Main points of Britain’s emergency budget

Here are the main points from Britain’s emergency budget, presented by new finance minister George Osborne to the House of Commons Tuesday:

– Structural deficit set to be eliminated within five years

– Seventy-seven percent of this change will come through spending cuts and 23 percent through tax increases

– Welfare cuts worth 11 billion pounds (13 billion euros, 16 billion dollars) by 2014-15, including child benefit frozen for three years, maximum limits for housing benefits being introduced and a tougher assessment being introduced for disability allowance

– Public sector workers facing a two-year pay freeze

– Government accelerating moves to raise the state pension age to 66

– Most government departments facing cuts of around 25 percent over four years, an overall figure of 17 billion pounds by 2014-15

– Payments to Queen Elizabeth II for carrying out royal duties to be frozen this year and subsequently facing a shake-up

– Value-added tax (VAT), a form of sales tax, to rise from 17.5 percent to 20 percent from January 2011

– Growth forecast lowered from 2.6 percent to 2.3 percent next year and set to rise back to 2.7 percent in 2014 and 2015

– In a joint move with France and Germany, government introducing bank levy covering British banks and the British operations of foreign banks, which is expected to raise two billion pounds annually

– Unemployment expected to peak this year at 8.1 percent and then fall each year to reach 6.1 percent in 2015

– Link between basic state pension and earnings to be restored from April next year.