08/03/2017 The Papers

coming in for his injured Ulster team-mate Andrew Trimble Rob Kearney

picked upn a groin injury in their win over the French

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the the papers will be

With me are Ruth Lea, Economic Adviser at Arbuthnot

Banking Group, and Caroline Wheeler, Political Editor at

Good to see you both, it has been an interesting day. We start with the

Telegraph and its take on the budget is the Tories have broken their

manifesto pledge not to raise taxes. The Guardian described the

Chancellor is falling into a tax trap over his approach to national

insurance. The Times describes the policy as a tax on red, while the

express says Philip Philip Hammond is laying down the tracks for the

Brexit move. The Daily Express asks what is so funny. The mail shows a

picture of Philip Hammond and says it is no laughing matter. All the

references are to joked and laughed. This is a man who is supposed to be

very dour, a spreadsheet guy, a policy wonk, but he is cracking

jokes as if he was Les Dawson. The most surprising thing about his

budget speech was that because we knew it. We knew there would be

extra money for social care, education, Betty level, or help for

business rates. We read about the national insurance contributions

rising and we knew the OBR would be changing their forecast. So the

jokes were the surprise. But still it has to be said, Caroline, the

front page of The Times, Philip Hammond's ?2 billion tax rate. The

indications were that this was going to happen, he was going to have to

do something about social care and he would have to find the money

somewhere and that national insurers would be the area that was hit, but

it was still a shock. We had an indication this was

thinking was going. It is surprising the Conservative Chancellor would

electricians, the make-up artists who have just done our make up. The

idea is was that an impact assessment done on this? Theresa May

said she was a country that works for everyone and not just the

does not extend to those people who does not extend to those people who

are self employed seem surprising to many of us, that these are the

losers of this budget, when there will be many of those who are in the

bracket. Also people who are running their own businesses who are self

employed, many of them are the backbone of this country, the small

shopkeepers, the people who do all those jobs that we need them to do.

The idea they will be worse off as a result of this is a surprise. I got

a tweet earlier saying the BBC, the BBC, you are so negative about the

budget. I am self employed, I do not mind paying a little extra because

the money will go to social care. That is very generous of that

particular lady, but I would like to add to what Caroline said about the

self employed. It is not just national insurance contributions

that will be increased. There is the dividend allowance and if you are an

incorporated self-employed person you can pay a dividend. The current

allowance is ?5,000 and it will be cut down to ?2000. Plus the flat

rate VAT scheme which is rather technical, there will be a

disadvantage there. For the self employed, and I include myself in

that bracket, there are now three different measures which have made

it more difficult for people to be self-employed and to produce the

incentive is to be self-employed. It is already difficult because you do

not get holiday pay, sick pay, maternity pay. But that is part of

the argument. What he is doing, as well as finding money for social

care, is bringing parity between those who are employed with staff

jobs and contracts and those who are freelance because they have been out

of kilter. In terms of what they pay, but in terms of the benefits,

he says they can get away with it because they have already tinkered

with the state pension. The self-employed are now entitled to a

full state pension. But if I am sick and I work for a company, I will be

paid. It is a hassle being self employed, not least of all doing the

VAT returns. I feel I deserve that bit of extra money! It is a hassle

being self-employed. Let's go on to the Daily Telegraph. In this story

it is the fact that before the 20 15th election the Conservatives said

they would not raise taxes. In fact, the Daily Telegraph has on the front

very commitment to you from that manifesto, no increases in VAT,

national insurance contributions and income tax. They have broken a

promise. I am afraid they have. If I may change the subject, I agree with

that... You want to talk about Barcelona winning? It is interesting

income tax is mentioned. What did not come out in this budget is that

personal allowances will go up and April ?211,500 and the high rates

will go up and that was not mentioned at all. If I had been

Philip Hammond, I would have set I have got a nasty surprise for the

self employed, but do not worry, I am putting personal allowances up.

He mentioned the living wage is going up to ?7.50. He could have

sugared the bill a bit. You are right about the tax break, but it is

more than that, it is an ideological break which is something we have

seen to read a good time and time again. From the moment she appointed

her own Cabinet and sacked all the Notting Hill set and brought in her

own people, she signalled a break with the camera an agenda which was

very much in tune with George Osborne in terms of bringing taxes

down and making the state as small as possible. It seems Philip Hammond

is cut from a different cloth. Allister Heath's commentary in the

Telegraph is very much talking about this idea that there are two camps.

Those who believe the state should be involved and they should raise

lots of taxes and do lots of things, and those who think you should step

back and keep taxes low and let other sectors take on

responsibility. Theresa May and Philip Hammond believed they can get

away with breaking a policy pledge because there is no one to pick them

up on it. Is that the implication? The Labour Party are whatever and

the SNP have however many MPs, but they can get away with it. That is

right. The Labour Party is polling 25%, that is extraordinary. Labour

and the opposition generally are pretty good at flagging up

warning signs. They have been going on for several weeks about the rate

rises, so they were on message today. They saw that storm brewing

and they headed it off today. They put in changes to business rates

which have been causing such as headache to the government in these

last couple of weeks. But what they did not do with this one is the

opposition were not on the ball enough to see this coming, so the

government did not get the warning signs they would often get when they

could see that they are walking into trouble. When I read about the

national insurance contributions last week it was described as

controversial. It was not as if this was not controversial... Clearly

they did not make anything out of it. They have already won a

by-election. Copeland. In a way they should not have done. But on the

front page of the Guardian, Philip Hammond falls into a tax trap. What

are they trying to get across? It is the notion that they have broken a

manifesto pledge which in political terms is a no-no. They cannot be

trusted. Exactly. It is you implicating and implementing

something which you yourself have said is bad. In that sense it is a

trap. Again we come back to who is going to pull them up on this trap?

