Pauper’s feast

Rose Stephenson seeks crumbs for higher education from the budget table

When Jeremy Hunt gave his budget speech on Wednesday—almost certainly the final budget before the next general election—he found himself in an unenviable position. On budget day, a chancellor needs a feast of tasty morsels to hand to the electorate: investments, tax cuts and freezing of duties to make folk feel each pound more heavily in their pocket. But given long-term stagnation in economic growth, the table of treats was bare.

Despite this, Hunt was keen to emphasise the strong position of the UK economy, although I’m not sure that this was convincing to those listening. As Gavan Conlon of London Economics stated at a recent Higher Education Policy Institute event: “Referring to the UK as being in a ‘technical recession’ is like saying that someone is ‘partly dead’. The UK is in a recession.”