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Budgets are all about numbers.

In the coming 24 hours, we’ll be engulfed with all sorts of figures – about the state of the economy, about the size of the deficit, about the fiscal rules the new chancellor is planning to introduce in the coming months.

But in fact most budgets, this one included, can really be boiled down to the difference between two big numbers.

Politics live blog: Budget 2024 latest developments

Total government spending and total government receipts.

Right now the UK government is spending just over £1.2trn a year and bringing in just over £1.1trn in taxes and receipts.

In other words, this country is spending more than it generates in tax receipts.

So it has to borrow the difference.

That borrowing, also known as the deficit, is (as you’ve already probably worked out from the above numbers) around £100bn a year.

And politicians, including the chancellor, spend rather a lot of time fretting about the deficit.

Graph graph

Indeed, the main objective of the various different fiscal rules they’ve imposed on themselves in recent decades has been to narrow the gap between those two big numbers.

Broadly speaking, the easiest way to do this is to cut something few people notice in the short run – government investment.

When he came into office in 2010, George Osborne cut a lot of parts of public spending, but he absolutely slashed the amount the public sector spent on buildings, infrastructure and machinery – capital spending.

Having lifted the total briefly after the pandemic, Jeremy Hunt was planning a similar fall in investment in the coming years.

Rachel Reeves has said repeatedly ahead of the budget that she plans to invest far more in the coming years.

This is a noble goal, given investment tends to benefit future generations, however, it will not be cheap in the short run.

pic pic graph

Indeed, keeping investment spending at current levels will cost roughly £30bn a year by the end of this decade.

So how does the chancellor square that with her fiscal rules?

Well, one part of the answer is that she’s planning to increase the revenues coming into the Exchequer, reportedly via higher national insurance charges for insurers.

But the other part of the answer is that she’s changing her fiscal rules as well.

Budget 2024: Rachel Reeves vs the fiscal rules

The long and the short of it is that Ms Reeves looks likely to choose a set of fiscal rules that ignore investment spending.

Both her updated debt rule and her current budget rule essentially omit capital spending – although they include debt interest costs, so she can’t just borrow willy-nilly.

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That might sound like fiscal jiggery-pokery, and some in the market fret that investors will soon take fright as a result.

Indeed, some suggest they already are, and point to the fact the UK’s cost of government borrowing – as measured by the benchmark 10-year bond yield – has risen from under 4% to nearly 4.3% in the past month alone.

However, this is a slight misreading of this market, which is as affected by global economic factors and central bank action as much as by UK budgetary policy.

Indeed, compare the recent changes in the UK’s borrowing rates with those in Germany and the US and British government bond yields are close to where they usually trade in the run up to a budget.

And they are far, far below where they were in the run-up to Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

graph

Even so, there are bound to be a few unexpected surprises and some relevant new data points in this fiscal event.

It is a budget after all.

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EY partner in talks to become boss of new football regulator

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EY partner in talks to become boss of new football regulator

An expert in financial regulation at one of the big four accountancy firms is in talks to become the inaugural boss of English football’s powerful new watchdog.

Sky News has learnt that Richard Monks, a partner at EY, is the leading contender to become chief executive of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR).

The new body will be formally established once the Football Governance Bill receives Royal Assent, which is expected this month.

Mr Monks spent 18 years at the Financial Conduct Authority and its predecessor regulator, the Financial Services Authority, before becoming chair of the G20/OECD Taskforce for Consumer Financial Protection, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He became a partner at EY, where he focuses on financial regulation, in the autumn of 2022.

The prospective choice of a chief executive of the IFR with no professional experience of the football industry may spark alarm among club executives who will face an onerous new regulatory regime overseen by the IFR.

In recent weeks, football industry executives have circulated rumours that the IFR boss was likely to emerge from the professional services sector.

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It was unclear this weekend whether other candidates were vying with Mr Monks for the post.

The IFR has already been set up on a ‘shadow’ basis, with Martyn Henderson, former chief executive of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, appointed in December 2023 as interim chief operating officer of the football watchdog.

The EY partner is understood to have held talks with David Kogan, the government’s preferred choice for the watchdog’s chairmanship but whose formal appointment has been delayed by an investigation sparked by his previous donations to Labour politicians.

William Shawcross, the commissioner for public appointments, is investigating the process through which Mr Kogan was recruited to the role, and is thought likely to produce his report in the coming weeks.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, told MPs last month that she was delegating the final decision on Mr Kogan’s appointment to the sports minister.

Stuart Andrew, the shadow culture minister, said at the time: “The public has a right to know whether this was a fair and impartial process, or yet another case of political patronage disguised as due diligence.

