Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 21 March 2016

It’s been a turbulent few days for the Tory Party following a bitter row over £4 billion of cuts to benefits for the disabled, announced in the Budget last Wednesday, and the resignation of the work and pensions secretary. Today Iain Duncan Smith’s replacement will tell the Commons that the proposed changes to disability benefits – known as Personal Independence Payments (PIP) – have been abandoned. Opponents of the move said it could have affected up to 640,000 people, with recipients losing up to £100 a week. And there has been widespread criticism of the Chancellor’s decision to cut benefits to the vulnerable at the same time as announcing a rise in the higher rate tax threshold. The weekend press digested the raft of measures laid out in the Budget with many focusing on George Osborne’s unveiling of the Lifetime ISA – or LISA. Under the terms of the new product, anyone aged between 18 and 40 can open one, and any savings deposited into it before age 50 will receive a 25 per cent bonus from the government.