DOES it sometimes seem to you that we tend to see rather more of Gordon Brown than we used to see of previous Chancellors of the Exchequer? Mr Brown’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR), which will take place before the end of the year, has become an increasingly significant date on the parliamentary calendar.

Although the autumn statement generates more interest under Mr Brown than it did in the past, it is not an invention of the Labour Government. Mike Warburton, of Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm, says: “There is a legal requirement for the Chancellor to make two economic statements to the House of Commons each year.”

Traditionally, this has come in the form of the Budget in the spring and an autumn statement. Under Mr Brown, the autumn statement has come to be known as the Pre-Budget Report.

The autumn statement used to be the occasion on which the Chancellor outlined expenditure plans, detailing the allocation of budgets to various departments as well as any changes to spending plans. “The autumn statement has always been heavily focused on expenditure,” Mr Warburton says, “whereas the Budget in March or April would focus on revenue- raising measures.”

However, under Mr Brown, the Pre-Budget Report has become almost as important as the Budget itself. David Kershaw, of KPMG, the business adviser, says: “These days it is much more of an event than it used to be. It now involves the introduction of substantive changes.”

Some economists and accountants say that this is simply because this Government likes to legislate. “There is new legislation coming into force almost every day,” Mr Kershaw says. He adds that this makes the system “unplayable” not just for accountants, but for taxpayers, too.

However, Mr Warburton says that there are purely practical reasons for the increase in importance of the Pre-Budget Report under Mr Brown. He says: “The Chancellor decided, wisely in my view, to unify the thresholds for the payment of national insurance contributions and the personal allowance above which income tax is paid.”

Since national insurance is calculated weekly or monthly, and since companies require some time to get their systems up to speed to take account of changes in national insurance contributions, the Chancellor has to announce the threshold in the autumn. “Effectively, this means that he is announcing the personal allowance in the autumn, too — and this is one of the critical numbers,” Mr Warburton says. It is all the more important since a Labour manifesto pledge prohibits Mr Brown from raising income tax rates.

However, this is not the only reason for the growth in importance of the Pre-Budget Report. Mr Brown tends to use the report to announce consultations over future legislative measures. Moreover, he has become a master of using the report as an opportunity for spin.

Mr Warburton says: “The Chancellor uses the report to say how well we are doing, how much better our economy is performing compared with everyone else’s and to explain why it isn’t his fault if we are not doing better than everyone else.”

There is also plenty of “foreshadowing”. Measures are often announced on more than one occasion and repeats are a ploy that Mr Brown uses to make sure that good news is heard on several occasions.

Mr Warburton says: “He tends to say, ‘I am going to do a wonderful thing’, and then six months later we hear about the wonderful thing again, and six months after that he reminds us that he has done a wonderful thing.”

By contrast, bad news is often “pre-announced” and then barely referred to again. The abolition of the dividend tax credit was announced inMr Brown’s first Budget in 1997. But the measure, which has subsequently deprived pension funds of £5 billion or more a year, did not come into force until 1999. Meanwhile the increase in national insurance contributions was announced 12 months before it came into force.

Accountants believe that the forthcoming Pre-Budget Report will probably be a fairly quiet one. “We are not expecting a lot of fireworks,” Mr Warburton says.

However, Mr Kershaw says that there are likely to be further measures designed to reduce tax avoidance, as well as possible reform of the inheritance tax system.