Autumn Budget: The Good, the Bad and the Weird

The autumn budget is now out, which means that policy wonks and journos will be scrambling to find something pithy to say in an incredibly boring 150-page document. We here at the Canary are no different, though ours usually has a bit more swearing.

See here for HG’s take on the housing budget. Or here for Rachel Charlton-Dailey’s article on the budget as it relates to the DWP. Maybe you want something a little lighter, like Ed Sykes’ reporting on Reeves’ weird swipe at Polanski. 

Those important topics covered, here’s all the rest: the good, the bad and the ‘what are you fucking on about?’ of the Autumn Budget.

Autumn Budget—The Good

This’ll probably be a quick one, given how deeply uncomfortable Reeves looked with what she was actually saying during the Budget speech. But anyway, here we go.

The Treasury plans to raise £1bn through greater taxes on gambling. Reeves plans to almost-double remote gaming duty, from 21% to 40%. Likewise, the online betting tax will jump from 15% to 25%. Traditionally, the ‘vices’ have been seen as a safe money-spinner for tax hikes, and it’s worked great here. I don’t give a shit about online gambling.

We’re actually dropping the two-child benefit cap. Marvelous, no longer punishing children for having siblings is probably the right thing to do. However, Labour probably owes a massive apology to those seven MPs it sacked for voting for this policy last year.

Starting 1 April 2026, the National Living Wage will increase to £12.71 an hour, up 4.1%. 18-20 year olds will also see their National Minimum Wage go up by 8.5%, landing on £10.85 per hour. It’s still fucking weird that the Minimum Wage isn’t, you know, a Living Wage — but hey, these crumbs are better than nothing.

The Bad

Speaking of ‘better than nothing’, even that’s sometimes too much to ask. A lot of the worst aspects of Reeves’ autumn budget were the omissions. Reeves mentioned nothing about ending the Private Finance Initiatives bleeding money from the NHS, improving the council housing crisis, or reducing the ever-widening wealth gap in the UK.

Beyond that, we won’t see an increase on the income tax thresholds in line with inflation for an extra three years. This means that tax brackets will only shift in line with how much your money is actually worth in 2031. As such, many people — particularly the lowest earners — will suddenly find themselves getting taxed more despite not actually making any more money.

A cynic would say that this is a deeply underhanded way of imposing a tax hike for many earners. Unfortunately, I am that cynic. This is a deeply underhanded way of imposing a tax hike.

Labour is also conducting an emissions-spewing bonfire of green tax policies. First up, Reeves plans to scrap the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme. Under the ECO, larger energy suppliers have to promote measures that allow low-income, fuel-poor and vulnerable households to heat their homes. It was designed to reduce fuel poverty and carbon emissions, and it’s now going the way of the dodo.

Likewise, housing energy bills will now see a £150-a-year reduction due to Labour scrapping ‘green levies‘. Imposed in 2001, these were intended to tax sources of pollution in order to fund energy-efficiency schemes.

The rather weird

Last on the bonfire of green policies, Labour are freezing the duty on petrol and diesel at 52.95p per litre. Sure, this will help many people get around without spending a fortune. However, it’s also a really weird look when your party is also imposing a 3p-per-mile charge on electric vehicles. Likewise, plug-in hybrid drivers can now expect to pay 1.5p per mile.

Meanwhile, alongside the hike on online gambling, the policy paper also boasts that it’s “protecting face-to-face gambling, from bingo halls to horse racing”. Thank god, who’d want to see a threat to horse racing? Apart from, you know, the horses. We’re also abolishing Bingo Duty from April 2026, which I genuinely didn’t know was a thing.

Finally, the government plans to build 250 new Neighbourhood Health Centres, aiming to bring care closer to the community. Lovely, but I thought that the NHS couldn’t afford to pay its doctors right now? How are we paying for this?

Well, “through a combination of public sector investment and a new model of Public-Private Partnership”. That absolutely smacks of a Public Finance Initiative with the serial numbers filed off, to me. And I’m not the only one — Unison’s head of health, Helga Pile, said:

The damage inflicted by public-private schemes in the past is well documented. Some NHS trusts are still repaying debts they were saddled with decades ago.

Reaching for a new spin on an old idea is not the change the NHS needs. These new plans should be ditched without delay in favour of straightforward public investment.

Mortgaging the future of the NHS didn’t work before and it won’t work now. The chancellor has already ruled out the use of PFI-style schemes for hospitals.

The government shouldn’t be weighing new health centres down with unnecessary debt before they’ve even got off the ground.

So, there we have it folks. A very quick whistlestop tour of some of the highs and many lows of the chancellor’s Autumn Budget. We’re quite sure that there’s more to go at in there, but that’s quite enough statistics for one day. Likewise, the wider implications of some of the choices are yet to be seen — but you can be sure we’ll be here to expand on them when they come to light.

Featured image via the Canary