Kenneth Clarke - Author of the First Unified Budget

History

The Budget evolved to become the main statement of the government's plans for taxation as well as an annual review of the economic state of the country.

For many years, the budget statement took place in the Spring, and the Autumn statement, on government spending plans, in November. In 1992 the then Chancellor, Norman Lamont, announced that these two events were to be amalgamated and on November 10 1993 Kenneth Clarke delivered the first unified Budget speech.

The Budget still takes place annually, although in election years, after a change of Government, a new Budget may be introduced by the incoming Chancellor, as is the case this year.

'Mini-budgets' have sometimes been introduced as intermediate measures when economic circumstances necessitated a change or when chancellors have chosen to re-draft the Budget when some measures were lost in the Commons. The last occasion when this happened was in 1994.