The Niesr think-tank has become the latest forecaster to downgrade Britain’s prospects, cautioning that the Chancellor, who previously complained that the Conservative Party after 14 years had left the country with a £22Bn black hole, has actually herself created a black hole of more than £57 Billion and possibly another £25Bn with public sector pension reforms.
Rachel Reeves’s record tax increases have derailed the economy and threaten to blow a £57bn hole in the public finances, analysts at NIESR have warned. “She has hammered business confidence and undermined growth far more than Donald Trumps tariffs“, say the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) and “will lead to significantly rising inflation -this will limit the Bank of England’s ability to cut interest rates to support growth“.
Benjamin Caswell, an economist at Niesr, said that Chancellor Reeves risks being forced to raise taxes again in the autumn to repair public finances and the only way she can do this effectively is to tax workers. Even Washington’s IMF (International Monetary Fund) agrees and has confirmed that Ms Reeves is the main cause of the UK’s downturn saying “domestic factors are probably the biggest contributors to this failure to motivate growth…..Damage from Labour’s public sector pay increases, tax increases and the fear of more to come is doing significant harm…..Tariffs have engendered a lot of uncertainty, but I don’t think that should take the Government off the hook, most of the damage was done by engendered uncertainty, the spring statement, recent Budget measures and a failure to tackle migration.”
Mr Caswell added: “Because of the weaker economic outlook, there will be lower tax receipts , and because of the lower tax receipts, we think the Government is not going to meet either of its fiscal rules….This means that Reeves would miss her rule to pay for day-to-day spending with tax receipts by £57.1bn. There will also be a £24.9bn shortfall via a failure to reduce net financial debt as a share of GDP.”
.