BUDGET BETTER GO WELL.

 

TAX AND SPEND

I think the fevered talk of plots to dislodge the Prime Minister is exaggerated. Whoever is PM on Brexit Day better stand by for massive criticism either for paying the Europeans too much or keeping us too close to the EU. Better to leave Mrs May to take the flack is surely the wise course for aspiring leaders. Reports that some Tory MPs want to go into opposition to refresh the party are ridiculous.

All that said the government is in a fragile state and is relying on Philip Hammond to deliver a good budget next week. I’ve got a lot of time for Phil The Till. When you look around the Cabinet table and see charlatans like Johnson and Gove, there is something reassuring about the grey man with his spreadsheets. He knows Brexit is a dangerous threat to the economy. He knows we are spending billions servicing our debts. Yet he is bated for exuding gloom when he should be apeing Johnson’s unfounded cheerfulness.

On Wednesday the Chancellor ought to loosen the purse strings to help with housing, the NHS, and elderly care. He needs to address our woeful productivity and skills record. But he should be bold enough to put up some taxes to pay for it and go back on a manifesto promise to raise the 40p income tax threshold to £50,000. The elderly should have to pay some National Insurance to begin the task of tackling intergenerational unfairness.

Unlike many commentators I don’t think a General Election is at all likely so now is the time in the political cycle to take a risk with incurring the wrath of those opposed to any tax rises.

But Phil Hammond faces strong opposition in his own party. Former Minister Nick Boles wants the Chancellor to scrap his deficit reduction target. He believes it is fine for the annual deficit to remain at 2.6% indefinitely. This in the face of an Institute for Fiscal Studies warning the deficit could be on course to be £20bn higher than expected by 2021/22.

GORDON BROWN.

The former Prime Minister has been in the North this week to boost sales of his memoirs. I had a lot of time for the granite integrity of this Scottish son of the manse. His one great achievement in No 10 was in October 2008 when he showed global leadership in the middle of the economic crisis.

His great flaw was his undermining of Tony Blair in his desire to be Prime Minister. Why did he want the job so badly? When he got it, he didn’t know what to do with it. Was he a continuity man for New Labour or something else?

He claims his differences with Blair were over policy and he had nothing to do with the personal attacks. The fact is Brown could have reigned in his spin doctors Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan who were constantly briefing against the Prime Minister.

Blair should have sacked Brown after the 2001 General Election, but it’s not just weak Prime Ministers who find it hard to dismiss troublesome Cabinet colleagues.

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COUNCILS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT NO MORE

 

THE EMPTY TOWN HALL PRESS SEATS.

It is very sad that the Oldham Chronicle has ceased publication after 150 years. It is the latest local paper to fall victim to the surge in on-line advertising and falling readership. For years local newspaper owners have cut the journalists to save costs and then been surprised when the thin content drove away even more readers. Most local papers used to have a correspondent who was an expert on local government and aware of what was going on at the Town Hall. Now they are nearly all gone. The media concentrates excessively on national politicians leaving the leaders, even of some large cities, largely unknown.

The assertion is made that local politics is boring. That is lazy thinking by people who are not prepared to scrutinise the way billions of pounds of our money is spent. It is true that people in one council area don’t really care about what goes on next door but in the great days of local papers, they were the go to places for people to get information on their council alongside coverage of other authorities.

Does this matter? After all a new world has opened on line with a vast range of people offering their opinions about what is going on at national and local level. This blog is one of them. But we will miss the dedicated, independent local government correspondents who exposed scandals like Newcastle’s John Poulson and Westminster’s Dame Shirley Porter. Town Halls still provide many of the services we rely on and are often left to sort out the consequences of ill thought through Whitehall decisions.

But who is keeping an eye on our councillors? Council meetings are rarely reported. The Cabinet system has left most councillors with little to do. The scrutiny they are meant to carry out is a pale shadow of the Westminster Select Committee system it was meant to replicate at a local level.

So, can we rely on central government to do the job? Not really. Eric Pickles, the worst Local Government Secretary in recent history, abolished the Audit Commission. It was responsible for audit and inspection of local government. It reported publicly.

The vast majority of councillors and officers do a great job in difficult circumstances. They are subject to big cuts in their budgets and are dealing first hand with tricky personal services like allocating school places to children and elderly people to a care home.

That said local relationships and big money contracts can lead to corruption. Who’s going to report it consistently and professionally to a wide audience in the future? If the answer is nobody then we should worry.

