By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. In the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, it was announced that government departments would have to cut their budgets by 1% in 2013-14 and 2% in 2014-15. The Defence budget, with its already-fragile spending and severe cuts on the way, would appear to be particularly badly hit. The MoD insists that […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Ian Cowie at the Daily Telegraph has reproduced a graph from Smith and Williamson showing the impact of George Osborne's proposed child benefit changes on "traditional families – where one parent goes out to work and the other stays at home to look after children". As I've written before, […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter The tax system should be as simple as possible. George Osborne thinks so too – which is why in opposition he supported "lower and simpler" taxes. It should also be designed so as to ensure that a lot of people pay a little tax, rather than a few people […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter There may be a Leveson effect but the Chancellor will nonetheless be pleased with today's newspaper frontpages and the warm noises made by the country's three biggest centre right newspapers: "Mr Osborne has played a difficult hand with some considerable skill. And after Ed Balls’s truly atrocious performance yesterday, […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter I won't revisit what I said at the end of my earlier blog. If Osborne had embarked upon a growth strategy from the beginning of this parliament then the Chancellor might have made more progress on fulfilling his ambition at that time to eliminate the deficit by 2015. Instead […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter George Osborne may have had a difficult year but I argue in today's Times (£) that he remains the dominant figure in Whitehall. Putting aside the centrality and constancy of his economic Plan A he is, more generally, the Government's Chief Executive to Cameron's Chairman. The 'Octopus' whose tentacles […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Even though it will be shorter and more transparent than those from the Gordon Brown era, tomorrow's Autumn Statement will still be no picture book. Here are ten preliminary questions that are worth asking to make sense of it all: 1) Will George Osborne break his fiscal rules? This is […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. 1pm update: On the Andrew Marr programme this morning, George Osborne said: "I’m very clear going forward we’ve got to deal with this deficit, it is going to take longer – that means more difficult decisions and it’s got to be done fairly, and that means yes, the richest […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. Ah, Boris. The Mayor comes to the end of his trip promoting London in India, and has ended on another note that might not be appreciated in Downing Street. Mr Johnson has performed a number of u-turns over the last week, on Europe, immigration, and spending cuts. The Autumn […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter This is the fifth in ConservativeHome's series of posts counting down to the Autumn Statement. On Tuesday, Tim Montgomerie said that George Osborne's economic narrative is taking shape. Yesterday, Peter Hoskin urged Mr Osborne to ditch his current fiscal rules, and Tom Frostick argued that the Chancellor must target wealth. […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Boris has been in India but he's also been displaying some topsy turvy positioning. The last three days have not been Boris Johnson's finest. First came his flip flop on an In/Out referendum. Earlier this year – ahead of his re-election bid – he signed the People's Pledge and […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. The Sunday Telegraph carries the story that Conservative Ministers are drawing up plans to include married couples' tax breaks in George Osborne's next Budget in Spring 2013. "Senior Tory sources", who say "We will do this – the likeliest option is in the Budget", hint that the tax break […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Harry Phibbs wrote about Eric Pickles's record this morning. CLG spending is counted under two headings – CLG Local Government and CLG Communities. The former, the larger of the two budgets, has risen by about a £1 billion, and is slightly south of £27 billion. Figures for the latter […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter And now for something bigger still: Education. 2010 – 2011 Outturn: £59,922,700 b 2011 – 2012 Outturn: £56,391,000 b Michael Gove's department is a particularly interesting one to examine, given the plan to cut his department's administrative costs by half, which Peter Hoskin reported recently on this site. I […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter And now for something a little bit bigger: The Justice Department. 2010 – 2011 Outturn: £9,338,400 b 2011 – 2012 Outturn: £9,026,000 b Tim Montgomerie has set out in detail on this site how Ken Clarke made these savings as Justice Secretary. Mr Clarke may not be ConservativeHome's biggest […]