Welcome to the This Is Money podcast.

I'm Simon Lambert and you are listening to a special bonus episode where we get some expert reaction to today's budget.

I'm joined by Charles Stanley Direct's chief investment commentator Gary White and Financial Plans Director Lisa Kaplan for a quick reaction to what the budget means for you.

Jeremy Hunt delivered what was dubbed his Last Chance Saloon budget today and brought us

a 2P national insurance cut, a shift in the child benefit removal, threshold and a new British

ISA.

Those three headline grabbers arrived alongside plenty more though in an hour-long speech.

Gary, before we get into things,

what were your thoughts overall? It's unsurprising, as virtually every single measure had been

trailed in the days up to it, there was very little, very few rabbits out of a hat in this one.

But I actually think it's broadly sensible when you're looking at the longer-term tax breaks.

So industries such as the creative industry, you know, British film and television is a very successful industry

and particularly in the pharmaceutical sector where they're going to encourage more manufacturing

with this sort of partnership, this deal agreed with AstraZeneca.

I think that's really, really sensible.

And medical research tax breaks as well. We want to encourage investment into the UK because,

you know, as the Chancellor said, you know, increased investment produces increased productivity.

We need more jobs. And all of this will work towards that end goal.

And Lisa, something we've been talking about a lot on the podcast recently has been the squeeze

on people's incomes and the squeeze on people from tax thresholds and various other

measures that people have really started to feel and complain about.

Obviously, the Chancellor was trying to do something about that today.

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