Click here to watch the forum.  

Labour has announced its first budget since the 2001 general election.

Chancellor Gordon Brown confirmed an increase in spending on the NHS, partly funded by a rise in national insurance contributions.

Fuel and alcohol duties are frozen, but cigarettes will cost 6p extra for a packet of 20.

In a LIVE forum, Working Lunch's Adrian Chiles put your questions to:

• Rachel de Souza - tax
• Malcolm McLean - pensions
• Mike Wolfe - benefits
• Ian Jackson - personal finance and investments.

Highlights of the interview:

Adrian Chiles:
Malcolm McLean. were you disappointed because there wasn't a lot there on pensions?

Malcolm McLean:
There wasn't. I can hear pensioners up and down the country saying there's a lot of problems with pensions at the moment and surely the Chancellor might have been able to say something about it. It would have been nice to have heard a lot more I think from the Chancellor about what plans, if any, they have for dealing with those problems.

Adrian Chiles:
A text message from Tony: Not a mention of the personal pensions mess? Would that be a fair assessment?

Malcolm McLean:
I think by personal pensions - I think he is talking about the whole issue of private pensions - yes, it is. The real problem of course is that people are living longer and therefore there is a problem here. Companies are finding it very difficult to run final salary schemes for example. So I think there is a major issue here.

The same problem applies with annuities as well. Insurance companies can only allow a certain rate of pension which is going down effectively. So I think there are a whole raft of issues there which it would have been nice to have heard a bit more about.

Adrian Chiles:
Rachel I have a quite detailed question for you. The questioner asks: I am a doctor working in the NHS. My income for this year from 1st April 2002 is �50,000. My wife is also an NHS doctor earning the same amount. We are expecting our first baby in July 2002. How much worse off will we be in 2002/2003?

Rachel de Souza:
I think the first thing to mention is the major issue that is going to hit them is the rise in National Insurance Contributions. National Insurance is going to go up by 1% to 11% which will be payable. But that is not until next April - so that is not an immediate tax change - it will come into force next April.

Adrian Chiles:
The next questioner asks: I am a middle-earner - I earn slightly over �20,000 a year. Will I be better off or worse off?

Rachel de Souza:
I think �20,000 - �21,000 is about the average wage and again from next April - not from this April - she'll probably be about �3 a week worse off. So that is not a huge negative but certainly not better off.

Adrian Chiles:
Is there a simple way of finding out exactly how much revenue the Government raises and how much is spent per year and on what?

Rachel de Souza:
The Treasury does produce a book on this - whether it's clear or not, that's for the individual to decide.

Adrian Chiles:
C.R. Emett, Skipton, UK: I am 53 years old. I have a Hong Kong Government pension of �31,000. My wife has an investment income of �6,000 - �8,000. I have never paid National Insurance - what is our present position?

Malcolm McLean:
I don't think their position is going to change at all. National Insurance is only levied on earnings not on unearned income or on pensions. So I don't think he need concern himself about that.

Adrian Chiles::
Let's now go to Mike Wolfe, our Citizen's Advice Bureau man. Nabil, London, UK asks: Will the Government ever legislate for paid paternity leave?

Mike Wolfe:
I certainly think they ought to if they're fearless about their Family Policy. Whether or not they will, I suppose depends upon money and he hasn't been giving an enormous amount of money away this afternoon. But the Citizens Advice Bureau would certainly support them doing that. It would allow fathers to get as involved in childcare as they should do but I doubt it at the moment and certainly there's nothing in this Budget about that.

Adrian Chiles:
Malcolm, will the Government be able to guarantee a state pension in 20 years time? Are they making provisions for an increasingly ageing population?

Malcolm McLean:
The Government are well aware of the fact that they have an ageing population on their hands. The other factor that comes out of that of course is that it puts a major political dimension on it because the more older people there are, the more votes that they have to take account of. So I think they will have to have regard for the need to pay a pension - the real issue is, how much is that pension going to be because they have, as you know, broken the link with earnings in the uprating of pensions and at the moment are concentrating their firepower on means-tested pensions credit. We heard about that in the Budget today. So I think there is still some way to go on this yet. I think there will be a pension, the problem is how much will it be valued at in real terms in 20 years time.

