UK News

from The Great Debate:

Britain’s austerity experiment is faltering

It was the Welsh sage Alan Watkins who remarked that a budget that looked good the day it was delivered to the British Parliament was sure to look terrible a week later, and vice versa. The avalanche of new information dumped by the Treasury is simply too much to grasp at a single sitting, and governments tend to bury bad news in a welter of statistics. And so it proved with finance minister George Osborne’s budget served up last week.

The immediate headlines stressed that rich Brits would pay less income tax – down from 50 percent to 45 percent – but it only took a day before even traditional Conservative cheerleaders like the Daily Mail were condemning Osborne for funding tax breaks for bankers and billionaires by stealing from those living in retirement. The paper’s cover screamed: “Osborne picks the pockets of pensioners.”

Osborne insists he is sticking to his “Plan A” to reduce the public deficit by sharply cutting state spending by 25 percent over the five-year parliament and imposing severe austerity. Because he believes his “Plan A” is on target, all he needed was a touch on the tiller. He therefore designed his budget to be fiscally neutral – that is, for every tax cut there was a corresponding tax increase. He put up tobacco and alcohol duties and sliced a little off corporation tax.

Osborne’s broader economic experiment, however, is fast faltering. If it were a drug trial, doctors would be urgently taking patients off the snake oil and feeding them the placebo. In 2010, he inherited from Gordon Brown’s Labour government a fast-rising recovery in economic growth, but now, after two years, GDP is headed south, and Britain is teetering on the edge of a government-inspired double-dip recession. In the last quarter of last year, GDP shrank by 0.3 percent.

As predicted, “Plan A” is not working. The number of jobless is 2.67 million (8.4 percent) and rising, the highest rate for 17 years, and the cost of paying the unemployed to do nothing is soaring. Inflation is running at 3.7 percent. Most galling of all, no doubt, for Cameron and Osborne, who were rushed into taking drastic measures when Bank of England Governor Mervyn King spooked them into believing the markets would punish them if they did not tackle the deficit right away, the rating agencies Moody's and Fitch have warned that notwithstanding the debt-reduction efforts, Britain could soon lose its AAA status.

Far from spurring the British economy to greater things, the Cameron coalition’s slash-and-scrimp policies have moved the government sector even deeper into debt. According to the latest Treasury figures, in February the current budget deficit rose to £11.1 billion. Borrowing rose to £15.2 billion. And the net public debt was £995 billion, or 63.1 percent of GDP. Critically for the coalition, even by the Treasury’s optimistic estimates, public-sector net debt as a percentage of GDP will continue to rise for another two years, maxing out at 76.3 percent just in time for Cameron to call a general election.

Debt reduction and austerity may be popular with the financial markets and Austrian economists, but British voters are fast beginning to tire of hard times. Cameron’s cry of “We’re all in this together” sounds a little hollow when he and his multimillionaire colleagues, such as Osborne – 23 of the 29 members of the Cabinet are worth more than $1.6 million – are so conspicuously not consuming the gruel they are feeding the rest of the nation. Cameron took five expensive high-profile family holidays last year, four of them abroad, all dutifully recorded in detail by Fleet Street’s finest.

from The Great Debate:

Should Obama mimic David Cameron’s austerity?

By Nicholas Wapshott The opinions expressed are his own.

In medieval times, a key member of a monarch’s retinue was the food taster, a hapless fellow who ate what his master was about to eat. If the taster survived, the food was deemed safe for the king’s consumption. President Obama has a taster of sorts in David Cameron, the British prime minister, who has embarked upon an economic experiment that echoes the recipe of wholesale public spending cuts and tax hikes needed if both sides in Congress are to agree to raising the federal government debt ceiling. How the British economy is faring offers Obama an idea of what a similarly radical policy of cutting and taxing here would mean to the American economy.

Cameron’s election in May 2010 coincided with the start of the Greek debt crisis. The Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned him that the public debt in the UK was so large that Britain, too, might see its lending become impossibly expensive, so Cameron decided that there was no time to lose in putting the fiscal books in order. He decided to slash public spending by 25 per cent over four years and immediately raise value added tax on goods and services from 17.5 to 20 per cent. Such a radical remedy found favor with the rump of British Conservatives who felt that Margaret Thatcher’s free-market, small government, “sound money” policies of the Eighties had not been pressed to their limit. In turn, Thatcher’s prescription to reduce the size of the state derived from her favorite thinker Friedrich Hayek, the author of “The Road to Serfdom,” who believed like many Tea Party supporters that government intervention inevitably leads to tyranny.

