Liz Truss allies set to publish ‘growth budget’ days ahead of autumn statement
Liz Truss allies are set to publish their so-called ‘growth budget’ just days ahead of Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement.
The former Prime Minister, who spent just 49 days in power, set up the Growth Commission after leaving Downing Street in a bid to challenge what she termed ‘Treasury orthodoxy’.
Now the task force has announced it will publish its own alternative ‘growth budget’ on 14 November – just days ahead of the Chancellor’s budget on November 22.
The document will be a pre-budget report, titled ‘The Growth Budget 2023’ and will analyse policies using “up-to-date dynamic economic assessment models”, a spokesperson said.
Truss’s commission says it will unveil a “detailed challenge to the conventional thinking” with its analysis including reforms to corporation taxes, income tax and national insurance.
Its scope will cover policy proposals, public sector spending and regulatory reform and assess effects on long-term GDP growth per capita over the course of 10, 15 and 20 years.
Advocates say the growth commission’s work will take into account more detailed modelling on behavioural impacts, such as on the tourist tax, which they say the Treasury fails to do.
Co-chairman Doug McWilliams called it “a detailed challenge to conventional thinking which has proved unable to rise to the challenge of fixing the UK’s low growth problem thus far”.
He added: “At a time when politicians of all parties are at a loss to explain how to generate growth, this is why it is so important to be putting forward an alternative that does provide answers, backed by leading economists from around the world.”
And co-chairman Shanker Singham added: “One of the exciting things about the budget is that we are looking at both tax and fiscal policy as well as domestic regulatory policy.
“We believe potential GDP per capita growth that could be unleashed as a result of regulatory reform is much larger than many have imagined and look forward to setting that out.”
A HMT spokesperson said: “We were among the fastest countries in the G7 to recover from the pandemic and since 2020 we have grown faster than France and Germany.
“The best way to continue this growth is to stick to our plan to halve inflation this year, with the IMF forecasting that we will grow more than Germany, France, and Italy in the longer term.”