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.
World
‘Widespread sexual violence’ took place during Hamas’s 7 October attacks, report by Israeli experts says
A newly released report led by Israeli legal and gender experts presents detailed evidence alleging “widespread and systematic” sexual violence during the Hamas-led terror attack on 7 October.
Warning: This story contains descriptions of rape and sexual violence
The findings, published by the Dinah Project, argue that these acts amount to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), and assert that “Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war”.
The report draws on 18 months of investigation and is based on survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with first responders, morgue personnel and healthcare professionals.
According to the Dinah Project, the documented patterns – such as forced nudity, gang rapes, genital mutilation, and threats of forced marriage – indicate a deliberate and coordinated use of sexual violence by Hamas operatives during the attack.
Reported incidents span at least six locations, including the Nova music festival, and several kibbutzim in southern Israel.
A destroyed car near the police station in Sderot, following the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Pic: AP
One section of the report describes victims “found fully or partially naked from the waist down, with their hands tied behind their backs and/or to structures such as trees and poles, and shot”.
At the Nova music festival and surrounding areas, the investigators found “reasonable grounds to believe” that multiple women were raped or gang-raped before being killed.
The report’s findings are consistent with earlier investigations by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Read more:
What is the possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal?
Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza
The UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict previously concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” CRSV took place during the attack.
Destroyed vehicles near the grounds of the Supernova electronic music festival. Pic: AP
Significantly, the Dinah Project urges the international community to officially recognise the use of sexual violence by Hamas as a deliberate strategy of war and calls on the United Nations to add Hamas to its list of parties responsible for conflict-related sexual violence.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The nature and scale of sexual violence on 7 October have been a subject of intense controversy, with some accusing parties of weaponising the narrative for political ends.
This report seeks to confront what its authors call “denial, misinformation, and global silence,” and to provide justice for the victims.
Hamas has denied that its fighters have used sexual violence and mistreated female hostages.
World
Israeli soldiers ‘psychologically broken’ after ‘confronting the reality’ in Gaza, UN expert says
A UN expert has said some young soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces are being left “psychologically broken” after “confront[ing] the reality among the rubble” when serving in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, was responding to a Sky News interview with an Israeli solider who described arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza.
She told The World with Yalda Hakim that “many” of the young people fighting in Gaza are “haunted by what they have seen, what they have done”.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ms Albanese said. “This is not a war, this is an assault against civilians and this is producing a fracture in many of them.
“As that soldier’s testimony reveals, especially the youngest among the soldiers have been convinced this is a form of patriotism, of defending Israel and Israeli society against this opaque but very hard felt enemy, which is Hamas.
“But the thing is that they’ve come to confront the reality among the rubble of Gaza.”
An Israeli soldier directs a tank near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel. Pic: AP
Being in Gaza is “probably this is the first time the Israeli soldiers are awakening to this,” she added. “And they don’t make sense of this because their attachment to being part of the IDF, which is embedded in their national ideology, is too strong.
“This is why they are psychologically broken.”
Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said he believes the Sky News interview with the former IDF solider “reflects one part of how ugly, difficult and horrible fighting in a densely populated, urban terrain is”.
“I think [the ex-soldier] is reflecting on how difficult it is to fight in such an area and what the challenges are on the battlefield,” he said.
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Ex-IDF spokesperson: ‘No distinction between military and civilians’
‘An economy of genocide’
Ms Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts, also said her most recent report for the human rights council has identified “an economy of genocide” in Israel.
The system, she told Hakim, is made up of more than 60 private sector companies “that have become enmeshed in the economy of occupation […] that have Israel displace the Palestinians and replace them with settlers, settlements and infrastructure Israel runs.”
Israel has rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to defend itself after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.
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‘Israel has shifted towards economy of genocide’
The companies named in Ms Albanese’s report are in, but not limited to, the financial sector, big tech and the military industry.
“These companies can be held responsible for being directed linked to, or contributing, or causing human rights impacts,” she said. “We’re not talking of human rights violations, we are talking of crimes.”
“Some of the companies have engaged in good faith, others have not,” Ms Albanese said.
Read more:
Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza
British surgeons on life in Gaza
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The companies she has named include American technology giant Palantir, which has issued a statement to Sky News.
It said it is “not true” that Palantir “is the (or a) developer of the ‘Gospel’ – the AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, and that we are involved with the ‘Lavender’ database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing”.
“Both capabilities are independent of and pre-ate Palantir’s announced partnership with the Israeli Defence Ministry,” the statement added.
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