Jeremy Hunt says everyone will have to pay higher taxes – but richest will make larger sacrifices
Jeremy Hunt has said everyone is going to be paying higher taxes but those who earn the most will have to make larger sacrifices.
The chancellor told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme during Thursday’s autumn statement he “will be asking everyone for sacrifices” but recognises there is “only so much we can ask” from people on the lowest incomes.
“That will be reflected in the decisions that I take, that’s important because Britain is a decent country, a fair country, a compassionate country,” Mr Hunt said.
“We’re all going to be paying a bit more tax, I’m afraid.”
Ministers are understood to be considering lowering the threshold at which employees pay the highest 45p rate of income tax from £150,000 to £125,000, the Sunday Telegraph reports.
Nurses across the UK this week voted to go on strike for the first time, likely next month, as they demand a 17% pay rise.
Mr Hunt, who was health secretary when junior doctors went on strike for the first time in 2015, said he was “very conscious” of nurses’ concerns and understands they are asking for that above-inflation increase because of the impact of inflation on their pay packet.
But he said: “I think we have to recognise a difficult truth that if we gave everyone inflation-proof pay rises, inflation would stay. We wouldn’t bring down inflation.
“And that’s why, you know, I’m not pretending there aren’t some difficult decisions.
“The way through this is to bring down inflation as quickly as possible, because that is the root cause of your concern, your anger, your frustration, that your pay isn’t going as far as it might.”
Jeremy Hunt told Sophy Ridge on Sunday tax will be increased for everyone
Mr Hunt promised the autumn statement will “not just be bad news” but said he believes the public recognises “if you want to give people confidence about the future you have to be honest about the present”.
He said his plan will be both short and long-term and will bring down inflation, control high energy prices and “get our way back to growing, healthily”.
The chancellor said his plan will help get the UK out of a recession as quickly and with as little pain as possible as he also promised help for energy bills not just this winter, but next.
But he also said spending cuts from government departments will be needed and hinted no more funding will be given to the NHS.
He said the health service’s funding is already going up but the government needs to do “everything we can to find efficiencies” within the NHS.
Mr Hunt, asked if the NHS is on the brink of collapse, admitted doctors and nurses “on the frontline are frankly under unbearable pressure so I do recognise the picture”.
Jeremy Hunt’s gloomy outlook will worry people – including Tory MPs
The government is zig zagging at speed with its economic policy and borrowing to invest one week while cutting our cloth to our means the next.
It’s no surprise that people’s heads are spinning.
That was a very depressing, gloomy interview with Jeremy Hunt in which he emphasised the world has changed so he has to bring in a lot of pain.
I think that will worry people, including Tory MPs.
Liz Truss wanted to borrow too much in order to promote growth and I wonder whether or not the conversation after Thursday is whether or not Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt haven’t done the same thing but in the other direction.
Whether the eye-watering pain they’re going to initiate on Thursday doesn’t go too far. Whether it’s commensurate with the size of the problem that we’ve got.
Read more: Sunak’s premiership is about to start for real as he faces a huge week at home and abroad
He added that public services need a strong economy but that applies the other way around as well.
And he said the NHS can help get the UK out of the current economic difficulties, such as helping the growing number of people out of work due to long-term sickness.
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Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary under Liz Truss, told Sophy Ridge on Sunday he would rather see public spending cuts than tax rises in the fiscal statement.
He said: “I would strongly urge that the great balance of this statement should come from spending reductions because I really do think that there is an issue with our raising the burden of taxation on Britain at this time.”
Mr Clarke added that government spending has risen “substantially” over the past decade so there is “potential” to make savings that “did not damage public services”.
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Minister hints at windfall tax expansion
Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the chancellor could still make “fair choices” in the autumn statement that do not place the burden on the public by closing tax loopholes and backdating the windfall tax on energy companies’ profits to January and extending it by two years.
She said the windfall tax extension could raise an additional £50bn.
Ms Reeves also called for a general election as she said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has “no mandate for the cuts and tax increases” because he was not voted in by the country, but by Conservative MPs.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
Read more:
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Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
World
UN’s Antonio Guterres condemns ‘teaspoon’ of aid allowed into Gaza after dozens die in airstrikes
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
The leaders of the UK, France and Canada are “on the wrong side of humanity and (…) history”, he said, after they threatened “concrete action” against Israel this week if it continues its “egregious” military operations in Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
A woman has been arrested after 12 people were reportedly injured in a stabbing at Hamburg’s central train station in Germany.
An attacker armed with a knife targeted people on the platform between tracks 13 and 14, according to police.
They added that the suspect was a 39-year-old woman.
Police at the scene. Pic: AP
Officers said they “believe she acted alone” and investigations into the stabbing are continuing.
There was no immediate information on a possible motive.
The fire service said six of the injured were in a life-threatening condition, three others were seriously hurt, and another three sustained minor injuries, news agency dpa reported.
The attack happened shortly after 6pm local time (5pm UK time) on Friday in front of a waiting train, regional public broadcaster NDR reported.
A high-speed ICE train with its doors open could be seen at the platform after the incident.
Railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was “deeply shocked” by what had happened.
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Four tracks at the station were closed in the evening, and some long-distance trains were delayed or diverted.
Hamburg is Germany‘s second biggest city, with the train station being a hub for local, regional and long-distance trains.
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