To cut taxes, inflation, and the deficit, Hunt must break free of the OBR
Treasury briefing keeps telling us unfunded tax cuts will cause inflation. Yet we have just lived through two years of surging and high inflation with increased taxes â that should lead them to question their bizarre view.
If they believe that tax is the key to inflation, why donât the Treasury think the tax rises also caused it? In one sense, some of them did: they heaped higher taxes on energy as energy prices soared.
The Office of Budget Responsibility acknowledges that it has overstated this yearâs borrowing so far by ÂŁ20bn. Yet carries on asserting there is no scope to cut taxes.
The reason borrowing is lower is once again they got their forecasts of tax revenue wrong. I read in the press they keep sending the Chancellor very different forecasts of how much borrowing there might be in five years time. The Government uses this to decide what tax cuts they can afford. The OBR forecasts, though fluctuating wildly, never seem to allow tax cuts according to the press briefings that filter out.
Why does the Government use the five-year forecast to decide anything? It is bound to be wrong. The last three years have seen many overstatements of future borrowing by the OBR for the immediate year, which should be a lot easier to get right than five years out.
The Treasury and Bank need to think again about the inflation they have just presided over. Let me give them some thoughts on what did cause it.
The Bank should grasp that printing ÂŁ150bn in the recovery year 2021 and paying very high prices for bonds to keep interest rates close to zero was inflationary. The Treasury should understand that boosting spending by ÂŁ350bn a year over three years, and borrowing the money to pay for much of the extra spending, was inflationary.
They ended up borrowing it at overdraft rates from the Bank of England; these rates then surged as the Bank decided to hike them. It means it was unwise to borrow like that. If they had funded it long it would have been a lot cheaper and arguably less inflationary.
The Government needs to grasp that recruiting 103,000 more civil servants over six years and allowing a 7.5 per cent collapse in productivity was inflationary.
They will reply that the surge in oil prices from the Ukraine war was inflationary. It certainly drove up energy prices. But this does not account for why British inflation was already three times target before that happened. Nor does it explain how big energy importers, such as China and Japan, did not have a big general inflationary surge as we did. (But then, they did not print lots of extra money and drive their interest rates lower.)
Jeremy Huntâs budget needs to cut taxes, to help bring inflation down, and to push downwards on the deficit. Far from being impossible to do these three things at the same time, the right policies will indeed do all three together.
If only the Treasury had a model of revenues that picked up more accurately increases in growth delivering higher revenues, it would be easier to persuade them. If they were better at controlling public spending and at avoiding big falls in public sector productivity, that would help too. Letâs have a go at a budget that they could grudgingly agree, using their wayward models, that will achieve these ends.
Letâs start with getting inflation down more quickly. Suspend the five per cent VAT on domestic energy for heating for the year ahead. Take five per cent off petrol and diesel by a temporary cut in fuel duty. This will give a useful nudge down to energy costs just as world prices are increasing again.
Some of the revenue lost will be compensated by higher profit and windfall taxes on the energy companies as they benefit from higher world prices. Cover the rest with the proceeds of selling the whole remaining holding in NatWest shares. A lower rate of inflation, earlier, will also save some money on public spending, which is very geared to the inflation rate.
Hunt should also expand the supply side of the economy to offset some of slowdown the Bank is creating.
The VAT threshold for registering small businesses should be raised from ÂŁ85,000 to ÂŁ250,000. This would release a lot of new capacity quickly, which in turn would produce a bit of downward pressure on prices. More importantly, it would generate additional tax on incomes and profits as the small businesses did more.
Treasury models will score this as a revenue loss, so offset their fictional figure with rephasing some of the £20bn carbon capture and storage spend. It is unlikely anyway that large scale projects with good business cases will be available to subsidise any time soon.
We have lost 800,000 self employed from the workforce since February 2020. Some of this may be covid related, but it is also the result of tax changes in 2017 and 2021 which make it too difficult for some to grow their businesses in the way they used to, particularly where they need business customers. Change the rules back.
Again the Treasury will claim a loss, it should save government money (especially where people move back into self employment from benefits). This could be more than offset by imposing a stronger version of the Civil Service recruitment controls the Government is talking about. Natural wastage should slim the Civil Service, after the increase of 103,000 in just six years.
Next, switch farming grants for the future away from stopping people growing food toward supporting them for doing so. That will generate more business success to tax and will cut imports, which do not deliver any income tax, national insurance, and or corporation tax on the food production.
Then, save on all the anti driver schemes the Transport Department helps fund, in accordance with the welcome new approach outlined by Rishi Sunak.
There are many other places for reducing the costs of government. All this means we can have lower taxes, a lower deficit, and lower inflation. This is a cautious package: it would be possible to go further and faster to generate more growth. Look at the USA, which has managed to get inflation lower than us despite their Central Bank making the same mistakes as ours: it has also just recorded 4.9 per cent growth.
We are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of England, which did much to give us inflation in the first place. Just do something to cheer us up.
January 12, 2024
Our politicians over the last 40 years or so have abdicated responsibility: to quangos, to the EU, the ECHR, to the BoE, to the OBR, to the UN, WHO etc etc.
Its used as a ploy so they can blame someone else for failure, or for implementing policies that are not in our country’s interest but which they secretly support.
Until we get politicians who are not afraid of being directly accountable for the things they were elected to get done, this will only get worse. Take back control.
January 12, 2024
Yes, we have inexperienced politicians now, who do their utmost to do nothing at all, because they don’t know what to do or how to do it!
However, will they learn the lesson from the leader of the LibDems, who tried and succeeded in not doing what he should have, and by not doing anything then, he’s finding he’s taking responsibility now.
Lesson, if you don’t want any responsibility, don’t go into public office.
January 12, 2024
Peter absolutely agree, but this is down to party leaders to educate their own Party Mp’s.
Perhaps they should be advised on entering politics: “We govern honestly in the name of our Country, for the benefit of our population and all that live here, and that is your overriding responsibility, if you do not understand, or cannot do that, then please leave now, before you are dismissed”
January 12, 2024
+1 thatâs the lesson! And he must pay a price for failure.
January 12, 2024
Yes, but this is another it was them or them or them. It is not the Treasury, OBR or ONS it is the Uni party ministers. 85 seat majority gave them the power to anything they wished including the bonfire of quangos!
Why is clear Snake does not know how to stop spending taxpayers cash! He ought to try it he might realise he could bring down debt!
