As I have suggested before, it is more and more difficult to identify anything significant from a Budget Speech that has not been leaked or explained in detail beforehand. The Deputy Speaker commented on this too – she was not very happy that the Press get to know about the Government’s plans before the elected representatives of the people do.
Rishi Sunak did not disappoint with his performance, bigging up his Government’s performance at every possible opportunity – ”Growth up, jobs up, debt down” he said. Just about all of his comments were extremely positive – it left me puzzled as to how all of the additional spending brought about by the Covid pandemic would be covered by income – surely somebody has to pay for it somewhere down the line, and the Chancellor wasn’t elaborating much in this speech as to how the books are going to balance in the longer term.
Those of you that know me will be aware that I like to look at the “lies and damned lies”, sorry I mean statistics, to see if anything that I might understand better than the political spin can be read into them. The Civil Servants obliged by providing back-up to the speech in the form of a couple of tables showing the effects of the matters mentioned in this Budget, and the effects of measures from the March announcement coming into effect after October.
The largest anticipated inflow to the economy is expected to be from the Health and Social Care Levy, followed closely by the increase in the Corporation Tax rate announced previously. The maintenance of personal allowance and higher rate tax thresholds for income tax is another significant inflow showing in these tables, as is what is described as “State Pension and Pension Credit – uprate with Double Lock”. This I take to be “Civil Servant speak” for the effect of breaking the manifesto promise to keep pension levels in line with different measures for inflation.
Changes to the availability of duty relief on red diesel are also a surprising entry in the top ten of income generating policies, and the effect of changes to the taxation basis periods for the self-employed is also predicted to be significant from 2024/25 onwards.
The other numbers in the table are quite interesting too – at least, they are if you happen to like that sort of thing…..
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