Spring Statement Summary 2025
In mid-March 2024, the then Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves gave the Mais lecture to the good and the great of the City.
In it she set out her broad fiscal framework, including goals to:
- Balance the current budget, i.e. match day-to-day government expenditure with revenues; and
- Have a single fiscal event (i.e. Budget) each year, in the autumn.
The speech was designed to give its audience confidence that a Labour government – then looking close to a certainty – would bring financial stability.
Just over a year later Rachel Reeves is both where she hoped she would be – 11 Downing Street – and where she hoped not to be – trying to avoid a parliamentary set piece less than five months after her Autumn Budget morphing into a Spring Budget. As the Institute for Government, pointed out, among others, the objective of one Budget a year does not sit comfortably with two forecasts in the same period from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Add in the small fiscal headroom that Reeves left herself after her tax-raising Budget last October and discomfort looked a distinct possibility come spring 2025.
Despite various media labels of mini-Budget or even emergency Budget in the run up to 26 March, the Chancellor avoided any fresh tax measures. Instead, her focus was on tightening public spending, an action which means the Treasury’s spotlight now turns to 11 June, when the deferred three-year spending review is due to be published. In the interim, underlining the swirl of economic uncertainty surrounding any forecast, 2 April is scheduled as “Liberation Day” in the US, when Donald Trump reveals his “reciprocal” tariffs.
