FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. EMBARGOED UNTIL SUCH TIME AS IT HAS ALREADY BEEN REPORTED.

HM Treasury today announced the launch of the Speculation Efficiency Programme, a single consolidated statement that neither confirms nor denies increases to income tax, council tax, VAT, inheritance tax or, in the wording of the document itself, “a levy on something”.

The programme replaces the existing arrangement, under which the same outcome was reached over a period of five to seven weeks, at considerable cost to newspaper columnists, backbench MPs and anyone with a pension, a house or a pulse.

Background

Ahead of every fiscal event, a number of tax ideas are traditionally introduced to the public by sources close to the Chancellor, who are understood to be close in the sense that they work in the same building and share a kettle. The ideas are then monitored for reaction. Those that provoke a sharp intake of breath on a Sunday morning political programme are quietly withdrawn, whilst those that provoke only a sigh are retained and described as difficult but necessary.

“The old system worked, in the sense that a Budget eventually took place, but it was inefficient,” said Helen Pritchard, Director of Fiscal Communications Readiness. “A rumour might be floated on a Monday, denied on a Wednesday and reinstated on a Friday in a slightly different hat. We have simply removed the middle part, and the part either side of it.”

Key features of the programme

All press office staff will be issued with a laminated A3 flowchart titled Not Commenting: A Decision Pathway. The chart opens with the question “Has anyone asked you anything?” and offers fourteen routes, every one of which arrives at the same box, which reads “Say you couldn’t possibly speculate”. The chart has been laminated, according to the department, because it is expected to survive several Budgets and at least one reshuffle.

The department’s spokesperson will be permitted to say only “I couldn’t possibly speculate”, and must deliver it in a tone of mild speculation. Guidance circulated internally specifies a slight lift on the word “possibly”, a half-second pause before “speculate”, and the expression of a man who has just been asked whether he knows what is in the envelope.

“We trialled a tone of total blankness, but journalists found it unsatisfying and wrote that the department was refusing to rule things out. Mild speculation lets everybody go home with something.” Graham Dunmore, Head of Press Office

The statement covers every tax currently in existence and several that are not. Officials confirmed that “a levy on something” was chosen as the final item because it can be applied, at short notice, to anything from plastic packaging to the sale of second-hand conservatories.

Expected outcome

The Treasury confirmed that the eventual Budget will be “broadly similar to the rumours, but with the bits people were angriest about renamed”. A rise that was widely described in the press as a raid will appear in the Red Book as a contribution, and a freeze on thresholds will be presented as a period of stability. Any measure still attracting complaints by the morning after will be referred to as a simplification.

Priya Nair, Deputy Director for Anticipatory Reaction Management, said the new approach would spare the public a great deal of unnecessary anxiety. “People used to spend a month fearing a rise in inheritance tax, only to be told on the day that it was a rise in inheritance tax. Now they can fear all of them at once, and get it over with in an afternoon.”

A backbench reaction exercise, previously conducted informally in the tea room, will continue in a revised form. Members will be asked how they feel about a measure that has not been proposed, and their answers will be recorded and filed under a measure that has.

Notes to editors

1. The Speculation Efficiency Programme is not a confirmation of anything, and should not be read as one, or as the opposite of one.

2. Laminated copies of the flowchart are available on request. Lamination is currently exempt, though the department has declined to say for how long.