January 12, 2024
Indeed, the latest WHO proposals are appalling and this after the WHO has, throughout Covid, shown itself to be incompetent, wrong headed and surely totally dishonest too. But Sunak and this appalling Con-socialist government seems set on this agenda.
January 12, 2024
You say âThe Government needs to grasp that recruiting 103,000 more civil servants over six years and allowing a 7.5 per cent collapse in productivity was inflationary.â
But so many produce nothing of value just red tape and inconvenience for the productive that does huge net harm. How do you measure the productivity of people who block roads or wreck our energy systems with mad the net zero insanity or those who impliment over restrictive planning that so restricts supply of housing? Productivity? Well done you blocked ten important roads this years only eight last year. A 20% increase in productivity!
January 12, 2024
Wanderer :
Correct.
January 12, 2024
@Wanderer – yet all the time we empower and pay our politicians to manage on our behalf. It would appear they (the Political Class) take our vote and our money on false pretenses. The object of our tax pounds now is for them to keep throwing great chunks of our money to their chums that can’t hold down a real job. Then when they are rich and fail they get honors.
January 12, 2024
Exactly! Responsibility and authority cannot be split. We MUST SELECT those we want to represent us as the candidates of the two main parties.
TRASH THE CANDIDATES LIST OF FAILURES AND EASILY CONTROLLED GOONS. the parties selection has produced one useless House after the next – the PEOPLE must select the best!
January 12, 2024
They kicked out the one small c conservative prime minister we have had since Thatcher, under false pretences. And then primed the media to blame her. The grown-ups have shown that they useless, appallingly so.
January 12, 2024
This article features below one from William Atkinson saying the OBR should not be made a âscapegoatâ and that Truss was the problem.
I suppose David Gauke will be along in a few days to give the definitive answer for âConservative Homeâ readers.
At least this article appears on the site. On previous occasions I have searched in vain for articles from here that were said to feature over there.
January 12, 2024
And William Atkinson is 100% correct. You cannot, as Mr Redwood begins, “cut taxes, inflation, and the deficit”. You might as well say you want to jump over the moon. If you cut taxes, inflation goes up (because people spend more) and the deficit also goes up (because the tax take is down). This is Economics 101. And it’s not just theory either, it’s only a year and a bit since Liz Truss did excatly what Mr Redwood now says Hunt should so. That went well, eh?
Reply Nonsense. You cut spending and boost growth to boost tax revenues
January 12, 2024
Cutting spending does not boost growth. As any competent economist will tell you
Reply It can if it makes the public sector more productive and frees resources to do other things
January 12, 2024
Keynes – you are still wrong and still dead.
January 12, 2024
âYou cut spending and boost growth to boost tax revenuesâ. Yeah right, and what happens if the people suddenly getting a few hundred pounds more (and that would be the maximum they could expect) were to decide to save that in bank accounts (unlikely to be used afterwards to be invested in âgrowthâ-producing companies)? Are they all to create a SME? What a joke, and continuously peddled by the same people.
This theory of tax cuts OBVIOUSLY translating in growth has been shown numerous times to be deficient as more often than not it simply resulted in a different timing of spending and not additional spending or investment. The economies prevalent in the Kennedy and Reagan/Thatcher years which showed this tax cut-growth relationship were around several decades ago with a very different geopolitical environment and only people stuck in those years still live with these anti-Keynesian Mont PĂšlerin Society visions.
January 12, 2024
Saving leads to investment.
Investment leads to growth.
Surely you know this hefner.
January 12, 2024
Hefner, the public sector is financed by the private sector taxpayer. The public sector has become unaffordable and excess taxes are killing productivity
Truss intended to restore productivity but the socialist blob would not allow it.
January 12, 2024
How many City of London bond traders constitutes a socialist blob?
January 12, 2024
The public sector is financed by the taxes paid not only by all taxpayers, but more generally by all people via VAT, NIC, Council tax, business rate, fuel duty, tobacco & alcohol duties.
And contrary to what some might be thinking even people employed in the public sector pay income tax.
Only people spoon fed by the TaxPayersâ Alliance still believe that only âprivate sector taxpayersâ finance the public sector.
Furthermore, how many public sector entities are feeding consultants, think tanks, and similar in the âprivateâ sector?
January 12, 2024
Sir
Your reply to @Lemming is of course right.
Sadly, the OBR and HM Treasury seem to have been unable to form a reasonably accurate view on the effects of tax reductions on people’s behaviour and on the resulting increase in the tax take.
If public sector economists are not up to the job then they should stand aside so that someone competent can take the stage.
January 12, 2024
Peter, I thought, who is William Atkinson, for others in the same boat, he is a recent Oxbridge Graduate History, now Assistant Editor at ConHome. “ignore Trussâs campaign promises to lower taxes and get Britain growing through supply-side reforms” he goes on “If I might be allowed a little self-indulgence, I would like to ask why I â a 22-year old graduate with no formal economics training and a silly haircut â was better able to predict the consequences of the Prime Ministerâs economic policies than herself or her former Chancellor. The latter, after all, does have a PHD from Cambridge in economic history.”…”I did tell you Trussonomics was a dud, and a lot of you still voted for her. This is your mess, not mine.”
January 12, 2024
Trussonomics didn’t fail. It was never allowed to be put into practice.
Sunak used the market chaos, caused by the BOE not raising interest rates as an excuse to get her out and finally get himself in charge. Liz Truss’ mini budget was used as a scapegoat for the market chaos.
January 12, 2024
I know but its always interesting to read her blamed for everything.
January 12, 2024
As an update, David Gauke has already written an article about the OBR on the 11th January in the ‘New Statesman’. This man gets everywhere.
‘Tory MPs attack the OBR at their peril’. Truss, markets will get panicked , the wisdom of George Osborne etc, etc.
January 12, 2024
No money for tax cuts but wait, a quick rifle down the back of the sofa will pull up millions in loose change to fund something, somewhere, for all and sundry of the world.
Maybe even enough to fund a few vanity projects along the way.
Amazing how the incompetence of all these fiscal bods is just allowed to go on and on.
Although how much is incompetence and how much is a deliberate plan, is open for debate.
January 12, 2024
Michelle:
They say theres no money for tax cuts, but they have just found another 2.5Bn for Ukraine.
As a taxpayer, words fail me, but suffice to say, I shall not be voting Conservative at the upcoming General Election.
January 12, 2024
The Americans now admit as many as 40,000 weapon systems(inc Anti-tank and Anti-aircraft) they have supplied to Ukraine have gone missing.To turn up where?
