Budget 2018: Chancellor does the minimum to avoid austerity deepening, but this was no windfall budget to undo the hurt

By the end of the next five year period, the government will be spending £30 billion more a year - the largest rise in public spending since 2010. That's the headline that the government will want to see rolling out.

But that is only the surface appearance. The reality is - as Institute of Fiscal Studies Director Paul Johnson said - £30 billion was the minimum to stave off deeper cuts. And the benefit of that spending goes squarely to the NHS.

While no one is going to dispute the NHS feeling the benefit of increased public spending, in this budget the increased spending on healthcare disguises the reality underneath of public spending stagnating - the cuts of the past decade are not being undone and departments may face more cuts ahead.

Measures in this budget were plentiful, but it was money spread thin. Just £800 million for local government, £1.0bn for Defence, £160 million for counter-terrorism policing, £400 million one-off emergency fund for schools, £420 million for highway repairs.

There was a range of handwaved increases for tech and infrastructure to the tune of £1.6bn plus. A mixed bag of measures for apprenticeships worth £650 million. A package of complex investment incentives made up of reliefs and loans.

A 'co-funded' £650 million to renovate high streets. The headline Business Rates cut (said to cost £900 million) - a policy where it is still unclear who will bear the burden, the Treasury or local councils, as the Chancellor has already announced the intention to let councils keep larger percentages of the rates. There was a few hundred million to speed up housing developments and around £4bn for the city regions and the devolved administrations.

For households, there was a £200 million a year increase to 'transition support' for those moving over to Universal Credit and the work allowances were to be relaxed to, at a cost of £1.7bn, to mitigate the impact of the new welfare system on the poorest for which the government had been criticised - but only once the roll out is completed, which could be deferred for a long time at this rate.

There is also the cost to be calculated of tax cuts, including the freezes to a series of duties and the further increase in the personal income tax thresholds - up to £12,500 for earnings before tax applies and a higher rate threshold increased to £50,000.

In total, there was about £7bn spread over the next few years, plus the cost of tax cuts, with perhaps less than £4bn in new one-off spending - and a little under £2bn deferred until the rollout of Universal Credit has been completed. It appears the NHS will get an amount reaching more than £20bn a year by 2023.

The economic forecasts, and tax receipts, gave the Philip Hammond what he wanted: the ability to achieve a surplus and completely wipe out the deficit, so the debt could begin to come down at a faster rate. However, the needs of the NHS in crisis seem to have pressed the Chancellor to action.

Otherwise, Hammond stayed true to form. He preferred to use his room for new measures on tax cuts - to 'keep money in pockets' - than funding public services in plight. In fact, to keep in track, how the Chancellor used his headroom means that there will probably be more department funding cuts to come.

Austerity is not over. At best, the Chancellor Philip Hammond has stumped up the bare minimum cash to stop austerity further deepening. Even then it is a temporary measure, as the Spending Review he announced for next year will likely reveal that there are still more cuts to come.

Budget 2018 Preview: Chancellor Philip Hammond will try to patch together competing demands to present a positive vision - which must be closely scrutinised

So, Prime Minister Theresa May announced austerity will come to an end. The Chancellor Philip Hammond told Conservative members they must not surrender the 'party of change' label. Their right-wing colleagues want a bold, positive statement with Brexit just around the corner.

Where does that leave the government ahead of the Budget?

When the Chancellor stands at the dispatch box on Monday, he will have meet a number of commitments and all of them will require him to open the public purse and spend money - something anathema to Hammond's own favoured fiscally conservative approach.

So beware of the narrative. Whatever the Tories in the Treasury have cooked up, take careful notice of how it is being framed. Hammond needs to carefully wrap up his policy announcements in a positive vision, promising a bright future that brings money to spend.

To spend 'sensibly', of course - the note of fiscal responsibility won't be going away. It's how the Conservatives like to paint themselves (despite the way the national debt has ballooned) and they have spent a decade marking it as separating them from Labour.

But something will have to change if the Conservatives are to find £20 billion for the NHS. To find the more than £8 billion a year needed to keep the various taxes and duties from rising. To at least bring a halt to cuts for long enough for it to seem like austerity has stopped - if not been reversed. Is there any room for movement to find this money?

Well there is pressure to bring the tech giants to heel with a tax - though it's not a move without complications. And the Chancellor has already set out his stall, with a brand new narrative, to increase National Insurance contributions from the self-employed - a policy that went down in flames less than a week after last year's Budget.

The other targets for more taxes are only the rich - the main constituents of the Conservatives. From Pensions to private school fees, there are reliefs and loopholes aplenty. But will the Chancellor be willing to close them?

Far more troubling for almost everyone else is that local councils fear even further cuts to their funding are on the way. That would be devastating for essential frontline services, that are already under pressure - as the government forces local communities to raise money in their own neighbourhoods, even those with few resources.

