Jeremy Hunt promises ‘permanent cuts in taxation’ before pre-election budget

Published

2 months ago

March 5, 2024

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Jeremy Hunt has promised to help families with “permanent cuts” in tax on the eve of the budget on Wednesday.

The chancellor, who is expected to announce a 2p reduction to national insurance (NI) in what could be the last major fiscal event before the next election, said “lower tax means higher growth”.

While he did not confirm what taxes he plans to slash, Sky News understands that a cut to NI is on the cards and the 5p freeze on fuel duty will be extended.

Money:
What 2p cut to national insurance means for your pay

Mr Hunt is also said to be considering:

• A new levy on vaping products

• Help for first time buyers, such as 99% mortgages

• A tax on air passenger duty for business class travel

• Cutting back plans to increase departmental spending to save money

Labour said that whatever is announced, it won’t be enough to “undo the economic vandalism of the last decade” – and the tax burden is still set to rise to a record high.

With Sir Keir Starmer’s party ahead by around 20 points in the polls, some Tory MPs want Mr Hunt to go further and cut personal income tax with an election approaching.

This is seen as a more headline-grabbing measure that benefits more voters, including pensioners.

But the chancellor is said to have decided against this after forecasts from the UK’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), gave him less fiscal headroom than hoped.

‘Conservatives know lower tax means higher growth’

A 2p cut to income tax would cost around £14bn, whereas the 2p cut to NI will cost around £10bn.

Combined with the 2p cut to NI announced in November, the move will save 27 million workers £900 on average.

In comments released by the Treasury on Tuesday night, Mr Hunt said: “Of course, interest rates remain high as we bring down inflation.

“But because of the progress we’ve made… delivering on the prime minister’s economic priorities, we can now help families with permanent cuts in taxation.

“We do this not just to give help where it is needed in challenging times. But because Conservatives know lower tax means higher growth. And higher growth means more opportunity and more prosperity.”

Mr Hunt added that growth “cannot come from unlimited migration”, but “can only come by building a high-wage, high-skill economy”.

He also took aim at Labour, claiming a government under Sir Keir Starmer would “destroy jobs” and “risk family finances with new spending that pushes up tax”.

Politics latest:
Will another NI cut appeal to voters?

Tories ‘overseeing 14 years of economic failure’ – Labour

But shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Labour is “now the party of economic responsibility” as she accused the Tories of overseeing “14 years of economic failure” with the overall tax burden still rising.

She said: “The Conservatives promised to fix the nation’s roof, but instead they have smashed the windows, kicked the door in and are now burning the house down.

“Taxes are rising, prices are still going up in the shops and we have been hit by recession. Nothing the chancellor says or does can undo the economic vandalism of the Conservatives over the past decade.

“The country needs change, not another failed budget or the risk of five more years of Conservative chaos”.

How will Hunt pay for Budget 2024 giveaway?

Experts have warned that a 2p national insurance cut would not be enough to stop the tax burden rising because of previously announced freezes to personal tax thresholds.

There are also questions about whether Mr Hunt can afford to pay for the measure.

He has said he will not pay for tax cuts with borrowing, meaning a combination of spending cuts and tax rises elsewhere will be necessary.

Revenue-raisers Mr Hunt is said to be considering include reducing the scope of non-dom tax relief, which Labour has said it would scrap to fund services such as the NHS.

A new levy on vaping is on the cards, as is a tax on air passenger duty for business class travel and a tax crackdown on those who rent out second homes for holiday lets.

The chancellor is also considering cutting back plans to increase departmental spending by just 0.75% a year, instead of 2%, to raise around £5bn.

While this would create more scope for tax cuts, it would likely prove controversial given the pressure already on public services, with a spate of local councils going bankrupt in recent months.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey – who will be targeting Mr Hunt’s “Blue Wall” seat at the election – described the Conservatives as “the great tax swindlers” and said they should be prioritising the NHS.

