The Budget Breakdown - Episode 11 Leaks, Delays, and Public Reaction

Mark Morton breaks down the post-budget chaos, covering leaks, delayed publications, and the heated public debate over policies like child benefit caps, while questioning the missing growth plan.

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Transcript

Hello, it's Mark Morton here 10 days after the budget, something like that. And the dust has settled. Quite interesting. What subsequently transpired on the night. It was very odd in terms of what the revenue releasing. Obviously leaving aside the, the leaks immediately before you couldn't make it up, could you?

But the leaks immediately before, and interestingly, we've now got an inquiry because it app appears that the leak occurred because essentially the OBR were using the same web. Reference and merely inserting in there November budget as opposed to spring, March, you know, 25 as opposed to November 25 or whatever.

So it appears, from what I've read so far, that the spring statement was hacked as well. There's now an inquiry into how many more were hacked, and of course, what that was used for, who was hacking it because the previous ones weren't leaked, you know, so was somebody making a killing on the stock market?

And so on and so forth. So it gets mercury and murer. And as we all know, although that may not be nothing to do with the current government it may be nothing to do with the chancellor. It ultimately comes home to roos with them and looked really bad. The revenues information was really odd on the night.

It took forever to appear, you know, it was supposed to, it usually appears within an hour after the speech took forever. May, maybe there were alerts in terms of, you know, we can't, let's better check what we are releasing here. We didn't receive all the information on the night that we normally would. The press releases were very unhelpful in terms of detail, which does smack a little bit of making it up as you go along almost.

Some of the figures for next year were not made available on the night. There's a publication called the Otlar. The overview of tax legislation and rates that was not published until Friday evening which was odd. The car benefit was not referred to at all until last week when suddenly it was passed as law.

There's been no announcements for, as I'm aware that the finance bill was gonna be published, but that's suddenly appeared last Friday. It's, you know, very disjointed for whatever's going on behind the scenes. Really disjointed and not helpful. To people like you and I also not helpful, possibly is, you know, you have a budget and then the the Prime Minister has to stand up immediately afterwards, you know, in, in subsequent days and give a speech saying he supports the budget as opposed to what question mark.

And he was talking about growth because in the budget speech, of course, there was virtually no mention of growth. And it's quite I think what's quite interesting and, you know, trying to divorce the politics from it all, it's not whether I personally agree or disagree with specific policies, but of course where is the growth plan as part of that?

The growth plan was the be all and end all a year ago. Nobody's been able to spot it subsequently, you know, nationally insurance increase and minimum wage increases aren't a growth plan. Somewhat the opposite I would suggest. And of course, what's now happened is that they're trying torque up the growth plan.

But I, what's really interesting to me is the public reaction to it. You know, for, I think a lot of lay people are fairly neutral on lots of tax related matters. You know, you don't often hear big outcry from the general public, but I think what has really rattled people's cages is particularly the, you know, whether you agree or not, but the lifting the child benefit cap.

Because the prevailing view that I hear is, you know, from working people, you know, I didn't vote for this to then pay people who aren't in work more money or people pay people with, you know, seven children when I decided to stop at two 'cause I couldn't afford three or four. And it's it's really interesting.

It's almost like I have visions here of Rishi Sunak announcing the general election in the pouring rain. You know, it almost seems to be at the moment, whatever he is done. The wheels come off almost, suggesting that Angela Rainer may be making a comeback, having not that long ago, not being able to get her tax affairs right, I think is quite a surprising statement as well.

But smacks of what I'm touching upon that actually there are a lot of negatives at the moment and not many positives. But anyway budget a strange process. We're now into the finance bill process. So the finance bill, pretty big 500 pages. I will spend a happy January trying to work my way through it and produce some notes.

We will then sit and wait for it to go through the parliamentary process, which I usually work on being done by Easter. Usually by Easter's passed, we can then have a look at the legislation, make sure nothing's changed. To be honest, not a lot does change as it goes through Parliament because most of the mp's who are debating it don't actually understand the technical nature of it anyway.

And then we will be ready to do some Finance Act courses in from the 1st of May onwards and give you a proper update of what may or may not be happening in this year, next year, or in fact four years time. To quote, salary sacrifice changes. So anyway, have a good Christmas everybody. Hey, you have a peaceful new year.

Enjoy the tax return season. I know it will be a lot easier this year 'cause most clients now don't file in January. I understand that. And then of course, you can build yourself up to either a MTD or B retirement as from next April. Anyway, on that happy note take care everybody. Look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Cheers.