Will Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement revive the Tories’ election chances? Our panel responds

Katy Balls : The Tories now have their budget for the doorstep, but some think its too timid

Rishi Sunak has finally done what his party has long wanted: cut tax. Jeremy Hunt used the event to herald the largest business tax cut in modern history as well as a retail offer by cutting national insurance for employees by 2%. The decision to prioritise national insurance over income tax was part of a wider desire by ministers to pitch this as a budget for workers.

There will be relief among MPs that the chancellor chose to focus on a tax cut for working people – rather than making the main giveaway an inheritance tax offer. While there are some MPs in blue wall seats who want to see the promise of an inheritance tax cut before polling day, more MPs worried it would play into the idea that the Tory party was most concerned with looking after its own. “This is sellable on the doorstep,” says a member of the 2019 intake of the autumn statement.

However, the picture is not all rosy. No 10 wants to press the idea that it was only by taking difficult decisions that it has been able to cut tax in a sustainable way. But there are Tory MPs who worry it could prove too little, too late. As well as the Office for Budget Responsibility downgrading the UK’s growth forecast, there is a question as to how much these tax cuts will really be felt. MPs concerned about their seats, too, would have liked a bigger focus on personal taxes over business taxes.

It means that many in the party want Hunt and Sunak to go much further before the election. Given the OBR forecasts, it is unclear how much further they can go.

Katy Balls is the Spectator’s political editor

Miatta Fahnbulleh : Voters don’t want tax cuts, they want services and investment What the chancellor gave with one hand, he took away with the other. A rise of the national living wage to £11.44 for low- income households is good news but eclipsed by energy bills and food bills that are 49% and 29% higher than two years ago. The chancellor could have upped the windfall tax on energy giants to provide cost of living support to struggling families, but he didn’t. And while increasing the housing allowance is good news, without a plan to tackle soaring rents or build thousands of social homes this will do little to resolve the housing crisis.

With just one in four British people preferring tax cuts to spending more on our public services, the cut in national insurance will ring hollow in the face of planned cuts to schools, hospitals, police and local services that are already on their knees. He could have used his headroom to resuscitate our crumbling public services, but he didn’t.

But worst of all, with the Office for Budget Responsibility predicting the largest reductions in living standards since Office for National Statistics records began, where was the long term plan to revive the economy and reverse 15 years in which living standards have been squeezed? There was no investment plan to flood the market with cheaper renewables, retrofit millions of homes or build the next generation of green social homes. Nor any plan to create new industries and jobs in every part of the country.

This was the wrong political choice for the country, and millions will pay the price.

Miatta Fahnbulleh is an economist. She is standing to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Camberwell and Peckham

Lucy Webster : Cruelly pushing sick or disabled people into work is being dressed up as ‘opportunity’ Once again, the Tories have delivered a budget that punches down. The chancellor tried to dress up his attack on disabled people as a generous offering of “opportunity,” but make no mistake: the aim is simply to take away vital, lifesaving benefits.

While the repeated threat of a real-terms cut to personal independence payment (Pip) and other benefits mercifully hasn’t materialised (yet), many of the most disabled people in the country will now fear an even worse outcome: a total withdrawal of their out-of-work benefits when, inevitably, they can’t find work within the new, arbitrary 18-month limit. Already, many of these people are going hungry, cold or without essential medical equipment. Some will die, not from their conditions but from enforced poverty.

Despite what Hunt says, extra money to help long-term unemployed people back into work will do nothing for those who simply can’t work. There are some disabilities and illnesses that no amount of retraining and, certainly, no amount of Department for Work and Pensions bullying will magic away.

The Tories know this. Taking benefits from disabled people who can’t work is not really some misguided attempt to help us enjoy the privileges that come with a job. Instead, it’s just another way to punish and demonise us, to push us further into poverty and out of society.

People who are so sick or disabled that they can’t work are not the enemy. They’re not the ones who made your weekly shop unaffordable. The Tories are. Lives depend on remembering where the blame truly lies.

Lucy Webster is a political journalist and the author of The View From Down Here: Life as a Young Disabled Woman

Jonathan Portes : Hunt is using ‘fiscal space’ we don’t have for ill-advised cuts This autumn statement seems even further removed than usual from the reality of the UK economy. As the Office for Budget Responsibility analysis shows , the supposed improvement in the public finances since the last forecast is partly illusory, as inflation pushes up tax revenues, but the government pretends that it doesn’t lead to the need for increased public spending.

So tax cuts are mirrored by cuts in desperately needed public investment. But it’s worse than that. We’ve had 15 years of slow growth in productivity and wages, exacerbated first by austerity and then Brexit. Today’s OBR forecasts project that this will continue for the foreseeable future, with real disposable incomes not recovering to their pre-pandemic level for another four years, perhaps the worst period for living standards in recorded history.

In this light, using fictional “fiscal space” to cut national insurance looks positively counterproductive, both economically and politically. It reduces the scope for better targeted tax cuts or public spending increases and it distracts from the longer-term challenges of building public services, increasing public and private investment, building housing and infrastructure, and improving education and skills.

Perhaps this disconnect is most visible when it comes to immigration. Tomorrow’s immigration statistics will generate predictable manufactured outrage. But without recent record increases in immigration, offsetting the fall in the workforce owing to sickness and disability,the UK’s economic and fiscal position would look considerably worse. In this light, the chancellor’s claim that Labour “want to expand the workforce by immigration” looks like projection. This contradiction, both political and economic, further illustrates the disjunction between the short-term debate about tax tweaks, and the UK’s need for a credible long-term economic strategy.

Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London and a former senior civil servant