Treasury

Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Treasury. HMT has today announced the appointment of Sharon White, the current Director General over at Horseguards, as Second Permanent Secretary. Who she? Well, she’s none other than the wife of Robert Chote, the chief of the Office of Budget Responsibility. The OBR was set up in 2010 by George Osborne to provide independent analysis and advice on Treasury policy. It is meant to be completely independent, so no pillow talk please.

Now the latest on the Politicians Keeping In Touch front. It’s funny how it’s the wives who take the brunt of the endeavour. It was Samantha Cameron yesterday who had to parade at the Tory party conference in a teal £42 polyester dress from Asos.com…no question, then, of Mr Cameron being asked to take a turn in an M&S suit. Alas, Mrs C did what every sensible person does who has to wear something from Asos or Florence and Fred (and may I say, given their modest cut when it comes to fabric only skinnies can carry this off) and replaced their belt with one of her own. It was a

Listen to Osborne and Balls’ exchange at Treasury questions here:- listen to ‘Osborne at Treasury Questions: ‘We’re enjoying this’’ on Audioboo ‘I hope this is not our last encounter across this despatch box,’ George Osborne said rather slyly to Ed Balls this morning at Treasury questions. ‘Because we are enjoying it.’ The Tories were in a good mood, because they’ve decided that they can now start to talk about the economic clouds lifting, and this means that they can say that everything Labour has ever said is wrong, wrong, wrong. ‘Cheer up Ed!’ Sajid Javid shouted cheerily at the shadow Chancellor as another Tory MP used their question to say

Strangely, both sides at Treasury questions today wanted to talk about something that does their own party no favours at all to mention. The Labour whips had sent their loyal backbenchers out in force to ask about Friday’s borrowing figures, while George Osborne and Conservative colleagues were very happy indeed to talk about how much the Opposition would have to borrow, too. Labour wanted to tell off the government for borrowing more. The government wanted to remind Labour that it would borrow even more. When it comes to performing elaborate and quite painful-looking contortions, Ed Balls is a master, but even he must realise that telling off another party for borrowing

George Osborne has got through the IMF’s report on the UK economy. It is far from a ringing endorsement of his approach but, as Isabel notes, its criticisms are couched in such opaque language that I doubt they’ll have much political impact. I also suspect that the Treasury is not unhappy about being told that it needs to get on with returning RBS and Lloyds to the private sector. Selling even a tranche of these bank shares before 2015 would be politically powerful, aiding the Tories in their attempt to argue that they’ve been clearing up the mess that Labour left behind. The next challenge for the Treasury is the

John Rentoul draws attention to a new ComRes poll that goes some way towards explaining George Osborne’s predicament when it comes to managing government finances. Put simply, the public is not interested in public spending cuts. On the contrary, British voters want to see public spending increase. Sure, they might agree that, all things being equal and in the broader scheme of matters, it might be a good idea if the government balanced the books but all things are rarely equal and as soon as you get into the narrow, particular view of these matters it becomes clear that, actually, the only departmental budget voters want to decimate is that

If Mark Carney had any reservations about his move to Threadneedle Street later this year, he might now add to his list regular sessions with the Treasury Select Committee. His three-and-a-half hour hearing included a quiz from Committee member David Ruffley on his ability to explain capital ratios and other terms, questions on how many mistakes he’d be happy for staff to make, whether he wanted to rename the Bank’s Court, and whether he’d judge his success on the return of growth to the economy during his tenure. The MPs also started their session with a bit of a grump about his £874,000 pay package, although as James Barty argued

Aside from Ed Balls’ attack on George Osborne for going ‘on the piste’ in Davos, Treasury question time in the Commons today was interesting not for what Labour did or didn’t have to say, but for some of the pushes from the Tory backbench on helping those on low incomes. Sometimes it’s the pattern of the questions that matters more than the individual answers. Many of the questions were pitches for the Budget, which also gave ministers the opportunity to not really answer them. Robert Halfon asked about reintroducing the 10p income tax rate, to which Greg Clark said he noted the MP’s bid for the Budget, adding: ‘But he

The irrepressible Lord Oakeshott is making mischief again: he’s using Sir Mervyn King’s comments about Goldman Sachs bonuses today to attack David Cameron and George Osborne. He’s just told Coffee House the following: ‘The Governor speaks for all on Goldman’s greed. He shows leadership where the Prime Minister and Chancellor stayed submerged. Starbucks are an also ran in the tax avoidance stakes compared to world champions like Goldmans.’ Then he took another covert shot at the Treasury by referring – not by name – to the appointment of former Goldman employee Mark Carney as the next Bank of England Governor: ‘Big banks like Goldman can’t have it both ways. If

Few politicians have put as much thought in to the team around them as George Osborne. He is a collector of talented people. Unlike most Tories, he has gone outside of CCHQ and parliament for nearly every senior appointment he’s made. But I understand that after Christmas he’ll be losing one of the most important members of his operation, Poppy Mitchell-Rose. Mitchell-Rose has acted as Osborne’s fixer and gatekeeper since he first became shadow Chancellor. On the long—and sometimes bumpy—road from opposition to government, she has been a calm sherpa who has dealt with a host of problems before they have even arisen. But she is now moving to Washington,

It looks like George Osborne will put the planned fuel duty rise on hold again, in order to avoid another Tory rebellion and potential government defeat in the Commons. This battle has its origins in a Labour Budget: that of 2009, in which Alistair Darling introduced a fuel duty escalator whereby fuel duty would increase by inflation-plus-a-penny every April from 2010 to 2013. In his 2011 Budget, Osborne announced that he was abolishing the escalator and instead cutting fuel duty by 1p per litre. From January 2012 onwards, the escalator was to be replaced by a ‘fair fuel stabiliser’, under which the duty rises by inflation-plus-a-penny when oil prices are

The Liberal Democrats are playing a game of whac-a-mole on welfare at the moment: each time they think they’ve blocked one cut they don’t like, another one pops up. Last night a mole they’d already whacked a year ago appeared again: decoupling benefits from inflation. The Newsnight scoop is that Whitehall is considering ending inflation-linked rises for many benefit payments – although the word is that this would not include payments to those with disabilities. This would be part of efforts to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare bill, which the Lib Dems oppose overall. Last winter the Lib Dems blocked a similar move from the Treasury, which

There’s war in Whitehall. The Sunday Times devotes its p2 lead (£) to the fact that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, is ‘sceptical’ of the Universal Credit, the key to Iain Duncan Smith’s revolutionary welfare reforms. The newspaper has gathered its intelligence by reading the leading article of this week’s Spectator, and repeats our point that civil servants will interpret Heywood’s reservations as a ‘go-slow order’. Here is what our leader column says: ‘Treasury officials have been against Duncan Smith from the start, due to the threat which Universal Credit posed to their beloved tax credits. Ambition in itself is looked down upon by ministers who deride ‘IDS’s grand projet’. Sir Jeremy

Much is being made today of reports that George Osborne will drop his fiscal target in his autumn statement on 5 December. Isabel reported earlier that, faced with breaking his own rule, Osborne will abandon it rather than implement more cuts to meet it. All the fuss seems to stem from a note by Citi Reasearch last Friday. You can read the whole thing here, but here’s a summary. Like Gordon Brown, Osborne has two fiscal rules. Neither says anything about eliminating the deficit, or even halving it. The first — called the ‘fiscal mandate’ — is ‘to balance the cyclically-adjusted current budget by the end of a rolling, five-year