Transcript for '2009 Pre-Budget Report' video

Treasury minister Stephen Timms explains more about this year’s Pre-Budget Report. You can watch the video on the right-hand side of this page.

Narrator:

The Pre-Budget Report - or PBR - is one of two wide-ranging economic reports presented to Parliament by the Chancellor each year.

It provides a progress report on what the Government has achieved since the previous Spring Budget.

It gives an updated assessment of the state of the economy and public finances.

And sets out the direction of Government policy in the run up to the spring Budget.

This year, the PBR takes place as the global economy recovers from the sharpest and most widespread global downturn for 60 years.

Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms:

We’ve seen over the last year a huge financial crisis, the biggest downturn in the world economy since the 1930s. The impact was felt right around the world, the global economy shrank for the first time since the Second World War.

It’s been a tough time for a lot of families and a lot of businesses. So we resolved to provide real help now, to support families and businesses, to put more money into the economy in order to make the downturn shorter and shallower than otherwise would have been the case.

We introduced tax cuts for working families, we cut the rate of Vat temporarily, we introduced a car scrappage scheme, we provided more help for people to get back into work, more time for small businesses to pay their tax bills.

And it’s working.

Unemployment, the number of home repossessions – much lower than many people expected. And we’re increasingly confident that we will, as we’ve been saying for some time, see growth returning to the UK economy by the turn of the year.

We’ve put the banking system back on a stronger footing, we’ve helped 330,000 people back into work just in the last month alone. We’ve supported so far about 150,000 businesses with more time to pay their tax bills.

There’s going to be some tough choices as there always are at Pre-Budget Report – perhaps particularly as this one. We will make those choices fairly and will continue to support vital public services and will continue to make good investments for the future.