January 12, 2024
In fairness the US left billions worth of kit to the Taliban when they ran away from Afghanistan!
January 13, 2024
but rather a lot damaged beyond usefulness.
January 13, 2024
Doesn’t matter to the MIC-it’s all been invoiced and paid for by the taxpayer.
January 12, 2024
@Cheshire+Girl – The one that gets me is the UK Unilever is help fund Putin so we have to pay more tax to fund the fight against him. But, that is apparently OK
January 12, 2024
Agree 100%
And taxes already high BECAUSE of the vanity projects!
January 12, 2024
A private business would act immediately.
Snake gives away another ÂŁ2.5 billion of borrowed taxpayers cash to corrupt Ukraine! Where is the money coming from JR? Does the maths kid know how to count? Secondly, as your party/govt shuts down steel works u dear nut stupid where will the steel come from to build all these weapons, ships, aircraft etc? Rely on China? Is anyone in your party/govt capable of joined up thinking?
After 14 years of lies and spin I think the sounding answer is No. all we had is highest taxes in history, highest printed money in history (Osborne promised sound money not funny money), big state, acting in lockstep to EU after voted leave and highest mass immigration in history. All against your mandates to govern.
This is not ONS or OBR it is the socialist half of the Uni party hiding behind quangos it created to hide its left wing policies. Your party could of course scrap them as promised by Cameron, but CHOSE not to. You had a 85 seat majority to change anything you wished, you CHOSE not to. Your mandate was to leave the EU, your party has CHOSE not to, but worse gave away N.Ireland and act in lockstep to prevent divergence.
January 12, 2024
Didnât I tell yeah, the UK is filthy rich âŠ.it must be, as we give billions upon billions to other countries
January 12, 2024
Duffers rule! No wonder the UK is going down the pan.
The other day, Harry Metcalfe on his YouTube channel Harry’s Farm, said he is reducing the land devoted to producing food by c60% over something like a 3 year period. This is to take advantage of government schemes intended to encourage just that. He showed the form describing several schemes, there must have been 6 or more listed. Nowhere on the form was there any reference to land used for actually growing food. He said lots of farmers he knew were taking advantage of these schemes. They will materially reduce UK food production in the years ahead. He thought there was a real risk of food shortages in a couple of years. Do Ministers and their officials have a clue what they are doing?
January 12, 2024
What is driving this lunacy in farming, energy, net zero, the net harm vaccines⊠are they just mad or are they actually evil?
January 12, 2024
Lifelogic
They simply do not remember the lessons of the second World war, and our dependance on home grown food production at the time.
Since then the amount of land available for farming has shrunk due to Housing, farmers re-wilding, set aside, and an increase in general infrastructure etc, and the population at the same time has increased by at about 50%.
Yes higher productivity is possible with the use of more efficient mechanical machinery and chemicals, but I would suggest we are still producing less food per person than we did 70 years ago. Otherwise imports would not be at the volume and value they are at present.
No point in growing nice to look at weeds, and having National Parks if you cannot do the basics and feed people.
January 12, 2024
+++
The powers that be want control of the food supply globally.
Something like old time factory/mine bosses who paid workers in tokens only redeemable in their factory shop.
There was a tv prog showing rewilding in Colorado ( I think) on what had been incredibly productive land. It had been transformed into a nightmare. No doubt it will eventually be built on amid the cries of all the idiots who believe the rewilding mythology.
They also want to âprotectâ public land similarlyâŠ.and keep us off it!
U.K. farmers have for years relied on the EU subsidies when they should have been learning how to grow, supply and survive.
Wilding = no farming = no food = eat bugs!
January 12, 2024
Damian Green in effect calling for wealth distribution! Is that a conservative trait or a socialist one?
In a volatile world it pays to be self sufficient in basics, our national security depends on it ie water, territorial waters, food, steel, energy. Snake Hunt and co want more EU!
Ukraine is going to lose the war this year and will not have a bargaining hand over the land Russia has taken because of Ukraine treatment of Russian speaking people in those areas, agreements with West Ukraine will act as a neutral buffer. What could go wrong with Cameron in charge of EU and foreign policy!
January 12, 2024
@Hope – he was never ever a Conservative, he believes everyone is entitled to anything that others have to work hard to achieve. In that he is aligned with the other non-Conservatives, the left wing One Nation Corcas, and the Sunak/Hunt cabal
January 12, 2024
Wealth distributes when people with money spend on what is worth buying, and people who have products and services sell them for what they are worth. Distributing wealth in other ways risks distorting into charity or waste.
January 12, 2024
Much of the insanity both from the DoE and elsewhere can be traced to the Climate Change Act which the cretinous Tories have not repealed despite their being in office for thirteen years. This Act is specifically designed to destroy our economy in order to save the planet. As JR has pointed out innumerable times, this simply transfers production elsewhere. It also helps countries which the goons in the MoD believe we need to attack in order to save us from all having to learn Russian or Chinese.
January 12, 2024
@David Andrews – this Conservative Government ensures there is no money to support the UK but plenty almost unlimited to destroy it.
January 12, 2024
Osborne should be condemned for his decision to birth the OBR. This man was nothing more a Blairite. The Tory party is packed with these low life reprobates. Owt for any easy life
January 12, 2024
What value a 5 year Plan? We wouldn’t have allowed for Covid, spin-the-bottle selection of a PM, Ukraine war, Gaza/Israel…..election of a new President? Labour Party back in Office?
January 12, 2024
At least we’re saving the world with our policies of net-zero ….leading the world again, the empire strikes back
January 13, 2024
yes our living standards seriously damaged in the goal for our 0.5% contribution to World Net-Zero.
January 12, 2024
The OBR could remain in place but be renamed as it clearly has nothing to do with responsible budgets but then its reports reviewed along with a number of other research firms so the Treasury has a diverse view of opinions to make decisions on. Giving one body this amount of influence is madness and as stated by its track record, foolish, given how hard it is to forecast the movements in an economy based on so many variables. And regarding tax cuts, income tax brackets and corporation tax needs revising as well for anything to have a meaningful effect in the economy. And the size of the civil service needs cutting dramatically, not only to save money and stop it crowding out the private sector, but also to stop it inflicting radical ideologies across all parts of our society that are causing long term damage to out society.
January 13, 2024
It could be renamed ‘Retirement Home for B of E and Treasury officials’.