He said: “Rishi Sunak has led the economy into a recession and forced families to pick up the tab. They have no shame.

“The Conservatives must put the NHS at the heart of the budget. It is no wonder the economy isn’t growing when millions of people are stuck on NHS waiting lists, unable to work.”

Watch Sky News’s coverage of the Budget live from 11am on Wednesday.

UK

Blood service collected donations from UK prisons despite infection risk warnings, documents to inquiry show

Published

51 mins ago

May 10, 2024

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Blood service collected donations from UK prisons despite infection risk warnings, documents to inquiry show

Documents submitted to the Infected Blood Inquiry reveal the blood service in the UK was taking donations from British prisons up until the late 1980s, despite warnings to end the practice.

It is evidence of how unsafe, by today’s standards, the UK blood supply was until the early 1990s when testing for life-threatening viruses like hepatitis C and HIV became available.

Much of the inquiry has focused on haemophiliacs, the group harmed most in the infection scandal due to blood products imported from the US made from contaminated blood from paying donors including those in jail.

But the vast majority of people infected with hepatitis C in the UK acquired their infection via blood transfusions in the NHS for things like routine surgery, cancer treatment or following childbirth.

Blood given to this silent majority in the infected blood scandal was sourced almost exclusively from donors in Britain.

“I felt so guilty I passed it on,” says Daphne Whitehorn.

She contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion she received during a kidney transplant in 1971.

“But I didn’t know I could pass it on because I was never told anything about it,” she says.

Her daughter Janice tested positive for the virus in 2019, probably infected when she was born. Neither knew they had the infection for decades.

Symptoms can be mild at first, many people naturally clear the virus and treatments introduced in the last decade can cure most people of their infection without serious side-effects.

But chronic infection can cause severe liver damage, liver failure and liver cancer.

The Whitehorns and thousands of other victims of the scandal are looking to the Infected Blood Inquiry for answers.

Key among them, why so many people were infected with hepatitis C.

There are no precise numbers, many of the records of donors, recipients and procedures have been lost or destroyed.

But statistical experts for the inquiry estimate around 27,000 people may have been infected with hepatitis C via transfusions. Most have subsequently died of other causes but they calculate around 1,600 have died so far from causes related directly to their hepatitis C infection.

The inquiry has heard how more could have been done to keep viruses like hepatitis out of the blood supply.

Documents show how calls to end the practice of taking donations from the prison population were slow to be heeded.

The inquiry was shown evidence that in 1973 rates of hepatitis viruses were found to be fives times higher in prisoners than the general population.

While this led to many regional blood services to stop taking donations from prisons, others continued. The last prison donation took place in 1987.

But the inquiry is expected to consider far wider failings too.

Like why, when testing for HIV for and then Hepatitis C became available, was the blood service slow to adopt using them. Also why infected frozen stocks of blood taken before Hepatitis C testing was introduced were not retrospectively tested before being given to patients in the early 1990s.

In addition, victims of the scandal want to know why it took four years for the Department of Health to approve a “look-back” exercise to identify those who may have been infected due to a blood transfusion. Also why that exercise left so many still unaware they had been infected.

“We’re very sorry for the parts that we played in the past,” says Dr Gail Miflin, chief medical officer of the NHS Blood and Transplant Service.

“Listening to the stories of those infected and affected, they are dreadful stories.

“My job as chief medical officer is to ensure that the blood supply today is safe and that people who need a transfusion today, get blood that comes from one of the safest blood services in the world.”

And much has changed.

Donors today are screened for lifestyle factors and travel history that might have put them at risk of blood-borne infections.

Each donation is also tested for a number of infections including HIV and hepatitis C, and a sample of each donation is archived for three years in case re-testing is required.

The Infected Blood Inquiry is due to publish its final report on 20 May.

If you think you may have been at risk of hepatitis C infection, free testing is available in England: https://hepctest.nhs.uk/ in Wales: https://www.shwales.online/wales-sti-testing-kit-test-and-post.html In Scotland you will need to speak to your GP.

