HM TREASURY PRESS NOTICE

For release: immediately, although most of it has been available since the second week of September.

HM Treasury today confirms that it has ruled out all tax rises ahead of the Budget. This position will remain in force until the Budget itself, at which point it will be withdrawn item by item over approximately fifty minutes, in the order previously reported by the newspapers.

The statement follows a seven-week period of consultation conducted entirely through the press, during which each proposed increase was floated by a think tank, described as under serious consideration by a source close to the Chancellor, denied by a second source close to the Chancellor, and then discussed on the radio by a former minister who had not been told anything but felt he could contribute. Officials confirm that the process has been a complete success, in that nobody is any longer capable of being angry about any of it.

Summary of the Department’s current position

Income tax thresholds have been ruled out. They have also been ruled in, ruled out again, and described as a matter for the Budget, which in this context means yes. Changes to capital gains tax have been neither confirmed nor denied, and the Treasury would like it noted that this is the first time in living memory that it has managed to do both at once.

Pension relief remains under review, a phrase the Department has been advised to retire on the grounds that it now causes visible distress in anyone over fifty-five. A freeze on something has been ruled out, except for the freeze on the other thing, which has been ruled out only in the sense that it is no longer called a freeze.

“We have always said we would not speculate, and we have kept to that. The speculating has been done on our behalf by people who are much better at it, and who have been very generous with their time.” Helen Corrigan, Head of Fiscal Event Communications, HM Treasury

Ms Corrigan added that the Department had considered simply publishing the Budget in August, but that this had been rejected after a working group concluded that the public would then have had to be angry for a further three months.

Graham Whitlock, Deputy Director of the Expectations Management Unit, said the system now worked with very little human input. “A figure is mentioned on a Sunday, and by the Wednesday it has been absorbed,” he said. “By the time the Chancellor stands up, the figure has been through anger, bargaining and a sort of quiet domestic acceptance. We simply read it out and everyone nods, as one would at a funeral for someone who had been ill for a long time.”

What the public should expect on Budget Day

Members of the public are advised that they may begin feeling surprised at any time from 11am. Surprise will be available until approximately 3pm, after which citizens are asked to resume their ordinary level of resignation, which the Department anticipates will be broadly unchanged.

Anyone who finds that they are not surprised is asked not to contact the Treasury, as this is the expected outcome and the helpline has been discontinued.

Notes to editors

1. The Chancellor will, as is traditional, hold up the red box for photographers outside Number 11. The box is now ceremonial. It contains a copy of the speech that was, in practice, finalised by the Sunday papers, together with a sandwich and a laminated card reading “Look as though this is new”.

2. References to a “black hole” in the public finances are to be understood as a term of art and not as a description of any actual hole. The Treasury has been asked to stop clarifying this.

3. Any tax rise appearing in the Budget that was not previously leaked will be treated as a clerical error and corrected by lunchtime.

4. Journalists seeking comment on the above should consult their own earlier articles, which will contain it.

5. This notice has not been leaked in advance. It was released at the same time as it was written, and the Department is aware of how that looks.