Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that ‘We’re not going to be coming back with more tax increases, or indeed more borrowing.’ But this evening, the Treasury minister told those same business leaders in a Q&A that:
Look, I’m never going to have to repeat a budget like that. You know, that was a big tax raising budget. I recognise that. It is what I felt that we had to do to secure our public finances… People need to know that we’re never going to repeat anything on that scale…. we will never have to repeat anything like that again.
Hmm. What does ‘anything on that scale’ actually mean? It might not be another £38bn Budget – but could the UK see billions more in tax rises? Those in the room, it seems, were non-plussed. Pressed for a fourth time on her plans for tax rises, the Chancellor only said ‘I’m not going to say that I’m not going to take any tax rises over the next four years’ before the chat moved swiftly on.
One amusing moment occurred when Reeves sought to dismiss concerns about her government’s impact on employers by claiming that ‘the CBI opposed the introduction of the national minimum wage back in the late 1990s’. It prompted this response by moderator Rupert Soames:
So, just as a matter of history, because it’s my specialist subject, is actually what happened is that the government formed a commission, the consistent employers, unions, to get together to agree a rate which was agreed in consultation by the commission as a way of doing it. And the CBI has supported the national minimum wage ever since.
Ouch. Much of the 40-minute Q&A proved underwhelming to those who had shelled out to attend, with some critical of the nature of the format. One attendee reported that ‘most people were on their phones’, adding ‘and this is the £500-a-ticket event.’ A second called the evening ‘safe, inert and underwhelming.’ He added that the Chancellor had been ‘insulated’ from ‘hearing any of the real concerns of business… the only round of applause was when she said she was the second longest serving Chancellor in the G7.’
Still, not the first time that Reeves has disappointed business, eh?
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