January 12, 2024
So, in short, the Conservatives in office can’t be trusted on the economy, have put up taxes, have killed a lot of small businesses, and have caused inflation. Plus they’ve achieved the highest ever rate of non-European immigration. Who exactly do they think is going to vote for them, with that sort of record? Not me.
January 12, 2024
Keep banging the right drum Sir J, though I fear Hunt ain’t listening, nor the Treasury nor BoE. It’s 5 to 12 the election gets ever closer… outta time and the appearance of a spent force… looks like Rishi’s about to leave a right mess for the equally incompetent incoming Labour government…
Thoroughly depressing there’s so few sensible folk left in charge… you are an excellent exception.. thank you most sincerely and please please keep banging the drum.
January 12, 2024
Indeed as you say:- âWe are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of England, which did much to give us inflation in the first place.â But Sunak was Chancellor at the time when the large inflation was caused by QE, lockdowns and other errors. Huge mistakes were made government expenditure (most of it totally wasted) went up from 39% of GDP to over 50% under Sunak.
âJust do something to cheer us upâ indeed stop the vast government waste, ditched net zero, cut taxes, deregulate massively, halve the size of government, go for cheap reliable on demand energy, unblock the roads (London now the slowest & most congested city in the World), fix the potholes, get police to actually deter and tackle real crime, get fair and free competition in health care, cut low skilled immigration levels, get people to build more houses⊠alas Sunak seem to have the complete reverse agenda, His policies and tax levels are hugely anti-growth.
January 12, 2024
O/T but I hope topical. Sunak says that the Royal Navy waging war on Yemenis because this action is “in self-defence”. If that is so, why has Parliament not been recalled to vote on the defence of our nation?
January 12, 2024
Commendable though your thoughts might be it aint gonna happen. You are dealing with a socialist government backed by a socialist civil service.
I would put an end to the OBR who have failed to function in any useful manner since their creation.
The CS are on an extended vacation. Strip out with redundacy all those working from home after ordering them back to the office. Remove all those with racist functions such as diversity throughout the whole CS. They are a drag on productivity. Largely remove the overhead cost of housing the CS in London by removing them north of the M62. Convert their grandiose offices to cheap housing for the junior ranks of our essential services, police, firemen, nurses, junior doctors, dustmen, etc.
Remove racist diversity from private industry by making its cost none deductable. The UK is not a racist country and does not need the overhead cost of being told it is.
Make it a legal obligation of running a high street bank in a population centre of 100,000 or more to function in a banking centre hub, accessible to all and offering cash in and out to all who need it as a minimum requirement of being allowed to function.
End the insanity of our energy business plan designed by scribes and our subserviant governmenf to keep their friends in the EU happy. Replace it with the UK using its own energy sources at cost plus a modest profit to undescore our financial recovery.
Through taxation rate reduction to both corporations, small businesses and individuals allow the UK to evolve into a Singapore of the West. Then watch the Laffer curve kick in, investment from overseas expand, and there to be enough money in the till to look after the genuine needy, and sort out our cadaverous infrastructure. Not forgetting our ability to militarily defend ouselves.
The above smells of Conservatism so do not expect anything like it from your current cabal of consocialists.
January 12, 2024
“We are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR,”
No, Sir John. We are fed up with being controlled by the UN, WEF, EU, IMF and every other Globalist organisation the Establishment has outsourced our governance to.
The Treasury and OBR don’t work in OUR interests, as we saw when first Kwarteng, and then Truss, were dumped so that the WEF could get their puppets installed in Nos. 10 and 11..
Yet instead of “Taking Cack Control” of our country, which the Not-a-Conservative-Party was INSTRUCTED to do in the Referendum, it appears, post the Scamdemic, that the Not-a-Conservative-Government now is about to do the exact opposite by signing us up to the proposed WHO power-grab represented by the changes in the International Health Regulations and their proposed Pandemic Treaty.
The OBR is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
January 12, 2024
Do they use these forecasts because like with Horizon and the plandemic they are so desperate to make out that technology is the way forward. Leading to 100% AI?
Oh..or maybe they just canât add up?
January 12, 2024
But it is said that irrationality is used in the march towards totalitarianism.
A leader might promise something and then break that promise (!) or do something irretrievably odd ( like the budgets) and the result is total confusion followed by loss of morale, fear and despair.
Just the right scenario for imposing draconian laws.
January 12, 2024
Sir JR, I’m sure you are aware of the impending General Election. At the moment your party is likely to be wiped out (deservedly)
Sunak and Co. will be looking for a way to prevent this happening. So rest assured tax cuts are on their way. They are unlikely to be huge and will be called bribery by the opposition. Sadly for you, they are also unlikely to fool enough of the electorate to save your skin.
January 12, 2024
Hunt isn’t actually allowed to cut the 5% VAT on domestic energy in Northern Ireland. So he won’t cut it in rUK because the discrepancy would show up Sunak’s NI Protocol failure.
( 5% is the minimum limit set by the EUâs VAT Directive Annex II positive list. Under the Brexit NI Protocol Agreement rules NI is bound by EU limits on the use of reduced VAT rate for goods).
January 12, 2024
Correct. And it’s why the EU was determined to retain control of the UK through Northern Ireland …. which WEF puppet Sunak was only too happy to deliver.
January 12, 2024
Whaaat? That was Johnsonâs deal! Blame the right villain
January 13, 2024
Johnson agreed the initial betrayal. Sunak made it worse with the Windsor Agreement.
January 12, 2024
Who regulates, audits and controls the OBR and why are they not able to force them to improve?
If the OBR sells information then surely the quality of that information needs to be correctly valued on one side of the double entry booking keeping and audited against the money they get paid.
So the problem is how is the value of the information provided by OBR made ?
On the information side simply list all the predictions that are made, how much value each prediction is worth on a percentage point basis and how accurate it was.
So if taxes are not predicted correctly then simply take the mismatch.
If inflation is not predicted then take the error and multiply it by GDP.
So letâs say taxes were off by 20bn and inflation was off by 20bn compare that to the costs of the OBR of 1bn and conclude they cost the tax payer ÂŁ39bn.
January 12, 2024
1. Tax cuts should be balanced by cutting government activity and largesse.
2. Inflation is always and everywhere caused by governments and central banks creating too much money for the volume of available goods and services.
3. Government should be SLASHING civil service numbers, not recruiting more. How many did our Edwardian forebears run Britain and the Empire with? Around 40,000 in the early 20th Century all told. We don’t need half a million.