If the Chancellor decides to hold off on these further cuts, it will likely depend more upon halting or deferring various tax cuts, rather than raising taxes in a more direct or conventional sense. But even then, it trimming one advantage for ordinary workers to protect those same people for a new disadvantage. Hardly a progressive pitch.

Hammond will try to dress up these trade offs as the hard-won rewards of decades of hard times and the promise of better to come. Progressives can't let him present that narrative unchallenged, because these measures will be little more than a government that imposed austerity trying to ride the wave of discontent their policies have stirred up.

Chancellor Hammond begins constructing the Tories framing for their budget

Chancellor Philip Hammond took to the stage at the Conservative Party conference to tell his party that they had to make the case of capitalism - and must first and foremost always be the party of business.

On the one hand, this was the latest barrage in a war of words within the Conservative ranks - torn by Brexit and the deep reservations of the business community. On the other, it's also laying the groundwork for the budget.

Hammond told the conference that the party couldn't afford to be seen as the party of the status quo. The Chancellor trailed the possibility of some tax rises to increase spending, but warned against trying to match Labour penny-for-penny.

We've heard this before.

The budget is coming up and the party delivering it are positioning their pitch, delivering up framing devices for the media to use in the coming weeks. For the Tories, they cannot afford to lose control of the message.

In recent months, even senior ministers have been defying the government with a whole barrage of comments to the media. It's making PMQs a whole lot easier for Corbyn and forcing No 10 and No 11 to waste their time running around putting out fires.

For instance, when the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) felt the need to express it's dismay about Brexit - and the danger of leaving the EU without a deal - a former government Brexit minister labelled them a 'grave menace' to the UK's prospects.

That's not a good look for a party that sees itself as the true representative of business. No wonder the Chancellor is calling for the party to get back on message. But there's more.

The Chancellor is also dropping little hints that there might be some tax rises - though these aren't yet more than hints - with an eye to some slight increases in spending.

Hammond finally loosened some of the purse strings this year, with a slight relaxing of public sector pay restrictions. But they were only very slightly relaxed and spending measures in the last budget were far below the kind of intervention for which the UK economy is crying out.

The consensus on the economy - and on Brexit - seems to be moving away from the Conservatives. Conceding the possibility of a spending increase lays the groundwork for framing the measures Hammond will announce on budget day.

In previous budgets, Hammond has talked up restricted spending and paying down the deficit only to deliver up, at times uncosted, spending increases - even if only small ones. The order of the day was austerity, but spending was needed.

Now, the consensus is shifting towards much larger public investment than Conservatives are prepared to meet. And so the Chancellor is preparing the ground to present the next budget as one that will deliver responsible spending.

Yet behind the narrative, there is little reason to expect anything but more of the same from the Treasury. Brexit is a hinderance and while the deficit has been reined in, the debt has ballooned under the Conservatives.

And who is going to be happy with Tories raising taxes? The last time Hammond tried to make a major tax adjustment, he had to withdraw his self-employed National Insurance fix within a week of presenting it.

In politics, the next best thing to delivering policies in line with the consensus is to get every believing that you're doing just that - without having to go to the trouble of spending the money. Expect this narrative to build through October.

Spring Statement: Even with the deficit reduced, the Tories continue to sacrifice the present and future of ordinary people

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

On Tuesday, the Chancellor Philip Hammond is set to mark the end of the financial year with the government's report at the Spring Statement - and will perhaps mark the near elimination of the budget deficit.

This month has already seen his predecessor and former boss, George Osborne and David Cameron respectively, pat each other on the back for setting in motion the policy of wiping out the deficit that Hammond has overseen in it's latter stages.

With the deficit is reduced, and a bumper year of tax receipts as well, surely austerity can be eased now? No, is the answer from the Chancellor. There will be no new spending because there is still a debt to pay off. So says the Chancellor.

As a result, the Spring Statement is set to be a plain response to the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) biannual forecast - and will likely be taken as an opportunity for the Conservative government to revel a little. However, Hammond is expected to be as cautious as ever.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Cameron told the gold plated, black tie, Lord Mayor's Banquet that austerity should become a permanent feature for ever - to produce a 'leaner' and 'more efficient' state that could be afforded in the long term.

That isn't good enough for the worst off. As with the closing of the coal mines in the 1980s, austerity is slashing the state and gambling on the private sector picking up the slack - and perhaps the pieces of those people whose lives were shattered and were left to fend for themselves.

Yet the Conservatives double-down on austerity every time - even when their doesn't really chime well with reality. For instance, the current budget has largely been in balance - taking day-to-day spending against tax revenues - for years. And the national debt is not the product of reckless public spending, but of quantitative easing (nationalising huge corporate financial debt to save the banks) and borrowing to invest in the future.

