Budget ‘black hole’ is same size as Rishi Sunak’s pre-election tax cuts, says IFS chief - Politics.co.uk
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The boss of a leading economic think tank has said that the budget “black hole” is equivalent to the Conservatives' pre-election tax cuts.

The boss of a leading economic think tank has said that the “black hole” in the UK’s public finances is equivalent to the Conservative Party’s pre-election National Insurance cuts.

Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt cut National Insurance by 2p in the last spring budget before the election, after making the exact same cut in the autumn statement last year.

The combined cuts were expected to save the average earner £900 a year.

At the time, Hunt argued that it would make the tax system fairer and help revive the economy.

In order to pay for the tax reductions, the former government insisted it was looking at further public spending cuts, to be introduced if the Conservatives had won the recent election.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said on Monday that it was “striking” that £20 billion “black hole” is of the same scale as Hunt’s NI cuts.

Johnson told BBC Breakfast: “It is very striking that if this problem is about £20 billion big that is exactly the scale of the National Insurance cuts implemented by Jeremy Hunt just before the election.

“Now, if those cuts were implemented in the knowledge that there was this kind of hole that is not good policy to put it mildly.”

  • DogPeePoo@lemm.ee
    501·
    3 months ago

    Stealing from the poor, adding to the tab, paid for by inflation by us and our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Same playbook in the USA.

    Fuck these financial terrorists

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      3 months ago

      Cant wait for the current government to get the country back on balance, and then the idiotic public voting these thieving tories back in immediately, and wonder why the country ends up going to shit again.

      The cycle of economic illiteracy continues.

      • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        218·
        3 months ago

        It is the political illiteracy that is the issue - only once people stop believing in the fairy tale of democracy we’ve all been told, and understand that all of what you described is a feature of the system rather than a bug, will we be able to start tackling it.

        Neoliberal Labour aren’t there to make things better for you, or the country, they are a placeholder there to serve the establishment and make sure everything stays comfortable for the rich while the far right gets its shit together before continuing to make it even better for them at the expense of the rest of us.