The Autumn Statement was hailed as being pro small business and the Self Employed. A freezing for a further year of the 75% reduction of business rates for Retail, Hospitality, and Leisure doesn’t help any business that is growing the economy by manufacturing, or any form of technology.

A reduction of employees National Insurance contribution from 12% to 10% looks really good on the surface. Abolition of NI for the self-employed saves them £158.60 a year, but there could be a downside. The allowance to big business to allow total offset against tax for new investment is a massive benefit to them. Most don’t pay minimum wage, so their annual costs don’t rise. No raising of personal allowance at the different thresholds of income means fiscal drag will continue to add more tax as wages increase to catch up with inflation. Apparently 4 million more people will start paying tax at the higher rate.

For a small business employing people on minimum wage of £10.34 an hour, 37 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, employees were receiving £19,894 gross, less £1,465 tax and less £1,239 National Insurance (at 12%). Total deductions £2,704. Take home pay £17,190.

The government has raised the minimum wage by £1.10 per hour to £11.44, which means for a 37-hour week, 52 weeks a year, the employee will have gross wage of £22,010, less tax of £1,888 and NI (at 10%) of £1,244. Total deductions £3,132. Take home pay £18,878, an increase of £1,688. Yippee for the employee.

The wage bill per employee has risen by £2,116, plus, the employer NI of 15% per employee of £317.40. Total cost to the employer is an increase of £2,433.40 per employee per year. Loss of profit for the small business.

The government will be getting additional Tax and NI of £428 from the employee, plus additional £317.40 from the employer, a total of £745.40. Yippee for the government.

The self-employed have no such thing as a minimum wage and the government is abolishing their small NI contribution of £158.20 a year. That’s good isn’t it. But beware, the state pension is based on the number of weeks worked in a year and the number of years paying NI contributions up to a maximum of 40 years. Abolishing self-employed NI contributions now paves the way to reduce the state pension by 1 year every year for the next 40 years. That amounts to a state pension reduction of 2.5% per year and completely phasing it out for the self-employed by 2063. Yippee for the government which has now found a way to reduce the future unaffordable state pension.

Universal Credit is to increase by 6.7%, equivalent to £450 per year, and there is to be an £800 a year

increase in Housing Benefit. People on benefits are linked to the Gross Average Wage, not the take home pay of those on minimum wage. You are still better off not doing minimum wage work. Yippee for the people on benefits.

The State Pension is linked to the triple lock, and they are unable to break the lock because retired people are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour. The average Public Sector pay rose by 8.5% so although unaffordable economically it is worthwhile politically. Yippee for Pensioners.

The Renewable Industry has been claiming for several years now how unbelievably the cost of offshore windfarms is falling. At the previous auction for sites the rate was set at £44 per MWh of generation. So, with costs apparently falling the latest new offshore wind farm sites should be snapped up. Unfortunately, there was not a single tender for a site, because like everything else the cost of creating and maintaining offshore wind farms is increasing dramatically. So, the government has increased the offer by 33% and is now offering £66 per MWh in the hope of selling offshore sites. At the same time the government is claiming that by creating more offshore wind farms that energy bills will go down. Both the Renewable Industry and the Government are blatantly lying. All other governments know that the cheapest source of energy is coal.

Over the last two or three years the average annual fuel bill has increased from £1,000 to £2,500 or more. None of the Chancellors ‘so called tax reductions’ come close to redressing this issue. Many businesses are now uneconomic, and households are struggling.

The steel industry here has to switch from imported coal and coke for blast furnaces for making steel from ore. They instead have to use Electric Arc Furnaces that cannot reach the required temperature to refine iron ore into steel. Henceforth they can only use recycled iron and steel as their source material. Refining ore must now be done overseas. All this to supposedly meet the Net Zero target.

We could again be economically viable for manufacturing and commercial and domestic fuel, and bills could fall dramatically if we stopped subsidising unreliable and costly renewables and re-started mining coal and started fracking for gas instead of importing it to produce low cost continuously available energy.

Importing gas and coal is just geography and isn’t actually reducing the UK CO 2 footprint. It is an extremely expensive illusion. Is there no end to the amount of sacrifice on the altar of Climate Change?

Antony Nailer

UK Independence Party Spokesman for Treasury