Chancellor Philip Hammond has presented the 2017 Spring Budget
Budget provides "strong, stable platform for Brexit" Chancellor says
National insurance contributions will rise for the self-employed
£2bn extra for adult social care
Economic growth forecast raised for 2017 to 2%
Borrowing forecast cut to £51.7bn in 2016
Labour: Budget of 'utter complacency'
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Next up is social care.
The Chancellor says additional grant funding of £2bn will be given to social care in England over the next 3 years.
The first billion will be available in 2017/18.
However it is not just about money but strategy, he says and promises there will be a green paper on social care.
However he clarifies that the green paper will not include "exhuming Labour's heated death tax".
Theresa May has made selective schools a key part of her plans to build a "more meritocratic" Britain, not without controversy.
Yesterday the prime minister pledged more funding for new schools, potentially including grammars.
In his Budget speech, the Chancellor offers help to children from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend selective schools.
All pupils on free school meals will also be able to receive free travel to selective schools, he says.
Image source, epaThe Chancellor now announces the introduction of T-Levels which will replace 13,000 qualifications with just 15.
He also says the number of hours training for 16-19 year old technical students will increase by over 50%.
The new qualifications will include including a high-quality 3 month work placement for every student.
The Chancellor now turns to the question of skills
Will our children enjoy the same opportunities we did, he asks.
He announces that universities will be asked to sponsor free schools and barriers to setting up faith schools will be removed.
The government will enable the creation of new selective schools and 110 new free schools.
This announcement elicits heckles from Labour MPs.
Economics correspondent Andy Verity tweets:
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Ewan Venters, chief executive of Fortnum & Mason purveyors to the Royal Family says London will still be disproportionately hit by changes in business rates.
Quote Message"Our rates at Fortnum's will increase by 49%, and it will be hard for some businesses to cope with such a hike. The one area the new scheme does not address is a fairer rateable charge to online only businesses, who are typically operating from remote warehouse locations where any increase in rates will be marginal if not actually in decline. I believe this to be an unfair commercial advantage within the digital space, and gives a company like Amazon, for instance, a benefit on top of their low tax bills."
The Chancellor dishes out some of the £23bn of investment he announced in the Autumn.
The funding designed to help the UK compete in science and innovation includes:
Image source, paOn transport, he has a number of offers:
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The Chancellor repeats earlier announcements that working parents with three-and-four-year-olds will get their free childcare entitlement doubled to 30 hours a week.
He says he is using the occasion of International Women's Day to make three other announcements:
During PMQs Theresa May said extra money for returnships would mainly affect women.
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Image source, Getty ImagesIt seems a lifetime ago, but in the 2015 election manifesto the Conservatives promised to raise the personal allowance - the threshold at which workers pay income tax - to £12,500 a year by 2020.
It also pledged that by that time the 40% tax rate would not kick in until £50,000. Mr Hammond re-commits to both those pledges.
Image source, gOne of the most eye-catching policies in last year's Budget was a sugar tax on soft drinks.
Philip Hammond says the tax will raise less than forecast because producers are taking more sugar out of their drinks - "good news" for children, he adds.
The Education Department will still receive the £1bn originally earmarked from the levy, Mr Hammond says.
Image source, PAOn cigarettes he tells MPs that he is introducing a new minimum excise duty on cigarettes based on a pack price of £7.35.
He adds that he will make no changes to "previously planned upratings of duties on alcohol and tobacco.
He now turns to the "unfair discrepancy" between the total tax paid by an employed worker and one who has set up his own company.
He therefore announces that he will reduce the tax-free dividend allowance for directors/shareholders from £5,000 to £2,000 with effect from April 2018
There's also - as expected - an announcement from the Chancellor on higher taxes for self-employed workers.
Mr Hammond says that lower National Insurance contributions from self-employed workers is forecast to cost public finances £5bn this year alone.
To make the system "fairer", he says that NI contributions will rise for the self-employed by 1% to 10% from April next year.
That will then rise again to 11% in 2019
Together with other changes, this will raises a net £145m a year - around 60p a week per self-employed person, he adds.
Newsnight presenter Evan Davis tweets:
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Paul Johnson is the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
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