News story

Budget 2013 to boost Northern Ireland economy and ensure fairness for families

What Budget 2013 means for Northern Ireland

From:
Northern Ireland Office, HM Treasury, and The Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP
Published
20 March 2013
This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Measures announced in today’s Budget will help everyone in Northern Ireland (NI) who wants to work hard and get on, look after their families, buy their own home, start or grow a business and save for retirement

Headline measures include:

  • Income tax reduction for 618,000 people in NI

  • 7,000 more people in NI lifted out of income tax altogether

  • Support towards child care costs for 80,000 NI families

  • National Insurance savings for 25,000 NI businesses

  • 10,000 NI businesses taken out of employer NICs

  • Extra £94m of capital spending power for the NI executive

Speaking from Washington DC, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers welcomed the Budget:

This Budget recognises the challenges facing Northern Ireland and the urgent need to renew and rebalance the economy away from an over-reliance on the public sector.

We need to boost private sector growth and jobs, and today’s announcements will provide a stimulus for that. We also need resolute measures to address community divisions - a stable and prosperous Northern Ireland requires action to build a build a genuinely shared and cohesive future for everyone, as well as a successful economy. The UK Government will work closely with the NI Executive on delivering both these goals.

Families and businesses across NI will benefit from a range of new measures aimed at supporting aspiration, creating jobs and helping with the cost of living.

Helping NI families:

  • Increasing the Personal Allowance to £10,000 in 2014-15 will benefit 618,000 people in NI and lift another 7,000 out of income tax altogether. Overall, changes to the personal allowance since 2010 will have taken 75,000 people out of income tax in NI

  • New childcare relief measures will support working families with 20% of childcare costs, helping 80,000 families in NI with 130,000 children aged under 12

  • A government equity guarantee on 95% mortgages will mean first time buyers in NI only need a £5,000 deposit on average

  • The cancellation of the fuel duty rise planned for September 2013 will save the typical NI motorist £25 per year

Boosting NI businesses:

  • The reduction in Corporation Tax to 20% will bring the UK rate to the joint-lowest in the G20, helping attract more foreign investment in NI

  • A new employment allowance from April 2014 will allow 25,000 NI businesses to offset £2,000 against their National Insurance bill, saving a total of £35m and taking 10,000 NI businesses out of employer NICs altogether

  • Cancelling the fuel duty rise will save NI van drivers around £50 and hauliers around £750 per year

  • NI’s aerospace cluster will benefit from access to the £2.1bn Aerospace Technology Institute, helping cement NI as a centre of excellence in the sector

  • 114,000 NI SMEs and mid-sized businesses will benefit from new measures announced for the Business Bank

  • The aggregates levy will remain at £2.00 per tonne from 1 April 2013, helping support the NI aggregates industry, which has been vulnerable to changes in the levy rate

  • Exempting Northern Ireland electricity generators from the carbon price floor from 1 April 2013, helping protect energy security

Budget 2013 also provides strong support for the NI Executive by:

  • Providing an additional £94m of capital spending power over the next two years

  • Increasing overall spending power by £54m over the next two years, bringing the total additional funding for Stormont to more than £900m since the last Spending Review

  • Reducing NI departmental budgets by just 0.2% compared to a 1% decrease for most Whitehall departments

Published 20 March 2013