Summary of Items

The list below is taken directly from Official Documents issued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Pre-Budget Report describes the next steps the Government is taking to enhance its long term goals in a number of areas. Some of those areas are addressed below:

I. Meeting the Productivity Challenge

• investing in a new ambition for world-class skills, increasing adult skills across all levels and strengthening employer voice in their provision -by taking forward the recommendations of the Leitch Review;
• investing in the growth of the UK's science and innovation system - through a single health research fund of at least £1 billion, taking forward the recommendations of the Cooksey Review, and ensuring a more balanced, coherent and flexible regime for intellectual property, as set out in the Gowers Review;
• enabling greater flexibility in the land use planning system to ensure it contributes to economic growth while delivering its wider sustainable development goals - by taking forward the Barker Review;
• investing in transport infrastructure to maximise the return on investment in transport – by taking forward the recommendations of the Eddington Transport Study;
• investing in the growth of sustainable housing supply - including further acceleration of the release of surplus public sector land and greater ambitions for assisted home ownership through shared equity schemes; and
• increasing business flexibility by reducing unnecessary burdens on business - by creating certainty for business, by implementing the recommendations of the Varney Review of HMRC Links with Large Business, and driving forward implementation of the Hampton Review's risk-based approach to regulation, and the Davidson Review's recommendations to reduce any gold plating of EU legislation.

II. Increasing Employment Opportunity for All

• extending the support offered to lone parents who move into work by maintaining the In-Work Credit in the current pilot areas for a further six months
• improving the Jobseeker's Allowance intervention regime by offering expert work-search support at the new claim stage, and extending the Job Grant of £100 (£250 to claimants with children) to 18-24 year old jobseekers;
• improving enforcement of the National Minimum Wage by increasing by 50 per cent the resources allocated to tackle noncompliance and raising penalties for the seriously non-compliant;
• providing funding to improve the administration of Housing Benefit and to raise awareness that Housing Benefit is available to those in work;
• taking forward measures to simplify and reduce error in the benefits system; and
• raising the earnings disregard to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit in line with indexation to £15.45 in April 2007, ensuring that claimants gain from increases in the rate of Working Tax Credits.

III. Building a Fairer Society

• from April 2007, the value of the child element of Child Tax Credit will rise by £80 to £1,845 per year;
• from April 2009, additional support for all families, with every mother-to-be becoming eligible for Child Benefit from week 29 of their pregnancy, so that women will be up to £200 better off;
• an extension of the Warm Front programme, targeting 300,000 of the most vulnerable pensioner and other households, community by community;
• making Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) permanent, beyond 2010, to provide stability for savers and certainty for the industry. In addition, the introduction of a package of reforms to the ISA, designed to simplify the regime, will make it more flexible for savers and providers and further promote saving;
• a package of measures responding to the consultation on the role of the third sector in social and economic regeneration, including the establishment of a new £30 million Community Asset Transfer fund and the guarantee of three years of funding passed on to third sector organisations;
• the establishment of an international research collaborative for the development sciences, led by a high level steering board including leading scientists; and
• further reforms to modernise the tax system and protect tax revenues, including work to tackle tax avoidance.

IV. Protecting the Environment

• promoting the development of a global carbon market through the expansion and strengthening of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and linking it to schemes outside the EU;
• taking further steps towards realising carbon capture and storage technology, including tendering for consulting engineers to help enable a decision in 2007 on whether to support a UK-based demonstration plant;
• an increase in all rates of air passenger duty, with effect from 1 February 2007, in recognition of the environmental costs air travel;
• an inflation-based increase of 1.25 pence per litre (ppl) in the rate of road fuel duty with effect from midnight tonight; and the same increase of 1.25 ppl in duty for rebated fuels, maintaining the differential with main fuel duty rates;
• a package of measures to encourage the development of the biofuels market and innovative types of biofuels;
• an ambition for all new homes to be zero carbon within a decade with a time-limited stamp duty exemption for the vast majority of new zero-carbon homes that meet this standard;
• legislation to ensure householders installing microgeneration are not subject to income tax on any payment for surplus electricity exported back to the grid;
• the extension of the Landlords Energy Saving Allowance to 2015 and to corporate landlords; and
• confirmation that the standard rate of landfill tax will increase by £3 per tonne to £24 per tonne with effect from 1 April 2007. The Government will also consider the case for steeper increases in the tax from 2008.