Hammond's fiddling sees him through

The chancellor can't have been looking forward to the Budget this week, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But in the end, it wasn't so bad.

Philip Hammond can't have been looking forward to this week's Budget. Having to kick things off with miserable Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts for GDP growth, productivity and public debt isn't the kind of thing chancellors dream of. But in the end, with a little fiddling of the fiscal rules, it all went off OK.

He made the right changes to Universal Credit. He produced some extra spending for the NHS. He made it clear the government is doing what it can to back up UK Plc with a rise in the tax credit on offer for spending on R&D; £3bn for Brexit preparation; support for the electric and driverless car sectors (he reckons they'll be on the road by 2021 hooray!); a good investment in maths and computer-science education; and a doubling of the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) allowance for those investing in high-risk knowledge businesses. He sent a firm signal to tax-avoiding multinationals about the supremacy of sovereign countries over corporate boards when it comes to deciding tax bills.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.