However, the Conservatives have pursued balancing spending both for the present and for the future against current receipts. They have managed to nearly eliminate this definition of the deficit - but they have done so on the backs of the poor, sacrificing their present and the future for their children in the process.

Squeezing both present and future spending into today's tax receipts makes today harder for the worst off, while hurting our ability to lay the ground ready for the future - especially since borrowing for long term infrastructure investment is so efficient.

The present fiscal situation is not exactly a resounding success story either. The Conservative plan is long beyond it's target year and still borrowing around £40bn a year for investment. And, while growth has helped, it is a very minor up tick to 1.5% - which is simply less bad than thought. The same goes for productivity.

For the Chancellor, this appears to be a sign of work still to do. But there are questions that need answers. There is still a shortage of homes. A necessity for food banks. Household debt being driven by a struggle to afford even necessities.

The Chancellor is flying in the face of opinion by pursuing debt reduction over ending austerity. Economic growth has been strangled and the UK national debt is not proving to be very worrying to anyone. He has room to manoeuvre.

But Hammond is the model of a fiscal conservative. He wants rid of the debt and to put something aside for a rainy day. That means another £40bn or more is still to be cut from public spending - either through budget cuts or raised in taxes.

At the weekend came the news that around a £1bn went unspent from the housing and local government budgets - which was ostensibly for building affordable homes - and was recouped by the treasury.

While there are people asking why was this money not spent and if it will it be reinvested in building affordable homes, the reality is that it simply be squirrelled away for the rainy day fund.

It is telling, perhaps, that the Chancellor and the Government don't seem to see this as a rainy day - perhaps looking gloomily ahead to the impact of Brexit? But there are many people out there in the real world who may very well disagree.

It is understandable to rule out major changes to taxation and rules - the IFS were among those recommending it stop. Doing so twice a year is a lot to keep up with. However, no one struggling under the burden of austerity is looking for a complicated readjustment of fiscal rules and tax brackets.

For those who have carried the burden of getting to this point, they want a little more support. A little more investment, or cheap credit, that could create a few more opportunities. Some surety of a roof over their heads and a means of putting food on the table. Care they can rely on when they're ill or retire. None of this should be considered too much to ask.

Affordable Housing: That seven years of government was nearly reduced to a bitter meme reflects disappointment with Conservative broken promises

Conservative flagship housing policies have yet to deliver anything even resembling an affordable housing market where young people can get their foot on the ladder.

When the phrase "No Deposit Required" started trending on social media on Sunday, there was a rumble of excitment. Unfortunately, it was not trending for the reason that people, momentarily, thought it was (it was actually a gambling promotion).

The mistaken belief was that it was a brave new housing policy announcement, with an level of ambition that might make a real dent in the housing crisis. A policy that might really help make home ownership affordable.

The trend quickly became filled with the same joke - "I thought this was a housing policy, but..." - and, for a moment, seven years of government teetered on the brink of being reduced to a single bitter meme.

That disappointment is dangerous for such a weak government and, that it spread so easily in a free form moment, is a big threat to a party that relies so heavily on well practised, old media control over the message and tone of politics.

The Conservatives rely on controlling public discourse and their grip is slipping. That is a sign of Conservative failure, symbolised by Philip Hammond's Autumn Budget in which he promised help to young people toward owning homes.

The breakdown of his signature offer of cutting stamp duty for first time buyers, however, is a narrow policy whose benefit will mostly be helpful to those who are already home owners - a key Conservative audience - and beyond a narrow group, may actually lead to homes being more expensive.

While Hammond put his faith in tinkering around the edges, with some subtle shifts in regulation, it's clear that out there in the public imagination tackling the growing crisis of affordable housing is going to take bigger ideas.

The fact that there was excitment about a policy of no deposits when buying a house - a policy that would come at an extraordinary cost, even for renters - shows just how far the May-Hammond government is from the scale of response the public is expecting.

For Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, that will be music to their ears - perhaps a sign that their message is getting through or has a receptive audience. However, Labour is not free from singeing by the burn of this particular trending topic.

Housing is an issue that no party has adequately dealt with - not even William Beveridge, when he drew his ideas for the welfare system, had an answer for housing.

Homes are too expensive and the growth and security of incomes is low and sliding. Land and property remain archaic, rentier dominated, sectors - cartels like great spiders sat in webs in the midst our economy, catching our resources, extracting and hoarding them.

Conservative failures and broken promises have fed disappointment that risks turning bitter. Progressives must take seriously the need to unravel these webs, and push out the fat lazy spiders, on which so much of our economic potential is snagged.

Budget 2017: Cautious Hammond has salves not solutions, as Budget falls short of action

Chancellor Philip Hammond was in bombastic mood for delivering his second Budget of 2017, making jokes despite the Office of Budget Responsibility's projections that listed productivity as down and growth falling. He brushed past those figures with lots of Brexiter-placating language and an opening salvo of £3bn put aside to get the country Brexit ready.

