This was a Budget aimed on getting growth going. Two areas were in focus. The first, investment, is a long-standing UK problem. Today’s announcement to allow companies to offset all capital spending against their tax bill is the latest effort to spark it into life. The second, bolstering the size of the workforce, is a relatively new problem to have emerged in recent years. Here there are changes to childcare provision and pensions. But at least both measures are being launched amidst a better growth environment after an upgrade to the outlook from the OBR.

In today’s Budget speech, the Chancellor ate up a lot of time announcing give-aways that are relatively small beer – in some cases, literally. We heard about funding being made available to fix potholes in England; relatively small amounts of money for leisure centres, veterans and Ukrainians; a freeze on duty for draught beer; and even investment in Tipton town centre. Jeremy Hunt spoke for over an hour, but the significant announcements in the speech could have been condensed into much less time.

This was a ‘kitchen sink’ Budget according to the BBC’s Faisal Islam, with the Chancellor throwing almost everything into it, including a wide range of tax cuts and incentives. A mini-Budget it wasn’t. But there was little to explain how it would all be funded. The shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves perhaps explained it best when she said that “never before has Government borrowed so much and explained so little”.

Image Source: BBC News