Is the Labour Party going to be able to make enough noise on this issue

that it will force Philip Hammond into a U-turn. In this instance you

will see more of a noise on the Conservative backbenchers because

they know they will harm more of their own. We have already seen

rumblings in the 1922 committee, which is usually a barometer of

where things stand in the Conservative Party and people like

John Redwood have been speaking this evening saying it was a daft idea, a

tax on enterprise. That is the trap and it is if he will get out of it

now. I do not think he will do a U-turn. Most of the papers are

running on the same story. That is the irony. There is something about

the economy as well. Some of this money is going to social care, that

was a big issue going into the budget. He has made an effort to try

and deal with that, although many people are saying 3 million over the

next few years, 1 million this year and 2 million later on, that is not

enough. It cannot be enough, especially in the longer term

dealing with an ageing population. I think funding social care and the

paper they are bringing out is well overdue. The truth is we have to

think very hard as we get an ageing population how we will fund social

care and the NHS. This debate has hardly begun. We need to have it. It

is difficult for him if you have this kind of red as it is being

portrayed. Despite van man. That is the front page. The Sun newspaper is

making the point that the Chancellor is hitting the self employed. We

have seen the number of self-employed rise dramatically in

the last few years. It is appealing to its readers, many of whom are

white van men and women. They have been hit by this. The problem he has

got is that self-employed people fall into every walk of life. They

will be people earning lots of money right at the top like barristers.

But the problem he has got is the notion he is kind of robbing Peter

to pay Paul in terms of the social care crisis and the problem he stuck

with it he has not solved the social care crisis. 1 billion pounds this

year is less than a third of what the local authorities are predicting

is the black hole in the funding formula for this year alone. He is

not solving one problem by creating another and that will be a political

nightmare for him. Tax raid on the self-employed, it is smoke and

mirrors. It looks as if he is doing something and this 1 billion this

year to immediately inject some cash in the system will help. I know some

local authorities are pleased about that, but there has to be a

strategic vision about where we go in terms of social care stop

absolutely and this is why I will be interested to see the green paper

when it comes out. There has been a debate, but it has not been pushed

hard enough. It is not a new issue and a lot of reports have looked

into this subject, but nothing substantive has changed. I wrote a

piece on the NHS 15 years ago saying it was not sustainable because we

had an ageing population and increasingly expensive treatments

and it was pushed into the long grass. Those issues will come back

time and time again. That statistic is really striking, every child at

this point today, one in three, will live to about 100. On that very

population, ageing by the minute. It population, ageing by the minute. It

is a bottomless pit. This is why you is a bottomless pit. This is why you

have to start thinking of other means of financing that and

inevitably it will be some sort of insurance system. The Daily Express.

The wider implications budget. This is paving the way for a

smooth EU exit. Cautious Philip Hammond repairs Britain to break

with Brussels. That is really the autumn budget. Article 50 will have

been triggered. Yes, absolutely. It is a different interpretation of the

same story, but they have tried to put a slightly more positive spin on

it, although they have the same strapline. What they are trying to

suggest is the forecasts in terms of government spending forecasts have

been pessimistic. We know Brexit looks a bit rosier than we thought,

which gives us a float as we set sail for Brexit. Set sail! It could

happen in a week that we trigger Article 50. There are other

suggestions it may not be until the end of the month. But the idea that

we are going into this project is a bit of a leap in the unknown with

the wind in our sales from the economy is something the Daily

Express feels their readers want to read about. Because of the OBR's

favourable forecast for the next 12 months at least he has got a bit

more petrol in the tank as well, but he will not splash it out. He will

save it in case the headwinds do get a bit choppy. He is right to do

that. Even if it was not for Brexit, we need fiscal discipline in this

country. We have still got a deficit of 2.5% of the GDP. Our debt is

about 85% of GDP, it is enormous. You would still need some austerity.

But this story is interesting because the OBR has been obliged to

push up its forecast to 2%. Yet again he is forecasting

organisations have been caught by the fact they were all terribly

negative about what was going to happen. I was saying it was going to

be fine. I was a maverick. If you are a maverick and you are wrong,

you are wrong. If you are a group thinker and you are wrong, you are

right. The predictions were on Article 50 being triggered on June

the 25th. And a lot were not. That is true. It would not have made any

difference. We will never know. Finally, we are going to mix

together the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror and show our viewers

what the front pages are saying. Here they come. The Daily Mirror on

the left. What is so funny, Prime Minister? The Daily Mail,

laughing matter. Both of them are making the point that he tried to

put some jokes in their anti-tried to look beyond the spreadsheet Phil

policy geek label, but fundamentally this was a crucial budget in terms

of the way that this government looks as it moves towards Brexit.

Yes, exactly. Both of them are not normal bedfellows, the Daily Mirror

and the Daily Mail. But we have got the same gist. We have got Theresa

May and Philip Hammond laughing and the message is that the message that

comes out of the budget will not go down particularly well with the

readers of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail. That is something for

the government to worry about. When you are getting papers that are

diametrically opposed and they are using the same line, you basically

offended both sides of the divide and that is very worrying for her as

we are so close to Brexit when we will need all the support we can

have. I have been told we have got to end, so there you go. It has been

a pleasure looking at some of the stories behind the front pages. All

of them have simply been about the budget.

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