Spring in her step: Rachel Reeves leaves 11 Downing Street to deliver her Spring Statement on Wednesday, as protestors gathered at the gates © Amanda Rose / Alamy Stock Photo
The Chancellor delivered the Spring Statement on Wednesday, where she announced… well not a whole lot of new stuff! The main announcements on welfare, housing and defence had already been largely trailed, namely the increase in defence spending to 2.5% from April 2027 and reform of the defence procurement system, however Reeves did unveil an extra £2.2bn to be spent on defence over the next year. Additionally, with the OBR rejecting the Government’s forecasts for how much its welfare cuts would save just hours before delivering the Statement, Reeves was forced to find additional welfare cuts – which will see the health element of Universal Credit cut in half for new claimants and then frozen; and the UC standard allowance increased from £92 per week in 2025-26 to £106 by 2029-30 (down from the expected £107 figure), although this does come alongside a £1bn investment to help people back into work. The Chancellor also set out plans to claw back an extra £1bn from tax dodgers by investing further in technology to crack down on avoidance, and increase the number of tax fraudsters charged each year by 20%. Furthermore, a number of consultations were launched, including on the treatment of electrolytic hydrogen in the Climate Change Levy and on widening the use of advance clearances in the R&D tax reliefs to reduce error and fraud.
Haven’t quite had enough Spring Statement coverage? If you were a client of Navigate’s you would have received our full roundup document with your 0830am Morning Briefing on Thursday, bringing together all the announcements, consultations, OBR forecasts and reaction from politicians, business groups, think tanks and trade unions.
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1% – expected growth for the economy in 2025 according to the OBR, revised down from its 2% expectation in October 2024.
250,000 – number of people expected to be pushed into relative poverty due to changes in welfare reforms announced in the Spring Statement, according to an impact assessment by the DWP .
15% – cuts to Civil Service running costs, announced by the Chancellor this week.
£1.7bn – funding announced by the Prime Minister to improve local transport in Yorkshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.
70 – age that Veteran DUP MP Jim Shannon turned this week.
9 – number of months that Matthew Doyle worked as the Prime Minister’s communications chief, before quitting this week.
£600m – investment to train up to 60,000 more construction workers to help the UK reach its housing targets.
The PM co-hosted a Coalition of the Willing meeting with President Macron in Paris, where he presented the outcomes of this week’s planning meetings in support of Ukraine; and underlined that ‘all must come together to support Ukraine to remain in the fight and back US efforts to make real progress despite continued Russian obfuscation.’ Discussions also continued around military planning of air, sea and land forces that would be required to support a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.
President Trump announced yet another set of crushing import tariffs for goods entering the USA, this time on cars. Due to come in alongside his other recently announced tariffs on Wednesday 2nd April, the new measures would impose a 25% tax on all vehicles imported into the country and have a huge impact on the UK’s automotive sector. The Prime Minister told reporters on Friday, the Government is engaging with the US, and that whilst no retaliatory tariffs have yet been announced, “all options are on the table”.
Keir Starmer’s communications chief Matthew Doyle resigned after nine months, with the Labour veteran saying it was “time to pass the baton on” after being brought in by Starmer four years ago. His departure is expected to lead to the promotions of James Lyons, the current director of strategic communications, who will be responsible for communications strategy, and Steph Driver, the current deputy director of communications, who will be in charge of communications delivery.
The Government outlined its vision for the maritime sector in a new strategy, setting new domestic decarbonisation goals for a 30% reduction by 2030, an 80% reduction by 2040 and net zero by 2050. As part of the plans, the shipping sector will be brought under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which will see operators of larger vessels pay more from their greenhouse gas emissions, with the Government seeking to increase the use of clean fuels and technologies.
An expanded Fraud Strategy is due to be published later this year, providing ‘fresh protections’ for the public and businesses. Fraud Minister Lord Hanson of Flint addressed the Global Anti-Scams Alliance Summit this week, in which he highlighted that fraud reports increased by 19% last year, said a key focus of the strategy will be combatting tech-enabled fraud, and announced plans for a Global Fraud Summit supported by the UK, to take place in Vienna in early 2026.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey delivered a speech at his party’s Spring Conference, urging the Prime Minister to agree a co-ordinated response to US tariffs with the EU and Canada and called on him to step up his efforts to support Ukraine, funded by freezing Russian assets in the UK. The Lib Dems also passed a policy motion that supported measures including opposing a UK-US trade deal that lowered environmental and health standards, ensuring the UK was a world leader on climate, and fixing the UK’s broken relationship with Europe.
