Budget 2013: Government offers boost to UK start-up scene and digital industry

Chancellor George Osborne has used his latest budget announcement to reveal measures to boost UK start-ups and small businesses, particularly those in the digital industry.

While Osborne's budget lacked a focus on the UK technology industry specifically and failed to reference national broadband initiatives or skills shortages facing the IT sector, Osborne did announce growth packages aimed at ramping up UK research, development and innovation.

"Research and development is absolutely central to Britain's economic future," said Osborne, speaking in the House of Commons.

"I want Britain to be the place where people raise money and invest."

Such measures lead on from those Osborne announced in the 2012 budget.

For example, last year Osborne revealed tax relief measures for a number of UK creative industries, specifically animation, video games and high-end television production. This will now be extended with new tax support for the visual effects sector.

Additionally, Osborne referred to the investment the government has pledged to the development of Aerospace technology. Before the budget was announced, the government revealed it has plans for a new Aerospace Technology Institute.

The institute will be given public investment of £1bn, matched by industry, to drive the development of technology for a more energy efficient aircraft.

Elsewhere in the budget a number of measures were announced by Osborne for the small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Growth vouchers for small businesses were revealed by Osborne, worth £30m, that will be made be made available over the next couple of years to advise SMBs on how to attract finance and hire staff.

The government has also set up a new Business Bank, which will provide long-term help for SMBs through £1bn of funding. Immediate support to SMBs will include a £300m investment school to diversify the supply of lending available to them.

The Small Business Research Initiative scheme also will be extended to provide support to SMEs bidding to the public sector.

Meanwhile all SMBs are to benefit from the government's decision to further reduce corporation tax by one per cent in April 2015 to 20 per cent. Also, around 450,000 small businesses - one third of businesses in the UK - will no longer pay employer National Insurance at all, or what Osborne referred to as the "jobs tax".

Osborne promised to boost capital spending in infrastructure projects by £15bn over the next ten years, particularly in the areas of road and rail.

"By using our extra savings from government departments, we will boost our infrastructure plans by £3bn a year from 2015-16," said Osborne.

Such plans are rumoured to include Wi-Fi roll-outs on trains, but this was not referred to by Osborne in his budget speech.

Finally Osborne said he was introducing the largest ever package to tackle tax evaders, in news that may not be welcomed by the likes of Amazon, Google and Starbucks, which have all made headlines for failing to pay UK corporation tax.

This year's budget was the first in history to have ever been leaked on Twitter before it was announced by the government. The Evening Standard was responsible for the leak and has apologised.