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Budget 2026: Key points at a glance - Published Chancellor John Healey has set out the government's tax and spending plans in his Budget – the first since Andy Burnham became prime minister. Here is a summary of the main points. - One-off £100 payment for up to 20 million households in council tax bands A-D in England to help deal with rising energy bills, with equivalent funding for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - Standing charges – fixed daily fees customers pay regardless of usage – to be removed from household gas bills in England, Scotland and Wales, with costs added to the unit rate instead - VAT cut on electricity bills extended to July - A green levy - the Gas Shipper Obligation to fund hydrogen projects - to be removed from energy bills and put on to general taxation - Freeze on fuel duty extended again to July - Import taxes to be removed on more than 100 food products, including gherkins and marmalade, as well as kerosene and fertilisers - A 55p per mile tax-free mileage rate for those driving up to 10,000 miles for work made permanent, with the rate rising from 25p per mile to 35p above that distance - A new scheme taking 25% off electricity bills for 10,000 energy-intensive businesses to launch in April, with payments backdated for energy costs this year - An extra 2% tax on income from savings and property rental from April - Amount people can put into tax-free cash Isas (Individual Savings Accounts) to remain at £20,000 a year, with plans to lower the limit to £12,000 for under-65s scrapped - Surcharge banks pay on their profits to rise from 3% to 6% for 15 months, starting in January - Threshold at which High Street shops start paying business rates in England to be increased from £12,000 to £18,000, meaning businesses would pay no rates on properties with a rateable value below this level - Adult games centres and vape shops will no longer qualify for certain business rates relief - Taxes on gambling machines with stakes over £1 to rise from 20% to 25% - Online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Temu to be made responsible for collecting VAT owed by sellers using their platforms - New, flat-rate state pension to rise by £488 a year from April – equivalent to 3.9% - under the triple lock policy, with old basic state pension to rise by £374.40 - A new tax-free allowance for low-income pensioners, to ensure those with income up to the value of the full new state pension will not pay income tax - Legal minimum wage to rise by 3.9% in April - Unpaid carers will no longer lose their entire Carer's Allowance if they earn more than £204 a week after tax, with a taper rate introduced instead - Parental pay extended to self-employed fathers and parents in same-sex couples - Your pay, energy bills and savings: How the Budget affects you - Published9 hours ago - The one thing that didn't change that will affect your pay the most - Published8 hours ago - New scheme to help first-time buyers in England purchase a home, offering government-backed loans to households earning less than £110,000, or £140,000 inside London - A new First Time Buyer ISA to be introduced from April 2029, to replace the Lifetime ISA and help people save a deposit for their first home - Lifetime ISA holders buying a property above the £450,000 cap will pay a reduced withdrawal charge of 20%, down from 25% - An extra £1bn for social and affordable housing in England, taking total funding for the 10-year programme to more than £40bn - An extra £432m for a programme aimed at giving every rough sleeper in England a route off the streets by Christmas - All business rates to be retained locally by the end of the decade, with mayors to keep 20% of revenue from next year - A share of income tax receipts to go to mayors from 2028 - Regional bodies and mayors in England to get greater powers over spending, starting with £285m next year for things like housing, transport and High Streets - Government to work with mayors to design a £1.5bn borrowing facility, enabling investment in larger projects - Defence Investment Plan to be fully funded through a further 1% cut to capital budgets of other government departments, after Sir Keir Starmer only committed £10.3bn for the £15bn plan - Details of how the government will meet a Nato commitment to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035 to be set out at next year's Spending Review, with a target date for 3% in 2030 - Extra £10bn of economic and military support for Ukraine - More than £600m of investment in projects related to artificial intelligence (AI), including an extra £120m for the UK's AI Security Institute and £100m for a national AI Biosecurity Lab - A £7m fund to explore a possible future bid to hold the Olympics and Paralympics in northern England - Fund to tackle misogyny in schools, at work and in communities to get £15m - Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts the UK economy will grow by 1.2% this year, up from a previous estimate of 1.1% - Growth then expected to slow to 1% next year, a downgrade from the watchdog's previous forecast of 1.6%, before lifting back to 1.6% in 2028 - Inflation – the rate prices rise – is predicted to average 3.1% this year and then 3.4% in 2027, a hike on previous forecasts, before declining to the government's 2% target in 2028 - Government borrowing is predicted to be higher than previously expected in every year of the latest forecast - But borrowing as a proportion of GDP is forecast to fall to 4.2% this year, dipping each year of the forecast to 1.8% in 2030/31 - UK national debt set to rise from 96% of GDP this year to 97% in 2028/29, before falling back to 96% in 2031 Get in touch Do you have any views, comments or questions about this story? 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