CITY AND SUBURBAN
Unity is strength, except when it comes to unifying the Budget
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Eyes down for the Unified Budget. This time next month Kenneth Clarke will unveil his plans for spending, taxing and borrowing — all at once. The reform is his predecessor's legacy, meant to make for even-handed budgeting, and at the time was received in Whitehall with qualified rapture. 'I'm sure,' a mandarin was heard to say, 'that we can make it work.' I took this to mean that ministers had such ideas and mandarins must live with them. This has proved no easy matter. What has hap- pened is that the run-up to the Budget, which kept the Treasury so busy in the win- ter, now coincides with the run-up to the plans for public spending, which keep the Treasury so busy in the autumn. These simultaneous separate processes are expected to lead to last-minute decisions, not necessarily good ones. For the Chan- cellor, it means that one day a year is make-or-break day. That, too, is not neces- sarily helpful. I thought that Mr Clarke, when he took over, might have put off the unified Budget in favour of a quick-fire package of tax increases and spending cuts, and he may regret missing the chance. One absolutely certain consequence of a major organisational upheaval of this sort is that it takes the operators' minds off their busi- ness. It suggests an odd sense of priorities. Of all the things now wrong with the British economy in general and the public finances in particular, none will be put right next month by unifying the Budget.
Previous page
