Worrying armchair learning about Gulf LNG production: there's almost nowhere to store it; it's hard to turn off; and it's slow to turn back on

Here is the Government's new animal welfare strategy: www.gov.uk/government/p...

It's been a busy season of budget analysis for me. I will now be a lot quieter for a while: listening, reading, fact-finding, pondering. Happy holidays!

Don't Panic: Britain is not broken. The UK can do better, but we shouldn't be too gloomy about things. If you look at the stats, there's a lot to be happy with (including how happy we are): adamcorlett.com/2025/11/30/d...

There is almost no trace of the Budget on bbc.co.uk/news – presumably HMT will count that as a win

The number of children in poverty has probably hit new record highs this year, but will be significantly cut in 2026-27. New government projections: www.gov.uk/government/p...

Hopefully a 1p Fuel Duty rise in September is a good way to break the taboo, and there's no Budget before then. It is less of a fiscal fiction than it has been, but we'll see... And maybe the approach of small, quarterly, automatic increases could be continued beyond 2026-27, instead of annual jumps

The 'High Value Council Tax Surcharge' is a big step to making annual property tax more proportional to value. Most homes already pay higher rates than mansions will. Unlike Council Tax it will be based on recent values, with five-yearly revaluation(?), and will be paid by owners not occupiers.

Big news on Fuel Duty - the 5p cut will be removed gradually from September. A good way to end this giveaway without pushing up inflation

💥 Govt says fuel duty to *go up* from next September. In the past the OBR has assumed that fuel duty would start to rise after a one-year freeze. This time, the govt has said explicitly that it will only be frozen for five months, and will start increasing it after that.

It sounds like this Budget won't cut VAT on public EV charging, but will launch a review that might lead to doing it in Budget 2026

Today I learned that NOx pollution from vehicles (esp. old diesels) and boilers interferes with insect scent. Yet another reason to electrify everything.

Everybody loves brownfield-first. But where exactly should we densify our cities? And how? Our new report shows Britain's density gap is wider in the biggest cities outside London than in the capital - and the inner city 'urban cores' up to 5km out from the centre are to blame.

It's *possible* the Budget could be very green: 🟢 Focus all price cuts on electricity, not gas 🟢 Don't cancel Fuel Duty rises 🟢 Cushion future EV VED rise with public charger VAT cut & other support 🟢 Expand emissions pricing to long-haul flights & international shipping 🟢 Help lower interest rates

It's *possible* the Budget could be very green: 🟢 Focus all price cuts on electricity, not gas 🟢 Don't cancel Fuel Duty rises 🟢 Cushion future EV VED rise with public charger VAT cut & other support 🟢 Expand emissions pricing to long-haul flights & international shipping 🟢 Help lower interest rates

A very worthwhile use of AI would be to work out when something on video footage was worth notifying the police (and owners). In future, 30 seconds into this, the police could already be aware, drones dispatched, number plates flagged and maybe even the car bricked. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is a common take, but I think it rather depends on whether the changes are adding new unevenness to the tax system OR smoothing over existing unevenness

One likely extra reason for this £50k bump is that the basic rate of dividend tax is only 8.75% – 25 points lower than the higher rate of 33.75% – so company owner-managers will plan their finances around that.

I'm proud to have received the innovation prize at last night's @smartthinking.bsky.social awards – for my and my colleagues' work producing an alternative to Labour Force Survey stats www.resolutionfoundation.org/our-work/est...

This is rhetorically the most pro-building govt ever, but housebuilding has ground to a halt and Heathrow still expect their planning app to cost £800m to produce. The problem is there's a massive gap between what Labour say they want and what they're doing. www.samdumitriu.com/p/rhetoric-v...

Clearly tax rises and May elections will be hard for Labour, but don't be 100% gloomy: there is also very likely voter-friendly news ahead on falling inflation, price caps, immigration and interest rates - and a fair chance that the 2026 budget could show 'our plan is working, here are some rewards'

Clear conclusion from a new Animal Welfare Committee report about the main way pigs are killed: "Exposure to high concentrations of CO2 in commercial systems causes pigs to suffer pain, respiratory distress and fear... its use should be prohibited." www.gov.uk/government/p...

Two reasons to focus Budget tax rises on non-wage income. 1. Tax rates on wages have long been higher than for other income. 2. The employer NI rise was a big tax wedge rise for most employees: even if non-wage taxes go up by 2p in April, wages would have had the biggest 2024-2026 effective tax rise

Two reasons to focus Budget tax rises on non-wage income. 1. Tax rates on wages have long been higher than for other income. 2. The employer NI rise was a big tax wedge rise for most employees: even if non-wage taxes go up by 2p in April, wages would have had the biggest 2024-2026 effective tax rise

Combining a couple of thoughts from this, perhaps a good way to do electoral reform (and what LDs should have demanded in 2010) is an (Irish-style) two-stage process where an independent Citizens' Assembly ponders the best system and then their choice is put to the rest of the public in a referendum

It is surely much easier to make this change now – while most voters are not directly affected – than in 5 or 10 years' time. Majority support on both the left and right.

