Wednesday, November 30, 2011
On 29 November 2011 the Chancellor George Osborne delivered his second autumn statement
to the House of Commons.
This was not a statement filled with good news. Setting the scene for the announcements to come,
Mr Osborne said that debt is not coming down as quickly as hoped, and the Office for Budget
Responsibility (OBR) has revised growth forecasts for 2012 down to 0.7%.
To put this into context, the OBR forecast for 2012 was 2.6% in the 2010 Autumn Statement
just a year ago today, and 2.8% in June 2010.
The OBR prediction that the structural deficit will fall from 4.6% of GDP to 0.5%
over the next five years also means that the Chancellor will likely miss his pledge to
eliminate the structural deficit by the next election.
This target has been the key plank underpinning the Chancellor's commitment to 'Plan A',
and the prediction that it may not be met will be damaging for the Chancellor personally.
It will also limit the Government's ability to start pulling vote winning policies out of the bag
ahead of the next election.
Unlike the 2010 Autumn Statement, which included very little detail outside the Plan for Growth
and the OBR's forecasts, this year the Chancellor's speech was accompanied with a 98-page Treasury document setting out a mixture of old and new announcements,
many of which will be strangely familiar to those who follow policy and public affairs closely.
Read the rest of the summary
here....
Find the full
Autumn Statement here
Find the
National Infrastructure Plan 2011 here