No mention of Brexit as Chancellor focuses upon key workers and the foreign poor to pay for soaring debt

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has set out government spending plans and latest economic forecasts.

Here are the main points:

£18bn allocated to testing, PPE and vaccines next year and £3bn for the NHS plus over £2bn to keep transport arteries open, more than £3bn to local authorities and £250m to help end rough sleeping

Altogether public services funding to tackle coronavirus next year will be £55bn

1. This year a total of £280bn provided “to get our country through coronavirus”
2. The OBR expects GDP to shrink by 11.3% this year, the biggest decline in more than 300 years
3. GDP expected to grow by 5.5% in 2021 but will not recover to pre-crisis levels until the fourth quarter of 2022
4. Borrowing is expected to reach £394bn for the current fiscal year, or 19% of GDP – the highest recorded level of borrowing in peacetime
5. The chancellor confirms £3bn for a three-year Restart programme to help a million people who have been unemployed for over a year to find jobs
6. Unemployment is expected to peak at 7.5% in the second quarter of next year

1. Pay rises for over a million nurses, doctors and others working in the NHS but pay rises “paused” for the rest of the public sector next year
2. However the 2.1 million public sector workers earning less than £24,000 will receive a rise of at least £250 – and this means the majority of public employees will see their pay increase in 2021
3. The national living wage will rise by 2.2% to £8.91 per hour and extended to those aged 23 and over. For a full-time worker on the national living wage, that’s an increase of £345 next year. National minimum wage will also increase.
4. Over this year and next, departmental spending will rise in real terms by 3.8%, the the fastest growth rate in 15 years
5. There’s £2.4bn more for Scotland, £1.3bn for Wales and £900m for Northern Ireland
6. Core health budget rises by £6.6bn next year, allowing the government to deliver 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more GP appointments, Mr Sunak said
7. There will also be a £2.3bn increase in capital investments in the NHS – to replace old MRI and CT scanners and fund a promised hospital building programme
8. Schools budget to increase by £2.2bn next year and a £291m boost for further education plus £1.5bn to rebuild colleges and £375m to deliver the PM’s lifetime skills guarantee
9. £400m to recruit 6,000 new police officers and £4bn over four years for 18,000 new prison places
10. Spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid is “difficult to justify” and at a time of “unprecedented crisis”: it is being cut to 0.5% in 2021 but with the intention to return to 0.7% when the fiscal situation allows
11. Capital spending next year will total £100bn, £27bn more than last year in real terms
12. £7.1bn national home building fund
13. A new national infrastructure bank, headquartered in the north of England, will work with the private sector to finance major new investment projects across the UK, starting in the spring
14. Local authorities to be given extra flexibility to raise council tax which – together with an extra £300m grant from Whitehall – will give them an extra £1bn to spend on social care
15. “Levelling up” fund worth £4bn to pay for local projects with “real impact” – such as bypasses, railway station upgrades, traffic reduction, libraries, museums and galleries as well as high street and town centre improvements.

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