Thursday 4th March 2021

Yesterday Rishi Sunak announced the furloughing of workers would continue until September, along with further support for the self-employed, including those whose businesses only started out last financial year. There were other measures too to help support industries. So, it was basically more COVID spending, adding to the government’s budget deficit. And yet Rishi Sunak has been repeatedly making the point that the budget needs to be returned to good order and he hopes to achieve that through tax rises for corporations and, by freezing the tax thresholds, increasing tax for households, with lower income families hit proportionately harder. Today Phil Dobbie talks to economist John Ashcroft, who writes the Saturday economist blog, about the good, the bad and the ugly of yesterday’s budget.