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Autumn Statement 2016 Maybe The Last

Chancellor Phillip Hammond could cut the autumn budget statement in a bid to reduce the power of The Treasury over Whitehall decision making.

The Autumn Statement – due on November 23, 2016 – gained prominence under Chancellors Gordon Brown and George Osborne.

Both took full advantage of the platform to give The Treasury more influence over policy decisions made by other departments by controlling the government purse strings.

They also had a habit of announcing policy changes to test reaction from voters, investors and business. Many policies were reversed or buried in later Budgets.

For example, Osborne mooted finding some cash to reduce ‘urban seagull attacks’ – an idea which was quickly forgotten after the last election.

All eyes on Hammond

This year, all eyes are on Phillip Hammond taking to the Chancellor’s ballot box stage for the first time to hopefully explain new Prime Minister Theresa May’s economic and fiscal strategy following Brexit and prior to pushing the Article 50 Treaty of Lisbon button to leave the European Union.

But the word is after this statement, the country will have one Budget in the spring to set tax and economic policy and an autumn update aimed at forecasting.

The move could foreshadow a move in the capital to take control away from The Treasury and move the power hub to Downing Street, where May and her closest ministers want to get away from the politics of ‘gimmicks and micromanagement’.

Apparently, mandarins in The Treasury are more sceptical about the plans of May and Hammond.

Padding rather than substance

They reckon they have seen other Chancellors try to take power away from The Treasury, but the Treasury is still there and they have been and gone.

Some commentators see giving the Chancellor the opportunity to make policy will see the space filled – but sometimes with padding rather than substance.

Julian McCrae, deputy director of the Institute for Government, said: “If you create fiscal events, they generate their own momentum and so get filled with guff.

“Changing the pension system so that the chancellor can pull a rabbit out of his hat, for example, is never the right way to go about pension reform.”

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