Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

0: the number of red iPads wielded by George Osborne today. (Sorry, Guido.) Jeff Moore/Empics Entertainment
In Numbers

In numbers: George Osborne's new UK budget

The UK’s coalition government introduces its second budget. Here’s our condensed guide to what’s in it.

BRITAIN’S CHANCELLOR of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has unveiled his second budget since taking power – with today’s measures announced in the House of Commons forming his coalition’s first full platform of economic measures following last summer’s ‘emergency budget’.

Here, in bitesize chunks, are some of the numbers produced by Osborne in the Commons today.

2.1 per cent - the previous estimated rate of growth in Britain’s economic output this year, as measured by Gross Domestic Product.

1.7 per cent – the revised forecast as produced by Osborne today.

One penny – the reduction, per litre, in duties levied on fuel.

100,000,000 - the amount, in pounds, pledged to be put forward to repairing potholes on the UK’s road network.

250,000,000 – the amount, in pounds, being set aside for grants for first-time home builders.

8,105 – the amount, in pounds, a worker can now earn before having to pay income tax. This new increased cutoff point is well over £600 higher than pre-budget estimates.

1,100,000 – the number of people the new government claims to have removed from the tax net between this Budget and the previous one.

50 per cent – the highest tax band in the UK, a rate which Osborne says he still considers to be temporary and hopes to remove in coming years.

23 per cent – the UK’s project rate of corporation tax in 2014, after a 2 per cent cut next month is followed by three further incremental annual cuts by 1 per cent.

97 – the number of pages of budget documentation produced by Osborne’s treasury.

21 – the number of pages, by comparison, of the document summarising the changes outlined in Brian Lenihan’s last Budget as Ireland’s own finance minister.

146,000,000,000 – the amount, in pounds, that the UK will have to borrow this year – a full £2.1bn below the previous estimate. This is to fall to £122bn next year and ultimately back down to £29bn by 2016.

40,000,000,000 – the amount, in pounds, of that borrowing that will be spent on defence in the 2011-2012 year.

43 – the number of various taxation reliefs being abolished, in what Osborne describes as a mass simplification of the tax code.

5 - the number of times Osborne thumped the podium in front of him, according to the eagle eyes of the Daily Telegraph.

0 - the number of red iPads containing Budget data wielded by Osborne outside the Commons, in spite of Guido Fawkes’ hopes that the chancellor would bring his notes in on one of Apple’s tablet devices. Osborne, instead, plumped for the traditional ‘red box’.

1 - the number of days before Northern Ireland’s own growth paper, examining the impact of the Budget measures on the province, is published.