Today's Bank of England outlook continues to support the idea that the OBR's March wage forecast is too low – despite the coming productivity downgrade. e.g. OBR forecast 2.3% pay growth for 2026, but the Bank and businesses they talk to expect ~3.5%. This matters a lot for the fiscal outlook.

This sounds promising: grappling with a big long-term tax issue. Though the suggested scale would be similar to the £200 EV VED rise that happened this April. And if the VAT 'pavement tax' were abolished at the same time, that might offset most of this cost for drivers without home chargers.

The Treasury is widely reported to be considering cutting energy bills, perhaps via a VAT cut. What's the best way to do this? We think the answer is to remove the taxes from electricity bills. Here is Nesta's proposal out for Tax-free Electricity: @nestauk.bsky.social

Not disagreeing with John's broader thesis here but I don't think this fact is true (& we can't trust the related rankings either). I think the UK top 10% are definitely better off than in 2000. The difference might be that this international data doesn't correct top incomes like domestic sources do

The Chancellor didn’t talk about tax reform this morning, but ideally the Budget would grapple with a range of longstanding tax problems. Here are 5 of the biggest challenges… www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Real fuel prices and fuel duty are historically low, and would remain so even after scheduled increases in Spring. Instead of fuel duty freezes, the Chancellor should focus cost of living support on bringing down electricity prices, which are definitely not historically low.

On the subject of how many households are "net recipients", this new chart of ONS data suggests that indirect taxes have plummeted. But I suspect this is mostly due to this survey missing more and more spending each year - rendering any related time series fairly useless.

Taxes on the typical salary are now 55% higher than on self-employment income - a record gap. You're better off taking a self-employed role even if it's ~13% less productive. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

What are the politics of this for Labour? Given strong public opinion, is animal welfare a cheap, easy way to show centre/left voters it is making a difference, while making life awkward for any opponents tempted to say that this is all woke nonsense? (Particularly once inflation weakens.)

A striking quote in Bloomberg from the president of the World’s Poultry Science Association, an industry group, about modern meat chickens:

Real incomes for lower-income households have likely fallen this year, but a 6.2% rise in UC standard allowances next April should contribute to better news in 2026-27

In today's stats, UK monthly inflation was 0%. Inflation since April has been at an annualised rate of 1.9%, slightly lower than in May-Sept 2019 (when there was no inflation problem).

Many of the people Katie Lam is threatening with deportation are entitled to vote in general elections, as Commonwealth or Irish citizens

Ahead of the Animal Welfare Strategy, I wrote to my MP to encourage ambition. #EndTheCageAge, roll out mandatory labelling, and end the fur trade. adamcorlett.com/2025/10/20/l...

One good option for #Budget2025 would be to reform Vehicle Excise Duty. The current tax regime – particularly for EVs – presents a fiscal challenge, distributional challenge and harms challenge. 🧵 www.thesun.co.uk/motors/37047...

Surely it's unlikely that VAT on gas will be cut. It would be such a missed opportunity to improve the UK's damagingly high electricity to gas price ratio. There's no shortage of ways to cut electricity bills, to help all households. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

How much we should spend on PIP is one thing, but I think there's a good case that Motability's tax breaks are weirdly distortionary. It buys new cars without paying CO2-linked VED, or most VAT, and then sells them on after a few years. That's why 1 in 5 new cars now go through Motability.

I laughed about Huel being “spiritually bad.” I also wish one could just trust media outlets that break news about supposedly troubling contamination to not lean into the story at the cost of scientific accuracy.

The Government has already said that “subject to negotiations, we intend to expand the UK ETS to include emissions from international voyages”, like the EU. This news adds to the case for doing that – and HMT could even score ~£0.4bn a year for it at the Budget. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It would cost £5 billion to keep freezing Fuel Duty, by 2029. It would cost £4 billion to take social levies, environmental levies and the Carbon Price Support off electricity bills and slash public EV charging VAT. Which is the better option?

UK inflation over the past year was very concentrated in April. So perhaps we'll see a big fall in the annual rate in April 2026 (published in May) when that drops out.

#Budget2025 could look at a >£20bn pension tax relief – the lack of employer NICs on employer pension contributions. This is a very generous part of the pension tax system. And because we treat *employee* contributions differently, it leads to arbitrarily different tax rates for different workers.

My instant reaction to Badenoch's stamp duty announcement for @instituteforgovernment.org.uk Stamp duty is a bad tax. But abolishing it without a broader reform of property taxes would be a missed opportunity and hard to afford. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/kemi...

Good chart in the FT. Ryanair and its customers face much higher carbon prices than many other airlines, because we basically exempt long-haul flights from the Emissions Trading Scheme. That's unfair and inefficient. The UK+EU should fix this & it may even be a revenue-raising option for #Budget2025