The mysteries of the nation’s finances are quite beyond any normal person’s understanding.

I think I was pleased to see the final costs of the First World War being paid off in last week’s Autumn Statement. But what about the national debt? What about the Second World War?

The most eye-catching (and readily understood) announcement was about stamp duty. The changes will be of benefit to everyone seeking to buy any house worth less than £1 million.

It should be of particular benefit to first-time buyers, and should free up the whole housing market in an area like ours. Those who are buying more expensive houses will have to pay more.

But then perhaps it’s rather like a Rolls-Royce: “If you have to ask how much it is, then you cannot afford it,” as they used to say.

No one can similarly object to Google, Starbucks and Amazon now having to pay tax at 25 per cent of their notional profits.

Most of the other announcements, modest as they may be, will be broadly welcomed. Raising the income tax threshold to £10,600 takes a large swathe of people out of taxation altogether. The abolition of Air Passenger Duty for children will help many people, as will the new rules about ISAs – where an ISA-holder dies, their spouse will inherit that ISA’s tax-free status.

Action on business rates for small businesses will be very widely welcomed, as will funding for post-graduate students.

Yet it is also important at a time like this that the Chancellor was not tempted into any kind of pre-election ‘giveaway’. If we are to get out of the terrible financial mess we inherited from Gordon Brown, then we have to stick to the long-term economic plan.

We do seem to be turning the economic corner, and are firmly on the way to greater prosperity, with higher growth (three per cent this year), falling unemployment, a record number of jobs, the deficit cut by 50 per cent, incomes rising, and inflation firmly under control.

Yet times are still very tough around the world, and we have still not ‘balanced the books’ which any sound economy does need to do. There will be further spending cuts to come, no matter who may form the government after the next election.

Nonetheless, as we face Christmas, I think that we can have a degree of satisfaction that the economy is going in the right direction, and that we can have greater confidence in the future.