The chancellor may have choked on his words but there was little in this Budget to make the property industry do the same. That said, it wasn’t completely without consequence.
Fifteen minutes in and deep into a section on the economy’s prospects, a frog gripped George’s Osborne’s throat. It wouldn’t have been the first time today that words had failed him. He would have taken longer to recover when, an hour earlier, the London Evening Standard had tweeted a picture of an embargoed front page bursting with Budget detail.
It all made for as rowdy a Budget as I’ve seen.
The chancellor congratulated the poster boy of urban regeneration Lord Heseltine on his “excellent idea” for a single competitive fund for local enterprise, and promised to implement the proposal. And he made his annual nod to the TMT sector, pledging support for the burgeoning visual effects and animation sectors.
But populism aside did Osborne do enough to fuel growth? Probably not in truth. He had little room for manoeuvre.
Jam was promised, but it won’t be served until tomorrow. So there will be an extra £3bn a year in infrastructure investment, but not until 2015/16.
When our airports are creaking to the point of threatening our international competitiveness it felt like too little, too late.
Help to buy was a nice soundbite. But as many, including the Centre for Cities, immediately asked: is underwriting £130bn of mortgages a better bet for growth than spending the same sum on direct housebuilding? It feels, not for the first time, that the Treasury has failed to take proper account of the full economic impact of investment rather than the cost of support.
There were a couple of other measures that could have interesting consequences. Stamp duty on share trades on growth markets will be scrapped, increasing the appeal of listing on AIM over the main board perhaps.
And a renewed effort to clamp down on tax avoidance was promised. Yes, successive chancellors have been promising this for some time, but here the Lib Dems will perhaps ensure it is followed through. How that plays out will be closely watched, nervously perhaps in some of the darker corners of the property industry.
Damian.Wild@estatesgazette.com