Adrian Chiles:
Rachel, a question from Christine Dixon, Belfast: What does the Budget mean for first-time home buyers with regard to the tax of the "Middle Ages" as they call it - Stamp Duty?

Mike Wolfe:
This is a tax whereby you actually have to have the legal contract stamped. So as she says, it is a Middle Ages tax. We are still actually working from the 1891 Stamp Act. But luckily for everyone, there is no changes in the Budget this year. So for first-time buyers up to �60,000 it is zero percent and from �60,000 - �250,000 you'll still be paying 1%.

Adrian Chiles:
Let's go to Mike in Stoke. Katrina in Bristol asks: If my husband and I both earned �30,000 a year, we would get full Child Allowance, yet because I stay at home to look after my kids, my husband has to bring home more money, which disqualifies us from Children's Tax Allowance and puts us in a higher tax bracket. Why doesn't the Government allow me to transfer my tax allowance to my husband's?

Mike Wolfe:
I think this all went back to the time when they did make the allowances slightly more generous but they did less of the transferring. If one of you wasn't working then it may be possible. But either of you can now get the additional amount for the child. So I think you're going to end up about the same.

Adrian Chiles:
Sharon Gardner in Leeds, UK: Will the amount of Child Benefit paid depend on the earnings coming in?

Mike Wolfe:
The Working Tax Credit will - not the Child Benefit, that element of it will remain the same - but the Working Tax Credit assumes that you are earning enough to take up all of it. So it is like any other tax allowance.

Adrian Chiles:
Malcolm, Emily Cummings, Cardiff, UK asks: My granny is a bingo-playing pensioner. At the moment she gets the standard state pension. Will she have more money in her pocket after today's Budget - provided she doesn't gamble it all away?

Malcolm McLean:
Well there is some relief on bingo tax. Rachel are you clear on that?

Rachel de Souza:
I haven't got the details in front of me.

Malcolm McLean:
Presumably that will reflect somehow on the consumer but it is not clear how. The increase in the state pension has already been announced and that took effect from this week.

Adrian Chiles:
Rachel, John asks: I am provided with a large company car and pay tax relative to emissions. Had I purchased the same car privately, I would still be emitting the same volume of pollutants but with no penalty for doing so. Would someone please explain why I am penalised in this way whether I am a private user or not?

Rachel de Souza:
If he did purchase the car himself he would actually have to pay out the �10,000 - �20,000 to buy the car but he doesn't have to do that because his company has done that for him and what this is trying to do is to seek to tax the element which the company has paid out effectively as extra salary for him.

Adrian Chiles:
Ian, let's have your thoughts on the Budget?

Ian Jackson:
I think it's very promising in that they promise economic stability and continued growth etc. - I think it will give people a lot of confidence because obviously in terms of investment etc. people are very wary about things.

One thing that did catch my eye that I do worry about is the further reduction in borrowing because at the moment people who have retired now have a great problem affording an annuity large enough to sustain their income and perhaps a fundamental problem there that needs addressing.

Adrian Chiles:
Barbara Peacock in Malaga, Spain asks: What will the Budget have on Stock Market investments and is it worth getting back into equities?

Ian Jackson:
Yes she is going to be suffering from determining her residence and domicile. Stock markets should respond well to a stable economy but I don't know that I would dash back in on the strength of a Budget statement. If she is going to go back into investments to think about the sectors that might do well - healthcare sectors, people providing services for the Health Service, perhaps even drinks companies and hotels that are not having to compete with French imports to quite the same extent. So there are areas which look promising but take careful consideration before you leap - if I can mix a metaphor.

Adrian Chiles:
Jennifer in Nottingham, UK asks: What does the Budget mean for interest rates and the economy?

Ian Jackson:
The Chancellor said he wants to reduce public sector borrowing which tends to be what governs interest rates - interest rates will continue to fluctuate as they want to keep within their targets set for inflation. But if the Government want to borrow very little money then interest rates will tend to stay low, I guess, thinking about the laws of supply and demand.