Former Chancellor Lord Philip Hammond told GB News that today’s Budget has been a “clear signal” that the Government intends to announce more tax cuts.
He told GB News’ Political Editor Christopher Hope: “I think it was cautious. It was clear in signalling the future trajectory, which is about lower taxes, increased productivity as being the solution to this conundrum about, on the one hand, how we fund public services and on the other hand, how we get taxes down.”
Asked if a National Insurance cut was something he had considered as Chancellor, he said: “No, it isn't. I'm quite wedded to the principle of National Insurance contribution. I think the contributory principle is important in our tax system.
“But getting it down as an incentive to people to be in work is important and the Chancellor made the point, I don't think by coincidence, at the beginning of his speech, that we can fix our economic growth problem by seeing more migration, or we can fix it by getting some of the ten million adults who are not working at the moment back into the workforce, and that's the route he's chosen to follow.”
Another former Chancellor, Lord Norman Lamont, added: “I do think and I've thought for a long time that we’ve relied too much on large scale immigration. Large scale immigration doesn't necessarily always help the pre-existing population of this country.
“And you have to measure the financial effects of it, not just in short term additions to the labour force, but the lifetime cost of all those who come here. The other point is migrants themselves grow old.”
Asked if he thought it was a pre-election Budget, he said: “By definition it is a pre-election Budget, but I don't think there'll be a May election.
“I think it's a good Budget, in that it points to the way the divide will appear in the election, one party wanting lower taxes, another party wanting both higher taxes and higher spending.”
On the non-dom tax change, he said: “That's where I think our Budget was extremely skillful. Labour have copied everything that Conservatives have done and now have nowhere else to go.”
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