Chancellor Rishi Sunak's Spring Statement today may be severely tested in the months to come.

As he said himself, the economy is in for trying times over the next 12 months, due in part to the economic impact of the war in Ukraine but also rampant inflation, slowing GDP growth and concerns about government spending in areas such as healthcare and pensions.

To be fair, he needed to do something today and he did. Many people are facing an economic meltdown as they struggle to meet rising prices and the Chancellor offered a modest helping hand.

The elephant in the room is the huge impact of rising energy prices which will push millions into fuel poverty, particularly in the second half of the year.  Many will struggle.

The rise in prices will also, inevitably, hit discretionary spending. Rising fuel prices will simply mean people travelling less and spending less, for example. Also inevitably, hard-pressed workers will seek pay rises at levels not seen for a decade or more.

Against this backdrop his raising of the NIC threshold to match the income tax threshold of £12,750 seems very generous. The promise to cut basic rate tax from 20p to 19p by 2024 seems a little more ambitious and 2024 may well come back to haunt him.

Help for families and small business is welcome and he needed to do something. He certainly went further in his Spring Statement than many expected in what was really a mini-Budget. There will be some kudos for that.

So what else could he have done? He could have been more radical and intervened in the fuel market, perhaps scrapping corporation tax for gas and electricity providers for a year in return for them passing on the savings. There were all sorts of radical moves he could have made but didn't. 

What he did do was populist and targeted and will probably have won him some friends for the time being at the risk of this being unwound in the coming months.

It is too early to predict the economic impact on Europe of the war in Ukraine on the European economy but it will not be good. The worst is yet to come, at least economically, and the Chancellor's largesse may well need to be revisited in the coming months.

Most people will see only marginal benefit from the tax changes and while the direction is promising the extra cash in pockets is, overall, very modest.

Some headline-grabbing changes but little real effort to tackle the underlying problems coming down the line.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Follow @FPT_Kevin • If you have not yet registered for Financial Planning Today as a subscriber please do so now. It's free to sign up.