Spring Statement reaction - video Dailymotion

Skip to player Skip to main content Skip to footer

27/03/2025

Ralph Blackburn reaction to the Spring Statement.

Category

Transcript

Display full video transcript

00:00Hello, Rafe Blackburn the Yorkshire Post's Westminster correspondent here

00:04just outside the Houses of Parliament where yesterday the Chancellor Rachel

00:08Reeves delivered her spring statement. Now this is not a budget, it's slightly

00:12different from that. Budgets are held once a year in the autumn and that's

00:16when we get a lot of big announcements around tax and spend that we did not see

00:20yesterday. The spring statement is in effect a response to the Office for

00:25Budget Responsibilities assessments and forecasts of the public finances. That's

00:31the watchdog which assesses what the Treasury is doing and they made two

00:35major pronouncements on Rachel Reeves's and the Treasury's finances. The

00:41first was it cut the growth forecast in half, that's the growth forecast for 2025

00:46from 2% to 1% and that basically means the Exchequer is getting less money and

00:51what that in turn meant is that the Chancellor's fiscal headroom was wiped

00:56out. Now fiscal headroom is quite a kind of nerdy phrase, it basically means the

01:02surplus that the Treasury has on on top of what it spends and it's used for

01:07things like emergency. So in this case for a variety of reasons including

01:12global uncertainty the cost of government borrowing has gone up and so

01:16this fiscal headroom has had to be used to spend to spend on that. So that

01:23therefore led the Chancellor to make certain decisions like the one around

01:28these welfare reforms we have seen. So the government is making changes to the

01:33personal independence payment and also to Universal Credit which it says will

01:37cut spending on welfare by five around five billion pounds by 2029 2030. So this

01:45is likely to be very contentious amongst Labour MPs, they say there's a

01:51lot of good measures within this but according to the government's own

01:55assessment it's likely to push around 250,000 people including 50,000 children

02:01into relative poverty and the concern amongst the MPs I've been speaking to is

02:06that instead of kind of looking at what reforms need to be made and working from

02:11there the government is actually working backwards, it's working how can we get

02:14the savings we need to meet these fiscal rules to get some more headroom

02:19in case of emergencies and then going from there and what they're worried

02:23about is that that won't actually lead to good outcomes for people out of work,

02:27people on benefits, disabled people. We're likely to see some sort of rebellion

02:32going forward when those measures are put to the House of Commons however all

02:37of this conversation around fiscal headroom might be moot because another

02:41thing the OBR said which is very important is that if Donald Trump

02:45introduces blanket tariffs of 20% on the UK as he's threatened to next week then

02:50Rachel Reeves's entire headroom, her spare budget will be wiped out in one

02:56day so if that happens or there are other you know events which which which

03:01lead to this you know pandemic, energy rises, all these sort of things which

03:05are going to cost the government a lot of money it's highly likely that she'll

03:08have to come back in the autumn either with tax increases or with spending cuts.

Recommended

3:47

Up next

Local elections reaction

02/05/2025

3:13

Yorkshire Post Bulletin 23rd March 2022

23/03/2022

2:15

Spring Statement: Opening remarks from Chancellor Rachel Reeves

26/03/2025

5:04

Autumn Statement: What people in Yorkshire think of Jeremy Hunt’s announcement in Autumn Statement

22/11/2023

3:18

Yorkshire Post Bulletin 22nd March 2022

22/03/2022

0:40

Arla Dairy closure in Yorkshire Dales, Brass Band Championships and Spring in Yorkshire

03/03/2025

1:29

The Week Ahead with The Yorkshire Post

22/07/2024

1:09

Yorkshire Morris dancers at sunrise on Mayday at Sheffield's Parkwood Springs

02/05/2025

1:23

The Week Ahead with Yorkshire Post features writer John Blow

31/07/2023

1:09

Yorkshire's 'stone henge' and farmer's outraged at Budget says National Farmer's Union - News Headlines

05/11/2024

1:04

The Week Ahead with Yorkshire Post

21/02/2025

1:16

Week Ahead with The Yorkshire Post

02/12/2024

0:38

Swirl in the sky: Met Office explains, Fulneck School closure and Spring Budget - News Headlines

26/03/2025

2:32

Yorkshire Post Bulletin 1st March 2022

01/03/2022

6:55

Yorkshire Post Bulletin 4th April 2022

04/04/2022

1:01

Yorkshire Post Week ahead Bulletin by John Blow

13/03/2023

0:53

Yorkshire Mayors sign historic White Rose agreement - News headlines

13/03/2025

0:58

IKEA in Sheffield evacuated over 'technical issues'

The Star, Sheffield

yesterday

5:54

Tramlines 2025: Interviews with festivalgoers on Friday

The Star, Sheffield

yesterday

1:44

Come with me to day two of Tramlines Festival 2025

The Star, Sheffield

yesterday

56:44

The Real Unforgotten 2025 S01E02

21/02/2025

1:50

A pretty girl offers special food for a smart dogs

SR Daily Cambodia

04/07/2018

1:29

lovely smart dogs play with my girlfriend

SR Daily Cambodia

04/07/2018

0:11

Beautiful Girl Riding white horse

SR Daily Cambodia

04/07/2018

1:47

Mylen Leah Solar Farm Protest

yesterday