Chancellor Philip Hammond approached this Budget with many of the most important decisions affecting the public finances already made for him - or at least out of his hands, writes Luke Bartholomew.
Despite this, he did receive some good news from the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) upgrade to the short-term outlook for the public finances and the major strategic decision taken in this Budget was to spend the windfall. This means fiscal policy will provide a modest boost to GDP growth next year. Despite the OBR making a number of upgrades to its short-term growth forecasts, the medium to long-term outlook remains reasonably pessimistic. This reflects the UK's continuingly disappointing productivity record, and the fact that Brexit is likely to represent a further drag to po...
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