Three Things to Watch for in the Spring Statement

Although the government has stated that major tax and spending announcements should take place once a year at the Autumn Budget, next week’s Spring Statement, and the accompanying OBR forecast, will still have important economic implications.

As a pre-Spring Statement analysis and assessment, we have prepared a brief slide pack with three main things we’ll be keeping an eye on:

What does the January tax windfall mean for near-term gilt issuance? Tax receipts have outperformed expectations in recent months.What does rising unemployment mean for the fiscal outlook? The unemployment outturn in recent months already exceeds OBR’s Nov projection. So far, so good, so what? Public finances are still fundamentally on an unsustainable path.