Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer approached the despatch box with renewed swagger to deliver the first Conservative budget in almost 20 years. The Chancellor could barely disguise his satisfaction at being able to announce big-ticket announcements on tax, spending and welfare designed to convince voters across the UK that the Conservative Party is wedded to a “we’re all in it together” philosophy.

The Chancellor statement that he was delivering a “New settlement….A Budget that sets out a plan for Britain for the next five years to keep moving us from a low wage, high tax, high welfare economy; to the higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare country we intend to create." Yet the stark economic landscape remains clear with around £37 billion of further fiscal consolidation required over the 5 year Parliament.

To try to remedy the deficit problem the Chancellor announced a series of welfare reforms designed to save the UK Treasury £9bn by 2019-20. It wasn’t all pain though, with a final flourish the Chancellor announced a new National Living Wage of £9 per hour, a surprise that is likely to grab the attention of the press and political commentators over the coming days.

Economic Figures

• National Living Wage: A new National Living Wage is to be introduced. It will apply to over-25s. It will start in 2016 at £7.20, rising to £9 a year by 2020.For small firms National Insurance Employment Allowance is to be increased by 50% to £3,000 from 2016 to help them cope with the rise in National Living Wage payments.

• Economic growth: UK’s economy grew by 3% in the last 12 months, up on the forecast figure of 2.6%. In the March budget it was thought the economy grew by 2.6% last year. The OBR has forecast the economy will grow by 2.3% in 2016 (same figure in March budget) and 2.4% in 2017 up from the 2.3% forecast in March.

• Borrowing: Borrowing is expected to be at £69.5bn for this fiscal year, £43.1bn for the next fiscal year and £23.3bn in 2017/18. The deficit -the gap between borrowing and income-which was 10.2% of national income in 2010 is expected to be 3.7% this year and 2.2% in 2016/17.

• National Debt:  The Chancellor has published a new ‘Fiscal Charter’ which commits the Government to keeping debt falling as a share of GDP each and every year and to achieving a Budget surplus by 2019-20. Osborne stated a budget surplus is forecast to be £10bn in 2019-20, and £11.6bn in 2020-21. He said “Britain has turned the corner. It has left the age of responsibility behind”.

• Unemployment:  There are two million more people in work since start of last Parliament. The OBR has forecast one million more in employment over the next five years. The Chancellor stated he wanted 2 million more people in work to help achieve full employment.

• Income Tax:  A tax lock to prohibit increases in main rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT for five years will be legislated for in coming weeks. Tax-free personal allowance will be raised from £10,600 to £11,000 next year, as a step towards a target of £12,500. The threshold for 40p rate of taxation is raised from £42,385 in this tax year to £43,000 in 2016-17. The Chancellor stated that 29m people will pay less tax due to this decision.

Announcements of interest for Northern Ireland

• Stormont House Agreement: No reference was made in the Budget Speech or in the Budget Book to the devolution of corporation tax in Northern Ireland. Instead the Chancellor called on Northern Ireland political parties to work together to honour the Stormont House agreement to “ensure that the potential of the Agreement to support recovery and growth is realised.”

• Corporation Tax: The Government will reduce the corporation tax rate from 20% to 19% in 2017 and 18% in 2020. The Government will introduce new payment dates for companies with annual taxable profits of £20 million or more, they will be required to make quarterly payments from 2017.

• Apprenticeships: The Government has committed to providing 3 million apprenticeships in England this parliament. The Government has stated that this will require funding from employers. As such the Government will introduce a levy on large UK employers to fund the new apprenticeships. This approach “aims to reverse the long-term trend of employer underinvestment in training, which has seen the number of employees who attend a training course away from the workplace fall from 141,000 in 1995 to 18,000 in 2014.” Details including rates and implementation will be set out in the Spending Review.

• Benefits: The Government has found £12bn of welfare savings. Measures include restrictions to automatic entitlement to housing benefits to those aged 18-21 who are not earning or learning. From 2017 all working parents of three and four year olds must work if they wish to gain universal benefits. Perhaps most controversially tax credit and universal credit support to be limited to the first two children are to come into effect from April 2017.

• Child care: The Budget confirmed that from September 2017, the free childcare entitlement will be doubled from 15 hours to 30 hours a week for working parents of 3 and 4 year olds. This will support those who choose to go out to work. This free childcare is worth around £5,000 a year per child.

• Planning: The Chancellor stated that UK planning reforms would be announced in a separate statement on Friday.

Other announcements of note

• Housing: The Chancellor stated that buy-to-let landlords have an advantage, because they can offset mortgage payments against income. That has encouraged the growth of buy-to-let mortgages. As such mortgage tax relief for buy-to-let landlords to be restricted to the basic rate. In addition, a new allowance will increase the inheritance tax threshold, so that people will be able to pass on estates worth up to £1m free of inheritance tax. It will not apply to estates worth more than £2m.

• Non- Doms: The Chancellor moved to tighten non-dom tax rules with permanent non-dom status to be abolished. In addition the tax status will no longer be inheritable.

• Pensions: The tax allowance for high earners putting money into pensions will be cut to £10,000. Osborne is to consult on creating ISA-style pensions, where people would lose the tax relief when they pay in, but would be able to take their money out tax free. Dividend tax credit will be replaced by a new £5,000 tax-free dividend allowance. But dividend tax rates are going up from zero to 7.5pc for basic rate income tax payers, from 25pc to 32.5pc for higher rate taxpayers, and from 30.56pc to 38.1pc for additional rate payers.