UK

‘I couldn’t cope with Britain anymore’: Kurdish man pays smugglers to return him to France after failed asylum claim

Published

51 mins ago

May 10, 2024

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'I couldn't cope with Britain anymore': Kurdish man pays smugglers to return him to France after failed asylum claim

We are rushing down the beach. In the gloom just before dawn, people are waiting by the seashore, a few hundred metres away.

We can see a dinghy out at sea. And then a voice rings out, in Kurdish.

“Whose passengers are you?”

In the half-light, the people smuggler thinks we are customers here to clamber onto the boat, and wants to know who we had paid.

We tell him we’re journalists.

“Keep out of the way,” he warns.

There are several dozen people gathered together, standing on the shoreline, moving anxiously from side to side.

I can see some women and children, but most of the passengers are men.

Some are clinging to a bag of possessions; others have nothing but the clothes they stand in. A man has his child held up on his shoulders.

Just about everyone is wearing a life jacket.

Just beyond, the boat is coming near the shore, already half full of people.

It seems impossible that all the people on the land can really fit into the space left in the boat, but that’s what happens.

On a signal, the movement starts – the younger men clamber in first, and then help the women, children and older people to get into the boat.

It all happens remarkably quickly. From a distance, migrant boats may look ramshackle and chaotic, but when you get up close, there is method and practice.

Some people jump off; the men who didn’t have life jackets on.

It becomes clear that these are the smugglers – or, more accurately, the smugglers’ assistants who have been sent to sort things out.

On one side, we see a moment of tension as two passengers square up – one accuses the other of not leaving a space for him to get aboard.

It is a faintly ridiculous squabble, like something between two drunk men in a pub, and it blows over. They end up sitting next to each other, brooding.

And then the engine is started and the boat sets off. At first, it’s a failure – the boat, low in the water with around 70 people on board, gets stuck on a small bar of sand and spins around.

But, with a push here and there, it gets going and slowly chugs away into the mist of the morning.

‘Migrants are desperate’

We turn around. The smugglers are leaving. We shout a question – are all these people Kurds?

“All of them,” he says. “These are the last Kurdish customers I have. There are no more.”

“Why not?”

And his answer is one succinct word: “Rwanda.”

The smugglers, dressed in black, disappear into the gloom.

We can just about see them clambering into the dunes, and then they are gone. It is a good ten minutes before we see the police – four officers marching down the beach.

They ask only two questions – firstly, did we see women and children on the boat (yes) and secondly, had the boat been launched from the beach (no).

They’d only just started their patrol, one of the officers tells me. He looks at the calm waters and shrugs. It could be busy.

Over the course of that night, we had seen plenty of police officers. We’d been questioned on the beach, checked as we walked near the beach and then pulled over at a road block.

We’d chatted with a team of CRS riot officers on the beach, one of whom bemoaned the fact that so few people grasped the sheer complexity of what they took on.

“It is so, so complicated – the migrants are desperate, and they can get everywhere. We cannot have a team in every place, at every time.”

It turned out that the road block officers were exactly the same team who we’d met on a different beach the previous evening.

“Ah, Sky News you are back,” he said, with a smile and a handshake.

‘I cannot go to Rwanda’

We meet two young Sudanese men who tell us they are determined to get to Britain. When I ask if they’re worried about the Rwanda plan, they look blank. They’ve never heard of it.

And then we drop into a migrant camp that is growing in size and bump into another group of Kurds.

They are cooking food – this is the cafe for the migrants – and brewing tea that is strong, and scented with cinnamon.

They give me a cup. It’s delicious.

Omar is kneading dough, making crispy flatbread, and serving it with yoghurt. And he talks as he cooks, serving a remarkable story.

Two years ago, Omar left Kurdistan and paid a smuggler $15,000 (£12,000) to get him to Britain. He was there for 20 months, suffered a stroke, failed to gain asylum and ended up paying a smuggler £500 to get him out of Britain and back to this squalid camp in France.