In the build-up to the Budget, Sarah Ann Harris in The Huffington Post UK posted an article listing those measures that charities said would be needed to address Britain's varied crises. Together, they would have required at least £10bn of new funding.

In the Budget, Hammond acknowledged the pressures and hardships and said that he was prepared to invest. But when the announcements came, they ultimately offered no more than half of the requested amounts to alleivate hardships.

On the disastrous impact of Universal Credit, Hammond went halfway towards the requests, even of MPs on his own benches, of reducing restraints on claimants - taking one week rather than two out of the waiting time to receive funds. With other easing measures, Hammond called this a £1.5bn package of support. Yet this was step didn't even reach the minimum requests for alleviation.

On the NHS, the Chancellor offered up some large numbers. These break down to smaller numbers, though. The figure of £10bn, for capital spending - infrastructure, buildings, etc - is spread across the five years of the Parliament, meaning no more than £2mn-£3mn a year. Another £2.8bn will be spread over three years, with just £350mn front-loaded to avert crisis this winter.

There was an olive branch to nurses in the form of a commitment to fund a pay rise for nurse, but this was conditional on negotiating a new contract settlement with the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

To address the housing crisis, and in particular affordability, the Chancellor announced a £44bn fund. This was, however, then broken down. This fund would be only partly public funding, with the other parts being loans and guarantees, and was intended to run through to the middle of the 2020s.

That could stretch that £44bn over eight years, or even more, meaning the yearly amount would actually be much lower, at around £5bn-£6bn - of which only a part would be a public funding rise.

At most this overall package, to tackle a range of social crises in Britain, will come to £2.4mn/year, plus only a part of the around £6bn/year package being invested in the housing market. That looks like being a long way short of the £10bn minimum requested.

The Chancellor found some money to invest, with £500m for various areas of tech, a few billion more to extend the Nation Productivity Fund, and a new £2.5bn fund to support new innovative, knowledge intensive, companies. Another £1.7bn was found for cities and city regions for various local infrastructure projects. The reality though, is that most of that will be spread over several years.

The Conservative Chancellor framed this as rejecting extra borrowing and instead using some of the headroom within his fiscal rules. However, there are still questions over how the Chancellor is going to fund these and the reality is there will still be lots more borrowing, with the process of eliminating the  debt and deficit extended over a longer period.

The headline offer made by Hammond was to end Stamp Duty for first time home buyers on homes up to £300,000. While this was trailed as a boon to young people, the reality is that it will serve current homeowners best - likely helping and subsidising current people who are, on the face of it, more likely to already be Tory voters.

The cautious Chancellor had hedged his bets with this Budget. He has tried to appeal to all sides, to make everyone feel like they came out of this Budget with a little something. The reality is that no one has gotten what they wanted, although Brexiters may have been midly appeased by £3bn and adopting their rhetoric.

Social pressures in Britain demand a response, but the Chancellor has decided not to act. Hammond has stuck with cheap salves rather than paying for the solutions. To make real progress, we need more from the Exchequer.

Budget 2017: Hammond gets a second attempt at Budget 2017, but will he act?

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond will present his second Budget of 2017. It has been trailed with promises of doing more. But the big question is whether any of the measures will be enough.

Between the growth of wages being anaemic, price rises eating away at households and the private sector not stimulating any positive movement by holding back from investment, it's being argued that Hammond has cornered himself against his own fiscal rules.

The government has made big promises - or at least big announcements, with little that is tangible behind them. The governing reality has frequently been the denial of the existence of a crisis, making excuses or tinkering around the edges.

Consider the big pledges Hammond has made on housing. The Chancellor has refused much needed additional funding, so tinkering measures - such as adjusting stamp duty or loosening restrictions on councils borrowing to build homes - are expected to carry the burden of getting the government to 300,000 new homes a year.

That will mean achieving the completion of around 100,000 extra homes, each year, to reach the target. Which makes it relevant to note that this is, of course, the same pledge that hasn't been met over the last seven years - at times struggling to reach 100,000 at all, never mind an extra 100,000.

These kind of promises, made over and again only to be missed, serve to undermine future pledges to do more. So too, do gaffes like Philip Hammond's Mitt Romney -esque announcement on Sunday that there are no unemployed people (there are).

It hurts the government too, that funding is denied where it is asked for by services, but is magically pulled out of thin air to solve the latest Conservative political crisis - a billion to secure a DUP-Con deal, for example.

The denials, excuses and tinkering extend to other areas. The NHS is expected to be denied the £4 billion in extra funding it's chief has demanded and the existence of a healthcare crisis has been refused.

