Whatever happened to the idea of pre-Budget secrecy?

In the old days there was such a thing as pre-Budget purdah, a sacred tradition strictly observed by ministers and civil servants. For weeks before a Budget, the chancellor would disappear from public view and any questions from journalists, or from MPs in the House of Commons, about tax or public spending would be answered by the questioner being told they would have to “wait for the Budget”.

The idea was that this would create space for the Treasury to consider the policy options in a calm and confidential atmosphere, without exposing the chancellor to lobbying from politicians and interest groups.

That tradition has long gone. The idea that it would protect the chancellor from lobbying was always silly, and the idea of a protected space has been encroached on by the demands of politics. In the arms race between leaks and formal government announcements, Gordon Brown accelerated the issue of Treasury news releases in the days before a Budget that would say something like “the chancellor is expected to announce in next week’s Budget…”

So now we have arrived at a position that is the opposite of purdah. The Budget on Wednesday has been preceded by a series of media appearances by the chancellor over the weekend and a steady stream of Treasury announcements. It feels as if almost all the significant measures in the Budget have been advertised in advance, usually in the form of a briefing given to one newspaper and then followed up by an official news release emailed in time for all the newspaper reviews at 10.30pm.

That feeling is particularly acute before this Budget, given that the main fiscal decision was taken, announced and rushed through parliament in September: the rise in national insurance contributions to pay for clearing the NHS backlog, with perhaps a bit left over for social care in a few years.

Indeed, decision-making on tax and public spending has been driven off the usual timetable over the past 19 months, with spending decisions on furlough, testing and support for businesses coming in day-to-day responses to the crisis.

That means that there is not that much for Rishi Sunak to announce on Wednesday, with a lot of attention devoted to the spending review, which has been combined with the Budget this year. These are the government’s plans for public spending over the next three years – in effect the period up to the next election.

Presumably, Sunak will have something new to announce in the Budget speech itself – all chancellors are keen to have some kind of crowd-pleasing surprise to announce towards the end of the speech, usually after a rhetorical flourish along the lines of, “I have received representations to do x, but I am not going to do x, I am going to do x-squared.” But if so, it will probably be the only thing in the speech that hasn’t been announced already.

Here is my incomplete round-up of all the announcements that have been made in advance: there will be £7bn of capital investment over three years (that is, not that much) for transport connections outside London; £5bn for digitising the NHS; £3bn for the Lifetime Skills Guarantee; £1.4bn to subsidise foreign investment in science and tech; £850m for museums and galleries; £700m for coastal patrols; another £700m “confirmed” (that is, it has been announced before) for sports pitches; £560m for adult maths coaching; £500m for family hubs (a kind of reinvention on small scale of Sure Start); and £435m for crime.

One thing not on the list that is worth looking out for is whether Sunak will announce some additional spending on universal credit, to try to buy off Conservative MPs who have been bruised by the end of the £20-a-week uplift, which is now feeding into claimants’ monthly payments.