The real story from Tuesday night’s Mansion House was more what didn’t happen than what did happen.
These speeches are traditionally the chancellor’s big annual opportunity to announce reforms to the financial sector, and to the way the government taxes and regulates the money system.
Speculation was rife in the run-up to this one that Rachel Reeves would impose new constraints on the amount that people can put into tax-free ISA savings.
Some wondered, too, whether the chancellor would impose new taxes on the banking system, softening the blow slightly by loosening the capital requirements and certification rules that make it harder to recruit top bankers.
In the event, neither happened.
The chancellor did not announce any changes to the ISA scheme, though she added that she “will continue to consider further changes to ISAs”.
She didn’t announce an increase of the bank levy, as some suspected, though she did loosen some of the regulations facing bankers.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves considering ‘changes’ to ISAs – and says there’s too much focus on ‘risk’ in investing
Is there £15bn of wiggle room in Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules?
Can Rachel make things cheaper?
Read more:
Should you get Lifetime ISA? Two key issues to consider
Is there £15bn of wiggle room in Reeves’s fiscal rules?
There was a host of other plans announced, collected into a package Ms Reeves has dubbed the “Leeds Reforms” (after the city which contains her constituency – also home to many financial firms). The chancellor said these amounted to “the most wide-ranging package of reforms to financial services regulation in more than a decade”.
But given the previous chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, made very similar noises three years ago when he announced his own “Edinburgh Reforms”, and given many in the financial sector judge that very little has changed, you have reason to be a little sceptical.
Impactful reforms
None of which is to say you won’t be affected by any of the reforms announced on Tuesday night.
If you are planning to buy a home, one change just announced (actually by the Bank of England, not the Treasury) should serve to make more high loan-to-value mortgages available for buyers – in particular, mortgages at more than 4.5 times a buyer’s income.
However, perhaps the most significant of all the elements of the chancellor’s speech wasn’t the “Leeds Reforms” or the fact that there weren’t changes to the ISA regime or the bank levy – it was the fiscal elephant in the room.
Because only a couple of weeks ago, everything changed. The government performed a drastic u-turn on its welfare reforms, leaving a gaping hole in the public finances, that (all else equal) will have to be filled with either higher taxes, less spending or more borrowing.
Shortly afterwards, the chancellor was pictured in tears in the House of Commons. Markets responded dramatically.
This was the chancellor’s first speech since that moment. So the real question on Tuesday night was whether she would refer either to the black hole or to the tears.
Well, there was a glancing reference to the latter. Referring to a recent visit to a school, where she was asked what job she most wanted in the world, the chancellor said: “Given the events of the last few weeks, I suspect many of you would sympathise if I had said: ‘anything but chancellor.’
“But I didn’t.
“I am proud to stand here tonight and address you for a second time at Mansion House as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
Speaking of the fiscal rules hemming her in, she also said: “This government and I remain committed to our non-negotiable rules.”
All of which raises the question: how will the government meet those rules? The most likely answer is: higher taxes. The real question is: which taxes, and when do we learn about them? The Mansion House speech provided no further answers.
