First topic message reminder :

Key points of Budget 2015: At-a-glance

George Osborne will deliver his sixth Budget as chancellor, and the last of the current Parliament, at 12:30 GMT.

State of the economy

Public borrowing/deficit

Pensions

Alcohol, tobacco and gambling

Energy and fuel

Taxation

Savings

Welfare

Business

Housing/infrastructure

What's your thoughts on what might happen? or what would you realistically like him to do?

That's a tricky one and it's anyone's guess? I don't think they can reverse all things but maybe move the goal posts? If there is a change of government then they will have their own budget.

Whoever and whatever they will only do what's best for their own pockets.

The normal procedure when someone only manages half of what he promised is to get rid of him. The cuts and let's remember increasing Vat cuts everyone's disposable income strangled growth. The deficit was already being dealt with in 2010 or perhaps he doesn't remember the confident forecasts that the deficit would be 180 bn. Economic crises always lead to a spike in deficits which usually declines shortly afterwards. Except this one didn't as it was prolonged by an incompetent Chancellor so eager to paint Labour as evil that even talking down the countries prospects of recovery was a 'price worth paying'.

Phill I contacted NSI and this is their reply

I can confirm that the only information available is that the increase will be in spring this year, this could be anywhere from April to June. We will be able to provide more information once the details have released by the Chancellor.

I hope this reply is helpful.


Kind Regards,

Ashley Kimber
Customer Service Team
NS&I
Blackpool

Thanks Andy,

So a independent organisation 'Blevins Franks' can give us a date, but the people who manage the system can't, (sounds about right)
But June does seem to have some meaning.


Maybe just to remind people that Premium Bonds have to be purchased one full month before going into the draw.
So it's not really necessary to go and top-up in one lump and could be spread over during June if you don't want to so to get a spread of different serial numbers.
(Although under the circumstances you would have thought they would have a dispensation on that rule under the circumstances)

So buy in June, then wait until 1st August to see if the man comes knocking on your door.
(yes the £1,000,000 receive a personal visit on the first day of the month)

Just found this which might be of importance to some.

DWP clarifies spent pension state fall-back rules.

If someone spends their pension pot the government can treat them as if they still have it when when calculating entitlement to benefits, reducing their recourse to the state in the event of poor decision making post-April, the Department for Work and Pensions has clarified.

In a factsheet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on the interaction of pension freedoms and means-tested benefits, the DWP explained that if people “spend, transfer or give away any money taken from a pension pot”, the they will have “deliberately deprived themselves of that money” to secure or increase benefits.

If it is decided that they have deliberately deprived themselves, they will be treated as still having that money and it will be taken into account as income or capital when benefit entitlements are worked out.

In general, the document states that how someone uses their pension pot or their partner’s pot is treated differently depending on whether they have reached the qualifying age for pension credit.

The document stated that if they are under the qualifying age for pension credit and no money is taken from the pension pot, then it will not be taken into account when benefit entitlements are worked out.

If an individual does take money from their pension pot, it will be treated as either income or capital depending on how regularly they make withdrawals. Those over the qualifying age for pension credit are expected to use pension to help support themselves.

If an individual chooses not to buy an annuity after reaching the qualifying age for pension credit, an amount of ‘notional’ income equivalent to the income the person would have received will be taken into account when benefits are worked out.

If an income is taken from the pension pot, the amount which will be taken into account when assessing benefits will be the higher of the actual income or notional income. If they take a cash lump sum, this will be taken into account as capital.

Pension income over a certain level can also affect entitlement to contributory benefits:

• for employment and support allowance (contribution based), half of pension income over £85 per week will be taken into account, and

• for jobseeker’s allowance (contribution based), all pension income over £50 per week will be taken into account.

If a pension is not drawn, it will not be taken into account when entitlement to contributory benefits is worked out. Any cash lump sum taken that is deemed to be capital will not affect entitlement to a contributory benefit.

