Why can’t the SNP just take the money?

FIRST, the good news. This was a million miles from the panic-stricken emergency Budget George Osborne warned us to expect if Britain voted to leave the EU.

Remember the former chancellor told us Brexit would mean income tax rising dramatically, with public services slashed, to fill a £30billion black hole as growth stalled and unemployment soared.

What a different picture his successor Philip Hammond presented in the Commons yesterday, when he delivered his first Spring Budget since the referendum.

Speaking with unruffled assurance – even throwing in jokes at the Opposition’s expense – he displayed barely a hint of anxiety about the economy.

Why should he? True, the national debt remains terrifyingly high, at almost £1.7trillion. But with this year’s borrowing £16.4billion lower than predicted, we’re on course to meet his modest target of starting to claw our way towards the black in the next parliament.

To confound scaremongers further, inflation seems under control – and even the pessimistic Office for Budget Responsibility has upgraded its 2017 growth forecasts yet again, confirming Britain’s place in the top two fastestgrowing countries in the developed world.

Indeed, far from emergency cuts, Mr Hammond found money – crucially, Scotland will benefit to the tune of £350million.

How illuminating that the SNP’s reaction to this windfall was to gripe. Why couldn’t it seize the chance to tell us it would use the millions to limit the cuts it is inflicting on local authorities or tackle the yawning attainment gap in schools?

The money also dwarfs the extra revenue Finance Secretary Derek Mackay will drag in by making Scots the highest-taxed workers in the UK, a tag that damages the economy and risks scaring off investors.

This tax raid could be abandoned in a trice but the SNP is too busy moaning about having £350million thrust into its wallets as though it were some sort of imposition. Though Mr Hammond loosened the purse strings here, he otherwise lived up to his nickname of Spreadsheet Phil. He sounded more like an accountant tinkering with a balance sheet than a statesman at this momentous juncture, preparing for Brexit. Of course, dullness and caution are not necessarily bad qualities in a Chancellor. Indeed, this paper respects Mr Hammond’s reluctance to take risks with the deficit, particularly as the economy is sure to turn down as the business cycle nears its end.

But his modest investments in boosting productivity – with the accent on infrastructure and research in cutting-edge technologies – are unlikely to transform our prospects.

Hardest to forgive, however, was the way he tried disguise the impact of his new taxes. For a start, Mr Hammond’s decision to make the self-employed pay more National Insurance was a naked breach of a Tory manifesto pledge not to raise rates. It is simply dishonest to pretend the promise referred only to Class 1 contributions, not Class 4 ones.

Highly disingenuous, too, is his claim that those affected will pay an ‘average’ of only 60p a week more, when millions will be paying an extra £240 a year.

Meanwhile, more than a million nest eggs will be hit by his £3,000 reduction in the tax-free allowance for shareholders and directors of small private firms – and insurance premiums are set to rise by some 10 per cent.

Indeed, Mr Hammond is targeting the prudent and hard-working – the very people who ‘do the right thing’, whom the Tories promised to protect.

To be fair, he has indicated that the real Budget will be in November. Could he at least try to be more honest then?