HAMMOND AND THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE.

Well at least the, Downtown inspired, crisis conference on the future of the Northern Powerhouse(NP) managed to get the Chancellor to come north this week.

Philip Hammond can be in no doubt at the anger directed towards the Transport Secretary who simultaneously cut back on promises to northern rail while giving the go ahead for Crossrail 2 in London. But it led to no promises while he was here, just a hint that there might be something in the Budget.

Well, Phil the Till, there better be or the NP will be dead in the water.

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BROKEN PROMISE,HEZZA GONE, AND BREXIT IGNORED

 

SHOOT THE MESSENGER.

Budget Day began with the news that Michael Heseltine had been sacked as a government adviser because he had voted to give the British people a meaningful vote on exiting the EU.

What a sad end for a man who has served the North, and Merseyside in particular, well. Let’s hope he continues to come to events held by the Heseltine Institute which bares his name. Last November, in a brilliant analysis, he dared to speculate that public opinion might change its mind on leaving the EU. That view has now cost him his advisory roles. The government will be the losers, but we live in an age when people don’t want to hear from experts.

WHAT! NO BREXIT?

While Hezza was sacked for his views on Brexit, the issue hardly got a mention from Spreadsheet Phil (The Chancellor, Philip Hammond) in the last Budget to be announced in the Spring. It was quite extraordinary that the issue that will have most impact on the British economy didn’t get a mention in the key economic statement. Nick Robinson on the Today programme likened it to a pilot asking passengers if they would like ice in their G and T as the plane was about to hit the mountain!

Why was this? Hammond was a Remainer in the EU referendum and is rightly worried about what faces the British economy in the medium term. Indeed, buried in the government documents that emerge after the Chancellor has sat down is a forecast that Brexit will damage our trade for ten years. Hammond didn’t want to antagonise his hard Brexit MPs by restating his real views. That’s because he had a nasty shock for them; he was going to break a key manifesto promise.

NATIONAL INSURANCE.

We know now that the promise not to increase Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance was made to fill a “news grid” on a slow day for announcements in the run up to the 2015 General Election.

It dramatically limits any Tory Chancellor’s room for manoeuvre in these fast-changing economic times. We will never know if George Osborne would have stuck to it but the increase of 2% in NI contributions for self-employed people has set off a firestorm on the Tory backbenches.

I actually agree with the measure to balance up the position of employed and self-employed workers but the refusal of the Chancellor to acknowledge that he has broken a manifesto pledge is pathetic.

THE BUDGET AND SMALL BUSINESS IN NORTH.

The year’s delay in quarterly tax reporting will be welcomed by small businesses wrestling with the costly change and, contrary to southern media based reporting, many northern businesses will benefit from the review. It was a shame Mr Hammond wasted £435m on measures to cushion the impact on businesses who’ve benefitted from the booming southern economy.

CONCLUSION.

Despite better than expected short term public finance figures, two elephants remain in the Chancellor’s room. They are Brexit and the National Debt. The fact that we are paying £50bn a year in interest is sobering. That is an HS2 every year.

The row over the NI increase will further dampen any talk of a snap election however tempting that might be. The Chancellor’s mauling of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during his speech was both surprising and almost cruel.

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JUST JIM 241

 

BROKEN PROMISE AND BREXIT IGNORED.

SHOOT THE MESSANGER.

Budget Day began with the news that Michael Heseltine had been sacked as a government adviser because he had voted to give the British people a meaningful vote on exiting the EU.

What a sad end for a man who has served the North, and Merseyside in particular, well. Let’s hope he continues to come to events held by the Heseltine Institute which bares his name. Last November, in a brilliant analysis, he dared to speculate that public opinion might change its mind on leaving the EU. That view has now cost him his advisory roles. The government will be the losers, but we live in an age when people don’t want to hear from experts.

WHAT! NO BREXIT?

While Hezza was sacked for his views on Brexit, the issue hardly got a mention from Spreadsheet Phil (The Chancellor, Philip Hammond) in the last Budget to be announced in the Spring. It was quite extraordinary that the issue that will have most impact on the British economy didn’t get a mention in the key economic statement. Nick Robinson on the Today programme likened it to a pilot asking passengers if they would like ice in their G and T as the plane was about to hit the mountain!

