George Osborne is releasing his first Budget as chancellor of a majority Conservative government, having previously been limited by the demands of the Liberal Democrats.
The 'emergency' Budget will give the government its first chance to follow its own policies unopposed. So far the predicted outcome of Osborne's Budget as suggested by the Press Association is that his priorities are to make £12billion welfare cuts and to raise the threshold of inheritance tax.
CONFIRMED: UK Summer Budget 2015
Young people are predicted to be some of the worst affected by Osborne's summer cuts and some newspaper briefings are claiming that the Chancellor will scrap tax credit wage subsidies completely for under-25s and remove housing benefit from young jobseekers.
On July 8th George Osborne will deliver his first tory Budget
Political Editor of the Press Association Andrew Woodcock said: "This will be a Budget largely of pain rather than gain and the pain is going to be received most greatly by those receiving welfare."
Asa Bennett, political reporter for the Telegraph said: "The austerity programme is more than halfway through, though there's still a lot to do: more cuts, worth around two-thirds of those implemented so far."
What is predicted?
- Scrapping tax credit wage subsidies for under-25s and converting university student grants into loans.
- Reducing how much a household can receive annually in welfare, these could be cut from £26,000 to £23,000 in London and £20,000 outside of the capital.
- Removing housing benefit from young jobseekers.
- Alleviating some mansion owners of inheritance tax as the threshold is raised to £1million.
- BBC to absorb the cost of providing free license fees to over 75's which currently costs around £650million a year.
- Raising of the 40p rate of tax - saving middle-earners up to £1,300 a year, and affecting 800,000 people across England.
Welfare is hugely affected in the predictions of the budget and it's likely that the Chancellor will use the example of Greece’s embattlement with the Eurozone to reinforce the need for the stringent cuts.
The Financial Times reports that Business Secretary, Sajid Javid plans on tackling his portion of welfare cuts by converting maintenance grants for poorer students into loans.
One minister told the paper: "This will be one of the boldest budgets in a very long time, in more than a decade certainly."