The new 'full-fibre' networks will have the capacity to reach speeds of more than 1Gbps, which it is claimed could allow users to download an entire Game Of Thrones series in less than a minute.

The Chancellor has revealed an amended 'taper rate' for the welfare payments, which will allow low-paid workers to keep an additional 2p of every extra pound they earn.

Delivering his first fiscal package since the historic EU referendum vote, the Chancellor insisted the government understands the fury of those who have not shared in the wealth generated by the economy.

MPs have voiced deep scepticism after the Office for Budget Responsibility delivered a series of dire forecasts about the impact of Brexit.

Tom Birch, 43, from Bath, earns £100,000 a year in his financial services job and receives extra life insurance, dental cover, and critical illness cover through a salary sacrifice scheme.

The announcement does mean there will be two full Budgets next year, in the spring and the autumn, as the new schedule rolls out.

Philip Hammond fulfilled his promise to be an un-showy chancellor today as his biggest 'rabbit' turned out to be a joke about his own abolition.

While the OBR's chairman Robert Chote admitted there is a 50 per cent chance that the forecast is 'too gloomy', he is standing by his forecast saying predictions were made based on existing trends.

Few can defend the way that letting agents hit tenants with rip-off administrative fees. These firms cash in every time someone rents a new home, writes DAN HYDE.

Until yesterday, Chancellor Philip Hammond was among the most dismal of doom-mongers. But as he delivered his Autumn Statement, he seemed transformed.

The new Chancellor Philip Hammond forecasts that Britain’s economy will continue to grow and create new jobs in every year to the end of this Parliament, says ALEX BRUMMER.

Social care for older people is the responsibility of local councils across Britain, and its leaders say that savage cuts have already had to be made due to lower funding from Whitehall.

Philip Hammond said UK output would grow faster than in most EU countries, creating half a million jobs. He vowed to spend billions to boost productivity, build homes and improve transport.

George Osborne, to his credit, was sitting on the backbenches yesterday to listen to his successor Philip Hammond deliver his first financial statement as Chancellor, says PETER OBORNE.

As Hammond speeches go, the Autumn Statement was short and reasonably un-glum. He kept it to 45 minutes. By his own morose standards he was almost skittishly optimistic in places.

Philip Hammond said Britain’s ‘productivity gap’ was ‘well known, but shocking nonetheless’. He told the House of Commons that the UK ‘lags behind’ the US and Germany by 30 per cent.

Hammond has backed recent HMRC proposals for a crackdown on using the loophole for smartphone and gym contracts, buying cars and TVs, or private medical insurance.

A row has erupted in response to the tenant fee ban, with some landlord and agents reacting with fury to what they say are ‘unworkable’ plans that would have a ‘boomerang’ effect.

Philip Hammond told MPs he would be compiling a major report into the impact that state spending on pensioners has on the health and social care of an ageing population.

The OBR forecast a £122billion rise in UK debt, with £58.7billion blamed on Brexit. That came as it said the UK would not fall into a recession, but growth would be lower.

John McDonnell insisted today that Labour MPs were listening to his response to the Autumn Statement yesterday despite most of them being seen busy on their mobile phones.

The Chancellor said the government was treating the estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) as a 'signal' of what might happen.

Five million higher earners will be hit by a £200 'stealth tax on Middle England' because of changes to National Insurance Contributions buried in Treasury documents.

It was not the kind of Autumn Statement we had come to expect under George Osborne – all fire and brimstone – but Philip Hammond’s debut was not without its nasty side.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s first – and last – Autumn Statement was very much focused on measures to keep the economy out of recession.

Former health secretary Stephen Dorrell, who is now chairman of the NHS Confederation, said Philip Hammond (shown) had made a ‘mistake’ by failing to find extra funds in last week’s autumn statement.

The Flat Rate Scheme for VAT, designed to cut bills and red tape for small firms, is being overhauled in a measure the Chancellor said would stem abuse of the scheme.

Currently, employees do not have to pay income tax or national insurance if their redundancy pay is under £30,000.

Ministers spent £12.6billion more than they received in taxes and other income last month - but economists were pencilling in a figure of £11.6 billion.

Professional golfer Paige Spiranac hit back after the LGPA released new dress code guidelines banning plunging necklines and short skirts, which she says is discriminatory against female players.

DOMINIC LAWSON: BBC Newsnight also cited the Depression of the 1930s as the nearest thing to modern Britain under the Conservatives.

PETER HITCHENS: How quickly we get used to evil. Stabbings in the streets, once incredibly rare in this country, are now common in big cities and become more so every year.

PETER HITCHENS: Did World War Three begin last Thursday? I fear it may have. Assassinations can have limitless effects and when ordered by the US president, it is hard to see good.

PETER HITCHENS: Where political parties combine patriotism, a strong but just welfare state, good education, firm policing and tough defence, they tend to win elections.

PETER HITCHENS: A key part of the resurrection of 'power-sharing' in Northern Ireland is a pledge to revive a rather nasty deal called the Stormont House Agreement.

PETER HITCHENS: As a small boy, I actually cried when they tore up the railways. It was fury as much as it was sorrow. I could see it was wrong and stupid, but nobody else could.

PETER HITCHENS: Richard, who has in the past mocked abuse of Tasers by police, has now changed his mind and concluded from this that all officers should be armed with these devices.

I don't think I can defend the BBC much longer, PETER HITCHENS writes. For years, I've been one of the few conservative patriots I know who still stand up for the licence fee.

PETER HITCHENS: We worry whenever some tiny band of neo-Nazis win a few votes in a backward corner of Germany. But this is as nothing to what is now happening in Dublin.

PETER HITCHENS: As I cross the bridge to my platform a treacly, ingratiating male voice intones: 'When on the stairs, please use the handrail - and take care!'

PETER HITCHENS: The idea that criminals are bad people who need to be punished and deterred has been abandoned. Crime is now officially a disease to be cured by 'treatment'.

It is my privilege to publish the defence of two scientists who could not abide the suppression of the evidence they had gathered regarding an alleged atrocity in Syria, writes PETER HITCHENS.

PETER HITCHENS: If Jason Kakaire had screamed 'Allahu akbar!' as he went about his bloody work, you would have heard of him, and he would have been debated in the House of Commons.

PETER HITCHENS: I have serious doubts about whether our Government has any idea how to slow the spread of this virus. I suspect it quietly reached these shores long before anyone noticed.

PETER HITCHENS: Here I am, asking bluntly - is the closedown of the country the right answer to the coronavirus? If we have this wrong we have a great deal to lose.

PETER HITCHENS: As I watched the Prime Minister order mass house arrest on Monday night, I felt revulsion, anger and grief - as anyone brought up when this was a free and well-governed...

PETER HITCHENS: How is it to be paid for? Oh, everyone says, the Government will pay. But when will it sink in that when we say 'the Government' we mean us?

Until I started travelling in the Communist world, my main experience of living under tyranny was my time at a boarding school on the edge of Dartmoor, 60 years ago, PETER HITCHENS writes.

PETER HITCHENS: The report from the Office for Budget Responsibility has made clear that the damage done by crashing the economy is deep and dangerous. It may last for many years.

PETER HITCHENS: I have come to hate this beautiful weather, the loveliest spring for 50 years.