Cameron’s experiment in applying a radical cure to the British economy caught the attention of a number of conservatives here, among them George W. Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson, who wrote in the Washington Post, “If Cameron’s approach works -- dramatically cutting deficits without stalling economic growth -- it will be an obvious, powerful example for America.” “If only the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress had been so courageous. Instead, they are choosing to put off these big decisions,” moaned Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief of the Economist, in a piece co-authored with Michael Green in the Wall Street Journal. Even Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner thought the British experiment worth trying. “I am very impressed, as one man’s view looking from a distance, at the basic strategy [Cameron] has adopted,” Geithner told the BBC.

So, how is the British economy doing? Under Cameron’s Labour predecessor, Gordon Brown, Britain fell into depression, with the economy shrinking during the worldwide banking meltdown to minus 2.1 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. By the time of the general election in May 2010, however, growth had slowly climbed to 1.1 per cent per quarter. With Cameron taking the reins and announcing his radical economic plan, the economy slumped back to minus 0.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, before returning to growth of 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of this. But the latest economic growth figures, released this week, show a slowdown in economic activity, to a miserable 0.2 per cent growth between April and June. Cameron’s chancellor George Osborne has blamed the poor figure on widespread partying that accompanied the wedding of Prince William and the effects of the Japanese tsunami. The double-dip recession that Cameron’s critics predicted has not yet taken place, but the figures are clearly headed in the wrong direction.

What exactly is causing the slowdown in Britain is not clear. The cuts have only just begun. The total spending reduction over four years will amount to no more than 1 per cent of government expenditure, though even that Osborne believes will put 1.3 million public sector workers out of work by 2015, though he hopes private companies will create 2.5 million new jobs to make up. The faltering economic recovery suggests he is being optimistic. The independent Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that the decision to raise VAT will cause economic growth to fall by 0.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2011/12. The tax hike has already dampened consumer confidence, leading in turn to a wave of retail store bankruptcies.

In his address on Monday, Obama suggested cutting government spending “to the lowest level it’s been since Dwight Eisenhower” coupled with new taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” He assured Americans “the cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy,” though that is plainly wishful thinking. Looking across the Atlantic, it seems that he, like Cameron, may be too optimistic about the true cost of slashing government spending and raising taxes at a time when the economy is still recovering from the Great Recession.

What did you think of the 2011 budget?

George Osborne has delivered his budget speech for the 2011/12 fiscal year to parliament.

The Chancellor said corporation tax would be cut by two percentage points to 26 percent from April, rather than by just the one point originally planned. A levy on banks would be increased to help pay for it.

Osborne also announced a surprise cut in fuel duty, while slapping higher charges on oil and gas production which he said would raise 2 billion pounds. Meanwhile, the government will offer loans to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder.

Osborne called it a “Budget for growth and jobs.” Do you agree? Take part in our poll below or leave a comment on this page.

What did you think of the 2011 budget?

• Great budget!
• More good than bad
• Neither good nor bad
• More bad than good
• Awful budget!

from The Great Debate UK:

Thinking outside the budget-shaped box

- Dave Coplin is national technology editor at Microsoft UK. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The emergency budget was announced recently as a means to tackle the country’s deficit and Britain's current economic situation.

But embracing a new approach to the way we run public- and private-sector organisations will be needed in order to stay competitive in the current market and help to redefine the fundamentals of business in this new environment.

Although Chancellor George Osborne’s budget has been deemed by a few as a “credible plan” for the future of public finances, and is an important step on the long journey back to economic health, we must remember that the economy is still fragile.

The budget announcement is likely to define the coming Parliament, and the government will either stand tall or fall on its ability to deliver Osborne’s proposals to bring the deficit down.

But it is UK businesses that the announcement will have the most tangible effects upon. Astute business leaders know that dramatic social, economic and political changes all ultimately affect our global competitiveness.

from The Great Debate UK:

VAT rise – is it really that bad?

Rachel Mason is public relations manager at Fair Investment Company. The opinions expressed are her own.-

So the new coalition government is putting VAT up from 17.5 percent to 20 percent on January 4 2011 and the country is up in arms, but is it really that bad?

Okay, in an ideal world, taxes would be low and public services would be top quality, but sadly, the world we live in is not like that. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) says Britain’s real debt is already 4.8 trillion percent – six times higher than the official figure of 772 billion pounds – and the simple fact is we need to pay it back, and to do that, the government needs to raise tax and cut spending.

A rise on income tax would have been a very unpopular move, so the government really only has one option left – VAT.

As George Osborne said, "This single tax measure will by the end of this Parliament generate over £13bn a year of extra revenues. That is 13 billion pounds we don’t have to find from extra spending cuts or income tax rises."

Considering what VAT actually is, the reaction to the rise has been disproportionate. For a start – did anyone really notice a big difference when Labour cut VAT to 15 pounds? No? Well, we probably won't notice a difference when it goes up by the same amount.

from The Great Debate UK:

Entrepreneurs needed if the UK is going to make up the deficit

-Joe White is managing director of Moonfruit.com. The opinions expressed are his own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-

The first Tory budget is a critical one. The Treasury and Chancellor George Osborne have been dropping hints for weeks about a big slash in public sector spending in an effort to try and prepare Whitehall for the worst, and to rally the private sector to step in and fill the deficit.

