£200 million extra for Leeds station and more local powers: John Healey delivers first budget

Those close to the Chancellor John Healey say his decades serving as a South Yorkshire MP means he understands the issues really affecting families and businesses. This budget was a chance to prove that. The big headline was a pledge to help people with their energy bills over the winter. Households in council tax bands A to D, of which there are over 2 million in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, will get a £100 discount paid directly to their bank accounts.

Cue mass searching of the government’s ‘Check your Council Tax band’ website and the inevitable failure of the page to keep up with the demand. The VAT cut on electricity bills will also be extended to July, instead of ending in April. Those measures won’t transform anyone’s life but the government is hoping that will show the public they are at least trying to help. Meanwhile, there was confirmation of what’s called ‘fiscal devolution’ - a boring term for an important phenomenon - as mayors saw more financial powers transferred from central government to the regions.

That includes eventually getting the power to raise money from an Overnight Visitor Levy, or tourist tax, being assigned a percentage of income tax and local and regional government getting 100% of business rates income before the end of the decade. None of that particularly new, but confirmation that mayors across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire will be getting more power to make decisions for themselves. There’s good news for miners too, although with some caveats, as the government confirmed its changing surplus sharing arrangements in two pension schemes so members receive 100% of surpluses generated from the schemes’ performance.

There's £30 million for a pilot scheme developing locally led approaches to AI adoption. That’s after the programme in Barnsley, framed as the UK’s first ’Tech Town’. The scheme will begin with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, and York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority. And there's an extra £200 million for Leeds train station to fund upgrades to include three new entrances and more space on the concourses.

This was a budget that felt aimed at consumers rather than large scale economic changes - the government are framing it a 'steady as she goes’ plan, the criticism will be that it was not bold enough to tackle the real economic challenges the region faces.