Plans to ‘revive the Victorian-era’ transport system in the North were unveiled, including making the Liverpool-Hull corridor an economic superpower with £1.7bn this year, £415m for the key rail line between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York, and over £1bn for local leaders to improve the transport services people use every day, alongside £270m investment in bus services and £330m in road maintenance. Keir Starmer stated that the Government is delivering “real change for the North”, spending double as much on local transport than in the South.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill completed its progress through the House of Commons, taking the UK a step closer to being the first country to phase out smoking. This was preceded a day earlier with consideration of Lords amendments to four bills, including the Great British Energy Bill and the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill (also known as Martyn’s Law), which resulted in over 10 votes taking place. Meanwhile, the Assisted Dying Bill completed its committee stage in the House of Commons, during which the controversial change to replace the need for a High Court ruling with a decision from a multidisciplinary, three-person panel was made.
In the Lords, the Employment Rights Bill completed its second reading and the Football Governance Bill passed its third reading., whilst Friday saw debates on modern slavery and the UK’s ‘broken food system’.
If Kemi Badenoch thought opposing Net Zero plans would win her votes last week, she might want to look away now… According to Deltapoll’s latest poll, 52% of Brits approve of the 2050 Net Zero target, even when it’s made clear this will involve heavily cutting the use of fossil fuels. This compares to just 18% who disapprove. 25% neither approve or disapprove, and 5% don’t know. If, by some miracle, she gets all these groups onboard she’d be looking at an all too familiar 52-48% split…
Rachel Reeves hasn’t had the best week when it comes to polls either… as Ipsos have found her negative approval ratings are edging scarily close to the lows hit by Kwasi Kwarteng after the disastrous mini-budget of 2022. With 51% of people believing the Chancellor is doing a bad job, 10 months into the job she’s ranking lower than Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt ever scored in the role.
A majority of people would accept a lockdown of 12 weeks or more, in the event of another pandemic in 2025, Savanta’s latest pandemic polling has revealed. Proving just how long ago Covid now was (and how memories have faded), 92% of people would accept a lockdown of 4 weeks or more, but this figure gradually decreases the longer the lockdown in question. Astonishingly, 10% of people would accept a lockdown of over a year (Editor’s note – your Navigate team would have gone stir crazy long before this point…)
The Institute for Fiscal Studies is the go-to place for policy-wonk Budget reaction, and this Spring Statement was no different. Whilst praising the Chancellor for “some bright spots” including the effect planning reforms will have on the economy, the overall judgement wasn’t a great read, labelling it a “holding exercise ahead of the really significant decisions later in the year”. Most hard hitting was its comment that the Chancellor “really does seem to risk losing the wood for the trees”, having left “next to no headroom” against her fiscal rules, with her spending plans at the mercy of events (and presumably unpredictable world leaders…)
Search parties were sent scurrying through Westminster this week, when concerns were raised House of Commons legend, and Parliament’s most regular contributor to debates, Jim Shannon MP had gone missing. Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani first raised the alarm during the debate on St Partrick’s day and Northern Irish affairs on Thursday afternoon, that the Member for Strangford was strangely absent from the Chamber. Coming just two days after his 70th birthday, fears Jim was suffering a mid-life crisis were quickly allayed as it was reported he had doubled-booked himself and was in fact leading a debate in Westminster Hall. Navigate’s Jim Shannon Fan Club can relax again.
Some MPs read from cue cards, some speak off the cuff… but very few do it like Lord McColl of Dulwich, who delivered a speech in the Lords on Friday morning, from what seemed like a never-ending sheet of paper. The 92 year old former surgeon delivered his remarks on the causes of obesity (TLDR: “stop eating so much”) whilst gently unfurling his speech like an ever-growing shopping list straight out of a Laurel and Hardy film. Whether it was the distinguished noble Lord’s intention to demonstrably deliver the metaphor whilst channeling his inner Steve Miller, we do not know; but we thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.