These attitudes, these tinkering measures, point towards Hammond's approach to the last Budget, which responded to big challenges with a 'steady as she goes' attitude, spending in the millions not the billions.

There are questions still ahead, however, and people who remain vulnerable. What tinkering will help those women, particularly young women, suffering from period poverty? How will tinkering, with cautious suggestions of reducing waiting times, deal with welfare debt traps?

Universal Credit, in the midst of a disastrous rollout, is exacerbating problems - like mounting rental arrears and the simple fact of more than a month without a means on which to live - that are entangled with all areas of life for the most vulnerable.

While the government may be more focused on avoiding any further embarrassments, of which it has had a string lately, by avoiding any backtracks and climbdowns - such as the major reversal on self-employed National Insurance changes back in the spring.

But now is not the time for 'little c' conservatism. Change will perhaps undermine the Conservative position, ever talking of the chaos Labour will unleash by deviating from their fiscal restrictions.

But the Tories failure to match their rhetoric with reality is a party affair. The wellbeing of the people has to come before the wellbeing of the party. It is time to act.

While the government will want to clear up its messy year of Finance Bills with an orderly status quo Budget, it needs to be bolder and start investing

Next month is Chancellor Philip Hammond's first Autumn Budget. Yet the pomp for the event might be diminished by the fact that the previous finance bill will only just reach it's third reading this Tuesday.

The Chancellor's Spring Budget had been one for pluggling holes. There were Reliefs for those affected by business rate changes. A tax rise for the self-employed (on which he later u-turned). And there was spending - in the millions rather than billions - across key areas like health and social care, construction and education.

All of these came as the clearance of the debt and deficit, and restoration of growth - the long term promises of the Conservatives - remained a long way from being a achieved.

With the truncated Parliamentary session, the Finance Bill reappeared in the Summer once the new MPs took their seats. It has a been a messy and confusing year that will have left many in confusion as to what is and isn't in the Treasury's plans.

The first obstacle the government must navigate is the amendments to the Finance Bill. Labour and Cooperative backbencher Stella Creasy put forward a series of amendments that press the government to action on tax evasion and the exploitative gains made by those corporations who engaged in PFI, private-public investment schemes under Blair and Brown.

These are yet more subjects on which the Tories are divided. And Labour pressure, with Conservative backbench support has ensured that changes will need to be made to the Universal Credit rollout come the Autumn Budget. 

That will have to mean another government U-turn - a term that is coming to be the lasting testament to how ineffective Conservative government has been. They promised stability and only produce confusion.

To that end, the instincts of Hammond and the government will surely be for this messy year of Finance Bills to be tied off with a clean, efficient budget that gets everyone on the same page. To resist change. Status quo may well be the order of the day.

And yet, action is needed. Globalisation continues to reek havoc on communities, as outside of the rich bubbles were technology and advantage and money clusters, investment is dire.

As Mariana Mazzucato stresses, the big private players do not take risks and will not redress this balance themselves. The state needs to invest and create markets, to be the pioneer that the private sector simply isn't.

The 2017 budget has to tackle the lack of opportunities, the need for innovative new industry with the training to staff them, and the cost of living that suppresses and excludes so many. Government can only achieve these things if the public sector steps out in front and takes the lead.

Pay Cap: Hammond focus on 'overpaid' public sector workers is just a distraction from Tories failing those in private sector

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

After a month of being pummelled over the issue, the Chancellor Philip Hammond tried to reframe the issue of public sector pay cap debate. The core of Hammond's approach was to draw a comparison.

That comparison says that workers in the public sector have it good compared to what those in the private sector were dealing with. Don't be fooled. The Tory angle on public sector pay is a distraction. One that covers for the party's failure to deliver for private sector workers.

In the private sector, low pay and precarity prevail. Working poverty is a reality in 2017.

And the Tories response is to using poor conditions in the private sector to justify undermining conditions in the public sector. And, in time, be sure that pitting workers against one another in envy will be turned back to the further diminishing of the conditions of those in the private sector.

The Conservatives do continue to speak of these restraints on pay, and low pay, as if they are temporary. A part of a restructuring process. But their intended solutions stink of permanence or a lack of vision that narrows their view to piecemeal policy solutions.

For instance, when Justine Greening, the Education Minister, addressed a social mobility conference. She told them that the government's plan was to tailor education towards giving people the high-level skills they needed to achieve their own advancement.

She promised a meritocracy. A system that rewarded hard work with advancement.

But that pledge is belied by the economy under the Tories. Yes, unemployment is down according to statistics (with some glaring flaws). But it isn't a coincidence that unemployment is down while self-employment, second jobs and precarity are all on the rise.

It is something that can be seen clearest in those places where Thatcher's dismantlement of the public sector industries hit hardest. Having skills and the will to work hard isn't enough. Social mobility begins with money. With huge, long term investment.

