The Budget: Will the rich get richer?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's bombshell rabbit (to mix a metaphor) was the Chancellor's promise to abolish the lifetime allowance on pensions.
If you're super-rich it's time to crack open the champagne. If you're working age and well-paid, it might keep you in your job longer - at least that's the aim- but this is against a backdrop where household disposable income is falling at its fastest rate since the 1950s.
We talk childcare, taxation, potholes, and Brexit beer.
Later, we revisit the question of BBC impartiality after leaked emails show an editor succumbing to pressure from Boris Johnson's Number 10 during the pandemic.
You can watch our episodes in full at https://global-player.onelink.me/Br0x/Videos
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:11.9 | No one should be pushed out of the workforce for tax reasons. |
| 0:15.7 | So today I will increase the pensions annual tax-free allowance by 50% from 40,000 to 60,000. |
| 0:26.6 | Some have also asked me to increase the lifetime allowance from its one million pound limit. |
| 0:33.6 | But I've decided not to do that. Instead, I will go further and abolish the lifetime allowance all together. |
| 0:41.4 | When you start talking about pension savings and lifetime allowances, it sounds so tedious. |
| 0:49.4 | But make no mistake, this is every bit as significant as when quasi-quarteng in the ill-fated budget |
| 0:55.9 | drop the top rate of tax from 45 pence to 40. Because people, the well-off, the well-to-do with big |
| 1:03.9 | pension pots have been handed a massive tax cut as a result of this measure. Yes, to keep doctors in work, but others will |
| 1:14.1 | benefit hugely too. And that bombshell takes me back to the George Osborne Conservative Conference |
| 1:21.9 | of 2007, where he promised to raise the threshold of inheritance tax to a million pounds. |
| 1:30.6 | And it was such a big move. |
| 1:31.9 | It was credited, actually, with making Gordon Brown drop all his plans for an election. |
| 1:37.2 | It never happened. |
| 1:38.6 | But this, curiously, is a massive, massive boon for people who want to pass on their money to their children. |
| 1:46.1 | The government don't want the headlines, the rich are getting richer. |
| 1:50.1 | But I think that out of this budget, that is the standout measure. |
| 1:54.7 | And that, I think, is where the political dog fight is going to centre. |
| 1:58.8 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 2:03.4 | The Newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. And it's Lewis. And we'll be talking also today |
| 2:10.1 | about this extraordinary story that's emerged and been very little covered about the BBC again |
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