Tag: 2004

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 24 December 2004.

Chancellor Gordon Brown today instructed the Bank of England, acting as HM Treasury’s agent,  to direct all UK financial institutions to freeze any funds held for or on behalf of the entity, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) immediately.

The action has been taken because the Treasury have reasonable grounds for suspecting that the organisation is acting on behalf of Sa’ad Al-Faqih, who was listed by the UN as an associate of Al-Qa’ida yesterday, 23 December 2004.

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 15 January 2004.

Sir Nicholas Goodison today published his review of regional and national museums’ and libraries’ ability to compete in the market-place for works of art and culture and called for a boost to private giving and a new emphasis on collections and curation.
Sir Nicholas said:

“We have a problem that we must solve. Museums, galleries and libraries are records of our history. All over the country they offer amazing opportunities for learning and enjoyment. In recent years it has been harder and harder for them to compete to buy essential works of art and culture. The most expensive objects, some of them likely to be exported, are often out of reach.

“We must find ways of encouraging more gifts from private owners and donors. In the United States private giving to public collections, with some encouragement from tax reliefs, is part of the country’s culture. I want more people in the U.K. to discover the pleasure of giving in this way.”

In his review, entitled ‘Securing the Best for our Museums: Private Giving and Government Support’ , which was commissioned by HM Treasury, Sir Nicholas argues the cultural and economic case for new acquisitions by museums and other public collections. He discusses the threat of continuing sales of important objects from private collections and their possible export, the sources of public funding available to museums, the need for a new look at the care of collections, and the difficulties that museums have in providing money for acquisitions. He analyses the various fiscal measures that help to keep important objects publicly accessible in private collections and that encourage private owners to sell to public collections rather than on the open market. He makes a number of recommendations to secure public access to works.

Sir Nicholas places particular emphasis on the strengthening of regional collections and their curatorial skills, and increasing the availability of important cultural objects in the regions, in order to widen people’s opportunities for enjoyment and learning.

Sir Nicholas added:

“A museum’s acquisition policy should reflect a well thought out policy of strengthening its collection to ensure excellence and to inspire its local community and its visitors.”

His chief recommendations are:

• New tax reliefs to tempt owners to donate works of pre-eminent importance to public collections during their lifetimes. If adopted, a donor would be able to set the gross value of the object against income before the assessment of income tax, and any capital taxes due on sale would be eliminated. The donor would be able to spread the income tax saving over a number of years.
• Changes to the Acceptance in Lieu system that will (1) enable executors to offer objects of pre-eminent importance against not just inheritance tax but all forms of tax liability due on a deceased estate, and (2) enable owners of objects, during their lifetimes, to arrange offers in lieu of tax liabilities following their deaths.
• A new one-stop shop for museums and owners to get impartial advice and guidance on buying and selling works of art.  Resource (the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries) could house an executive function to deal with most of the programmes to do with the retention of works of art and other cultural objects. This will enable Resource to provide a much needed professional advice and guidance service to owners and their representatives, and to strengthen its advice and guidance services to museums, in particular regional and smaller museums who don’t have specialised knowledge in this area. It will bring greater consistency into the present varied and (to owners) confusing programmes. The service would include a comprehensive and clear written guide to the many options available to the owner of an object, which would be distributed to owners, professional advisers and museums.
• Raising the annual grant to the National Heritage Memorial Fund to at least £20million.

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 20 January 2004.

The commitment and achievements of the staff and volunteers at the Fersands Family Centre in Aberdeen were praised by Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo on a visit today.

The Family Centre was created to provide educational, training, social and recreational facilities and resources to local families.

Ms Primarolo commented:

“The Fersands Family Centre provides a first-rate service to families in a wide range of areas, ensuring parents in the community receive the support and advice they need.

“Through providing high quality childcare and training opportunities, the centre also offers parents a real opportunity to fulfil their potential in the workplace and to develop their skills. I am also pleased that so many of parents using the nursery are taking advantage of the new tax credits which are currently benefiting more than 5.9 million families across the UK and give extra support for children and help parents meet their childcare costs.

