Wednesday's announcement could be surprisingly uneventful
by Emran Mian / March 16, 2015 / Leave a comment
What’s George Osborne planning for Wednesday’s budget? © Ben Birchall/PA Wire
The Chancellor said yesterday that there would be “no gimmicks, no giveaways” in this week’s Budget. Few people believe him. Before every fiscal event, I go through the documents from the previous one and check what has already been promised for the next one. It’s a former civil servant’s instinct. Surprisingly, the documents from the Autumn Statement (in this blog I only deal with what has been conclusively promised, rather than briefed off the record to journalists) don’t suggest that much action in this Budget either.
There are some nuggets about housebuilding. In the Autumn Statement the Government announced that, rather than selling off a big parcel of public land in Northstowe, Cambridgeshire, it would take charge of developing a new town at what has formerly been the site of an airfield, then a barracks and an immigration reception centre. The ambition is to build 10,000 homes “up to twice as fast as conventional development routes.” The phrasing is handy here, “up to” twice as fast could mean half as fast. Nevertheless the Government is due at the Budget to report back on how it’s getting on and the hint is that, if the model works, then it may be used on other parcels of public land. The Autumn Statement also revealed that the Budget would include proposals for speeding up the development of brownfield land by making the Compulsory Purchase Regime “clearer, faster and fairer.”
A second area where an update was definitively promised is the sale of public assets. The Government has a target to make £20bn of sales between 2014 and 2020. The big items are the shareholding in Lloyds Banking Group and the mortgage portfolio that was taken over from institutions that collapsed during the financial crisis. The Treasury sold off another package of Lloyds shares just last week; and a deal for the Government’s stake in the Eurostar service has also been made. An outstanding item is the student loan book. The Government has plans to sell parts of it, turning a long-run source of cash repayments into a one-off return upfront. On the one hand, being able to do so might counter Labour’s claims that the student loan system is unsustainable. On the…
You have now reached your limit of 3 free articles in the last 30 days.
But don’t worry! You can get another 7 articles absolutely free, simply by entering your email address in the box below.
When you register we’ll also send you a free e-book—Writing with punch—which includes some of the finest writing from our archive of 22 years. And we’ll also send you a weekly newsletter with the best new ideas in politics and philosophy of culture, which you can of course unsubscribe from at any time
Prospect may process your personal information for our legitimate business purposes, to provide you with our newsletter, subscription offers and other relevant information.
Click to learn more about these interests and how we use your data. You will be able to object to this processing on the next page and in all our communications.
