“Hunt seeks to unlock Brexit dividend by ditching financial rules”

Dec 9, 2022 | Financial Services

An independent (financial adviser’s) view

Jeremy Hunt’s package of reforms to financial services regulation has been trailed as a 21st Century ‘Big Bang’. For younger readers, the last one was in 1985, when both Thatcher’s UK and Reagan’s America effectively let the banks have free rein to lend, invest and run the financial markets. A boom or two followed and it took 15 years for the chickens to come home to roost when, in 2008, those uncontrolled banks started to go bust, everything crashed and governments suddenly realised they needed regulating after all. So here we go again, about to ‘unlock the potential of Brexit’, to bring on, they hope, another blood-rush of lending and investing which will, I fear, have the same, inevitable results. But, for this government, on someone else’s watch. Cynical? Moi? Sorry, but I really have seen it all before.

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“Rachel Reeves may be forced to raise taxes”

“Rachel Reeves may be forced to raise taxes”

Why did she/they (in the old sense) think that tinkering around with IHT and CGT would be enough to sort out the NHS; and the potholes; and…and the list goes on. My guess is  that they asked the Treasury for a list of anything not involving income tax that they could get away with lightly, although they should already have learned from the winter fuel stuff that all publicity is not good publicity.