LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves should raise taxes by a lot in next month’s budget to exit the “Groundhog Day scenario” of continuously having to find measures to patch up the public finances, a think tank said on Thursday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies urged Reeves to stop giving herself only minimal headroom for meeting her fiscal targets which can lead to rushed policy changes.

“There is a strong case to do something big enough that you don’t keep getting back into fiscal Groundhog Day,” IFS director Helen Miller said. “It’s sucking the life out of other things that we should be talking about such as how to get growth up.”

Reeves – despite raising taxes by about 40 billion pounds ($53.45 billion) in her first budget last year – is probably 22 billion pound

See Full Page