘not-for-profit’ lender that specialises in finding finance for businesses.

It is headed by Paul Kalinauckas, who said: “Small business owners want to feel they are valued. They are the backbone of the British economy and the Chancellor needs to show them they are appreciated.”

Big business

Tony Hague

Tony Hague, Cheslyn Hay

PP Control & Automation employs more than 200 people making control systems for companies across the UK, USA and Germany.

Earlier this year it unveiled a £1 million extension to its factory at Cheslyn Hay.

Managing director Tony Hague said: “I’m looking for a very bold Budget from the Government and one that helps to instill confidence in the business world.”

Mr Hammond said at the weekend: “There is no single magic bullet and it’s certainly not just about pouring money in, because if you pour money in without fixing the other elements of supply, you will simply create more house price inflation, that makes the problem worse, not better.”

But, short of a big building plan, he has to fall back on tinkering with Help to Buy, stamp duty and other existing schemes. It is thought he might look at ways of speeding up the planning system to push through more housing schemes, which might in turn help solve the problem of ‘land banking’, when developers buy up sites and then sit on them for months or years waiting for permission or the most profitable time to build.

Meanwhile the Chancellor is being urged to boost defence spending after former senior military commanders have warned that years of cuts have left the armed forces ‘close to breaking’. Mr Hammond and Mrs May were both in the West Midlands yesterday flagging up a £1.7bn plan to improve transport links between city centres and outlying suburbs.

The region has been allocated £250m to improve transport here such as the extension of the Metro to Brierley Hill and Wednesbury.

Any spending plans, however, run into the problem of falling industrial productivity in the UK, which means the Government can expect to take less in tax over the next few years.

To try and tackle that, Mr Hammond’s Budget will be followed by the launch of the Government’s long-awaited Industrial Strategy White Paper next Monday.

The aim is to give young people the skills they need for industrial jobs, giving British companies the skilled workforce they need, as well as supporting investment in research and development to come up with new products that can be sold around the world.

It will aim to be big, bold and ambitious.

It will also take years.

And there are already voices from the business community that these moves are fine for the big multi-nationals but aren’t helping the smaller firms.

Meanwhile a more immediate problem for most people is the growing wage gap, as pay continues to rise slower than inflation, making the weekly shopping bills more expensive.

So proposals for nationwide testing of self-driving cars as part of almost £1bn of investment in transport and technology, while eye-catching, will mean little to ordinary families looking for a tax break or some help stretching the monthly pay packet.

Latest research for credit card firm Visa suggests this could be the first Christmas since 2012 when we spend less rather than more.

Against that background, Philip Hammond will have his work cut out tomorrow.