“The decision to launch an inquiry is welcome [and] must include scrutiny of [Sir] Keir Starmer, his advisers, and whether any conflicts of interest were properly declared.”

If Mr Kogan’s appointment is ratified, the appointment of a chief executive would be a crucial step in paving the way for the most radical reforms to the supervision of English football in decades.

The legislation includes a new licensing regime for clubs, measures to ensure greater fan engagement and a backstop power allowing the IFR to impose a financial settlement on the Premier League in relation to distributions to English Football League clubs.

Revisions to the Bill have seen a requirement for the IFR to take decisions about club takeovers in the context of the government’s foreign and trade policy removed.

If Mr Monks does land the IFR chief executive’s post, ministers are likely to argue that his expertise as a regulator will balance Mr Kogan’s decades of experience as a negotiator of sports media rights deals.

Last year, Mr Kogan acted as the lead negotiator for the Women’s Super League and Championship on their latest five-year broadcasting deals with Sky – the immediate parent company of Sky News – and the BBC.

His current roles include advising the chief executives of CNN, the American broadcast news network, and The New York Times Company on talks with digital platforms about the growing influence of artificial intelligence on their industries.

The creation of the IFR was pledged by the last Conservative government in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project in 2021.

Its establishment comes with the top tier of the professional game gripped by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases with the Premier League over the club’s financial affairs.

The Premier League has also been keen to agree a long-delayed financial redistribution deal with the EFL before the regulator is formally launched.

Tentative talks between representatives of both factions failed to produce meaningful progress, however.

This weekend, EY declined to comment on Mr Monks’s behalf, while the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been approached for comment.

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Ofwat could be scrapped in water reforms

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Ofwat could be scrapped in water reforms

An independent review of the water industry is to recommend sweeping changes to the way the sector is managed, including the potential replacement of Ofwat with a strengthened body combining economic and environmental regulation.

Former Bank of England governor Sir Jon Cunliffe will publish the findings of the Independent Water Commission on Monday, with stakeholders across the industry expecting significant changes to regulation to be at its heart.

The existing regulator Ofwat has been under fire from all sides in recent years amid rising public anger at levels of pollution and the financial management of water companies.

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Campaigners and politicians have accused Ofwat of failing to hold water operators to account, while the companies complain that its focus on keeping bills down has prevented appropriate investment in infrastructure.

In an interim report, published in June, Sir Jon identified the presence of multiple regulators with overlapping responsibilities as a key issue facing the industry.

While Ofwat is the economic regulator, the Environment Agency has responsibility for setting pollution standards, alongside the Drinking Water Inspectorate.

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Sir Jon’s final report is expected to include a recommendation that the government consider a new regulator that combines Ofwat’s economic regulatory powers with the water-facing responsibilities currently managed by the EA.

In his interim report, Sir Jon said options for reform ranged from “rationalising” existing regulation to “fundamental, structural options for integrating regulatory remits and functions”.

He is understood to have discussed the implications of fundamental reform with senior figures in industry and government in the last week as he finalised his report.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed is expected to launch a consultation on the proposals following publication of the commission report.

The commission is also expected to recommend a “major shift” in the model of economic regulation, which currently relies on econometric modelling, to a supervisory approach that takes more account of individual company circumstances.

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How water can teach Labour a much-needed lesson


Liz Bates

Liz Bates

Political correspondent

@wizbates

On Monday, the government’s long-awaited review into the UK’s water industry will finally report.

The expectation is that it will recommend sweeping changes – including the abolition of the regulator, Ofwat.

But frustrated customers of the water companies could rightly complain that the process of taking on this failing sector and its regulator has been slow and ineffective.

They may be forgiven for going further and suggesting that how Labour has dealt with water is symbolic of their inability to make an impact across many areas of public life, leaving many of their voters disappointed.

This is an industry that has been visibly and rapidly declining for decades, with the illegal sewage dumping and rotting pipes in stark contrast with the vast salaries and bonuses paid out to their executives.

It doesn’t take a review to see what’s gone wrong. Most informed members of the public could explain what has happened in a matter of minutes.

And yet, despite 14 years in opposition with plenty of time to put together a radical plan, a review is exactly what the government decided on before taking on Ofwat.

Month after month, they were asked if they believed the water industry regulator was fit for purpose despite the obvious disintegration on their watch. Every time the answer was ‘yes’.

As in so many areas of government, Labour, instead of acting, needed someone else to make the decision for them, meaning that it has taken over a year to come to the simple conclusion that the regulator is in fact, not fit for purpose.

As they enter their second year in office, maybe this can provide a lesson they desperately need to learn if they want to turn around their fortunes.