Andrew Tully, pensions technical director at MGM Advantage, said that the DWP could not be any clearer in how they will treat cases where people have either deliberately or unwittingly spent their pension pots and intend to fall back on means-tested state benefits.

“We have a duty as an industry to make it very clear what the consequences of this are. But all of the responsibility rests with the individual to tell DWP and the local authority when they take money from a pension.”

He added that people need to pause before raiding their pensions next month, ensuring they fully understand what the potential long-term consequences of doing so are.

WOW, really grateful for that, because it is something although not in so many words that I have also been saying for a long time, but TBH it was almost as if no one took any notice and thought I was probably making it up.

A bit like when back in the 1960 and BIG redundancy payments were being made so people just flitted it away and then claimed benefit, that is until the government then implemented what is still the current system of savings Vs spending.

The other thing people need to be aware of when taking a lump sum is if it will take your savings over the government saving threshold of (about £6k) sorry I can't be very precise, but you will also see figures of £10k and I think even £15k being mentioned.
That figure is the maximum savings figure that a person is allowed to have before any benefit will then be stopped, the amount of benefit a person is entitled to is based on a Pro-Rata amount (sliding scale) so the higher your saving the less you get.

The above figures of £6k - £10k may have changed and most definitely should not be taken as gospel.

Glad you found it useful Phil I to was really pleased when I came across it and I'm sure there will be thousands out there that will never know any of this because that's the way the British government wants it

The same can be said of my £6K, £10k & £15k figures above, they are all bandied around but none of them will actually have a definitive answer to which figure is for what.

The idea is to 'lure' people into a false sense of security.

Can I just say, I don't put dole 'scroungers' into the same category as people who as some may put it, 'have paid into the system' all of their life and now when it comes to retirement then if they are entitled to some form of benefit then on this occasion I do not believe any amount of savings a person has managed to accumulate should be taken into consideration, benefits for OAPs should not be means tested.
As with other types of benefits, not all people need them and therefore not everyone would claim for something they may not need.

But if you have £20k+ in the bank to help look after yourself and give yourself a treat or two in your retirement not forgetting to also pay for their funeral then why should they be penalised for having such a largish sum?

Sorry got carried away, but back to topic by all means.

Phil-H wrote:

The idea is to 'lure' people into a false sense of security.

SPOT on

Osborne's spending review shows this is an extremist government says: Natalie Bennett

George Osborne has been chancellor for five and a half years now, so the pattern for spending reviews and budgets is becoming familiar. We get warnings of massive cuts, then on the day some of those don’t come and the news is about the services and spending saved.

Let's not fall into the trap of believing this old three card trick.

This time we already knew one of the reversals was coming – the change in plans for tax credit cuts was forced on the chancellor by that unlikely champion of the poor the House of Lords. But he managed to produce surprise on Twitter by abandoning these altogether.

This will only slow the cuts to family budgets which are coming anyway, under government plans to switch all households on benefits over to universal credits. That means government savings rising to £3 billion a year by the end of the parliament – or in other words cuts of £3 billion to household budgets. That's of course if the government manages to make the universal credit computer system work on a large scale, something over which there's been considerable doubt.

That's only one of the issues with the underlying structure of this budget – the other is the generous estimates of growth, and "adjustment" of figures for tax revenue provided by the Office for Budget Responsibility for the chancellor. More than £29 billion has been found from 'modelling changes'. It's handy what you can find down the back of the sofa. These efforts have raised more than a few eyebrows.

No doubt the chancellor would rather focus on the maintenance of funding for police, which was expected to be cut along with funding for the Foreign Office. Both of those decisions are welcome – the funding for diplomacy is something I've been focusing on. But let’s not lose sight of the cuts.

One of the hardest-hit areas is the environment. On the day that record figures for excess winter deaths were announced, £132 million was removed from the budget for home energy efficiency. We have a fuel poverty problem because of the poor quality of our housing stock – now progress in improving that (following the abandonment of the zero-carbon homes standard for new homes) will be snail-like.