Why was this? Hammond was a Remainer in the EU referendum and is rightly worried about what faces the British economy in the medium term. Indeed, buried in the government documents that emerge after the Chancellor has sat down is a forecast that Brexit will damage our trade for ten years. Hammond didn’t want to antagonise his hard Brexit MPs by restating his real views. That’s because he had a nasty shock for them; he was going to break a key manifesto promise.

NATIONAL INSURANCE.

We know now that the promise not to increase Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance was made to fill a “news grid” on a slow day for announcements in the run up to the 2015 General Election.

It dramatically limits any Tory Chancellor’s room for manoeuvre in these fast-changing economic times. We will never know if George Osborne would have stuck to it but the increase of 2% in NI contributions for self-employed people has set off a firestorm on the Tory backbenches.

I actually agree with the measure to balance up the position of employed and self-employed workers but the refusal of the Chancellor to acknowledge that he has broken a manifesto pledge is pathetic.

THE BUDGET AND SMALL BUSINESS IN NORTH.

The year’s delay in quarterly tax reporting will be welcomed by small businesses wrestling with the costly change and, contrary to southern media based reporting, many northern businesses will benefit from the review. It was a shame Mr Hammond wasted £435m on measures to cushion the impact on businesses who’ve benefitted from the booming southern economy.

CONCLUSION.

Despite better than expected short term public finance figures, two elephants remain in the Chancellor’s room. They are Brexit and the National Debt. The fact that we are paying £50bn a year in interest is sobering. That is an HS2 every year.

The row over the NI increase will further dampen any talk of a snap election however tempting that might be. The Chancellor’s mauling of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during his speech was both surprising and almost cruel.

Follow me @JimHancockUKv

 

THE COST OF BREXIT

 

THE EXIT FEE.

Extreme Brexiteers may rail against the figures, but the fact is we are going to pay a heavy price if we exit the European Union. That is the most important message from the Autumn Statement Some of us hope public opinion will change and we can yet halt this madness. But as it stands we are heading out and the Chancellor has spelt out the consequences of Brexit.

£59bn of the staggering £122bn of extra borrowing is directly attributable to Brexit according to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR). Because of that borrowing our debt to gross domestic product is set to peek at 90% in 2017-18. The weaker pound caused by the Brexit shock is forecast to lead to a 5% increase in food prices next year. A real problem for the Just About Managing.

AT LAST A MOVE AGAINST PENSIONERS ?

Perhaps it has been lost a little amidst the analysis of the immediate impact of the Autumn Statement but Philip Hammond this week flagged up a major area of controversy for the next parliament. The triple lock on pensions is to come under review. Rightly so, whilst some pensioners still struggle, most have never had it so good, to coin a phrase. In any case it is the young burdened by tuition fees, job uncertainty and the inability to buy a home that must be top priority for government in the third decade of this century, if not before. The problem is that up to now the elderly vote in larger numbers than the young. In the next parliament ministers will have to be courageous. I think pensioners will get the point but well done Mr Hammond for preparing the way for a change of policy.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE.

At one point it looked as if George Osborne’s pet project was going to be quietly forgotten by his successor. However there was enough support for devolution to force the Chancellor to input significant funds into the Northern economy. £3bn for northern local enterprise partnerships in growth deals, a £400m investment fund to support smaller businesses and £60m in development funding for Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Areas about to elect city region mayors like Liverpool City Region and Greater manche4ster will get new borrowing powers. There is talk of a municipal bond to aid infrastructure investment. The continuing failure of Leeds to resolve the elected mayor issue and avail itself of these incentives is notable.

Specific road improvements include the highly congested part of the M60 near Worsley, the Waterfront Link in Warrington and dualling the A66 in the North Pennines.

MIXED PICTURE FOR BUSINESS.

The big challenge for business in the North is productivity. Nationally we are 30% less productive than the Germans and the North lags well behind London. A Productivity Investment Fund will help. There was relief that the increase in the Living Wage was modest and a welcome for the further cut in corporation tax. Some wanted a VAT cut to mitigate rising inflation but that wasn’t going to happen, nor apparently reform of business rates.

HAMMOND’S DEBUT.

There is widespread dismay that the Chancellor did not address the growing adult social care crisis but overall Philip Hammond showed himself to be a safe pair of hands on his début. He is not as close to the Prime Minister as George Osborne was to David Cameron but nor is there the ruinous rivalry of the Blair/Brown years.

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