It's Budget week
The business news that matters
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Off to Lunch…
Jeremy Hunt is still working on his Budget speech and is trying to find the money to cut national insurance by 2p, according to weekend reports.
The government is considering a series of tax rises to pay for this cut. That includes increased air passenger duty on business travel flights, the removal of tax breaks for second-home owners who make money on holiday lets, and an expansion of the levy on North Sea oil and gas companies. The non-dom tax status is also under review.
Hunt, pictured above, appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show on Sunday….
Interestingly, so did Andy Haldane, the former chief economist of the Bank of England. He had his own ideas about how to grow the economy…
Hunt is due to deliver the Budget from around 12.30pm on Wednesday. Ahead of that the media coverage is heating up, as the front-pages of the newspapers highlight this morning…
Businesses are also taking the opportunity to make some late pleas to the chancellor about what they would like him to do. The first post below is from Stuart Machin, the chief executive of Marks & Spencer…
For further reading on this I recommend checking-out Business Leader’s round-up of all the policies that Hunt is considering and what business groups are asking for. You can find that here. Our politics expert Steve Swinford, who is the political editor of The Times, has also set the scene for the Budget and this year’s general election with his first column for Business Leader. He writes:
Strip away the political rhetoric and the election will be won and lost on the economy. After several shifts in his strategy, Sunak has finally alighted on a consistent theme: stick with us and our plan to deliver a brighter future. The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, so the Tories’ central argument goes, will take the economy back to “square one”.
The riposte from Labour is straightforward. Over the past 14 years, the Tories have trashed the economy. Energy bills are higher, prices in shops are higher and mortgage repayments have gone through the roof. The time has come for real change.
The Conservatives’ hopes for what is an increasingly narrow path to victory rest on a significant improvement in the economic outlook and tax cuts. No 10 and the Treasury believe the economy is heading in the right direction, with inflation poised to fall significantly in the coming months. Cabinet ministers hope the Bank of England will begin cutting interest rates sooner than expected, handing a much-needed tonic to homeowners battling higher mortgage costs.
You can read that column in full here
Other stories that matter…
1. Vodafone, Microsoft and other British-based companies have joined a business group called the Building Back Britain Commission, which will promote ideas to help improve productivity across the UK. More from Sky News here
2. Siemens is to invest £100 million into replacing a rail infrastructure factory in Chippenham, Wiltshire, with a new high-tech research and development facility. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is at a Siemens event today where the announcement has been made. “Our strategy is to become a global leader in the industries that are going to grow the fastest in the 21st century, and those sectors are all linked to technology,” he said. BBC story here
3. Gary Neville is joining the financial advisory firm Consello Group. The former Manchester United and England footballer will be a partner in Consello’s Strive division, which works on sports, media and leadership. Consello was set-up by Declan Kelly, the former boss of Teneo, who left in 2021 after allegations of inappropriate conduct. Bloomberg story here
4. Cadbury is 200 years old today. John Cadbury opened a grocery shop in Birmingham on this day in 1824. The BBC has put together a timeline on the history of the business, including its £11.5 billion takeover by US company Kraft in 2010. You can find that piece here
5. Losing your temper at work and being angry can obviously be destructive. But it can also have a “galvanising effect in specific circumstances” according to academic research. You can read more about this in The Economist here
Podcast…
The latest episode of our Business Leader podcast looks at how B&M became one of the biggest retailers in the UK. We speak to Simon Arora about B&M’s transition from a promising medium-sized business to a FTSE 100 giant. This is a transition that many businesses fail to make. We also speak to Arora about why he stood down as B&M’s chief executive and what may come next for him and the business.
You can listen to the episode on Substack here, Spotify here and Apple here
The next episode of our podcast will be with you on Tuesday morning…
The new Business Leader…
The new Business Leader website and magazine have now launched. We are building a new inspirational, aspirational and agenda-setting business publication for the UK. You can read our analysis, interviews and expert columnists on our website by clicking the image below. Our new magazine is on its way to shops and you can subscribe to your own print or digital version by clicking here
And finally…
The Sunday Times has put together a fantastic guide to the 100 best places to stay in the UK this year. The list is topped by Gleneagles in Scotland. In second place is Estelle Manor in Oxfordshire and in third place is Langdale Chase in Cumbria. The guide includes awards for the best family-friendly hotels, cheap and chic hotels, and boutique hotels, so it really does cover everything. You can find the list here
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