Yes, you read that correctly. He paid to be smuggled out of Britain, and back to France.

“Here there is no washing or bath,” he says.

“You can’t clean yourself. Life is hard. But in Britain I had to give my fingerprints and signature regularly. Once every two weeks.

“Then I was told they had turned me down for asylum. I couldn’t cope with Britain any more.

“They could arrest me and send me to Rwanda or Iraq. Rwanda – I cannot go there.

“So that’s why I came back here, to this place. But I have no money. I am 52 years old. It’s a terrible feeling to be back here, but what can I do?”

Listening to him is Barzan, who arrived in the camp five days ago after eight months on the road since leaving Kurdistan.

By striking contrast, he is not remotely bothered by the Rwanda plan.

“People won’t stop, whatever you tell them.

“Even if you tell them they will be taken to Africa, they would still go without hesitation. Rwanda is better than Kurdistan.

“But in Britain there is work. The currency is strong. I’m young and I want to make a life for myself.”

Another voice is raised – a man named Karwan.

He hears the word Rwanda, shrugs, smiles and shakes his head: “I think it’s a joke. Two years ago they started going on about Rwanda and nothing came of it.

“Now, it’s just for the sake of the election. Nothing else.”

UK

Sir Keir Starmer to pledge ‘elite’ Border Unit with anti-terror powers to stop small boats

Published

51 mins ago

May 10, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer to pledge 'elite' Border Unit with anti-terror powers to stop small boats

Labour will create a new Border Security Command to tackle people-smuggling gangs bringing migrants across the Channel, Sir Keir Starmer is set to announce.

The “elite” unit, to be part-funded by scrapping the Tories’ Rwanda deportation scheme, will be led by a former police, military or intelligence chief and be granted new powers under the Counter Terrorism Act.

Politics Live: New Labour MP’s apology ‘unlikely to change minds’

These powers will allow officers to conduct stop and searches at the border, carry out financial investigations and issue search and seizure warrants targeting organised immigration crime.

Sir Keir will outline the measures in a speech on the Kent coast on Friday, when he will vow to “replace gimmicks with graft” and draw on his experience as the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Labour leader will say: “Let’s be clear at the start, these are criminal enterprises we are dealing with.

“A business that pits nation against nation, thrives in the grey areas of our rules, the cracks between our institutions, where, they believe, they can exploit some of the most vulnerable people in the world with impunity.

“It’s a vile trade that preys on the desperation and hope it finds in its victims.”

The speech comes after the defection of Dover MP Natalie Elphicke, who joined Labour from the Conservatives on Wednesday, accusing the prime minister of failing to deliver on his promise to “stop the boats”.

The move was met with shock and bafflement on the Conservative benches, given Ms Elphicke has previously attacked Sir Keir on immigration and seen as being on the right of her party.

It left some Labour MPs less than impressed too, with the Brexiteer apologising on Thursday over past comments supporting her sex offender ex-husband.

Ms Elphicke said the “key deciding factors” in her defection were housing issues and “the safety and security of our borders”.

Speaking from the constituency of his newest MP, Sir Keir will accuse the government of “rank incompetence” on immigration, dismissing the Rwanda scheme as being unable to provide an effective deterrent and accusing the Conservatives of operating a “Travelodge amnesty” by housing migrants in hotels rather than processing their claims.

Over 52,000 people are stuck in the asylum backlog while some 8,826 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel so far this year, provisional Home Office figures show.

This is up 32% on this time last year, when 6,691 migrants were recorded, and a 14% rise compared with the same period in 2022 (7,750), according to PA news agency analysis of the data.

Labour has previously vowed to scrap the Rwanda scheme and focus its efforts on targeting people-smuggling gangs and clearing the asylum backlog.

The new command will be funded by diverting £75m of the money allocated for the first year of the scheme, which is yet to be up and running.

The policy has been mired in setbacks since it was announced two years ago, with the first flights expected to take off in the summer, Downing Street has said.