Professor David Heald

• Personal website

Hansard Society

• How does Parliament authorise the Government's taxation plans? A procedural guide to the Budget process

• How does Parliament approve Government spending? A procedural guide to the Estimates process

UK Parliament

• Spring Statement 2025: Background briefing, House of Commons Library

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ntro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox

Mark D'Arcy: and I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week

Ruth Fox: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a spring statement or is it an emergency budget? What exactly might Rachel Reeves' big statement next week be and what might it mean?

Mark D'Arcy: Will MP's scrutiny of whatever the Chancellor announces make any difference or is that just all an empty ritual?

Ruth Fox: And is Parliament getting serious about how the laws it has already passed are working out?

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, let's talk about Rachel Reeves [00:01:00] Spring Statement next week. It's actually the Spring Economic Announcement, or the Spring Forecast.

Ruth Fox: Spring forecast, yes.

Mark D'Arcy: Or something like that. It's supposed to be quite a low key event. It's supposed to be a kind of update based on the latest projections that have emerged from the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Slight course correction, nothing very big, just keeping you informed, guys, kind of deal. Not so much this time. Kemi Badenoch caused a bit of a furore at Prime Minister's Question Time this week when she referred to it quite deliberately as an emergency budget, implying that the government's being forced into making really serious changes because things have gone awry and their strategy isn't working, there was a roar of derision from Labour MPs.

But there is, I think, a bit of a graduation here that we've got to talk about. What's the difference between a statement, first of all, and a budget, or a mini budget, or an emergency budget, or any of the other possible identities that might be pinned on to the event that's due to happen next Wednesday?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, you've got to [00:02:00] go back, Mark, nearly 10 years, goodness, to sort of explain the history of this. So, in 2016, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer decided we should have just one fiscal event, as it's called, per year. So, one major event where they announced tax and spending changes. And that was going to be the budget

Mark D'Arcy: The then chancellor of the Exchequer was

Ruth Fox: Philip Hammond, I think. I wouldn't, I wouldn't swear by that, but I'm pretty sure it was Philip Hammond. He basically wanted one fiscal event, so there'd be autumn budget, and then in the spring there would be this forecast, this statement by the Chancellor, which would be solely a response to the second forecast in the year by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the independent body that was established under the coalition years to provide independent authoritative analysis on the state of the public finances, the government's tax and spend plans and so on.

And it's proved a bit of a straitjacket around chancellors because it forecasts whether the government is going to meet its fiscal rules, which we'll come onto in a minute. But, for context, most countries only have one fiscal event. We were unusual in having two in a year.