7 Autumn Statement Announcements That Are Less Impressive Than They Seem

Philip Hammond announced more houses, more generous rules on universal credit, investment in broadband, and more – but the small print matters.

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Philip Hammond gave his first Autumn Statement as chancellor on Wednesday, having been appointed by Theresa May in the summer when she became the prime minister. In his address he announced a package of measures to boost those who were "just about managing" – but not all of them do as much as it first seems.

1. A new fund to deliver 100,000 new homes.

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Hammond announced an extra £2.3 billion of funding to help build homes to address the UK's chronic housing shortage. This was welcomed by housing organisations, but some felt it was only a start. The UK government has committed to building a million homes in five years.

“The measures announced during the Autumn Statement today to boost housebuilding go some way to making the housing market work for everyone, but quite frankly do not go far enough," Mark Hayward , managing director of the National Association of Estate Agents, told BuzzFeed News.

Labour politicians also sounded the alarm over a government decision to relax the rules over what qualifies for grant funding on affordable homes. This does allow more types of property to be built, but could hit the already tiny number of socially rented homes built.

“These astonishing figures in the small print of today’s official Office for Budget Responsibility report show that the overall effect of the Autumn Statement housing changes will be 13,000 fewer affordable homes," said shadow housing minister John Healey, referring to housing association properties.

“This blows a hole in the claims made by the chancellor today. After we learnt last week that new affordable housebuilding has fallen to its lowest level in 24 years, Ministers must now urgently sort out this mess and get Britain building again after six years of failure.”

2. The tampon tax will be donated to women's charities.

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Philip Hammond announced that women's charities would receive £3 million – distributed by Comic Relief – from proceeds of the 5% of VAT paid on women's sanitary products, an unpopular tax the UK government says it cannot abolish due to EU rules.

However, this measure had already been announced by George Osborne, who suggested it would amount to a contribution of £15 million a year. Women's groups also said the money was a "drop in the ocean" compared to the extent of cuts to services including refuge centres for victims of domestic violence.

Even Ros Altman, a Conservative peer and former minister, tweeted disparagingly about the announcement.

Ros Altmann @rosaltmann

£3m from tampon tax fund to go to Comic Relief for women's charities - is that a joke?

01:07 PM - 23 Nov 2016

3. New funding for grammar schools.

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One of Theresa May's most controversial policies – and a significant departure from the stance of her predecessor, David Cameron – was to announce support for new grammar schools.

This policy received strong opposition from Labour and several Conservative backbench MPs, and some expect May could be forced to make concessions or abandon the policy altogether.

Hammond announced today he was issuing "new capital funding" for grammar schools. However, analysis by BuzzFeed News shows this is just £50 million a year – around 0.1% of the UK schools budget – for existing grammar schools. Even this funding to grammars, which tend to have a richer intake than general schools, could face opposition from MPs.

4. Funding the NHS.

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"The government, Mr Speaker, has pledged to invest in our NHS, and we are delivering on that promise," Philip Hammond said in the House of Commons. "Backing the NHS’s Five Year Forward View plan for the future with £10 billion of additional funding a year by the end of 2020-21."

Despite speaking of funding for the NHS – and using a figure NHS leaders dispute – Hammond actually announced no new funding for the NHS or health in this year's Autumn Statement, scotching hopes of help for a cash-strapped health service already facing severe budget deficits.

“I don’t know a single doctor who, like me, isn’t terrified of patients dying as a result of these draconian cuts to NHS funding,” one doctor told BuzzFeed News.

Similarly, despite referring to help for childcare in the Autumn Statement, Hammond announced no new policies in this area.

5. A "national productivity investment fund".

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Philip Hammond announced a series of new infrastructure projects the government would back, funded to boost the UK economy – though several of these were pre-briefed ahead of the Autumn Statement.

In his actual statement, Hammond referred to these projects as part of a "national productivity investment fund" (NPIF) – though it appears this will not be a formally set-up ongoing fund, but rather a branding exercise on a set of projects, as the chief political correspondent of the Financial Times noted.

Jim Pickard @PickardJE

What is National Productivity Investment Fund? 1] It isn't a fund 2] It's rebranding of housing, roads, R&D announcements from this week.

03:55 PM - 23 Nov 2016

In reality, branding the projects under the NPIF label seems to have been an effort to say the rest of the Autumn Statement wasn't an unfunded giveaway, but was funded through tax rises on businesses and a few other measures.

If the NPIF and some cancelled decisions are excluded, the statement appears not to affect the overall deficit – but once they're included, it's a multibillion pound spending spree.

HM Treasury

6. £1 billion extra funding for broadband.

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Hammond announced £1 billion for a series of measures to improve the UK's rollout of ultra-fast fibre broadband, 5G, and to "keep the UK in the forefront

of the development of the Internet of Things".

However, Louise Haigh, the shadow minister of the digital economy, noted that despite this help the UK would still lag well behind other countries on internet access.

Louise Haigh MP @LouHaigh

I'm sure investment in broadband will be made to sound like a big deal today. It really isn't #AutumnStatement https://t.co/HUmfhvWOeH

08:03 AM - 23 Nov 2016

Louise Haigh MP @LouHaigh

Gvt’s ultrafast broadband pledge will take us to dizzying heights of 7% household coverage by 2020. Latvia & Lithuania got there in 2012.

12:20 PM - 22 Nov 2016

7. Doing more to help those "just about managing".

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Much of the pre-briefing around the Autumn Statement focused on what Hammond would do for the "just about managing", the new political demographic identified by Theresa May. The measure announced which most directly does this was a change in the "taper rate" for people on universal credit.

This rate measures how much money is taking away from families getting universal credit – which will replace allowances including child tax credits etc with a single payment – as they start to earn more money. Previously, this was 65p, but this was reduced by Hammond to 63p. While this provides an income boost of up to around £430 to some families, it was greeted as underwhelming even by some Conservative commentators.

Tim Montgomerie ن @montie

Sadly, gap between TMay's Downing Street rhetoric and the Autumn Statement looks huge. People voted for change on 2… https://t.co/CFMMMmArDB

10:13 PM - 22 Nov 2016

The main driver for this disquiet is that previously announced cuts to welfare – which have yet to take effect but have not been cancelled – will for most low-earning families more than outweigh the small relief announced today, leaving them up to £3,650 poorer than they would otherwise have been (in cash terms) by 2020.

The well-respected Resolution Foundation think tank calculated the effects of today's changes, as well as all others announced since the last election, on a range of "just managing" families set out below.