25 Mar The Spring Statement
If a week is a long time in politics, then the near five months since Rishi Sunak’s second 2021 Budget feels close to a lifetime. Back on 27 October, it looked like 2022 would be a year of recovery in which the pandemic faded in the rear-view mirror and ‘transitory’ inflation duly transited to lower levels. It has not worked out like that.
Although events have consistently conspired against him, Mr Sunak is not a member of the mini-Budget fan club. The fact that the timing of the Spring Statement was revealed on 23 December with minimal detail underlines the point. At the time his hope was to follow the framework introduced by Philip Hammond, with the Spring Statement setting out for consultation matters to be legislated for in the Autumn Budget. To some degree, this is what has happened but faced with a welter of headlines about a cost of living crisis it proved impossible for Mr Sunak not to produce a Statement that had a strong resemblance to a mini-Budget.
You can download and read the full Spring Statement here.
Cheers.
Charles