| | Is the Chancellor the
consultants’ friend or
foe? Mr Brown has just
delivered his pre-Budget
report, where we once
again learned that while
economic growth is the
creation of wise and
prudent chancellors,
slowdowns and recessions
are caused by mysterious
natural forces.
The pre-Budget
report, and the
long-term trailing of
Budget changes before
it, was an honourable
innovation by Mr Brown.
By taking the
uncertainty out of
Budget Day he gave
businesses the chance to
make long-term plans to
react to changes, and
provided a useful tool
for consultants as well.
Unfortunately, the whole
business has been
overtaken by spin.
I’m not surprised to
see the Chancellor pat
himself on the back for
the half of predicted
growth the country did
achieve. But this need
to pretend that
everything is hunky-dory
has led to a deeper | |
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| | moral deficiencies of
the British nation and
solemnly announce that
he is closing the
“loophole”.
This makes the true
future direction of
government policy as
hard to read as a
delivery from a
sub-Continental spin
bowler. You never know
when they’re going to
slip in a googly and
leave you staring at the
wreckage of your
financial planning, like
an England batsman
regarding his uprooted
off-stump.
Now Brown has
developed an even more
fiendish delivery, in
which the ball, after a
series of spins and
turns, ends up back in
the hand of the bowler.
Wide-reaching changes
are trailed far in
advance and in great
detail, only to be
reversed shortly before
they are even
introduced.
The headline example
of this is the u-turn on
allowing private pension
funds to buy residential | |
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| | property – to prevent
potential “misuse” which
seems to have been
clearly envisaged in the
original proposals. Lord
alone knows how much
time and money has been
poured into setting up
now-redundant schemes.
A week or so before the
pre-Budget Report, the
Chancellor also casually
announced in his speech
to the CBI’s annual
conference that he was
dropping the statutory
requirement for quoted
companies to publish an
operating and financial
review (OFR). A
reduction in the
regulatory burden
perhaps, but an
incredible amount of
time and money has gone
into researching and
preparing for OFRs,
which once again could
have been put to more
productive use.
You could, cynically,
say this trend is good
news for consultants. Do
a project preparing
clients for some
heavily-trailed
announcement, then go
back on fees to sort it | |
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| | all out again when the
initiative is dropped.
But no-one really likes
to work on abandoned and
futile projects. There’s
also a danger that
clients will spot that
Treasury announcements
are little more than
exercises in
kite-flying, and start
playing “chicken” with
the Chancellor. Projects
will be put off until
after the pre-Budget
Report or even Budget
Day itself, leading to
intense resource
bottlenecks as everyone
scrambles to meet
deadlines from a
standing start. In any
case, the talents of the
consultancy industry
would be far better
employed helping clients
achieve competitive
advantage, rather than
react to the whims of an
increasingly capricious
and spiteful Chancellor.
Who knows, it might even
be able to create some
of that elusive economic
growth he is always so
eager to take the credit
for.
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