“It has been a pleasure to meet staff, volunteers and families using the centre today and I would like to congratulate the centre on its ongoing success.”

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 8 March 2004.

Speaking at a conference in York of over 100 owner-managers and representatives from schools and local government tonight (Monday 8th March), John Healey, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Wentworth in Rotherham, said:

“For too long the world of the entrepreneur has seemed closed to all but the lucky few.  What we need is a dynamic business culture right across the country. Enterprise must be open to all in the UK and we cannot accept ‘no-go’ areas for successful companies.

“More than 148,000 extra jobs have been created in Yorkshire and Humber since 1997.  However, with all its potential, the region still punches below its weight economically. In a Britain enjoying the benefits of hard-won macro-economic stability, the challenge facing the region is to build on this success through a shared commitment to enterprise and wealth creation.”

Mr Healey argued that the region’s inner cities, towns and old industrial areas in parts of Sheffield, Rotherham and Leeds should be seen as new markets with competitive advantages – such as their strategic locations, their often untapped retail markets, and the potential of their work force.

The potential has already been demonstrated by the 11 firms from Yorkshire represented in the Inner City 100 index in 2003. This index celebrates the 100 fastest growing firms in urban areas. Yorkshire and Humber had the third highest regional representation, with four businesses in the top twenty and the second fastest growing firm – Action 4 Employment Ltd, based in Sheffield.

Mr Healey added:

“Our goal is that no one is left out on the margins of enterprise, no one excluded from the mainstream of economic prosperity.

“We are putting in place the right incentives to stimulate business-led growth in our inner cities and estates, and encourage much bigger flows of private investment. Our aim is to make the market work in places where it is failing. That is why we designated the 2000 most deprived wards in the country as Enterprise Areas.

“This benefits the property market, with abolition of stamp duty for domestic properties up to a value of £150,000 and all commercial properties. Breaking down barriers to enterprise in our most disadvantaged communities in North Yorkshire will tackle remaining barriers to local job and wealth creation and will help us realize the full economic potential of our region.”

“Other advantages enjoyed by Enterprise Areas include: the Phoenix Fund (which has helped in the creation of 330 new businesses and supported almost 1200 existing ones in Yorkshire) and the Bridges community venture capital fund; and new powers for planning authorities that will cut red tape for growing businesses by removing the need for them to apply for planning permission.”

Cllr Paul Blanchard, who organised the event, said:

“As Chair of Young Enterprise in York, we’re really pleased that Mr Healey has agreed to speak at our event.  Creating a dynamic business culture in this country must start within our education system – showing the adults of the future the benefits to themselves and their community that entrepreneurism can bring.

“Young Enterprise is at the heart of this – founded in 1963, and a national business education charity, in this region we run six programmes for over 6,500 young people in schools, colleges and universities; with guidance from local business volunteers, teachers and tutors. Usually programmes are class-based, and three involve students running their own real company, developing entrepreneurial skills for personal success and enhancing their employability.”

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 20 January 2004.

Exploration in North Sea oil and gas was given a further boost by proposals announced today by Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo.

Building on an announcement in the Pre-Budget Report, the Government is introducing a new Exploration Expenditure Supplement, effective from 1 January 2004, to help promote exploration and investment in the North Sea.

The supplement will be available for up to 6 years, at an annual rate of 6 per cent compound interest on unused allowances. This will maintain the value of existing 100 percent allowances for new entrants unable to make immediate use of them.  As a result of the supplement, the overall tax relief available to these companies could increase by up to 41 per cent.

Speaking to representatives of the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen, Dawn Primarolo said:

“The North Sea oil and gas industry is a vital contributor to the UK economy. The new Exploration Expenditure Supplement will ensure new entrants get support for the important early stages of investment. This builds on the existing 100 per cent first year capital allowances introduced in 2002 for investment in the North Sea and will help to ensure a sustainable future for the UK’s oil and gas industry.”

