Jeremy Hunt will deliver his first Declaration of autumn this morning, after I became Chancellor afterwards Quasi Quartengis disastrous mini-budget forced him to resign.
It is expected that Mr. Hunt will to announce £25bn in tax increases and £35bn in spending cuts to close a £60bn funding gap.
But what exactly is the Autumn Statement and how does it differ from the Budget?
Here’s everything you need to know.
What is the budget?
The terms Budget and Autumn Memorandum are often used interchangeably, but there is indeed a difference between them.
The budget is an annual statement and usually focuses on tax plans for the coming year.
Traditionally, the Budget takes place in the spring. Since 2017, however, it has taken place in the autumn to implement major tax changes annually, well before the start of the financial year, in April.
Mr Kwarteng’s disastrous ‘growth plan’, presented in September, has been dubbed a ‘mini budget’ rather than a budget because it was not supported by official analysis of the UK economy.
What is the Fall Statement?
Government website states that the autumn statement: ‘provides an update on the government’s plans for the economy based on the latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’.
These forecasts are published twice a year (in autumn and spring) and look at how the UK economy will perform in the future.
The Fall Memorandum usually has fewer details than the Budget about how the taxes will actually work.
However, Mr Hunt is expected to provide plenty of detail in this statement given the chaos caused by Mr Kwarteng’s tax cut plans and the lack of details on how they would be funded.
When was the first budget?
The budget dates back to the 1720s and Sir Robert Walpole, who as the first Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, is widely regarded as Britain’s first Prime Minister.
Income tax was first introduced in the 1798 budget by William Pitt.
The first red Budget Box, used by Chancellors to carry their Budget speech from No. 11 Downing Streets to the House of Commons, was hand crafted for William Ewart Gladstone around 1860 and used for 111 years.
In 1965 Lord Callaghan became the first Chancellor to use a new box and in 1997 Gordan Brown became the second.
When Labor came to power in 1997, they introduced a second annual budget, the Pre-Budget Report, but this was relegated to an autumn statement when the Conservatives took over in 2011.
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