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Brown: Wednesday Budget
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Brown Announces Wednesday Budget
The Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said that the new Government's first Budget will be on Wednesday, July 2,
The announcement, in a Commons written reply, marks a break with the long
tradition of having the Budget on a Tuesday. There is also speculation that Mr Brown is considering dispensing with the over 100-year-old Budget Day box, and also the traditional Chancellor's "perk" of an alcoholic tipple as he delivers his Budget in the Commons.
The Treasury says Mr Brown wants to ensure the whole event reflects the
welfare-to-work theme of the Budget, and his determination to equip Britain for
the future. Mr Brown is holding an early budget, mainly to put into place the windfall levy on the excess profits of privatised utilities, designed to raise funds to put 250,000 young and long-term unemployed people into work.
Budget may return to the spring
Meanwhile, Leader of the House Ann Taylor said that the government was considering returning the annual Budget Day to the spring.
One innovation of John Major's government was to have a single unified
tax-and-spending Budget in the autumn, to replace the old system of splitting
the two between autumn and spring.
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