This is kind of Chancellor’s statement that I like. No big surprises that would cause panic in financial markets. The threatened “tax cuts” are not all that evident but at least my state pension will be going up substantially next April.
ISA changes are relatively minor but this statement gives me some concern: “expanding the investment opportunities available in ISAs to include Long-Term Asset Funds and open-ended property funds with extended notice periods”. This makes no sense and is a recipe for future mis-selling claims.
But there is a commitment to legislate to extend the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trust (VCT) schemes to 2035 which will remove concerns about the sunset clause in existing legislation.
The Government is still intent on throwing money at what it perceives as hot sectors with this comment: “Funding of £4.5 billion has been announced to help unlock private investment in strategic manufacturing sectors, starting in 2025-26 and lasting for five years”. What is the justification for subsidising commercial ventures?
This is an interesting statement by the Chancellor: “The UK is uniquely placed to harness the power of health data to improve patient outcomes. In England the NHS has 1.6 million patient interactions every 24 hours generating real world experience and insights at scale. The government is therefore announcing a further £51 million for the Our Future Health (OFH) programme, a world-leading resource for health research, to genotype their first 1 million participants and to recruit hundreds of thousands of new volunteers, supporting the development of better ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases”. That is a useful project.
More comments may follow on the Chancellors Statement after I have digested it more fully.
Roger Lawson (Twitter https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
You can “follow” this blog by entering your email address in the box below. You will then receive an email alerting you to new posts as they are added.