Merryn Somerset Webb

Why are they not putting it to work?

I mean, part of it's the way of the world, let's be honest.

The world is a noisy, uncertain place.

And I totally get the desire to squirrel away some money for a rainy day.

And let's be honest, this year once again has brought a whole sequence of eight weeks of rainy days since the Iranian crisis struck.

So some of that is just the way of the world.

But you're right, a chunk of it is domestically induced self-harm, if you like, which is uncertainty around policy.

which has been very acute over the past few years.

I mean, both budget 24 and budget 25

took the legs from beneath the animal spirits of companies and households, either because of fearfulness of tax rises or in some cases because of actual tax rises.

So we need government and policy to sign the Hippocratic Oath and to genuinely do no harm.

I think the Spring Statement did a reasonable job on that, actually, in that it was a...

It was a much smaller no news event, and that was better than some of its predecessors.

But more than that, this government and previous ones need to get serious about providing the enabling environment for spending to take place, for animal spirits to be revivified, for balance sheets to be put back to work.

We have, and you and I discussed this previously, we have a crazy tax system in this country, not just the level of rights, which we've discussed, but it's complexity.

21,000 pages among, if not the longest in the world, taking a chainsaw or a pickaxe to that rather than the pruning shears is absolutely what was needed.

And what's true of tax is also true of regulation.

Again, I used to be a regulator, for heaven's sake.

But nonetheless, the individually well-intended actions of now more than 100 regulators in the UK

nonetheless can collectively add up to a quagmire.