Budget 2024: The main announcements in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has finally unveiled the budget for 2024. Here are the key points:
• The budget will raise taxes by £40bn.
• National insurance (NI) contributions for employers (not employees) will increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15% from April 2025.
The point at which employers start paying NI will fall from £9,100 a year to £5,000 a year. This will raise £25bn per year.
• The lower rate of capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale of assets will increase from 10% to 18%. The higher rate will go from 18% to 24%. CGT on the sale of residential property will also increase from 18% to 24%.
• Tax thresholds will rise in the future, meaning the point at which people pay higher taxes will be increased. These tax bands had been frozen. But this freeze will end in 2028 and the bands will then increase at the rate of inflation.
• The freeze on inheritance tax will continue for a further two years until 2030. This means the first £325,000 can be inherited tax-free, rising to £500,000 if the estate is passed to direct descendants, and £1m if it’s passed to a surviving spouse or civil partner.
• From tomorrow, the stamp duty surcharge for second homes, or ‘higher rate for additional dwellings’, will increase by two percentage points to 5%.
• Health and employment services for people who are disabled and long-term sick will get £240m in funding.
• The minimum wage will rise by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour for people aged 21 and over. This is the equivalent of £1,400 a year for a full-time worker. Workers aged 18 to 20 will see their minimum wage increase by 16.3% to £10 an hour.
• People will now still be able to claim carers allowance while earning more than £10,000 a year (the equivalent of 16 hours work a week). This will mean an extra £81.90 a week for those newly eligible.
• A new fair repayment rate will mean Universal Credit claimants who have been accidentally overpaid will only have to pay back 15% of their allowance each month, falling from 25%. This means a gain of around £420 a year for roughly 1.2 million of the poorest households.
• The maximum amount allowed in an ISA (individual savings account) will be frozen at £20,000 until 2030.
• The household support fund will receive £1bn to help those in financial hardship with the cost of essentials.
• An increase in employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,000 will mean 65,000 businesses won’t pay any national insurance at all next year. It will also mean more than a million businesses will pay the same or less than they did previously.
• Business rates relief will fall from the current 75% down to 45% for retail, leisure, and hospitality businesses.
• The day-to-day NHS budget will increase by £22.6bn. There will also be a further £3.1bn investment in its capital budget for facilities and equipment.
• This will facilitate 40,000 extra hospital appointments and procedures every week and will include £1.5bn for new hospital beds.
• Local government will receive funding worth “at least” £600m for social care.
• An investment of £5bn in housing, which will increase the affordable homes programme to a budget of £3.1bn.
• In addition, £1bn will be spent on the removal of dangerous cladding, implementing the findings of the Grenfell inquiry.
• The ‘right-to-buy’ discount on people buying their council properties will fall and councils will be allowed to keep the full amount from sales.
• Fuel duty will be frozen this year and next, with the existing 5p cut maintained.
• A cut to draught alcohol duty of 1.7%, which could make drinks in pubs bought on draught cheaper by 1p.
• The tax on tobacco will rise at the rate of inflation plus an additional 2%. There will also be an extra 10% on rolling tobacco.
• There will be a new flat rate duty on all vaping liquid of £2.20 per 10ml from October 2026.
• VAT will be introduced on private school fees from January 2025 and schools’ business rates relief will be removed from April 2025.
• Some 500 old state schools that are not fit for purpose will be rebuilt at a total cost of £1.4bn. There will be an extra £300m for school maintenance each year, which will cover dealing with concerns about reinforced aerated autoclaved concrete (RAAC).
• The budget for free school breakfast clubs will be tripled to £30m in 2025 and 2026. The core budget for schools will also rise by £2.3bn.
• There will also be an investment of £300m for further education and £1bn for children with special educational needs (SEN).
• The HS2 rail link to Birmingham will end at London Euston, following speculation trains would terminate at Old Oak Common in west London.
• Air passenger duty on private jets will rise by 50%, which is the equivalent of £450 per passenger.
• The energy profits levy on oil and gas companies will increase to 38% until March 2030.
• The annual defence budget will fall below the pledged target of 2.5% of GDP next year – with an increase of £2.9bn.