It isn't enough to pursue personal empowerment, expanding knowledge and skills, if they're are rendered impotent by their environment. Putting achievement down to personal work ethic is an evasion. An excuse not to reform. There can be no piecemeal solutions.

Only holistic, joined up approaches will make a difference. Only coordinating trade unions and worker's rights, a universal welfare settlement that counters precarity, and tackling the cost of living - and many other aspects - will address the deep problems in Britain.

And the Conservatives that have shown this is not, and will not, be their approach. To them, it appears, the struggle - held at bay by 'dependence creating' community support - carries a moral worth.

The world of work is changing. Perhaps even making towards its end. For progressives, an ideology that praises an anxious, desperate struggle for being a test of moral character is not a safe framework for ushering in that future.

It is even less so in the hands of a party that excuses how it has failed private sector workers by stirring up discontent with public sector workers - and who wish to further deconstruct safety nets even as working poverty spreads still in 2017.

Hammond's distraction just papers over the cracks. Punitive action against public sector workers does nothing to improve the conditions in the private sector. The problems of the day call for progressive solutions, with long term investment backing efforts to fight anxiety and build far more life security into working life.

The Budget: Hammond's budget all about tweaks - spending headlines mostly in the millions rather than the billions

Philip Hammond delivered his first budget today. Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond looked relaxed, even made jokes, as he delivered his first - and apparently Britain's last - Spring Budget. The Chancellor's budget was one tweaks, all framed as adjustments to increase fairness. He began by summarising current economic trends, noting the highest number of women in employment ever. Growth projections are up slightly, but a projected drop in borrowing is only short term.

The long term economic plan of his predecessor George Osborne, to eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus to whittle away the national debt, was much delayed. Its aims where pushed back again by Hammond today. The promised fiscal surplus now not likely be seen until a long way into the 2020s - at least.

As for spending, the numbers he was pitching were all notably in the millions rather than the billions. £200 million for school repairs. £100 million for A&Es. A few hundred million for devolved administrations. £700m for councils to tackle urban congestion. The one exception appeared to £2 billion for Social Care - yet that was immediately qualified as being spread over three years.

Those spending commitments were companied by big companies seeing Corporation Tax fall again, as planned, to 17%. Perhaps as a counter to the criticism Conservatives have faced for their tax cuts for those at the top end, Hammond did however announce a halving of Director-shareholders' tax-free dividend allowance - noting it as a very generous tax break for investors.

For income taxes and wages that affect the overwhelming majority of people, the Personal Income Tax Allowance and the National Living Wage will both increase, to £11,500 and £7.50 respectively. The Universal Credit taper rate will also be reduced from 65% to 63% for earnings over allowances. Yet the overall positive impact of these is likely to be slim.

It is not surprising then that Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Chancellor's budget as one of "utter complacency". Corbyn painted a picture of people in precarious work - unsure of where they'll find work or what money they may make tomorrow, queueing at food banks and one of a million working households getting housing benefit because working pay doesn't cover the rent - for whom there were few measures.

The Labour leader expressed anger that public servants have still seen no pay rise in seven years, due to the Government's freeze on pay, and that no funding security has been given to the NHS despite there being an obvious crisis, despite the fact that corporations are still going to get their year on year tax cut.

The Chancellor's budget has offered only a range of small spending increases, in a very concise series of measures, and it is hard to see them as sufficient. Analysts, such as Kamal Ahmed at the BBC, have characterised the budget as representing 'pain delayed' - taking advantage of the short term boost that Government finances are experiencing this year.

This is not the start of a public investment led drive to build a path out of austerity. With the debt and deficit still hanging heavily over Britain, these feel like stop-gap measures to assuage certain political pressures in the present, and to ease the way to the further austerity that waits ahead.

Budget Preview: Will Hammond act to end Conservative pattern of money being redistributed away from most vulnerable?

With the National Debt is still rising, will the Chancellor be able or willing to find some money to invest in essential services? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond faces his first budget as Chancellor on Wednesday and he has a lot of pressure to handle. The overall Conservative promise to alleviate the country's debt is still a long way from started and there are spending decisions that Hammond will find it difficult to avoid addressing.

Funding plans for Schools, Social Care and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) all indicate a troubling pattern of money being redistributed away from the poorest and most vulnerable areas that need it most - not an image that Theresa May, if she is to keep her promise of a Britain that works for everyone, will want to reinforce.

Schools, even those under financial pressure, face up to 3% in budget cuts. Social Care has seen billions cut from the system. And, Theresa May's government is trying to wriggle out of coughing up more money to cover a court-ordered expansion of the PIPs welfare programme.

How the Chancellor addresses these concerns is important. He has already done the press rounds in the past week to assert there will be no big spending and rolled out, the now standard Tory line, that problems are less the result of low funding and more of not following 'best practice' (BBC, 2017). But will that line be maintained through Wednesday?

