Autumn Statement

Chancellor George Osborne has scrapped a planned 3p rise in fuel duty, but benefits face a further squeeze as he admitted the UK economy was struggling. There will be more money for roads, London's Underground and schools, but councils were warned of cuts to come.
Austerity measures will be extended to 2018, as debt-cutting targets are missed, his Autumn Statement revealed.
"Turning back now would be a disaster" for the UK, he said. But Labour said his credibility was "in tatters".
Mr Osborne had said debt would start falling as a proportion of GDP by 2015/16 - the year of the next general election.


But he has been forced to delay that target by a year because of the worse than expected state of the economy, which is now expected to shrink this year by 0.1%.
The Office for Budgetary Responsibility says the UK has a "better than 50% chance of eliminating the structural current deficit in five years time", said the chancellor - meaning his other key objective has been pushed back by a year to 2017/18.


This move heralds a fresh benefits squeeze and a raid on the pensions of the wealthy.
Most working age benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance and Child Benefit, will go up by 1%, less than the rate of inflation, for the next three years.

But Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, for Labour, accused Mr Osborne of breaking his own rules, on which his credibility depended. "Today after two and a half years we can see, and people can feel in the country, the true scale of this government's economic failure," Mr Balls told MPs

He said the average family with children on £20,000 a year would be "worse off" - even with the personal allowance changes.