• There will be a commitment of £3bn a year for Ukraine for “as long as it takes” to end the war there.
• Public finances will be in surplus, rather than in deficit, by the 2027-2028 financial year. The government claims this means reaching stability two years earlier than planned.
• The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts UK GDP growth to be 1.1% in 2024, 2.0% in 2025, 1.85% in 2026, 1.5% in 2027, 1.5% in 2028, 1.6% in 2029.
• The OBR expects public sector net borrowing to be £105.6bn in 2025-26, £88.5bn in 2026-27, £72.2bn in 2027-28, £71.9bn in 2028-29 and £70.6bn in 2029-30.
• Consumer price index (CPI) inflation will hit 2.5% this year, according to OBR forecasts. Next year it will rise to 2.6% before falling to 2.3% in 2026, 2.1% in 2027, 2.1% in 2028 and 2% in 2029. It’s the goal of the Treasury to bring inflation down to 2%. The Bank of England has raised interest rates to bring the rate of price rises to 2%.
• The price of soft drinks will rise in line with inflation, with an increase in the drinks levy. Nearly £1bn a year will be raised thanks to the measure.
• All government departments will have to reduce their budgets by 2% next year. This will be achieved by “using technology more effectively and joining up services across government”.
• The budget for compensating victims of the infected blood scandal will be £11.8bn, with the Post Office Horizon scandal totalling £1.8bn.
A foreign sex offender freed in error from Wandsworth prison has been arrested – as Sky News filmed the moment he was detained.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian national, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October.
Sky News approached Kaddour-Cherif moments before his arrest in Finsbury Park, north London, at 11.30am, but he claimed to be someone else.
He was then approached by officers next to a police van and arrested.
One of the officers said Kaddour-Cherif had been identified as the missing prisoner because he had a “distinctive wonky nose”.
Sky News witnessed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest
Officers held his arrest picture next to Kaddour-Cherif’s head to confirm his identity
In the footage, the Algerian was shown shouting to people standing nearby in the street.
An officer then held up a photo of Kaddour-Cherif on a phone, comparing the image to the man arrested.
When officers asked him whether he knew why he was being arrested, Kaddour-Cherif replied: “I don’t know.”
Kaddour-Cherif, who was wearing a grey hoodie, black beanie and black backpack, said the mix-up at the prison was the fault of the authorities who released him.
“It’s not my f***ing fault”, Kaddour-Cherif shouted.
Kaddour-Cherif shouted at bystanders as officers arrested him
Kaddour-Cherif claimed to be someone else when he was arrested
The Prison Service informed the Metropolitan Police about the error six days later – and a huge manhunt for him was launched.
It is not yet clear why it was nearly a week between the release at HMP Wandsworth and the police being informed that an offender was at large.
“At 11.23am on Friday, 7 November, a call was received from a member of the public reporting a sighting of a man they believed to be Brahim Kaddour-Cherif in the vicinity of Capital City College on Blackstock Road in Islington,” a Met Police spokesperson said.
“Officers responded immediately and at 11.30am detained a man matching Cherif’s description. His identity was confirmed and he was arrested for being unlawfully at large.
“He was also arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous unrelated incident. He has been taken into police custody. The Prison Service has been informed.”
Kaddour-Cherif shouted it was ‘not my f***ing fault’ that he was mistakenly released
Kaddour-Cherif is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure in November last year, following an incident in March.
At the time, he was given a community order and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
He was then subsequently jailed for possessing a knife in June.
He was wrongly freed from Wandsworth prison. Pic: Met Police
Kaddour-Cherif came to the UK legally and is not an asylum seeker, but it is understood he overstayed his visit visa and deportation proceedings had been started.
He was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu. Both Kaddour-Cherif and Kebatu were arrested in Finsbury Park.
A third man, fraudster William Smith, 35, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on 3 November, but turned himself in on Thursday.
After Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, Justice Secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing,” he said.
“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.
“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
A young woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been convicted of harassing the missing toddler’s family.
However, Julia Wandelt, 24, was cleared of stalking the couple.
A Polish national born three years after Madeleine, Wandelt said she suspected she had been abducted and brought up by a couple who were not her real parents.
