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The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service would get an extra £2 billion for the time being, £750 million of it diverted from elsewhere in the Department of Health budget. Another £1.1 billion from bankers’ fines would go to support GPs. Labour said it would give the NHS twice as much. Out of the £15 billion already set aside by the government for roads, a tunnel would be built for the A303 past Stonehenge. Of £2.3 billion (over six years) earmarked for flood prevention, only £4.3 million was set aside for the Somerset Levels, but £196 million for the Thames estuary. An intention to build 55,000 new homes a year until 2020 was announced, including a new garden city of 13,000 houses at Bicester, Oxfordshire. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to admit that he had missed the target announced in 2010 of eliminating the nation’s annual deficit by next April, since annual borrowing would hardly come in at less than last year’s £97.5 billion. But the Office for Budget Responsibility revised this year’s growth forecast from 2.7 to 3 per cent. Mr Osborne announced help for small businesses, a review of business rates and autonomy for Northern Ireland in setting its corporation tax.
Owen Paterson, a former cabinet minister, said that David Cameron, the Prime Minister, had been ‘sat on’ by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, and made to drop any mention of curbing migration from the European Union in his much-awaited speech. Mr Cameron proposed that migrants should not qualify for benefits until they had worked in Britain for four years. He came nearest to mentioning withdrawal from the EU by saying that if ‘we cannot put our relationship with the EU on a better footing, then of course I rule nothing out’.
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