enough to help households facing soaring energy costs and rising bills due to increasing inflation. rishi sunak insisted he d taken action to help people by cutting fuel duty and raising the income threshold for national insurance contributions. our political correspondent ione wells has more. tightening his grip on the cost of living squeeze. that was the hope of the chancellor at yesterday s spring statement. he announced a fuel duty cut of 5p per litre, said an income tax cut would come in 2024, and raised the threshold at which people start paying national insurance. that same tax is going up in april, but the chancellor sold this as a tax cut. it s the biggest personal tax cut in a decade. it means a typical worker will be over £330 better off as a result of our policies. 70% of workers will pay less tax, even accounting for the new levy. the office for budget responsibility framed it differently.
criticism from the labour party and also some conservative mps and peers, who said that was leaving some of those on the lowest income is really quite vulnerable, so there has been some pressure on the government to move on this. we are expecting that there might be changes to some of those universal credit payments announced in the budget. we are not expecting a total u turn on that £20 a week, but it may be that the government does something to what is called the taper rate. that means the amount you get to keep from you and your universal credit versus the amount you earn from your wages. it would effectively mean that people might be able to keep a bit more of their universal credit payments. it is important to say that this hasn t been confirmed yet, but there is an expectation that that might be one the government could look at around the government could look at around the cost of living squeeze, because thatis the cost of living squeeze, because that is where ministers are fee