4. The war in Ukraine did not drive up energy prices. Energy producers, specifically oil producers, did that by not increasing or restricting supply.
5. Take the 5% VAT on energy off permanently and abolish fuel duty. It is monstrous that fuel duty is added before VAT is applied. That is paying tax on a tax.
6. Windfall taxes are a bad, socialist idea. Like Corporation Tax, they feed through to higher prices for consumers.
7. I am one of the self-employed lost prematurely. Because of the over-zealous Convid response I had to close my business and retire fully 18 months before I had planned. It cost me a six-figure sum for which I received no compensation. No furlough payment for me. I’m not complaining, just highlighting the stupidity of what was done.
8. Pay farmers to produce food, not cover land in solar panels and turbines. This island nation should be self-sufficient in food or as near to it as we can get.
9. Abolish, not save on, the anti-driver schemes. No cars and vans, no economy.
and finally:
Scrap Net Zero and repeal the Climate Change Act. More and more people know that man-made climate change is the Great Lie of our times. Climate changes, it always has and always will. Mankind does not cause it to change and can do nothing about it except adapt. We are puny, insignificant, in the face of the power of nature.
UN Agenda 21 and its bastard child, Agenda 2030 with its sustainable development goals which are predicated on a need to stop ‘global warming’ and ‘save the planet’ are nothing short of a Marxist scheme to control the whole world and its human population. They will ruin us – as they are intended to do. Withdraw from them.
January 12, 2024
Keep banging the drum John, sometime, somewhere in Government, someone may listen, and then hopefully act.
January 12, 2024
Cutting out waste should be the focus.
I read a police officer has been awarded more than ÂŁ800,000 in a sex discrimination case, to be paid out by West Midlands Police. That’s ÂŁ800,000 of public money that should be going into policing, not to mention how much they paid in legal costs.
If this was a charity having to pay this claim, upon hearing that your donations weren’t going to feed children as you intended but to be given to a wronged charity worker, you would cancel your donations.
Redress should come from the errant police officers, not the public purse.
January 12, 2024
Don’t understand all of points but totally agree that we should use VAT better is one of the things we left the EU for
January 12, 2024
Some chance. Hunt totally out of his depth but then he wasnât chosen for his fiscal acumen. Precisely so there would be no pushback against the OBR/BOE.
It must not be forgotten this is Sunakâs Treasury and any criticism of them would criticise Sunak, so thatâs off the agenda also.
Another day, another example of this governments impotence.
However we can spaff more money on Ukraine, ÂŁ2.7 billion. As a voter I seem to have missed being asked if I wanted to pay more tax to support a war triggered by us (eu) causing government change and taken as a threat by Putin.
Like the Middle East where our failure to follow through in sorting out Iran, turning a blind eye to Israel has contributed to the situation that yet again ultimately hits us in the pocket.
January 12, 2024
Those fortuntate folk who follow my fascinating, stimulating and incisive posts here on Sir John’s blog will be aware that I am not a fan of Rishi Sunak, nor his lackey Grant Schrapps
However, one must give credit when it is due and Sunak – who is making a surprise visit to Ukraine – has announced a further package of support involving a new ÂŁ2.5bn funding package covering long-range missiles, air defence, artillery ammunition, drones and maritime security, with the support an increase of ÂŁ200m on the last two years.
Sunak said âFor two years, Ukraine has fought with great courage to repel a brutal Russian invasion. They are still fighting, unfaltering in their determination to defend their country and defend the principles of freedom and democracy”
âI am here today with one message; the UK will also not falter. We will stand with Ukraine in their darkest hour and in the better times to come.â
Now what we need is an announcment that the defence budget will increase over the next 5 years to 2.5% of GDP and then 3%
January 12, 2024
You seem to be suffering from the same fuhrerbunker fever as Zelensky and Sunak.
A hundred year partnership?Not very ambitious is it?Wasn’t the Reich supposed to last for 1,000 years
January 12, 2024
sakara
“Increase the defence budget”
Indeed and agreed, but instead we are shrinking our own armed forces, and have been doing so for decades.
I see we are now mothballing two warships because we do not have enough sailors to man them, we are dismantling older aircraft because we do not have the capacity to keep them in storage, or fly them in an emergency.
Without NATO’s help we cannot defend ourselves anymore, yet the World is getting a nastier place and we still think we should act as the Worlds policeman.
Latest foray into the middle east with America.
Interesting that one of the Warships is called HMS WESTMINSTER, just about sums it up that they have retired Westminster because they have nobody competent to run it !
What a fiasco.
January 12, 2024
Has Parliament approved this donation to a foreign country, Sir John? Or does Sunak consider the ÂŁ2,500,000,000 as his money to dish out to whichever bunch of corrupt foreigners he pleases? And will there be an audit this time, to see where the cash ended up?
January 12, 2024
….and you mugs out there are going to pay for it ( it being to finance somebody else’s war).
January 12, 2024
Those fortunate folk who follow my fascinating, stimulating and incisive posts’, aka ‘fools gold’?
January 12, 2024
But doing all the things you so sensibly favour, would require a Conservative Government, not the pale imitation of New Labour that is now in power. You say we are controlled by incorrect OBR forecasts, but that is not the case: we are controlled by Sunak and Hunt who are quite clearly not prepared to challenge anything the OBR tells them. The sooner they are voted out of power the better, because that is the only way that gives any prospect of change in the leadership of the Conservative Party, even though it would mean several Labour years, but I cannot believe that would be much worse than what we have at the moment.
January 12, 2024
Throughout his career, Hunt has only been interested in his political advancement doing little/nothing for the electorateâs benefit preferring âserenadingâ the elites.
Why should anything change now?
Good riddance at the election , I hope.
January 12, 2024
we have got to increase national insurance, both employers and employees, for work visa holders to the same levels as Brits pay. the current situation where its often zero is not sustainable.
and we need to do this regardless of what treaties with places like India say.
we cannot go on subsidising the decimation of the local workforce with tax perks.
January 12, 2024
“…. Hunt must break free of the OBR.”
Truss and Kwarteng tried to break free of the OBR and they were brought down by Sunak’s swamp.
Sadly, the Conservative Party will deserve everything it gets …. at the next GE.
January 12, 2024
If the Chancellor canât sort out the OBR nonsense shouldnât the National Audit Office expose its faults and cause its closure?
January 12, 2024
Bloke – THEY do not want to sort it out.