On Schools, Hammond faces a situation that will be hard to explain away. The government announced plans for a new funding formula in December, that came with the less than reassuring 'assurance' that no school would lose out by more than 3% (Weale, 2016).

That is hardly going to offer succour to schools in poorer areas. As Andy Burnham (Bean, 2017), Labour nominee for Mayor of Greater Manchester, asked the Prime Minister in the Commons: how does the Prime Minister expect to get more working class children to university by cutting schools funding across the North West?

Meanwhile, Social Care has become the particular Tory baggage with which to pummel the government. With £4.6 billion in cuts since 2010 and shortfall predicted (Full Fact, 2016), it is about the hardest area for the government to argue that funding cuts don't make a difference.

In fact, the previous Chancellor George Osborne did begin to respond - but only with an, at best modest, increase in funding, that was planned to come in with this budget, but would only raise around £200 million nationally (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

The plan also does not actually involve a boost in cash from the government itself, but rather put it onto local councils to raise more in tax - up to 2% extra. However, the one, and particular poignant, flaw in this approach is that wealthier areas will be able to raise more for themselves than the poorest and most vulnerable who need it most.

Across Schools and Social Care, there is a very clear pattern emerging of money being withdrawn from where it is needed most to make tax savings for those from wealthier areas - simply, regressive economics.

That pattern is reinforced in the government's insistence upon not spending the extra £3.7 billion that an expansion of Personal Independence Payments, ordered by the courts, would call for across four years (BBC, 2017{2}) - less than a billion a year to take care of people primarily with mental health problems.

An aide to Theresa May was heavily criticised for his callous remark that funding need to kept to only the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017{3}) - for which he later apologised - but it summed up the Conservative attitude.

Under Conservative government, the services people depend upon in their everyday lives are being squeezed. Money is being siphoned out programmes that serve the most vulnerable and leaving them to find ways to fend for themselves - whether they're young, old or disabled.

There are rumours that the Chancellor will respond with a little more money than is currently planned (Kuenssberg, 2017). However, a lot more investment is needed to convince anyone that the government is moved by a real comprehension of the difficulties people actually face when the public services they rely on are disappearing.

Autumn Statement: Austerity hasn't worked, yet Chancellor's response is much smaller than Britain's big problems demand

House building pledge typifies problems with Chancellor Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement - it's too little action to tackle a much bigger problem. Photograph: Regency Houses from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, described the Autumn Statement as a budget that does not make up for six wasted years. That after all of the sacrifice, over more than half a decade, despite continuous failures, austerity will continue.

That is not an unfair assessment. For this statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond had to juggle the policy inheritance from George Osborne, meeting the promise of Theresa May to help those just getting by, and the economic pressures that are depressing growth, disincentivising investment and pushing up debt.

The result has been a budget statement that sticks close to the status quo, with only some token, already scheduled, easing measures: the personal allowance advancing to £11,500, the 'national' living wage to £7.50, and the welfare withdrawal taper rate down by just two pence in the pound.

The Chancellor's focus remains upon the broader economy, not least with tax cuts continuing for big business as Corporation Tax falls again to 17%. The promise that these subsidies, and policies like the productivity fund, make to people is that if they help the economy, that prosperity will extend to them.

Yet many of the Chancellor's announcements were effectively cancelled out by the facts. He lauded the fact that the UK has its highest employment and lowest unemployment, with a labour market recovery serving everyone. Yet much of the new work has already been reported as being unstable, insecure and precarious.

Despite confirming plans to increase public investment, that comes on the back of years of delayed, stalled or unfunded infrastructure investment plans that have been shifted from announcement to announcement. Meanwhile economic growth is depressed, private investment remains low and debt is still rising.

And on house building, a necessary step to tackling the damaging housing crisis, Hammond has said he will lead a step change in progress on getting them built. Yet his commitment extended to just 40,000 new homes - a long way short of the hundreds of thousands needed, let alone tackle prices and rents escalating beyond what could be credibly referred to as affordable.

While Conservative spokespeople on the cycling news coverage are keen to deflect their failures onto the uncertain circumstances of the times, the reality is that six years of fiscally conservative government has led to a rise in borrowing and a vast increase, even a doubling, of the national debt. Austerity hasn't worked.

Those 'just about managing', as the Tory government labels them, have made huge sacrifices - with less welfare support, with their frontline services embattled, with work that is more precarious for lower pay. But after six years, there is still no pay off. There is no easing. There is still no succour for falling living standards.

If the Government is serious about helping the poorest, the most vulnerable, those most distant from opportunities and living precarious lives, it needs an alternative plan. Fiscal discipline, bringing down debts to reduce the cost of servicing them, is important. But no major economy is working well enough to provide prosperity for the people they're supposed to serve without help from public funds.