That’s just one of the blows to green small businesses, who were hoping to do that work. After solar installers took the hit on the virtual abandonment of the feed-in-tariff, it is installers of biomass boilers, anaerobic digesters and other green heating sources who'll suffer from the £700 million cut to the Renewable Heat Initiative, the last government's flagship programme.

Instead the government is betting our energy future on fracking and highly speculative research into 'modular small-scale' nuclear. Meanwhile the proven technologies of solar and wind are being left as poor relations, despite their fast-falling cost and rapid adoption across much of the rest of the developed world.

In other spending areas, once again it's young people who are bearing the brunt of much of the government's cuts. In a notable piece of Osborne 'newspeak', we were told that he was "modernising" funding for nurse training. In other words bursaries for student nurses will be ended. Nursing students will henceforth be forced to fund their studies with loans, despite our shortage of nurses and the fact that a nurse's income is already inadequate for the needs of many.

The income threshold at which student loans have to be paid back – loans that students have already taken out – is to be frozen at £21,000. That means by the end of this parliament two million students will have paid £300 more towards loans - £300 that wasn't in their original contracts and that is going towards loans that at least three quarters of them will never pay off.

Further cuts of note (and this isn't a comprehensive list) include public health funding (meaning more pressure down the line on the NHS and more ill-health for the nation), tax credits for families with more than two children, cuts to short money that funds democratic scrutiny of the government, massive cuts to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Transport and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs.

Overall, one figure is telling: over her entire term of office, Margaret Thatcher cut public spending by six percentage points of GDP. Osborne has already cut public spending by six per cent, to below 40% of GDP, and he's well on track to a planned 36% by the end of this parliament.

This is clearly an extremist government, with plans for a 'small government' (smaller than that of the United States), a massive agenda of privatisation (not just of public services but of debt) and a commitment to dinosaur technologies and speculative punts on energy, instead of a sensible plan to tackle climate change which would create jobs, save lives and cut our carbon emissions.
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the Green party. Follow her on Twitter.

The opinions in politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.is the leader of the Green party.

The opinions and Comment and Analysis are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of myself

Landlords won't be paying ANY extra money, as they will increase the rent to cover it over a period. Remember, the end user pays for everything! Aren't Landlords satisfied with the increase in value of each of the properties they own? This housing problem happened years ago when council houses were put up for sale (which I never agreed with).Left a shortage of reasonable rent for those who could not afford to buy! Many other properties have already been snapped up by greedy landlords (buy to let) This will change nothing. What chance do young people have of getting a mortgage and buying a property??  On another note, the Government decides to give away the publics money to pay off private bankers debt & then as soon as some money comes back in they straight away are giving themselves a pay rise from that cash. Better together my a$$ what sort of a Conservative government is this

How about starting with ALL expenses allowances and free homes taken away from gravy train politicians. Then remove their subsided bars, canteens and armed protection. Then cut their jobs to say half, 326 of them should do it. We don't need them all. If police can be cut why can't these idiots who do little or nothing? That'll save a few bob. If it's good enough for everybody else why not these clowns?

Well done Mr Osbourne, landlords will just put the rent up so, first time buyers will still struggle and their only option is to rent which will now be inflated as landlords cover the OH which is set by the government. Long term this will result in more families in a very bad situation where perhaps they will looking for added help by government hand outs to help pay the inflated rent. Short term resolve will inevitably cause long term damage and a social separation we have not witnessed yet. What an idiot he is!!!!

Comrade Osborne said overseas aid was our 'duty to the world'. No cuts there then. But what about his 'moral duty to the people of Britain' you know, taxpayers, did he ask them if they wanted austerity to squander overseas when our own people are dying by the tens of thousands, especially the sick and disabled who worked all their lives only to succumb to a medical condition but IDS reforms pass them fit, then sanctions them for petty reasons? This is the fate of all as we become ill and age and die. British people are dying by stealth under Osborne economics. Cuts to his own people, £billions for for those overseas.