January 12, 2024
The OBR needs to take its own medicine and declare “responsibility” for its very own systemic defective erroneous expensive forecasts then be shut down permanently, saving us all poorer futures.
Amateurs.
January 12, 2024
Just included in your next manifesto a single line
”We will disband the OBR at the next parliament” ….job done
January 12, 2024
not done without also leaving UN, WEF, ECHR …..
January 12, 2024
thats the only thing that would get my vote
January 12, 2024
The most important issue is the complete failure of Treasury, Bank of England, and OBR to get any prediction right, especially 5 years in advance !
Will markets accept a brave Chancellor going against the forecasts ? Given the Truss government’s experience, I rather doubt it, but then her treatment was born of a cynical conspiracy to replace her with Sunak and Hunt, who is definitely not the brave chancellor we need.
January 12, 2024
Sir John
You have again presented us with a lot of logical positives that would drive us all and the Country forward. But, as the majority off your contributors have noted previously there are just a few like-minded real Conservatives like yourself around, this WEF Sunak/Hunt Socialist Cabal that calls itself a Conservative Government isnât and doesnât know how to be. Am I name calling? A Conservative manages the economy by ensuring what is spent by the State is backed up by what can be earned as such cuts its cloth accordingly. A Socialist make promises it canât keep, spends money like it is going out of fashion, then foists higher taxes and high borrowing on the taxpayer â but no one other than the inner clique advances.
Clearly from the get go the creation of the OBR by the Conservative Government was just one manâs egotistical dream. Then given its record of failure on failure you have to ask why is it there, the only conclusion its just somewhere for personal chums to go that canât get a job in the real World. The Conservative inner clique gets to profit yet again and the Country doesnât. That is not a Conservative Government ‘managing’ but deferring to ego and masters elsewhere
January 12, 2024
âWe are fed up with being controlled by incorrect forecasts by the OBR, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of EnglandâŠ.â
So who is really running the country? The same applies of course to the unelected CCC controlling and destroying our economy with their Net Zero policy.
If an unelected individual can be made a Lord and put in charge of our foreign policy, can this not be done for all the other departments of state and in fact for the whole cabinet including the PM?
January 12, 2024
Sir John
You and âweâ should not loose sight of the fact that this Conservative Government and the Sunak/Hunt club in particular are not there to support the UK. From their actions and the way they dispense of our money to anyone and everyone that doesnât contribute to its creation, shows they are there to destroy the UK.
There is no reason economically or in any practical purpose for the OBR, so why is it there? As reported in the MsM the WEF national Socialist gathering is upon us once more and running through their doctrine and direction they also join the club of having never been correct at any time. Those that buy into this WEF Socialism decline and the World that is to busy with real day to day management moves on at a pace.
Our so-called Conservative Government buy into the Socialist proclamations with gusto without question and guess what we are declining and the World moves on.
The big question I have is how many State employees/officials/wannabes will the UK taxpayer be forced to fund to leave their post and go on this Socialist jaunt?
January 12, 2024
Seems to me, the root of the problem starts with the particular computer models the OBR and the BoE utilise for their projections. Given the continual errors produced, perhaps they should now switch to the model preferred by Mrs Thatcher’s macroeconomist, Professor Patrick Manford who gets the right results.
January 12, 2024
Sorry, Prof, the name should be Patrick Minford.
January 12, 2024
All good ideas. Hereâs the problem: if Hunt does this the Conservatives might win the election – and the blob really doesnât want that. The blob sees a real opportunity to entrench its power with a Labour govt, and de facto to reverse Brexit, the ultimate prize. So expect all manner of official and âexpertâ objections to anything along these lines. Given that, Iâm afraid a cautious Sunak and a quasi-blobbish Hunt are very unlikely to face down such objections. But letâs see.
January 12, 2024
The country must not be governed by the OBR and the BoE or any other non-elected body . We are starved of encouragement and stimulation and need a spark in our lives . I cannot argue or dispute any of Sir Johns’ views on the economy ; my background is different to his but what I do know is that everyone is entitled to an expectation in their lives that should keep them stimulated ; this has not been happening since the Sunak/Hunt direction has been operating . The world is in quite a mess at the moment and we ought to use whatever means we have to steer our way forward .
January 12, 2024
Unless this limited and obdurate government do take your advice and âdo something yo cheer us upâ, we will take matters into our own hands and cheer ourselves up by sacking them en mass.
January 12, 2024
How could Japan drive their interest rates lower? Havenât they had rates close to zero for decades?
Reply You can take them negative
January 12, 2024
So more funds for war – and another little bit of reality for Mr Sunac today – please draw this to his attention Sir John:
Hertz said it will sell 20,000 EVs – citing low demand and expensive repairs – reverting to ICE.
January 12, 2024
âheaped higher taxes on energyâ which disappears in subsidies
Some people admire the Norwegians for having created a wealth fund, and so they should. This Conservative Government has made much about new oil exploration in the North Sea, they have given âEquinorâ a licence to extract and sell the output on the World Market (it doesnât come direct to the UK), so no UK security of supply. Equinor is Norwegian State owned and run, those employed on the rigs just as the Company itself earn and pay taxes in Norway. The UK therefore is held to ransom by the political will of those it canât vote for.
Then in another announcement we hear the French Government owned EDF is also to be subsidized with these exhortingly high energy taxes to let us have electricity in the UK. Again, this UK Conservative Government is causing the UK people to be held to the whim of a Foreign Government it canât vote for.
Then we have The Danish Government Orsted build one of the Worlds largest windfarms in UK waters. The condition for the project was the UK consumer would pay over the market price for their electricity, higher than the Danish Government would allow for the same in Denmark. Just as with the other projects the UK is held to ransom by the political will whims of those we canât vote for.
It is quite a stretch to suggest that having UK Energy, self-sufficiency and resilience owned by Foreign Political Groupings provides what the headline would have you believe. Itâs a Government that is bereft of all ideas and interest in supporting the UK.
In each situation the tax base is abroad and there is no substantive contribution to the UK as would happen if UK Companies were treated the same on the same level playing field.
January 12, 2024
I see the USA resumed imports of Russian oil at the end of last year, and at price much higher than the $60 price cap set by the G7 in Dec 2022.
The relevant data was published by US Bureau of Economic Analysis. 10 thousand barrels for $749,000 is $74.9 per barrel.
And the Germans have reached 1970âs Britain. They need a Mrs Thatcher!
January 12, 2024
The Germans need a Mrs Thatcher. So do the French and so do we.
