Budget 2025: personal finance expert views

Robert Salter, Simon Edelsten, Christine Ross, and Laura Suter

This excerpt was originally published in the Financial Times

Markets were well briefed about this Budget and the limited options available once more radical steps had been ruled out. Before the chancellor stood up, top hats had been inspected and no rabbits had been found. The UK bond market and sterling exchange rates wobbled, but ended where they started.

While the investment tone in the UK has been gloomy, particularly about rising costs, international investors are upbeat about the range of growth opportunities — especially artificial intelligence, but also advances in robotics, machine learning, alternative energy, medical diagnostics and streamed entertainment. Despite British strengths (commercial and academic) in these areas, there seemed little in the Budget to help them flourish. Only the UK defence sector got the expected lift.

As with last year’s Budget and the Spring Statement, the £22bn fiscal headroom leaves little room for error. The component parts of this number include volatile debt payments and uncertain forecasts of government spending — the growth in both labour and capital costs being prone to revision. The shock absorbers in UK finances have been wearing thin since the 2008-09 financial crisis and the UK gilt market will be jumpy until these have been rebuilt.

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