Progressives have to construct an alternative plan, that can return more prosperity to the communities that have made big sacrifices to achieve it, but have been alienated from the rewards by austerity. That means getting on with the work that has been put off, like building homes and infrastructure, tackling the cartels that lock communities out of the product of their own resources, with ideas like community energy co-ops, and doing more to support the most vulnerable with healthcare, social care and welfare.

Autumn Statement Preview: Hammond looks likely to ease austerity, but progressives have to believe we can do more

What awaits Britain under a new Chancellor? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond will present the Autumn Statement, the half-year update on the Government's progress towards their budget targets.

Under previous Chancellors Gordon Brown and George Osborne, the Autumn Statement became virtually a second budget, a second for the Government to manage and tweak the country's finances. Osborne in particular liked to tinker at every opportunity, adjusting targets again and again, an announcing new surprise policies to keep political opponents off balance.

The new Chancellor, Philip Hammond, as befits his reputation as 'dull', has suggested he'd like the Autumn event to go back to being just a rudimentary update, rather than a full blown budget adjustment. And considering the economic situation, that might not be a terrible idea.

An economy runs principally on the basis of confidence and Hammond has everyone to reassure: Brexiters and 48ers; the banks; businesses big and small, and workers. Whatever advantage Osborne's constant surprises afforded him in the political arena, would only have been yet another element of volatility in an already volatile time.

As well as provide assurance of a steady hand, Hammond must also find a way to satisfy his party's extreme right-wing - while, for sake of the appearance of competence, avoiding the complete repudiation of the actions of the previous Conservative ministry. That means maintaining at least token continuity with his predecessor's insistence upon tackling the deficit at the expense of front line services.

If those matters weren't hard enough to juggle, Hammond must also find a way to meet the new commitments made by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. That means, at the least, finding some way to slow down austerity just enough to help those who are 'just getting by'.

In times of high drama, a period of calm, anchored in fiscal stability and dullness, with no unpredictable moves and longer term planning - that actually sticks to a long term economic plan - would usually be a thing very welcome, for any economy. If that is what Hammond brings, it signals, hopefully, a return  to managing fiscal matters with a long term view, rather than with short term grandstanding better fitting a corporate boardroom.

However, the new Chancellor doesn't have the luxury of simply postponing a little of austerity programme and holding station. To that effect, Hammond has already deprioritised his predecessor's constantly shifting deficit targets and proposed a small increase in spending to a improve some roads, with May herself adding today the promise of a little more research and development funding. These steps are clearly an effort to show concerns - that withdrawing too much Government money, too quickly, will only make straightened times leaner - have been acknowledged.

Yet Hammond is rightfully under pressure from the Left to do more. John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, has also called for the undoing of tax breaks for the richest that were delivered by George Osborne, eve as frontline services and local councils were subjected to stringent budget restrictions.

With the money saved from reversing those measures, McDonnell has called for dropping the next round of welfare cuts, planned out by the treasury under Osborne - that will hit hardest precisely those who the Prime Minister lately pledged to protect: those 'just getting by'.

Socially and economically, the times have become hard and uncertain, and disproportionately for the most vulnerable - for women, minorities, people with disabilities and the working poor. And each of these groups are exposed to a range of risks, pressures and dangers by declining prosperity and rising desperation, as people turn inwards and shield themselves with hostility towards those who should be their neighbours.

While stability for the Conservatives may stop at settling down jittery markets, progressives want the Government to look further afield: to help calm the fears of ordinary people. Hammond's promises of infrastructure spending and pausing austerity are a start. Yet McDonnell isn't wrong to question the record of the Tories on delivery - Osborne made bigger promises of infrastructure spending, that might have helped stimulate the economy if they had ever seen the light of day.

For progressives, the time is long overdue for a budget with more spending commitments: on research and investment, to help stimulate the economy, creating jobs in the immediate present and to lay the foundation for more down the line; on the critical shortfalls in the NHS and social care budgets; on ending, and even reversing, cuts to welfare, to help people during hard times; and on building many desperately need homes.

All of those commitments are expensive and neither debt nor deficit can be completely ignored. But the present status quo simply is not stable. Worrying  about public debts, themselves fairly stable, weighing on the future as a tax burden is madness when the poor, just to get by, struggle under mounting insecure private debts.

And the Government, on the public behalf, is in the strongest position to help. Even just reversing tax cuts and subsidies for rich corporations and individuals - before you even get to the matter of how cheap interest is on Government borrowing - would go a long way to paying for what's needed.

Stability and reassurance are needed. But the Government must act first to create stability, because right now there is desperation and precariousness bordering on disaster. Progressives have to believe that Hammond can and should do more, before he can declare the ship steady, the waters calm and a course plotted for the harsh waters awaiting Britain outside of the European Union.