The Green-Socialist nutters, including the British ones, are destroying Europe.
January 12, 2024
So according to you, Gaby Attal, the new French PM, is a Green-Socialist? You really have the perfect political understanding to comment on this blog, donât you.
January 12, 2024
Where did Donna mention the new French PM?
You are getting over excited hefner.
January 13, 2024
He’s yet another WEF Young Global Leader. So yes, a Green-Socialist.
January 13, 2024
As a certain Liz Truss who participated as a panellist to the 2021 WEF in the discussion âFixing the International Trade Systemâ?
And BTW I could not find Gabyâs name among the WEF Young Leaders. You should try to learn how to do a proper web search âŠ
January 12, 2024
Yes they are destroying the entire western world.
January 12, 2024
The extra 2 billion quid Rishi just gave to Ukraine, and the extra 2 billion quid he recently gave to India, really need to come under some scrutiny. A PM dishing out money like this, when finances at home are so tight really needs more consideration. I dont think there is any support in the country for either of these gifts, which is just adding to the national debt.
January 12, 2024
Ian
Yep another trip abroad, more taxpayers money spent, happens every time !
January 12, 2024
IG – Just ask yourself – WHERE does the money go!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 12, 2024
Has Zelensky described the U.K. and USA attack in Yemen as a âtotally unprovoked attackâ yet? Where are the U.K. politicians – that eccentric breed – screaming about dictators waking up one morning and deciding to wipe out the de facto government of Yemen?
Isnât it lucky that another superpower like Russia, for example, has not declared it will arm Yemen âfor as long as it takesââŠ.
Is the collective West using electric ships – donât tell me they are burning Russian oil to prosecute this war!
đđ€Ł
January 12, 2024
âThe OBR should not be made a scapegoat by those unwilling to own their own mistakesâ.
Discuss in about 1000 words.
January 12, 2024
Hefner – is there anyone capable in governement of writing a thousand words on anything?? Career politicians one and all.
January 12, 2024
it won’t be published, try a precis of about 50 and be in with a chance.
January 12, 2024
I have skimmed your article with which I agree. The government appears uniformly not to be governing for the good of the population. The questions my relatives have are “how do I get this thing out of me” and “what can I do to ameliorate these repeated infections and the injuries I have suffered since vaccination” – and the government will not entertain these questions.
January 12, 2024
“They will reply that the surge in oil prices from the Ukraine war was inflationary.”
It is indeed curious how frequently the PM, Chancellor and Treasury ministers have parroted this assertion, as if attempting to bleach our memories of the inflationary wave that was well under way in Britain months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
January 12, 2024
I asked AI to summarise your message with permission; the author argues that tax cuts might not cause inflation, as there was a surge in inflation despite increased taxes. The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) insists that tax cuts will cause inflation, but the author thinks this is a strange view. The author suggests that the Bank of England’s printing of ÂŁ150bn in 2021 and the Treasury’s boosting of spending by ÂŁ350bn, funded by borrowing at overdraft rates, caused inflation. They also argue that recruiting 103,000 civil servants over six years and a 7.5% fall in productivity was inflationary.
To lower inflation, the author suggests suspending the five per cent VAT on domestic energy for heating for the year ahead, taking five per cent off petrol and diesel, raising the VAT threshold for small businesses, supporting food production, and reducing the costs of government.
If you put the personal allowance up to ÂŁ15,000, what effect would that have on inflation? Could it aid growth?
January 12, 2024
Re, the above AI summary. My husband sent me AI to trial today to see if I thought it would assist people at work. I have become fascinated to see what it cuts and what it keeps.
When the education department discusses English examinations done on computers, not handwriting, how will they ensure that technology like this and grammar programs don’t write home-based essays and dissertations?
January 12, 2024
Canât you see? For some of the clever clogs in the PCP cutting IHT or getting rid of the 45% tax rate is much more important for their survival than increasing the personal allowance that would improve the life of âthe little peopleâ.
The average salary in the UK is ÂŁ39k, which means that 20% tax is paid on 39,000-12,570 = 26,430 ie ÂŁ5,286. With the personal allowance at ÂŁ15k, the tax paid by an average salaried person would become 39-15=24 ie only ÂŁ4,800.
According to Treasury projections, 27 million people are basic rate tax payers, which means that HMRC would suddenly look at at a (5,286-4,800)*27 m = ÂŁ13,122 bn. What PCP MP would support such a thing given it would be a gift to people whose majority would not vote for the Conservatives, and that the extra ÂŁ486 would likely not be âinvestedâ in âgrowth-inducingâ endeavours?
Will Sir John support such an increase in personal allowance? I doubt it very much.
January 12, 2024
Sorry ⊠at a drop of £13.122 bn ⊠a dot not a comma.
January 12, 2024
Hefner, the Tories without much fanfare or acknowledgement did increase the personal allowance for under retirement age workers on their national insurance by ÂŁ2690 pa each person. (ÂŁ2430 on the suggestion of ÂŁ15k pa on income tax is lower, I believe the left want to rise the costs for pensioners there is talk of merging tax and NI then not stopping it).
This increase helped all those people you say the Tories donât want to help. I actually have sympathy for helping workers, especially English taxpayers with their graduate taxes. The Tories this month went on to reduce the NI rate from 12% to 10% and all the left do is complain?
I donât want much change to the Inheritance tax, I think the thresholds should rise with inflation each year and perhaps be backdated at most.
Iâd rather the child benefit be given back to parents if one earns over ÂŁ50k helping working parents to pay for their childcare than take off the top band, that can wait for better times. I also donât agree with the personal allowance being clawed back over ÂŁ100k that could be started from a much higher level.
January 13, 2024
A Tracy
All they need to do with inheritance tax is to remove the residential home completely from the value of the estate, and then backdate any increase in the allowance in line with inflation, that would make it a rather more fair tax for everyone, given house prices have such a huge variation nationwide.
When I say residential home I do mean the house in which the deceased and their partner and direct family (if they have such) have been living, any additional properties should of course form part of the estate.