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 23 January 2004.

John Healey, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Rotherham MP, today congratulated the South Yorkshire Key Fund (SYKF) for its success in receiving the largest ever lump sum award from the Phoenix Fund1 for boosting enterprise in deprived areas, and on passing the £3 million mark in distribution of funds to voluntary and community groups.

With over £10 million available for the region’s communities, the Key Fund is providing an innovative and dynamic approach to economic development, helping promote and stimulate regeneration throughout South Yorkshire.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of the fund in Sheffield, John Healey said: “Boosting levels of enterprise is central to the future of South Yorkshire. This record award and the £3 million already distributed by the South Yorkshire Key Fund represent a major step forward for the region”.

The work of the SYKF, as a community development finance institution, contributes to the government’s social enterprise agenda by providing support to social enterprises and contributing to the economic regeneration of the region.

It provides a custom-made grants and loans scheme for social economy organisations. This ranges from funding for feasibility and start-up activity, through development finance, to large scale, ‘venture capital’ type investments.

The SYKF also works alongside other projects which provide financial support to the social economy, including the South Yorkshire Investment Fund for larger investments and a Global Grants scheme to support smaller, local community based initiatives.

John Healey added: “Disadvantaged communities should not be seen as ‘no-go’ areas for business and enterprise. They should be seen as new markets with competitive advantages such as strategic locations, workforce potential and untapped retail markets. The SYKF is consistently achieving this in the local area.”

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 4 February 2004.

Innovative schemes to deliver joined-up care for victims and witnesses, developing visitor centres in prisons and reducing the number of children entering the Criminal Justice System, are just some of the winning projects across England to receive a total of £46 million under the ‘Invest To Save’ initiative, announced the Treasury and Cabinet Office today.

The ‘Invest to Save’ initiative provides support for projects that involve joined up public bodies working together to deliver services that are innovative, responsive to local needs and more efficient.  This, the sixth round of the Invest to Save Budget, continues to include partnership bids from central government, local authorities and the voluntary sector.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Paul Boateng said:

“Since 1999, the Invest to Save Budget has invested £370 million in some 400 projects across the United Kingdom to deliver reform and enhanced levels of service to local people.  This investment has helped develop new ways of working – for example, partnerships between voluntary organisations and the public sector as well as better outcomes such as more effective teaching of citizenship and reductions in crime and the fear of crime.

“The  Invest to Save Budget has been a catalyst for change across the public and voluntary sector – sharing lessons learned and best practice across regions and departments and so helping to improve service delivery.”

Douglas Alexander, Minister for the Cabinet Office said;

“Improving the delivery of services to the public is a key objective for  Government. The ISB programme funds projects that have identified innovative ways to transform the way public services are delivered through multi-agency partnerships. There are other benefits too, which include improvements to the quality and cost effectiveness of the services themselves.”

The new projects receiving funding are:

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 9 February 2004.

Ahead of the 10 February meeting of EU Finance Ministers and the March European Council, the Treasury is today publishing a new report highlighting the need for further and faster economic reform to promote growth, jobs and prosperity in Europe.

Advancing Long-Term Prosperity: Economic Reform in an Enlarged Europe, examines how Europe needs to respond to the challenges of globalisation, enlargement and ageing populations and advises that the problems of low growth and high unemployment will only be solved with greater efficiency, flexibility and productivity.

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown praised the reforms which have been achieved so far, but called for the pace of reform to accelerate:

“In the past four years since the Lisbon Council, the EU has made great steps, with significant reforms in many Member States. However, we still have a long way to go if Europe’s economy is to match that of our major international competitors.

“We have created six million jobs since 1999.  But Europe will still fail to meet its 2005 targets and must create another 21 million jobs to hit its target for 2010.  Productivity in the US is at least 14 per cent higher than in the EU.

