Kwasi Kwarteng to announce network of low-tax investment zones
The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, is expected to announce the creation of a network of low-tax, low-regulation investment zones in an emergency budget on Friday.
Planning regulations will be relaxed in up to 12 places earmarked for this status, and taxes will be cut to incentivise investment.
The announcement, which is expected to take deregulation further than the post-Brexit freeports set up by Boris Johnson’s government, will be part of a package that will also see the rise in national insurance contributions abandoned, a planned increase in corporation tax scrapped and green levies temporarily removed from fuel bills.
Although not formally being billed as a budget, Kwarteng’s statement to MPs will dwarf most budgets in terms of its impact on the public finances. The main tax changes trailed in advance are expected to cost the exchequer at least £30bn a year.
Kwarteng wants to use the statement to show that the government is delivering quickly on the promises made by Liz Truss during her campaign for the Conservative leadership, when she said that investment zones would be at the heart of her plan to boost growth. A formal budget is due later.
The West Midlands, the Thames estuary, the Tees Valley, West Yorkshire and Norfolk are among the places where the new zones might be sited. According to the plans set out by Truss in the summer, in each area there will be a central region, where regulations and planning rules will be eased to encourage industrial, commercial and residential development, and a periphery where the planning rules will be streamlined for housing.
According to one report, the Treasury is considering whether, as well as offering lower taxes for businesses operating in the zones, it could also also offer lower
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