Pre-Budget Report: Darling’s alternative Christmas bonus

So it will not be a windfall on the banks but some sort of tax hit directly on the bankers’ bonuses.

The PBR has not yet gone to the printers but it will have a measure that is supposed to head off excessive bonuses by introducing some sort of temporary punitive tax on them. 

I hear this is intended primarily as something that should change behaviour not raise money, although it is expected to bag the Treasury hundreds of millions of pounds.

Treasury officials are now standing by the door desperate to get the thing off to the printers. The latest anyone can remember a Budget getting off to the printers was 5am on the day of the Budget itself – one of Gordon Brown’s, I am told.