21 Sep Institute of Economic Affairs Director General Mark Littlewood says Friday’s mini-budget needs to be a ‘maxi-budget’
FRIDAY’S emergency budget announcement could include the most radical changes in tax and regulatory policies since the 1980s, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs.
IEA director general Mark Littlewood told GB News: “I think this needs to be a maxi-Budget, it needs to be hugely radical and decisive.
“Liz Truss, during the Conservative leadership campaign, confirmed she would abolish the rise in National Insurance contributions and would also abolish the rise in Corporation Tax.
“I’m expecting the Chancellor of the Exchequer to almost do those in the first sentence or two of his speech on Friday when he stands up at the dispatch box, but I think we’re going to see a lot more of that because the cost of living crisis is acute, really serious.
“It’s not just afflicting people at the bottom end of the income spectrum. People on average to middling salaries are struggling to get by too.
“I’m expecting and hoping that we’ll see a large number of tax cuts but I think he needs to go even further than that. It won’t just be about tax and spend.
“I’m really hoping there’ll be a lot about regulation and red tape, which I suspect and hope that Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss will be wanting to remove in order to really boost enterprise…
“I think we might see the most radical changes in tax and regulatory policy since the 1980s.”
Speaking in an interview with Mercy Muroki on GB News, he said: “She has said she wants to rip up the orthodoxy. There’s no more steady as she goes managerialism.
“I think actually, we have a very radical Prime Minister and a very radical administration, but she has basically talked the talk the test on Friday is, ‘is the government going to walk the walk?’
“If it is just a few fiddles here and there and steady as she goes, then I will be hugely disappointed, I suspect there’s no time to lose.”
Mr Littlewood said: “The Government’s lost an awful lot of impetus in its early days because of the tragic death of Her Majesty the Queen, but that’s actually given them time behind the scenes to plan for this.
“This is almost the launch of the new government on Friday and we should look into the whites of their eyes to see whether they were really going to deliver.
“I’m anticipating this is going to be very, very surprising and very radical, not a mini budget at all, not a ‘fiscal event’.
“I think there will be very, very clear and decisive direction of the change in economic policy, taxes down, regulation down, more power to individual men and women and a bit less power to centralised government.”
