George Osborne has delivered an autumn statement that, provided it doesn’t unravel in the next few hours, should give him very good headlines.
He has abolished the old, unfair system for stamp duty and claims that his new system means 98 per cent of people buying new homes will pay less stamp duty as a result. The changes will come into effect at midnight tonight and those who have exchanged contracts but not completed will be able to take advantage of the reforms if they want. This is the measure that MPs will vote on in the mystery three-line whip division tomorrow, giving Labour 24 hours to decide what it thinks.
Normally when pundits talk about ‘retail offers’ from Budgets and Autumn Statements, they mean something along the lines of scrapping air passenger duty for children. This reform to stamp duty is of a different order entirely. It is something that newspapers, having campaigned on the problems with this tax for a good while, will praise and splash over their front pages (provided we don’t find a howler lurking in the small print). It is something that appears to reward aspiration. It will also encourage a bustling housing market in the run-up to the General Election. Handy, that. Fraser explains here how it’ll work.
There were other good ‘retail offers’ in the speech too. Andrew Bridgen has won his campaign to scrap air passenger duty for children which Coffee House reported a while back, with Osborne going even further and removing the tax for all under-16s rather than under-12s. Osborne re-iterated his intention to keep fuel duty froze, which earned Robert Halfon robust pats on the back from colleagues sitting behind him.
One of the problems with the statement, save the stamp duty reform and Osborne’s claim that deficit reduction was going better than expected, was that very little of it was a surprise. So much of it had been briefed to ensure days of good headlines about the government handing voters things that large chunks of Osborne’s speech were just things we are expecting. That’s not really a bad thing given most voters do not sit through economic statements to the House of Commons but do clock what’s appearing on the front pages and at the top of the news bulletins. So a string of announcements over a series of days is much better media management.
The Chancellor also continually suggested that the only reason the Coalition is able to offer more money for the NHS and so on because of its ‘careful management’ of the economy. His pitch on the state of the economy was more upbeat than many expected, though he did talk about the ‘warning lights… flashing over the global economy’. But he did make clear that this was an unfinished job in his conclusion by repeating the phrase ‘on course’:
‘Through the storm we have stayed the course. Now Britain is on course for surplus. On course for lower taxes. On course for more jobs. On course for higher growth. On course for a truly national recovery. A long term economic plan, on course to prosperity.’
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