LAST Wednesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, delivered his first budget, and the first after the EU Referendum.

The Chancellor’s mission, he says, is to build the foundations of a stronger, fairer, more global Britain.

The economy has beaten the predictions, with faster growth than the United States, Japan, and the Euro area as a whole, and our labour market is delivering record levels of employment.

However, the UK’s debt and borrowing are still high so difficult decisions are necessary and there is no room for complacency.

There were many welcome announcements in the budget, such as the significant investment of £2 billion in social care over the next three years and £100 million for Accident and Emergency Departments to place a GP in emergency departments who will be able to deal with non-emergency patients and divert them to more appropriate treatment.

The Government is also delivering on its commitment to raise the personal tax allowance and the higher rate tax threshold, which will be raised to £11,500 and £45,000 respectively.

Fuel duty has been frozen for the seventh successive year, and the national living wage is set to increase to £7.50.

These are welcome actions that will allow people to keep more of their earnings, keep the cost of living under control and increase earnings.

Much of our economic success is built on us being a leader in science and technological research, and we are lucky to have some of the leaders in this field based within our region.

Building upon our success is a key part of the Government’s new Industrial Strategy, and it was good to see the Chancellor announce an extra £270 million for research and development into artificial intelligence, robotics, driverless cars, and batteries.

New T-levels for 16-19 year old technical students have also been announced, which will give students at schools like UTC Oxfordshire in Didcot tailored educational qualifications that property recognise their technical training.

Another £40 million was set aside to pilot new ways to improve access to lifelong learning to retrain people throughout their working lives.

A £200 million package was also announced to further support the roll-out of superfast broadband, and tackle the remaining areas that are still uncovered. £16 million was also earmarked for a national 5G Innovation Network to trial the new mobile broadband technology which has the potential to deliver faster speeds to mobile devices than the broadband network.

I know there is a lot of concern about the revaluation of business rates, and I was pleased to see that the Chancellor announced a significant package to mitigate the effects. This package includes reliefs so that 600,000 small businesses will pay no business rates at all, £3.6 billion of transitional support to help those companies facing increased bills, discounts for pubs, and a discretionary fund for local councils to help those that have been hardest hit.

It was not a ground breaking budget, but it was one that contained important measures that will set a solid foundation for the UK’s future as we prepare our economy and country for life outside the European Union.