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Rachel Reeves has defended raising taxes by the highest amount since 1993 as she said “everything has to be paid for”.

The chancellor announced £40bn worth of tax rises in Wednesday’s budget, with the lion’s share coming from a £25bn increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions.

She told Sky News’ Breakfast With Kay Burley that, unlike the previous Conservative government, she has included everything ministers will spend in their forecast, including £11.8bn compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal and £1.8bn for victims of the Post Office accounting scandal.

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Ms Reeves insisted the tax rises would “fix the foundations and wipe the slate clean” and that this would be a one-off budget.

She added: “As a result of what we’ve done, we’re not going to have to come back and ever do a budget like this again, because we’ve brought everything out into the open.”

The chancellor also admitted growth “is largely unchanged” in the next five years, as revealed by the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) report on the budget.

But she said that is because she is looking at the economy in the long-term.

She said: “For the first time, the OBR are now looking at economic growth over a longer time frame.

“And that’s really important because often politicians make short-term decisions rather than things that are in the long term interests of the country.”

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‘Raising taxes was not an easy decision’

Ms Reeves said she had to make the tax rises she did, despite promising not to raise taxes beyond Labour’s manifesto, because of “the circumstances that I inherited” from the Conservatives as she repeated they left a £22bn black hole.

“I could have swept that under the carpet and pretended it didn’t exist, or try and raise a bit of money this year and a bit more next year,” she said.

“I didn’t want to do that.

“I wanted to be open and honest, to wipe the slate clean, to put our public finances on a stable trajectory, to make sure that our NHS is properly funded so we can bring down those huge waiting lists.”

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UK’s economic growth forecast

Ms Reeves’ predecessor, the Conservative Party’s Jeremy Hunt, said Wednesday was a “bad day for trust in British politics” and said it will mean “lower pay, lower living standards, higher inflation, higher mortgages” for ordinary families.

He told Sky News: “Because 30 times this year before the election, the chancellor said she had no plans to increase tax outside of what was explicitly written in the Labour manifesto.

“And we had the biggest tax raising budget in British history.”

The shadow chancellor said a Conservative budget would have taken “the harder path” by cutting the number of people on benefits to 2019 levels to fund public services, which he said would release £34bn a year.

He added he does not think “anyone actually believes this £22bn number… but she didn’t increase taxes by £22bn, she increased them by £40bn”.

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“This was not about her legacy. This was a choice,” he added.

“This was the budget that she wanted to do all along. And it’s a legitimate choice. It’s one I disagree with. But if she’d wanted to do that, she should have told us before the election we could have had the debate.”

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Three US crypto bills revived after initial failure in House vote

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Three US crypto bills revived after initial failure in House vote

Three US crypto bills revived after initial failure in House vote

Though the House of Representatives may soon be able to consider the three bills, President Donald Trump didn’t get all Republicans to fall in line to support the legislation.

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EU sanctions crypto entities for election interference, disinformation

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EU sanctions crypto entities for election interference, disinformation

EU sanctions crypto entities for election interference, disinformation

The EU has sanctioned multiple entities for using cryptocurrencies to evade restrictions, channel funds, and propagate pro‑Russian disinformation and election interference.

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Starmer says former Tory ministers have ‘serious questions to answer’ over Afghan data breach

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Starmer says former Tory ministers have 'serious questions to answer' over Afghan data breach

Sir Keir Starmer has said former Tory ministers have “serious questions to answer” about how the names of Afghans who worked with UK forces were exposed.

Nearly 7,000 Afghan nationals are being relocated to the UK after their names were accidentally sent in an email in February 2022, when Boris Johnson was prime minister, but the leak was only discovered by the British military in August 2023, when Rishi Sunak was PM.

A super-injunction, preventing the reporting of the mistake, was imposed that year in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from finding out about the leak.

The Conservative government at the time then started transporting thousands of Afghans to the UK in secret as they were in danger.

On Tuesday, the injunction was lifted.

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Victim of Afghan data breach speaks to Sky

Kicking off Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir said: “Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.

“The chair of the defence committee has indicated that he intends to hold further inquiries.

“I welcome that and hope that those who are in office at the time will welcome that scrutiny.”

The data breach saw a defence official accidentally release details of almost 19,000 people seeking to flee Afghanistan after the return of the Taliban.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch avoided mentioning the data breach, but Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said it was “shocking” how it had been kept secret for three years.

Sir Ed said the prime minister will have the Lib Dems’ support if he decides to pursue a public inquiry.

Mr Healey’s Tory predecessor, Sir Ben Wallace, said he makes “no apology” for applying for the initial four-month injunction and insisted it was “not a cover-up”.

The scheme, which had been kept under wraps until yesterday, has so far cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

However, the total cost to the taxpayer of existing schemes to assist Afghans who are deemed eligible for British support, as well as the additional cost from the breach, will come to at least £6bn.

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Afghans being relocated after data breach

Earlier, Defence Secretary John Healey told Sky News he is “deeply uncomfortable” with the government using a super-injunction to keep the massive data breach hidden.

He said: “I’m really deeply uncomfortable with the idea that a government applies for a super-injunction.

“If there are any [other] super-injunctions in place, I just have to tell you – I don’t know about them. I haven’t been read into them.

“The important thing here now is that we’ve closed the scheme.”

Mr Healey was informed of the breach while in opposition, and earlier this year he commissioned a review that led to the injunction being lifted.

He said “accountability starts now” and added Labour had to deal with the risks, court papers, intelligence assessments and different schemes when they came to power last summer before they could lift the injunction.

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