“Europe will only solve its problems of low growth and high unemployment by becoming more efficient and increasing productivity – pressing ahead with reforms to increase product, labour and capital market flexibility, and ensuring that its policies are rooted in the realities of global competition and the opportunities it offers.

“Europe must ensure that its policies do not protect and shelter inefficiency, but promote competitiveness, enterprise, innovation and skills. Policies such as those to reduce the burden of regulation, and to reform further the state aid rules and the Common Agricultural Policy, will ensure that Europe secures its place in the modern global economy.”

Detail

The report examines the progress made in economic reform since the March 2000 Lisbon European Council, noting both the EU’s achievements over the past four years, and the scale of the challenge ahead if Europe is to compete effectively in the modern global economy and achieve the Lisbon goals. It calls on Member States and the institutions of Europe to demonstrate a strong commitment to reform, designed to:

• improve the quality of regulation, building on the joint initiative of the next 4 EU Presidencies to simplify existing regulation and ensure that every new regulation is subject to strict tests for its impact on competitiveness;
• strengthen the Single Market, with a more pro-active competition policy, further reform of the state aid rules, and by making the Single Market a reality for services as well as goods;
• deliver more and better jobs, implementing the recommendations of the Employment Taskforce report, with new commitments to improve the functioning of Europe’s labour markets;
• promote enterprise and innovation, building on the recent joint statement of the UK, France and Germany, and with new European Centres of Enterprise – local centres of excellence in enterprise policy;
• ensure an ambitious outcome to world trade negotiations, by improving access to all of Europe’s markets and further reform of the Common Agricultural Policy; and
• strengthen the transatlantic economic relationship, by tackling the barriers to trade and investment between the EU and the US.

The report also calls for a more flexible and adaptable approach to European policy-making, that reflects developments in the global economy and the diversity within Europe itself, advances flexibility and fairness together, and ensures that EU budget expenditure is limited and refocused to support the Union’s priorities, including economic reform. It also calls on the European Commission to nominate a Vice-President with explicit responsibility for overseeing progress in reform.

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 10 February 2004.

“Of all the responsibilities of government – to ensure a competitive environment, to invest in science, skills and infrastructure – the greatest and pre-eminent challenge is the creation and entrenchment of economic stability and taking the hard decisions to lock in stability even in difficult times in the world economy – like the last three years when we have lived through the first slowdown to hit all continents simultaneously for 30 years.

But instead of being – as in the old days – first in, worst hit and last out of any world downturn, Britain has not only avoided recession but has continued to grow in quarter after quarter, year after year, in all seven years of our government since 1997.

And we are not just one of the only major industrialised countries to have avoided recession but have been more stable than any of our neighbours over the last few years.

While I recognise that manufacturers and exporters in all regions have faced difficult times, employment overall has continued to rise, unemployment continued to fall and we have had the lowest interest rates and lowest inflation for a generation.

And I believe that now the world economy is strengthening, with, in the fourth quarter of last year, GDP in Britain growing by 0.9 per cent – the fastest rate seen since the first quarter of 2000.

And for the year as a whole, UK GDP expanded by 2.1 per cent – in line with the Treasury’s Budget and Pre Budget Report forecasts.

Growth is also becoming more balanced. While consumption has moderated over the last few months, official data shows that manufacturing output has been rising – up 1.1 per cent in the 3 months to December compared to a year ago. And business surveys show a marked strengthening in corporate conditions in every region of Britain, with export prospects for manufactured exports at their highest level in eight years.

As we discussed this weekend in the USA, the lessons all advanced economies have learned are that in a global economy, monetary and fiscal policy has now to adjust quickly to fast moving changes and to heightened risks of instability – and to do so it has to be proactive and forward looking.

While there is a link between money supply and inflation, in open economies with liberalised capital markets rigid monetary targets just cannot work. But the experience of the 1970s and 80s also taught us that, correct as Keynes was to point to the need for proactive and forward looking monetary and fiscal policy – ever more essential in fast moving capital markets, the old way of doing so – crude annual fine tuning – could not work either.

