The general election budget?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jeremy Hunt’s budget was a massive day in Westminster – and a big moment for the country. But what difference did it really make to the government’s fortunes – and to people’s pockets? Straight after crunching the numbers, studying the forecasts and making sense – or trying to – of the chancellor’s statement, the IfG public finances team gathered in the studio to record a special livestreamed episode of Inside Briefing. What have we learned from the chancellor’s big announcements and what choices did he make? What did the new OBR forecasts show about the UK’s economic prospects? What did it mean for public services? How did Labour respond? And how might this budget shape the battles on the economy at the next general election – and when that election might be held? Presented by Gemma Tetlow with Giles Wilkes, Jill Rutter and Olly Bartrum. Produced by Milo Hynes and Neil Bowerman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this special live recording of Inside Briefing, podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:15.4	I'm Gemmatello, chief economist at the Institute for Government. Just a few hours ago,
0:19.8	Jeremy Hunt set out his budget in Parliament. We've crunched the numbers, looked at the Institute for Government. Just a few hours ago, Jeremy Hunt set out his budget
0:21.3	in Parliament. We've crunched the numbers, looked at the charts, weighed up the forecasts,
0:26.3	and made sense, or tried to at least, of what we heard from the Chancellor. So what did
0:31.1	the Chancellor announce in his budget and what does it tell us about the economy, the government
0:34.7	spending plans and how the next year might play out.
0:42.7	Joining me to answer these questions are more of my IFG colleagues, Senior Economist Olli Bartram,
0:45.8	and Senior Fellows, Giles Wilkes and Jill Rutter. Hello all.
0:46.6	Good afternoon.
0:46.8	Hi.
0:50.5	Ollie, let me start with you. What was your take on the budget?
0:56.1	So I think the Chancellor was in a relatively difficult position. He's obviously determined to deliver tax cuts with the election coming up, but there was
1:01.8	basically no change in the economic and fiscal forecast from the OBR. He would have
1:06.9	been hoping for a little bit more headroom than he eventually got.
1:11.6	So faced with that difficult position, he still did deliver a quite large personal tax cut in the form of cutting national insurance.
1:25.6	But he had to do quite a lot of targeted tax rises in order to pay for that.
1:31.9	So whether that's the extension of the energy, windfall tax, the vaping tax, there's more that I've
1:41.0	forgotten.
1:41.9	Non-doms, there we go, that's the big one.
1:45.3	So I think that was sort of the broad changes we saw in terms of policy and the background situation that
1:50.5	he was facing. I think sort of big picture, I was struck by Hunt's sort of continued insistence
	...

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