The ‘Green Budget’ could leave Rachel Reeves red-faced

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

Daily News, News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its yearly Green Budget, weeks ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal event. It’s grim reading, for both the government and the public. For Labour to make good on its promise to avoid ‘austerity’, taxes are going to need to go up significantly: by £25 billion, the IFS’s reports, and that’s just to ‘keep spending rising with national income.’ Can Reeves square the circle?

James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews.
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0:11.4	along with a free 20 pound John Lewis or waitress voucher go to
0:15.2	spectator.co. UK forward slash voucher.
0:20.3	Hello and welcome to coffee house shots. I'm James Seal and I'm joined today by Kate Andrews and Katie
0:26.1	Bulls. Now Kate this morning the IFS have released their annual green budget report talking
0:31.4	about the choices facing Rachel Reeves in three weeks time.
0:34.7	Talk us through what they say.
0:35.8	It's grim reading, but we shouldn't be terribly surprised because it was the Institute for
0:40.2	Fiscal Studies who ahead of the election was the main think tank warning for looking for finances. Now of course none of the political parties wanted to talk about that so it suited them not to bring that into the debates in the conversation, but it was the IFS that was saying guys.
0:59.0	Whether we're talking Tory tax cuts or a few labor tax hikes, none of you are grappling with the
1:03.8	situation and the green budget lays this bare. The IFS forecast is that
1:08.9	Rachel Reeves will need to find an additional 25 billion pounds of tax rises to make good just on the day-to-day
1:15.1	spending that has already been promised.
1:17.1	This does not include huge infrastructure investment.
1:19.6	This does not include a huge surprise spending announcement. This is pretty much to keep things on track as they
1:24.7	are. Now some listeners might be asking wait I thought I heard all week that she was going to make
1:29.2	it easier to borrow so why do taxes have to go up to? Well it does look the speculation is only growing that
1:36.3	Rachel Reeves is indeed going to change one of the fiscal rules that will make it easier
1:39.8	for her to borrow for capital investment and for more building for more projects, long-term projects, it's
1:46.5	actually interesting that IFS warns today, the merit of doing that is still going to come
1:50.0	down to the project and whether or not markets are convinced that they're good ideas or not.
	...

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