Families face their worst decade for income growth on record, WORSE than post-war rationing, IFS warns after Healey's Budget
Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaking to ITV News, with NatWest chief executive Paul Thwaite among those criticising Chancellor John Healey for lacking ambition on growth.The freeze will also hand the Treasury an extra £71bn, with one in three London homes set to miss out on the Budget's £100 energy handout due to eligibility rules based on 1991 council tax bands.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that average household disposable income will grow by just 2% across the entire 2020s — the weakest decade on record and worse than the 1950s, when post-war rationing was still biting. IFS director Helen Miller said no amount of temporary cost-of-living packages will fix it and that Britain needs a stronger economy. The think tank branded Healey's Budget "unhelpful fiddling", warning it does nothing to alter the grim underlying trajectory.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation projects average annual disposable incomes will fall by £450 between April 2024 and April 2029.
According to the OBR, frozen income tax and National Insurance thresholds are set to eliminate 215,000 jobs by 2030 — a move Shadow Business Secretary Julia Lopez has called 'economic vandalism'.
