Schools will be offered a £600 bounty for every extra pupil taking A-level maths to improve Britain’s skills after Brexit.
Philip Hammond will unveil a package of measures in today’s Budget designed to boost education and skills, as he warns that improving Britain’s productivity is essential as the UK prepares to leave the EU.
Mr Hammond, nicknamed ‘Eeyore’ by critics for his gloomy view of Brexit, will also attempt to strike a more upbeat note about the UK’s prospects as he fights to save his job.
Philip Hammond will announce his Budget on Wednesday and is expected to pledge £180million to improve maths teaching as part of an initiative to improve workplace skills
The Chancellor will also promise billions for housing with a target to build 300,000 new homes per year and plans to make it easier for councils to build
Setting out his vision for a new ‘global Britain’, he will say the UK has the chance to become ‘an outward-looking free-trading nation, a force for good in the world, a country fit for the future’.
Relations between the Treasury and 10 Downing Street have been strained in the run-up to the Budget, with fresh speculation that the Chancellor could be sacked in a New Year reshuffle if today’s package unravels in the way his March Budget did.
Even one ally of the Chancellor last night conceded that his statement today could ‘make or break’ his political career.
The Treasury briefed last month that Mr Hammond was planning a ‘bold’ Budget to reconnect with voters in the wake of this year’s election setback for the Tories.
But, following warnings from party whips about the difficulty of pushing through radical measures, he has opted for a more cautious package.
One Cabinet minister told the Mail last week the Budget looked set to be a ‘car crash’. The Chancellor is expected to:
- Announce billions to tackle the housing crisis, including a new target to build 300,000 homes a year and measures to make it easier for councils to build;
- Confirm that the national debt is on course to start falling as a proportion of GDP for the first time since the financial crisis;
- Introduce measures to help younger voters, including a possible cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers, and the extension of the young person’s railcard to all under-30s;
- Insist that public sector workers must improve their productivity in return for an easing of the 1 per cent pay cap;
- Announce a 40 per cent increase in research and development spending to make the UK a world leader in areas such as driverless cars and robotics;
- Stick to his plan to wipe out the deficit left by Labour by the middle of the 2020s.
Mr Hammond will warn that the UK needs to ’embrace change, meet our challenges head on and seize the opportunities for Britain’ as we prepare to leave the EU in March 2019.
And he will say the UK needs to improve its flagging productivity, which has been flatlining for a decade, putting a brake on living standards.
He will announce a £180million investment in maths teaching, arguing that better workplace maths skills are essential to ensure the UK ‘remains a competitive force in the global marketplace’.
Schools and colleges will receive an additional £600 for every extra pupil studying maths A-level, allowing them to invest in better provision.
More help for young voters will come in the extension of the young person’s railcard to everyone under the age of 30. The current cut-off is 25
Teachers in underperforming schools will be offered training grants worth up to £1,000 each to improve their skills.
Mr Hammond will set aside more than £80million to train an extra 8,000 computer science teachers. The Chancellor has been warned that Eurosceptic MPs will seize on any slip-ups in today’s Budget to make life difficult for him.
Mr Hammond faced humiliation in March when he was forced to drop a Budget raid on the self-employed within days following a ferocious backlash.
MPs have urged him to drop plans to increase diesel duty by a penny a litre and drop the VAT threshold for small businesses.
The Chancellor indicated last night he will reject calls to abandon austerity, saying the Budget would be ‘balanced’.
Labour has demanded large-scale investment in infrastructure to boost manufacturing, new cash for the public services, a major housebuilding programme and a pause in the Government’s flagship Universal Credit welfare reform.