In mid-March 2024, the then Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves gave the Mais lecture to the good and the great of the City. In it she set out her broad fiscal framework, including goals to: • Balance the current budget, i.e. match day-to-day government expenditure with revenues; and • Have a single fiscal event (i.e. Budget)…
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2024 was the third consecutive year in which the Scottish government was forced to undertake an emergency budget review. In a statement on 3 September, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Shona Robison, announced “support [for] the 2024/25 Budget totalling almost £1 billion, of which up to £500 million are direct savings”. The Scottish Budget 2024
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The first Budget from a Labour government since March 2010, and the first ever from a female Chancellor, proved to be the defining event that had been widely anticipated. From the moment in late July when Rachel Reeves unveiled her “£22 billion black hole” and announced means-testing for the winter fuel payment, it was clear…
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The early trailers in January 2024 for what is probably Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s last ‘fiscal event’ featured Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising “more to come” on tax cuts. At the time, Mr Sunak’s bullish viewpoint puzzled some commentators because the Treasury had yet to receive even an initial assessment of the UK’s financial health from…
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The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Shona Robertson, faced some difficult decisions in drawing up her first Budget. Inflation had taken its toll on spending, to which had been added new commitments such as a promised council tax freeze in 2024/25. The situation was exacerbated by the UK government’s decisions in the…
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Jeremy Hunt’s second Autumn Statement was set against a much less financially turbulent background than his first. However, politics still loomed large with a likely election in the next 12 months prompting calls for tax cuts from within the Conservative party. Until recently the Chancellor had attempted to stall such demands with warnings of “difficult…
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The first Budget since October 2021 was widely expected to be an uneventful affair. Five months ago, the then new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, presented an Autumn Statement that was more of a Budget than many formal Budgets. Not only did his Autumn Statement result in a greater increase in the tax burden than most Budgets…
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The Scottish Budget arrived towards the end of a busy week for economic news and the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, set out “four important factors” in arriving at the measures announced in the 2023/24 Scottish Budget. Subject to these major constraints, Mr Swinney also set out three priorities for “a different path” from…
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The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement came against the background of a Spring Statement and a September ‘mini-Budget’ (which has now been substantially reversed). The overall context is a European recession and high inflation in the wake of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The Autumn Statement was presented as a difficult and necessary…
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‘The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient’ – Warren Buffett If you read nothing else in this communication please read the next couple of paragraphs and look at the first graph below. The intention of this communication is not to provide market commentary, it is simply to…
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