That bold decisions do not require months of review, endless consultations, or outside experts to endlessly analyse the problem.

They just need to get on with it. Voters will thank them.

Sir Jon has said the water industry requires long-term strategic planning and stability in order to make it attractive to “low-risk, low-return investors”.

The water industry has long complained that the current model, in which companies are benchmarked against a notional model operator, and penalised for failing to hit financial and environmental standards, risks a “doom loop”.

Thames Water, currently battling to complete an equity process to avoid falling into special administration, has said the imposition of huge fines for failing to meet pollution standards is one of the reasons it is in financial distress.

Publication of the Independent Commission report comes after the Environment Agency published figures showing that serious pollution incidents increased by 60% in 2024, and as Thames Water imposes a hosepipe ban on 15m customers.

Ofwat, Water UK and the Department for the Environment all declined to comment.

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Post Office Capture IT system conviction referred to Court of Appeal for first time

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Post Office Capture IT system conviction referred to Court of Appeal for first time

The first Post Office Capture conviction is to be sent to the Court of Appeal, Sky News understands, in a “breakthrough” moment in the IT scandal.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has decided to refer the case of sub-postmistress Patricia Owen, who was convicted in 1998 of theft.

Mrs Owen was found guilty by a jury based on evidence from the faulty IT software Capture, which was used in 2,500 branches between 1992 and 1999, before the Horizon Post Office scandal.

Pat Owen and husband David
Screengrabs from Adele Robinson i/vs with case study. Family of Pat Owen from Kent who was convicted of 1998 from stealing from her post office branch. Now the Capture IT system is suspected of adding errors to the accounts. 
Source P 175500FR POST OFFICE CAPTURE CASES ROBINSON 0600 VT V2 JJ1
Image:
Pat Owen, pictured here with her husband David, always maintained her innocence but died in 2003 with a criminal record

Pat Owen always maintained her innocence but died in 2003 with a criminal record before the wider Post Office scandal came to light.

It comes after Sky News revealed that a damning report into Capture, which could help overturn criminal convictions, had been unearthed after nearly 30 years.

The decision to refer the first-ever Capture case to the Court of Appeal has been made on the grounds that Mrs Owen’s prosecution was an “abuse of process”.

The development has been described by victims’ lawyer Neil Hudgell as “hugely pivotal”.

“The Court of Appeal don’t receive that many referrals that start at the CCRC, and most get turned away, so it’s a very high bar to even get cases from the CCRC to the Court of Appeal…”

“I think it will be a real shot in the arm to all the other Capture victims who are waiting for their cases to be determined by the CCRC.”

Mr Hudgell described the report found earlier this year – written by computer experts in 1998 and highly critical of Capture – as “significantly tipping the balance”.

Screengrabs from Adele Robinson i/v with lawyer for victims of the Capture IT system, Neil Hudgell from Hudgell Solicitors
Source P 175500FR POST OFFICE CAPTURE CASES ROBINSON 0600 VT V2 JJ1
Image:
Lawyer Neil Hudgell says development is ‘hugely pivotal’

Sky News found that the Post Office knew about the report at the time and continued to prosecute sub-postmasters based on Capture evidence.

Pat Owen always maintained her innocence but died in 2003 with a criminal record before the wider Post Office scandal came to light.

Her daughter Juliet Shardlow said she cried when she heard the news that her mother’s case would be referred to the Court of Appeal.

“I feel angry that she is not here because she died before her time… we will be there – we will be sitting there in that front row.

“I can’t put it into words because it’s still all a shock that we are where we are and that later this year, or next year, we might have what we set out to get… justice for her.”

Juliet Shardlow whose mother sub-postmistress Patricia Owen who was convicted in 1998 of theft
Image:
Juliet Shardlow is seeking justice for her mother

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The CCRC is currently investigating 30 cases potentially related to the Capture software system.

Twenty-seven of those cases are now assigned to case review managers and under “active review”, with a further three cases in the preparatory stages.

The CCRC has described a “challenge” over determining “whether cases involved the use of Capture at the time of the alleged offences”.

In a letter written to Liam Byrne, chair of the Business and Trade Committee, and seen by Sky News, it said that information the Post Office has provided “does not, in most cases, show whether it was installed and in operation at the time of the alleged offending”.

It also mentioned that the Post Office is reviewing “a significant amount of data which may contain further information”.

A Post Office spokesperson said: “While it is not appropriate for us to comment on specific cases, we have been very concerned about the reported problems relating to the use of the Capture software, and we are sincerely sorry for past failings that have caused suffering to postmasters.

“We are determined that past wrongs are put right and continue to support the government’s work in this area as well as fully co-operate with the Criminal Cases Review Commission.”

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