Chancellor John Healey has said he wants to be "a chancellor who backs business" and will look at "the cost of business" in his first Budget, which he will deliver on Wednesday 28 October.
Healey made the remarks in an interview with The Times on Wednesday, given during a visit to Aberdeenshire to mark the approval of the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. The Budget will be his first since Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed him on 20 July to replace Rachel Reeves, and the first fiscal event since the Treasury ruled out a rise in capital gains tax.
The interview marks a change of tone from the Treasury towards employers, who have faced an increase in employer National Insurance from 13.8% to 15% under Reeves. Healey set out no specific measures, costings or thresholds, and no Treasury document has accompanied his remarks.
"I want to be a chancellor who backs business in Britain making a profit, and those entrepreneurs who, in the end, are the ones who challenge the status quo, come up with innovative ideas and are trying, some of them through sheer bloody-mindedness, to keep going through these sorts of pressures," he told The Times.
He linked the pressures on firms to those on households. "And so when I talk about the cost of business, and recognising that in the same way as we're recognising the cost of living pressures, I'm conscious of that as I go into the budget for both businesses and households," he said.
GB News reported him as listing the sources of that pressure in the same interview. "I have recognised that in recent times there's been a lot of pressure: employment law, regulation, tax, input costs, supply chains," he said. He did not name his predecessor.
City AM reported that Healey signalled plans to reduce the reporting burden on smaller firms. Daily Business reported that he expressed concern over the cost of hiring staff, including higher minimum wages for younger workers, but gave no indication that he would change National Insurance contributions. Which requirements would go, and for firms of what size, has not been set out.
The Chancellor's room for manoeuvre on the main taxes is limited. Rises in income tax rates, employee National Insurance and VAT have been ruled out in line with Labour's general election pledge, and his Treasury has already ruled out any increase in capital gains tax.
Healey's conciliatory language sits alongside reports of new revenue-raising measures aimed at business. A report syndicated by AOL earlier this week said he had drawn up plans for a tax raid on family businesses, and LBC reported that he is expected to increase bank taxes. Neither has been confirmed by the Treasury. The CBI, whose chief executive Rain Newton-Smith has pressed the government for a detailed growth plan, warned this week that further taxes on the financial sector would be an "own goal".
The opposition has already sought to make the Chancellor's record an issue before the Budget. Andrew Griffith, the Shadow Chancellor, said in his first speech in the role last month: "Britain has a debt problem, it has a growth problem, and it has now a Healey problem". The Conservatives have not responded to Wednesday's interview.
Healey also gave a separate interview on Wednesday to ITV's political editor, Robert Peston, recorded at Shell's St Fergus plant, where gas from Jackdaw will come ashore. The North Sea Transition Authority granted consent for the field to its owner, Adura, the same day, a decision Green Party leader Zack Polanski described as "climate vandalism".
Advantage Travel Partnership, a travel industry body, welcomed the Chancellor's remarks. The British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors have not yet commented.
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