Peter Hall

This will be a tough weekend for the Chancellor. She knew almost six weeks before the Budget from the OBR there was no ‘black hole’. Yet she and the Treasury still stoked up the idea that there was — and it would take big tax rises to fill it. By Oct 31 she knew from the OBR there was actually £4bn headroom rather than a black hole. Yet still on Nov 5th she commandeered breakfast media to roll the pitch for big tax rises. Even by mid-November she was telling the BBC if Labour stuck to its manifesto commitments (ie no income tax rises) she’d need deep cuts to capital investment. None of what she said in the run up to the Budget was true. The Treasury select committee needs to ask her why she so misled the Parliament, the markets and the British people. She raised taxes to give herself some more headroom and to pay for yet another increase in (largely welfare) spending. The tax burden is going to all-time record level for a simple reason: the Labour manifesto said public spending would be around £10bn higher than Tory plans by 2028/29. In reality on the latest projections it will be £179bn higher!!! Nothing to do with filling in black holes.