The Chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to Chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within His Majesty's Government, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the chancellor is a high-ranking member of the British Cabinet.
His Majesty's Treasury, occasionally referred to as the Exchequer, or more informally the Treasury, is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and economic policy. The Treasury maintains the Online System for Central Accounting and Reporting, the replacement for the Combined Online Information System, which itemises departmental spending under thousands of category headings, and from which the Whole of Government Accounts annual financial statements are produced.
In many states with political systems derived from the Westminster system, a consolidated fund or consolidated revenue fund is the main bank account of the government. General taxation is taxation paid into the consolidated fund, and general spending is paid out of the consolidated fund.
Sir Howard Kingsley Wood was a British Conservative politician. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance. He became a member of the London County Council and then a Member of Parliament.
A spending review, or occasionally a comprehensive spending review, is a governmental process in the United Kingdom carried out by HM Treasury to set firm expenditure limits and, through public service agreements, define the key improvements that the public can expect from these resources.
The Barnett formula is a mechanism used by the Treasury in the United Kingdom to automatically adjust the amounts of public expenditure allocated to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to reflect changes in spending levels allocated to public services in England, Scotland and Wales, as appropriate. The formula applies to a large proportion, but not the whole, of the devolved governments' budgets − in 2013–14 it applied to about 85% of the Scottish Parliament's total budget.
A Finance Act is the headline fiscal (budgetary) legislation enacted by the UK Parliament, containing multiple provisions as to taxes, duties, exemptions and reliefs at least once per year, and in particular setting out the principal tax rates for each fiscal year.
The Golden Rule is a guideline for the operation of fiscal policy. The Golden Rule states that over the economic cycle, the Government will borrow only to invest and not to fund current spending. In layman's terms this means that on average over the ups and downs of an economic cycle the government should only borrow to pay for investment that benefits future generations. Day-to-day spending that benefits today's taxpayers should be paid for with today's taxes, not with leveraged investment. Therefore, over the cycle the current budget must balance or be brought into surplus.
IR35 is the United Kingdom's anti-avoidance tax legislation, the intermediaries legislation contained in Chapter 8 of Income Tax Act 2003. The legislation is designed to tax 'disguised' employment at a rate similar to employment. In this context, "disguised employees" means workers who receive payments from a client via an intermediary, i.e. their own limited company, and whose relationship with their client is such that had they been paid directly they would be employees of the client.
The Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) was a statutory body of the UK Government that provided loans to public bodies from the National Loans Fund. In 2020, the PWLB was abolished as a statutory organisation, and its functions were allocated to HM Treasury, where they are discharged through the UK Debt Management Office. The members of the PWLB were known as the Public Works Loan Commissioners.
An Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom is primary legislation passed by the UK Parliament in Westminster, London.
The March 2010 United Kingdom Budget, official known as Budget 2010: Securing the recovery, was delivered by Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the House of Commons on 24 March 2010.
A contingencies fund or contingency fund is a fund for emergencies or unexpected outflows, mainly economic crises.
The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement was a policy document drawn up following the 2010 general election in the United Kingdom. It formed the terms of reference governing the Cameron–Clegg coalition, the coalition government comprising MPs from the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is a non-departmental public body funded by the UK Treasury, that the UK government established to provide independent economic forecasts and independent analysis of the public finances. It was formally created in May 2010 following the general election and was placed on a statutory footing by the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. It is one of a growing number of official independent fiscal watchdogs around the world.
The Budget of His Majesty's Government is an annual budget set by HM Treasury for the following financial year, with the revenues to be gathered by HM Revenue and Customs and the expenditures of the public sector, in compliance with government policy. The budget statement is one of two statements made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, with the Spring Statement being made the following year.
The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 is the Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced the Sovereign Grant, the payment that is paid annually to the monarch by the government in order to fund the monarch's official duties. It is usually set as a percentage of annual income from the Crown Estate. The Sovereign Grant Act was the biggest reform to the finances of the British royal family since the inception of the Civil List in 1760. In addition to the Sovereign Grant, the monarch continues to receive the revenue of the Duchy of Lancaster, while the Prince of Wales receives the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall.
The 2016 United Kingdom budget was delivered by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the House of Commons on Wednesday, 16 March 2016.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that granted the government emergency powers to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. The act allowed the government the discretionary power to limit or suspend public gatherings, to detain individuals suspected to be infected by COVID-19, and to intervene or relax regulations in a range of sectors to limit transmission of the disease, ease the burden on public health services, and assist healthcare workers and the economically affected. Areas covered by the act included the National Health Service, social care, schools, police, Border Force, local councils, funerals and courts. The act was introduced to Parliament on 19 March 2020, and passed the House of Commons without a vote on 23 March, and the House of Lords on 25 March. The act received royal assent on 25 March 2020.
The Contingencies Fund Act 2021 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which allowed for a temporary increase in the maximum capital of the United Kingdom's contingency fund from 2%, as set out in Section 1 of the Contingencies Fund Act 1974, to 12%. It was introduced by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in response to the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