It’s a risky strategy. The belief that you can slash deficits and generate private sector growth is close to Tory hearts, and further encouraged by recent successes in this area by the Canadians.

But the difficulty is that when Canada implemented rapid deficit reduction, the wider global macro-economic climate was much more benign. One person’s spending is another person’s income, so reducing spending will reduce income unless other kinds of spending rise to fill the gap.

Economically there are only four kinds of spending, the total of which equals the national income: Consumer (you and I spending), Government (we all know about that one), Investment (generally spending by companies) and the net of Imports and Exports (net imports sends cash overseas, net exports increases domestic income).

Government spending is going to fall, that much is clear. Unless something else rises, national income will fall by definition.

from The Great Debate UK:

Osborne to show no sympathy for middle or high earners

-Nick Earl is partner at chartered financial planners Wardour Partners LLP. The opinions expressed are his own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes  an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-

On Tuesday we will hear the first budget from new Chancellor George Osborne.

From the snippets of information we have heard from the Lib-Con coalition camp, I do not anticipate this budget will show much sympathy for middle or high earners.

It is unlikely that the government will revise the higher rate tax-relief rules for those earning in excess of 150,000 pounds per annum.

A more possible outcome is that higher rate relief could be withdrawn altogether and should this happen it will be those who earn between approximately 40,000 pounds and 130,000 pounds who suffer the impact the most.

However, with this being an area that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats disagree on, it is perhaps more likely to be a compromise where pension tax relief is scrapped for earnings over a set level.

from The Great Debate UK:

Key tests for the emergency budget

-Thomas Story is tax director at BDO LLP. The opinions expressed are his own.  Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes  an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-

Ten key tests by which Chancellor George Osborne will be judged when he delivers the emergency budget on Tuesday:

1. Do the tax measures make a significant contribution to reducing the fiscal deficit?

The Chancellor is caught on the horns of a dilemma with the promise of various tax cuts contained in the coalition agreement needing to be offset by larger tax rises in the emergency budget to help plug the gap in the government’s finances.  However, this may allow some targeted tax cuts to be introduced from 2011 but only in small steps as the economy improves.

2. Will the total tax take be re-focused towards indirect taxes upon consumption and away from taxes upon income and profits?

It would be a massive surprise if there was no announcement of a significant VAT uplift on Budget Day. On current projections VAT is anticipated to bring in 78 billion pounds for 2010-11 and a rise to 20 percent could add up to a further 11 billion pounds. Given that the Chancellor is unlikely to have an opportunity to raise VAT again this parliament, he may be tempted to raise the rate even higher with a promise to reduce it once the deficit is under control.

from The Great Debate UK:

Banks, borrowing, bonds and Britain’s budget

-Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School and a co-author of “Verdict on the Crash” published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are his own. Join Reuters for a live discussion with guests as UK Chancellor George Osborne makes  an emergency budget statement at 12:30 p.m. British time on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.-

George Osborne must be thankful to Don Fabio and his boys for ensuring that Wednesday’s tabloids will have other things to think about than the Budget, because it is going to be one of the toughest ever.

There is every indication the advance billing is more than just news management. The pain is going to be frontloaded for two reasons.

First, if anyone thought the electoral cycle was dead, the run-up to the last election should have disabused them.

The old wisdom is still valid: get the pain in early, keep the goodies for later, when the next election is in sight. In the present case, it is reinforced by the more Macchiavellian consideration that the more blood is spilt on Tuesday, the less attractive will be the prospect of an early election and hence the stronger the bonds holding the coalition government together.

The more important reason for cutting the deficit drastically at the outset is the message it sends to the markets that we are not going to exploit our position outside the Eurozone to inflate away the debt.

This may hurt a little

Britons are being prepared for the hardest of hard times. Prime Minister David Cameron has warned the public that they will feel the impact of deficit-cutting decisions for years and maybe even decades. Cameron justifies the pain by saying that doing nothing about debt would be disastrous and that Britain will come out of the other side as a stronger country.

His finance minister George Osborne and LibDem sidekick Danny Alexander were setting out plans on Tuesday for how to conduct this year’s spending review, with  unions, the public and the private sector asked to contribute ideas.

Former Canadian finance minister Paul Martin told Reuters that the key to his country’s 1990s deficit cuts was being honest with people about what was to go.

The problem Cameron and his coalition may face is that spending cuts seem justified — as long as it’s someone else’s benefits or perks that are being pruned.

Where would you swing the axe to help cut the budget deficit?