"It's been a long time coming. If you feel like this Budget has been going on for ages, you'd be right. Not just because by one senior MP's count, 13 - yes, thirteen - different tax proposals have already been floated by the government in advance of the final decisions being made public. Or because of an ever-growing pile of reports from different think tanks or research groups making helpful suggestions that have grabbed headlines too."
""Everyone was getting ready to open up the Excel," one aide recalls, but Reeves announced she didn't want any spreadsheets or Treasury scorecards. Instead she wanted to start by working out how to pursue her top three priorities, which she scribbled down on A5 Treasury headed paper. That trio is what she'll stick to next week: cut the cost of living, cut NHS waiting lists, and cut the national debt."
Planning for the Budget began in July with Chancellor Rachel Reeves meeting aides and setting three top priorities written on A5 Treasury paper. The priorities are cutting the cost of living, reducing NHS waiting lists, and lowering the national debt. The strategy signals a combination of controlling inflation, maintaining public service spending, protecting long-term infrastructure investment, and constraining overall spending to tackle high debt. Reeves's team expresses confidence, but political constraints, party fears, business scepticism, high taxes, and years of squeezed public services risk complicating delivery.
Read at www.bbc.com
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