Guest post from from Mike Cartwright - Bradford Chamber's Policy Representation Executive:
Wednesday’s Budget session in the House of Commons was interesting on a number of fronts.
I don't suppose many businesses were watching the Chancellor live as he spoke, as I was, but it was a very rumbustious yet disturbing affair really. I suppose there can be a fine line between ‘lively debate’ and chaotic or unruly; some might say the ‘yah boo sucks’ on display was a pantomime, others would say disgraceful – another example of why respect for politicians is so low. (For those who still don’t know what I’m talking about, the Speaker – that’s the chair of the debate – had to chastise and silence both sides of the Commons in order for the George Osborne then Ed Miliband to speak. Of course, the layout of Parliament’s chambers are designed for attendees to be diametrically opposed to each other so the scene is set regardless of the subject of the day.
Osborne had his usual voice-wobble, where he ‘dried up’ and needed a long pause to wet his whistle; and the Labour leader hammed it up like a gud ‘un, mocking his Twitter account and asking who in government was on the 50p tax rate. Pure theatre.
On the content of the Budget, we were pleasantly surprised. Corporation tax down, NICs reduction for many small firms, house-building programme, and Heseltine recommendations affirmed – all good. No mention of road-building and repair strategy, nor a freeze on business rates for three years, as we’d called for – disappointing. Fiscally neutral overall (as you’d expect in the circumstances), you never going to please everyone in the Budget but there was enough in there on this occasion for us to reprieve the Chancellor.
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