A glimmer of hope was given to Cornwall's struggling high streets in Monday's Budget as the Chancellor Philip Hammond promised tax relief for small businesses and greater levies on large online corporations.

Mr Hammond has spoken of his desire to end austerity and hopes that knocking a third off the business rates of premises with a rateable value below £51,000 - estimated to be around 500,000 small retailers nationally - will help this.

At the same time he will introduce a new £400 million levy aimed at global tech giants such as Google and Facebook.

It's also good news for pubs - and their drinkers - with beer, cider and spirits duties to be frozen, although the cost of a bottle of wine duty is to rise by 8p, in line with inflation, in February.

For individuals, the personal allowance threshold - the rate at which people start paying income tax at 20 per cent - is to rise to £12,500 in April, a year earlier than planned, meaning a cut in tax for an estimated 32,000 workers, while the National Living Wage is to increase to £8.21 an hour.

And in a victory for Cornwall's many campaigners, including town and parish councillors, who have been fighting for the last few years to remove public toilets from business rates, Mr Hammond has confirmed the facilities will become exempt from rates.

West Cornwall's Conservative MP Derek Thomas has welcomed the Budget announcement overall and in particular this news, describing it as "a victory for common sense."

Mr Thomas has been supporting a campaign to have them removed since he became an MP in 2015, lobbying then-Chancellor, George Osborne and discussing it with the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron.

Mr Thomas said: “Over the past few years, Cornwall Council has steadily handed over the management of public toilets to parish councils and community groups in a bid to save money.

“These organisations are doing a terrific job keeping them open, very often finding imaginative and innovative ways to reduce running costs to enable them to maintain this vital service, but treating the toilets as a business and charging them rates has had a devastating effect.

“In West Cornwall, I have been contacted by a number of parish councils who have been on the verge of closing toilets in their area because of the costs involved in keeping them open."

Mr Hammond also confirmed an extra £20.5 billion for the NHS over the next five years, a minimum of an extra £2 billion a year for mental health services and a one-off £400m "bonus" to help schools buy "the little extras they need" this year.