The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that he will present the Autumn Statement to Parliament on 22 November 2023.
Jeremy Hunt will use the Statement to set out future tax and departmental spending plans, although he may hold back some ideas due to inflationary pressures. He has also commissioned an Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that will be presented with the statement.
Both Jeremy and Rishi Sunak have repeatedly promised to halve inflation amid a series of Bank of England interest rate rises since they both came into power in 2022. When announcing the date of the Autumn statement, Jeremy said,
“The Office for National Statistics published an update to the UK’s GDP growth figures which shows the UK economy was 0.6% larger than pre-pandemic levels by the fourth quarter of 2021. It means our economy had the fastest recovery from the pandemic of any large European economy, thanks to decisions such as furlough that protected millions of jobs. For that growth to continue we now need to halve inflation, which I am pleased to report is now nearly 40% below its 11% peak”.
By the time of the Autumn Statement, we should have a pretty clear idea of whether that target – a target the government has very limited control over – will be hit.
However, with the general election in mind, will the Chancellor hold back on favourable announcements until the Spring Budget?
Watch this space!