She was having mental health issues at the time and had been abused by an elderly relative.
The relative looked like an artist’s drawing of a man who was once a suspect in the Madeleine case, which she stumbled across during internet research on missing children.
She went to Los Angeles and told a US TV chat show audience: “I believe I am Madeleine McCann.”
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from the family’s rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
She had been left sleeping with her younger twin siblings, Sean and Amelia, while her parents dined nearby with friends, making intermittent checks on the children.
Madeleine is the world’s most famous missing child, the subject of three international police investigations that have failed to find any trace of her.
Wandelt claimed to have a blemish in the iris of her right eye, like Madeleine’s, and to resemble aged-progressed images of her.
Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA
Over three years, she attracted half a million followers on her Instagram account, iammadeleinemccan, and posted her claims on TikTok.
Police told her she was not Madeleine and ordered her not to approach her family, but she ignored the warning.
The McCanns and their children gave evidence in the trial at Leicester Crown Court, describing the upset Wandelt had caused them.
Her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.
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Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.
Mark Drury – speaking in his role as representative for open prison governors at the Prison Governors’ Association – told Sky News open prisons that have had no absconders for “many years” are now “suddenly” experiencing a rise in cases.
It comes after a man who was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap and grievous bodily harm absconded from an open prison in Sussex last month.
Sky News has learned that Ola Abimbola is a foreign national offender who still hasn’t returned to HMP Ford – and Sussex Police says it is working with partners to find him.
WARNING: Some readers may find the content in this article distressing
Ola Abimbola absconded from an open prison. Pic: Sussex Police
For Natalie Queiroz, who was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner while she was eight months’ pregnant with their child, the warnings could not feel starker.
Natalie sustained injuries to all her major organs and her arms, while the knife only missed her unborn baby by 2mm.
“Nobody expected either of us to survive,” she told Sky News.
Babur Raja was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder, but Natalie has recently been told that he’s set to be moved to an open prison four years earlier than planned.
“Any day now, my ex who created this untold horror is about to go to an open prison,” Natalie said.
Open prisons – otherwise known as Category D jails – have minimal security and are traditionally used to house prisoners right at the end of their sentence, to prepare them for integrating back into society.
With overcrowding in higher security jails, policy changes mean more prisoners are eligible for a transfer to open conditions earlier on in their sentence.
Natalie Queiroz was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner
“It doesn’t feel right, it’s terrifying, and it also doesn’t feel like justice,” Natalie said, wiping away tears at points.
Previously, rules stated a transfer to open prison could only take place within three years of their eligibility for parole – but no earlier than five years before their automatic release date.
The five-year component was dropped in March last year under the previous government, but the parole eligibility element was extended to five years in April 2025.
Raja, who is due for release in 2034, has parole eligibility 12 years into his sentence, which is 2028.
Under the rule change, this eligibility for open prison is set for this year – but under the new rules it could have been 2023, which is within five years of his parole date.
Another change, introduced in the spring, means certain offenders can be assumed suitable for open prisons three years early – extended from two years.
Natalie says her ex-partner Babur Raja caused ‘untold horror’
Natalie has been campaigning to prevent violent offenders and domestic abuse perpetrators from being eligible to transfer to an open prison early.
She’s had meetings with ministers and raised both her case and others.
“They actually said – he is dangerous,” she told Sky News.
“I said to [the minister]: ‘How can you make a risk assessment for someone like that?’
“And they went: ‘If we’re honest, we can’t’.”
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The government told Sky News that Raja’s crimes were “horrific” and that their “thoughts remain with the victim”.
They also insist that the “small number of offenders eligible for moves to open prison face a strict, thorough risk assessment” – while anyone breaking the rules “can be immediately returned”.
Mark Drury, a representative of the Prison Governors’ Association
But Mr Drury describes risk assessments as an “algorithm tick box” because of “the pressure on offender management units”.
These warnings come at an already embarrassing time for the Prison Service after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly freed last month.
This week, it emerged two others have been freed in error since then, amid new release checks.
In response to this report, the Ministry of Justice says it “inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days away from collapse” – forcing “firm action to get the situation back under control”.
The government has promised to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and introduce sentencing reforms.
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