Philip Hammond is reportedly considering abolishing the annual Autumn Statement as he looks to move away from “gimmicks” and micromanagement.
According to the Financial Times, the chancellor wants to focus the Treasury’s tax and spending decisions on the spring Budget.
Under Hammond’s proposals, in future years the Autumn Statement could return to its original function of fiscal forecasting. But this year’s event on 23 November will go ahead as planned.
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It will mark Hammond’s first major set piece event since taking over from George Osborne at the Treasury.
Osborne said in opposition he would end the Treasury’s “micromanagement and empire building” and reportedly planned to scale back the Autumn Statement.
However, that approach "lasted for one fiscal event,” a Treasury official told the FT.
Former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling said he too hoped to scale back the Autumn Statement but was thwarted by the need to address the economic turmoil stemming from the financial crisis.
“Philip Hammond might want to move to a situation where he has just one Budget, but I suspect that with the uncertainty around Brexit, that may turn out to be impossible," the former chancellor told the FT.
The Treasury has produced “two fiscal events” since the 1975 Industry Act required the Government to publish at least two economic forecasts a year.
The deputy director of the Institute for Government, Julian McCrae, welcomed the idea of axing the Autumn Statement.
“If you create fiscal events, they generate their own momentum and so get filled with guff,” he said.
“Changing the pension system so that the chancellor can pull a rabbit out of his hat, for example, is never the right way to go about pension reform.”