Another thought dawned on me. As a stimulus plan to boost demand one could raise the starting thresholds for NI & Income Tax to £15,000 p/a, kill off the claw back threshold for basic personal allowance & raise the 40p threshold to £80,000 p/a. This could jump start the economy by cutting taxes.

Then as Matthew Parris suggests in this morning's Times National Insurance could be extended to the salaries of those on the state pension. Bearing in mind they would only have to pay anything on the amount by which their salary exceeded £15,000 p/a.. This could help cut the deficit in a relatively fair way.

And in the longer term this could help open a conversation about streamlining taxation by integrating Income Tax & NI with most tax breaks dropped. In the longer term one tax rate of just 20% of incomes in excess of £20,000 p/a could make our economy super competitive with plenty of job creation, higher wages & growing revenues all fostered by higher productivity.

I did say largely frozen. The point being one can look from department to department & freeze or not freeze recruitment on the basis of need. Certainly if you put sunset clauses on all QUANGOS & the spending programmes which they administer you could achieve big cuts in Govt Spending within two or three years. Key workers will always need to be recruited - but it is wise to be open minded about freezing recruitment in less important areas as part of curbing the public sector payroll so that deficit & in time debt can be reduced.

How about a Canadian style reform plan a la what they did in the 1990s whereby they cut the cost of their state sector by 20% which helped balance the books & spurred the economic recovery ?

It could be argued that the this is an emergency situation & in a time of crisis things will never be the same again which calls for radicalism. You could schedule it for the first year in the next parliament dependent on hitting deficit reduction targets.

And overseas aid could be overhauled too. £5 billion could be relocated to the MoD to help fund peace keeping, £6.2 billion into a reserve to fund emergency relief & the other £4 billion to pay for development projects in return for the UK & developing countries opening their markets to each others goods n services & investment.

Public sector recruitment could be largely frozen for five years with pension triple lock ditched & procurement looks ripe for an overhaul too. What could also be considered is the Govt could call in experts from Silicon Valley to conduct a major review of the public sector with a view to reforming working practises & using AI and other tech to make public services more responsive to service users while cutting costs. This could be the result of higher state sector productivity thanks to greater efficiency.

Welfare payments could be axed for those with incomes exceeding £80,000 p/a, Barnett Formula could be repealed & all new roads could be privately funded by tolls. Job centres could be paid by results & retirement age for state pension & public sector pensions could be increased.

Major public sector reform is needed to balance the books & secure the recovery. Another example of that could be State Depts getting the money they spend on regulating private business as a fixed item of expenditure to be driven down annually to help curb over regulation & cut govt outlays.

Government needs to look at what sort of jobs will be created in the recovery & devise a plan in concert with employers & unions to start training those who are jobless and/or furloughed so that they have a fighting chance to get those jobs.

By breaking the manifesto pledge not to frack you could have fracking on an industrial scale to boost job creation & by driving down energy costs you could boost economic growth. And by reforming the Bank Balance Levy you could cut it by 90% on banks who extend cheap credit to small/medium sized business start-ups/expansion. Banks with credit in businesses that aren't viable would face a 50% surcharge on this tax within two years if still providing credit to businesses that are not viable.

Areas with high unemployment would get to be new enterprise zones. Businesses which hired new staff would be exempt from business rates & employers NI.

Pension funds which mainly invested in any combination of energy, infrastructure & hi-tech sector would attract a substantial tax credit.

Reforming our regulatory system so as to win pro-growth trade deals post Brexit & to substantially reduce business costs sufficiently so as to spur investment & job creation to secure long term average non inflationary GDP growth of 4% p/a must be a priority.

And to boost confidence moving Bank of England inflation target back to 2% on RPI-x might be wise as might cutting corporate taxes to 10% & CGT rates from 28% & 20% to 15%.

Bold ideas are needed to produce a strong recovery.

What they could do is bring in some tax reductions now designed to both boost demand now to minimize any recession & then to act as supply-side measures to secure a recovery.

Then as the recovery gathered momentum you could undertake reform of the public sector to boost efficiency & productivity so that long term savings can be secured to erode the budget deficit along with faster growth in the private sector made possible by reforms to tax & regulation.

One could call in Silicon Valley experts/entrepreneurs who could look at how working practices, AI & other tech eyc could bring the public sector up to date so that it was efficient & less wasteful and more fit for purpose for the 21st century. Reforming procurement & public sector pensions could be big challenges to get right.

Top rates of tax could be cut from 45% & 40% to 30% with threshold of £250,000 p/a & tax allowance claw back rule axed with plenty of the revenue loss from this found by axing most tax exemptions that favour the wealthy.

Corporate tax could be cut from 19% to 10%, CGT rates could fall from 28% & 20% to 15% and basic rate income tax down from 20p to 15p. And as 70% of the benefit of Inheritance Tax reliefs go to the top 20% of estates there might be a case for discontuing those tax breaks to fund raising the IHT threshold.

Pension fund dividend credit could be restored for funds that invest mainly in any combination of infrastructure, green energy from April 2021&/or hi-tech sector start-ups/ expansion & income tax relief on pension fund contributions could be restricted to funds that invested mainly in such things from April 2023.

We need to kick the murderous Chinese Communist Party out of our 5G network & junk HS2. Perhaps in anticipation of being out of the EU rulebook procurement rules can be overhauled to favour British companies to boost job creation & the balance of payments. Also as we have far more civil servants now than when we ruled 25% of the globe & as public sector pensions are ruinously expensive urgent reforms are needed there too. Pension providers could be called in to look at making public sector pensions more affordable. Silicon Valley experts need calling in to recommend new working practices & enlightened usage of AI & other tech to reduce the civil service numbers & cut procurement costs while favouring Briitish firms.

QUANGOs & the spending programmes that they administer could have sunset clauses applied to them so that they expire within 3 years. Most public sector recruitment could be frozen for four years, welfare payments scrapped for those with an income exceeding £80,000 p/a & triple lock ditched for pensions.

All of the above could make a real dent in the PSBR by 2024-25. If businesses and/or entrepreneurs had cash overseas then they could bring it home tax free during a two year period if 75% of it was invested in any combination of hiring British workers, buying plant & machinery manufacturered in Britain &/or investing in Research & Developement. Capital Gains Tax & Corporate Tax could all be cut to 15% using some monies from spending cuts. To boost demand so that there is an incentive for businesses to invest in new products starting thresholds for income tax & NI could rise to £15,000 p/a by 2024-25 subject to strict targets of cutting govt expenditure & borrowing being hit.

Government should look at EU regulations & look at stripping out unduly burdensome gold plating of said rules. Each Dept should get the money it spends on regulating private business as a fixed item of expenditure to be frozen in cash terms. And for every new rule introduced by a Govt Dept it should be compulsory for three to be axed. By taking burdens off of business the barriers to economic recovery are taken away. We need faster productivity growth to get the well paid jobs & higher wages that are urgently needed.