Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave her Spring Statement to the House of Commons this afternoon.

Whilst not a fiscal (tax) event we can report the following headlines:

• Fiscal rules non-negotiable with OBR forecasting they will be met by 2027/28
• No further tax increases
• Increased crackdown on tax avoidance
• Welfare savings recently announced will amount to £4.8bn
• Universal Credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in the financial year 2025/26 to £106 per week by 2029/30
• Universal Credit health element will be “cut by 50% and then frozen for new claimants
• Defence spending to increase to 2.5% of GDP
• Overseas aid to be cut to 0.3% of GDP
• NHS England abolished as previously announced
• Civil services cuts of 15% – including voluntary exits, AI use
• Day to day government spending will increase in real terms each year
• Capital spending announced £2bn per year extra
• Inflation forecast as 3.2% this year, 2.1% in 2026 and under 2% from 2027
• Growth forecast from OBR reduced from 2% to 1% for 2025
• OBR Increased growth forecast to 1.9% in 2026, 1.8% in 2027,  1.7% in 2028 and 1.8% in 2029
• 10% of new defence spending to be spent on new innovative technology
• Small business access to defence contracts
• £2bn of UK export finance to be made available for defence

We will have a detailed summary tomorrow available on our website.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/spring-statement-2025