Instead the flexibility and proactive approach a modern economy needs demands a framework – both monetary and fiscal – based not on short term targets but on clear long term objectives that are met and seen to be met: instead of politicians making interest rate decisions on short term considerations, the Bank of England independently operating a symmetrical inflation target — a target that because it is as concerned about deflation as it is about inflation is not just pro stability but pro growth.

And in Britain today, in contrast with the experience of many other economies where growth has been lower, the credibility that has come from independence for the Bank of England and the symmetric target, the British model we have created, has enabled the monetary policy committee to respond early and decisively – raising interest rates in 1997, cutting them sharply in 1998 – and again with nine interest rate cuts since the latest global downturn began with the result that, even when more exposed than any European economy to the IT shock, growth continued and unemployment continued to fall.

I want to reassure you today that we will never take stability for granted and I can say categorically to investors everywhere that while no-one can ignore the reality of the economic cycle and the potential of global events to impact on the economy, we have shown it possible to make the hard choices and to steer a course of stability. And we will continue to make whatever decisions are necessary to steer that course and support our monetary authorities in the difficult choices they have to take.

And we will entrench not relax our fiscal discipline. Let us recall that at this stage in the economic and political cycle governments have resorted to short termism in fiscal policy and gone on to raise the rate of spending.

But I can tell you this evening that I am determined not to go down the short term road, and we are resolved to avoid the short termism and mistaken monetary and fiscal policies of the past.

So, as I have announced, we will, while meeting all our commitments and our fiscal rules, lower the rate of spending growth in the next spending round.

And let me add: as we welcome the opportunities of Enlargement, we will continue to demand the same discipline from the European Union as we demand of ourselves. We are agreed to resist plans for any excessive increase in the European Union budget. And, so as we are determined to lock in monetary and fiscal discipline in Britain at this stage of the economic cycle, we are resolved to tackle profligacy and waste where it exists in the European budget.

As I found at the G7 this weekend, each country and continent is having to face up not just to the immediate question of fiscal sustainability but to the longer term question of sustainability. Some countries face bills for pensions and health care rising over the next decade to 20 to 25 per cent of national income. Our bills are much lower – around 5 per cent for state pensions for example – and we are determined to ensure that our fiscal position is sustainable over not just a year or two but over the next decades. And in the Budget we will publish our best forecasts not just for the next few years but the next decades examining the costs of health care and pensions in the years ahead, showing how we can meet our fiscal rules.

So let me conclude: it was decisive action by the Bank of England, and supportive fiscal policy, that ensured Britain – unlike other countries – avoided recession. And let me be clear: Britain would have run the same recessionary risks as other countries – indeed, suffered the same British recession of the past – but for the new British model that has been created.

As the monetary policy committee demonstrated rightly and decisively last week, it will be the same forward looking monetary action – backed by our sound fiscal policy – that can, if we continue to make the right decisions and stick to our resolve, lock in greater stability not just for a year, or for an economic cycle, but in this generation – a prize of greater stability that has eluded successive governments of all parties in the post war era; a prize that – with resolve and prudence – is now within our grasp.

So it was right not wrong to make hard difficult choices to ensure that inflation and debt are low, and our fiscal rules are met.

You asked the government to make stability our first priority, above all else, after years of boom and bust.

And I repeat: our priority will remain stability first: stability yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 11 February 2004.

Following Budget 2003, the Government commissioned research from the consultancy Integrated Skills on ways in which increases in landfill tax could be recycled to business.  The Government is publishing that research today.

This independent report highlights a range of measures which could be useful to businesses in reducing the amount of waste that is sent to landfill.  The two high priority options identified are targeted grants, and funding for increases in promotional, capacity building and advisory services.  However a range of other options are also considered to be helpful for business in reducing waste sent to landfill.