Journalists were told two days ago in the wake of the u-turns on the pasty tax and caravan tax that there would be no imminent decision on the charity tax. The position is the same, said Treasury officials – there will be some form of compromise with the charitable sector, but not a full u-turn, and it will come after a consultation during the summer.
Today we were told there would be no consultation, and that a full u-turn would take place immediately. What on earth is going on at the Treasury? Read more
David Cameron is fond of saying that u-turns are not a problem, they are actually a sign of strength and a government that listens to voters and is willing to change its mind.
He may be right: voters stuck with him through a spate of u-turns early in the government’s life – on selling off national forests, on GP commissioning, on sentencing. But today we have three in one day – will this now start to look like a government that doesn’t know what it’s doing?
The key may lie in the way in which the u-turn is handled. When he announced he was abandoning plans to offer 50 per cent discounts on sentences for offenders who offer guilty pleas, Ken Clarke united the House in laughter by telling MPs:
I have done a few u-turns in my time, and they should be done with purpose and panache when you have to do them.
The data released last night on how much the super-rich paid in tax in 2010-11 was fascinating. As Robert Peston comments on his blog, getting this information out of the last government was nigh-on impossible, as Labour didn’t want to put wealthy people’s tax affairs in the spotlight. So it is an amazing irony that it is a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition that is choosing to do so instead, as it looks to bolster support for its unpopular decision to cap tax reliefs, which will impact on charitable giving.
The Treasury released the data in an attempt to show us how much rich people avoid tax. George Osborne told the Telegraph that when he saw these figures he was “shocked”. And certainly there are some shocking figures within them, such as that thousands of people in the 50p tax band actually pay less than 20 per cent tax. Twelve people who are mega-rich, earning over £10m, even pay less than 10 per cent. Read more
Welcome to the FT’s rolling coverage of the UK Budget.
By Kiran Stacey at Westminster and Gordon Smith, Michael Hunter, Darren Dodd, Tom Burgis and Ben Fenton on the FT news desk.
All times are GMT.
16.45 So, that is about it for the live blog. The main FT coverage can be found in the usual place.
We thought we would leave you with a small image of what life in the Financial Times London newsroom is like on Budget Day. Below, you can see Chris Giles, economics editor, briefing the rest of us on what it all means. This picture was taken less than two minutes after the Chancellor sat down at 13.29.
So, from the FT live news desk, enjoy digesting the ramifications of the 2012 Budget, whether you are an outraged pensioner, a relieved 1-percenter or the Chancellor of the Exchequer. FT Live Blogs will be back just as soon as something big enough breaks. Goodnight.
Chris Giles briefs the Budget team on what it all means. Chris is the figure in a light grey shirt immediately below the left-hand TV image of George Osborne.
16.25 John Authers and Martin Wolf parse the 2012 Budget
16.06 The top trending phrase on Twitter in the UK at present is #grannytax.
And one of the main users of Twitter, Lord Prescott, has his say on the Budget.
Cameron gives 14,000 millionaires (him & Osborne included) a £40k tax cut funded by grannies. Shameful #giveitbackdave#grannytax
15.57 This was a budget, opines the FT’s Philip Stephens
that was in part “about George Osborne’s ambitions to establish
himself as David Cameron’s heir apparent”.
The chancellor talked about a Budget to put Britain back to work, but
the measure most likely to stick in the public mind was the cut from
50 per cent to 45 per cent in the top rate of income tax. It marked a
tilt to the tax-cutting right that he hopes will build his support on
the Thatcherite wing of the Tory party.
15.52 Podcast time.
15.48 Our colleagues over at FT Alphaville have been going through the
Budget documents and have found the official issuance plans for the
Osborne super-long bond.
The question, it seems, is not how long the bond should be, but how
big…
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, told me yesterday:
I suspect that we are going to see a Budget which has got more Liberal Democrat stuff in it than Tory. The amount of money being returned to individuals will go overwhelmingly to middle and lower income earners.
George Osborne has been in the far east this week – probably the best place to be when the IMF announced it would ask member countries for an extra $500bn in funding. This would probably involve another €30bn from the UK – a request that would have to be approved by parliament.
This request is tricky for the chancellor. He wants to play his role as a responsible world leader and help the Fund fight the various economic crises gripping global markets – after all, a collapse of the eurozone (for instance) would have serious implications for the UK too.
The problem is, his own MPs see this as a backdoor bailout for the eurozone. They say that as the UK is not a part of the currency bloc, it shouldn’t be forced into rescuing it when it fails. And Cameron and Osborne have both made much political capital out of not signing up to the expanded European rescue fund, the EFSF. Many Tories therefore see this as both a cop-out and hypocrisy. Read more
Welcome to the Westminster blog’s live coverage of chancellor George Osborne’s autumn statement. One of the most eagerly anticipated statements since the coalition government took power was expected to offer a gloomy prognosis on the economy. Michael Hunter and Gordon Smith from the FT main newsdesk covered the statement live from 12.30 with additional comment from FT colleagues.
Unless there is a last minute U-turn in Whitehall tonight, one of the ways which George Osborne will pay for the various jobs and infrastructure schemes in Tuesday’s growth review will be to squeeze tax credits.
The unemployment stats on Wednesday triggered a new round of speculation about whether George Osborne was likely to meet his two fiscal targets: balancing the structural current deficit and having debt falling as a ratio to GDP by the end of the parliament.
Neither target is quite as tough as you might think, however, as the Guardian has pointed out today. On the debt target, technically, the government could borrow billions more than it is currently planning and still not breach it, as long as it slowed borrowing towards the end of the parliament and showed debt was falling by 2015. This is unlikely to happen (partially because it could breach the other target), but it is possible. Read more
The private finance initiative – or at least the PFI as we know it – is dead. That’s what the fiercest critics will hope given the Treasury’s announcement of a “fundamental reassessment” of the model.
We reported last week that George Osborne and Vince Cable were pushing for a new toll road scheme on the heavily congested A14 near Cambridge. Today, the Sunday Times suggests that road tolling will play a central role in the government’s growth review on November 29.
The paper says Osborne and Cable want £50bn from the private sector, mainly pension funds and insurance companies, to fund new infrastructure, including roads, homes and power stations. In return they will get a share of tolls, rents and energy bills.
The problem is that ministers can’t force private companies to spend their money on such schemes: all they can do is put the incentives in place for them to do so. But these carry their own risks. Read more
Labour is in a slightly difficult position about how to respond to the news in the FT today that the Treasury is looking to slash benefits by linking them to earnings or even freezing them temporarily.
Although Cameron said he wouldn’t “balance the books on the back of the poor”, Labour knows that attacking the government for hypocrisy on this point could make it look like they are standing up for benefits’ claimants – or “scroungers” as they are thought of by many people.
Instead, the opposition will want to pick its battles. At the moment, the Treasury is still actively considering applying this change to all benefits and pensions, which would affect a lot of people who don’t fall into the “scrounger”. Read more
Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
Older entries
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
