Black Hole In UK’s Public Finances Equivalent To Tory’s Pre-Election Tax Cuts

[Borg Refinery]

The multi-billion black hole in the UK's public finances identified by chancellor Rachel Reeves is equivalent to the Conservative Party's pre-election National Insurance cuts, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.
Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt cut National Insurance by 2p in the last spring budget before the election, after making the exact same cut in the autumn statement last year.
The combined cuts were expected to save the average earner £900 a year.
At the time, Hunt argued that it would make the tax system fairer and help revive the economy, but he stayed silent on what the cost to the public's finances would be. [..] Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said it was "striking" that the £20 billion "black hole" is of the same scale as the tax cuts.

He said: "It is very striking that if this problem is about £20 billion big that is exactly the scale of the National Insurance cuts implemented by Jeremy Hunt just before the election.
"Now, if those cuts were implemented in the knowledge that there was this kind of hole that is not good policy to put it mildly."

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