January 15, 2024
If they did it, Alan, it would be quickly reversed by Labour and a vote loser. The younger generation is already indoctrinated; this is one of their biggest bugbears, people mainly in the South that bought homes for ÂŁ35,000, then the market exploded, excluding younger generations from buying now and living in eternal rent situations and those same homes are supposedly worth around ÂŁ600,000, the same house up North would cost ÂŁ150k and wasn’t lots less in the 1980s, without the owner spending more than ÂŁ60,000 on improvements in the past twenty years, it will all come to a grinding halt if entry to purchase is blocked for the under 35s unless we sell our souls to wealthy foreigners. Labour is talking about 25-year guaranteed monthly gradual repayment at a set %. If anyone had offered that when rates were 2%, they’d have bitten your hands off; now, no. And if they can do this for mortgages, why are student loans 7.5% tied to inflation?
It is somewhat conflicting to me that people can make more on buying a house ‘in the right place’ (this is not a universal UK issue) than a lifetime of long hours of work, risk and indebtedness to get businesses going, hardly taking breaks and making family time sacrifice.
Homeowners have some choices. If they don’t want their children to pay the inheritance tax, they could downsize, or swap homes with their children; more would if they did something about the awful stamp duty and high costs of downsizing.
January 12, 2024
last sentence – with no other cancelling measure it would help the low incomes pay bills easier, motivate to work more with less tax taken, signal a low tax Party ( I joke of course).
January 12, 2024
Yes, the Budget should cut taxes but emphatically not ‘Jeremy Hunt’s budget’. Even if Hunt and Sunak cut taxes significantly at the Budget they have no credibility because they put up taxes to the highest level in 70 years. So almost nobody (myself included) would believe it is anything other than an election gimmick soon to be reversed at Civil Service whim after the election in the event of a miracle occurring and them being re-elected.
It has not only to be tax cuts but also regime change at the top (a new Prime Minister) if the Conservatives are to have any credibility or chance at the election. The Budget is the last chance a new Leader would get to credibly change economic direction without it seeming to be a desperation measure just for the election. If the Conservative Party waits until after the Budget to change Prime Minister, the notion of a new Leader with a new economic vision would be hopeless. The only chance (and a slim one) the Conservatives would then have of a reasonable election result would be to risk making Suella Braverman Leader as she would have what in boxing is termed ‘a puncher’s chance’ as she sure is a political puncher like no other British politician.
January 12, 2024
This is great stuff indeed John. Why are you not First Secretary to the Treasury?
January 12, 2024
He is a politician. says all the right words but NO action. Do you ever hear any of them stand up in the HoC and call the governrmnt out for what they are? Andrew Bridgen spoke up and you see what happened to him.
January 12, 2024
First LORD OF THE Treasury surely?
January 12, 2024
Did I miss our declaration of war against Yemen, did I miss the UN resolution, did I miss the vote in parliament ? If we can bomb who we like, how about the French
Reply There was a UN resolution this week. I assume Starmer who was informed agreed so there was no need for a vote.The Leader of the Opposition could have asked for one and then we should have one.
January 12, 2024
@ glen cullen – hopefully there was no declaration of war for were they to be one, under international law neutrals obtain rights and obligations in their treatment towards the combattant parties that would not suit us. It was just a police action perhaps.
January 12, 2024
@glen cullen – being cynical was it us the British that left the Yemen in such as mess that it was inevitable?
January 12, 2024
We left South Yemem 55 years ago and North Yemem got their independence from the Turks in 1918 …not everything is our fault, what of self-determination
January 13, 2024
@glen cullen – I didn’t suggest anything other than we never left it in a good place has been shown elsewhere. What was right at the time doesn’t always translate as right to day
January 12, 2024
GC _ Reply to reply _ A UN resolution!!!!!!! We ll that’ s OK isn’t it????? Another bunch of corrupt globalist morons.
January 12, 2024
9527th Meeting (PM), SC/15561, 10 January 2024
Adopting Resolution 2722 (2024) by Recorded Vote, Security Council Demands Houthis Immediately Stop Attacks on Merchant, Commercial Vessels in Red Sea
Following naval interception by the United States and United Kingdom of a barrage of missiles and drones fired from Houthi-controlled territory into the Red Sea on 9 January, the Security Council today adopted a resolution demanding that the Houthis immediately cease all attacks on merchant and commercial vessels.
January 12, 2024
It was apparently done as self defence as they were attacking our ships, as far as the legal box ticking goes.
I am sure the forces are allowed to act in self defense without political permission anyway.
January 12, 2024
We need a bit of self-defence against the French
January 13, 2024
agreed
January 13, 2024
I thought Brussels did us the most harm?
January 13, 2024
them too
January 12, 2024
Reply to reply: A UN resolution to bomb Yemen, Sir John? I don’t think so. And I haven’t seen any announcement by Starmer or the Labour Party, in favour of attacking one of the world’s poorest countries with cruise missiles. Not a good look for the humanitarian internationalist Labour Party.
Isn’t the truth that Sunak was just following orders?
Reply A UN resolution to defend shipping from Houthi attack
January 12, 2024
Once again you show us that things do not have to be the bad way they are, if only the government would fashion a budget to help us all. It does not seem capable, however, of acting to “Just do something to cheer us up” – although it will when it clears off.
January 12, 2024
which politician signed off on the London ambulance service buying electric powered ambulances, I kid you not?
cold weather, a few trips uphill, standing around with flashing lights on for prolonged periods etc will be a disaster.
why oh why does the NHS think it can spend money on virtue signalling instead of actual healthcare delivery?
more money thrown down the drain.
January 12, 2024
“Say It Ain’t So, Joe”
January 13, 2024
Have you entered the US election campaign?
BTW: a brilliant song.
January 12, 2024
Update â Reporting on GB News
ââ A second London bus has burst into flames just one day after flames caused a critical incident. The hybrid vehicle caught fire in North Woolwich, East London, just 24 hours after an electric bus burst into flames in Wimbledon.ââ
https://www.gbnews.com/news/woolwich-bus-fire-critical-incident-wimbledon-london
January 12, 2024
Dear Sir John,
Hunt has shown absolutely zero inclination to cut taxes so far, so in that regard, the OBR have been providing justification for his chosen course rather than holding him back. If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he does want to cut taxes, he cannot disregard the OBR and do what he likes, because he risks another backlash a la Truss, where everybody from the IMF to Joe Biden lines up to attack him. What he can do, and should do, is place the OBR under scrutiny, challenge their lack of accuracy, demand changes to their models to predict the future with greater accuracy, and propose changes to their remit, which at heart was designed to make the UK a suitable candidate for the Euro. This sets the tone and the mood music for doing something that would be opposed by the OBR. Going at it whilst the OBR has all the credibility would ensure disaster. For the OBR read also the Bank of England.
Regards,
SR