National insurance to be cut from 12% to 10% – but tax burden to remain at record high

Published

11 months ago

November 22, 2023

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National insurance is to be cut by two percentage points, the chancellor has announced.

In a boost to employee’s pay packets, Jeremy Hunt told the Commons that the main 12% national insurance rate would fall to 10% from 6 January – saving those on an average salary of £35,000 over £450 a year.

In his autumn statement, he also abolished NI payments for the self-employed, known as class two national insurance, to recognise the government “values their work”.

Politics latest: Chancellor delivers autumn statement amid pressure in the polls

The tax cuts follow long-standing pressure from the Tory backbenches to reduce the burden on both the public and business, which has been sat at a 70-year high.

But it also comes as a general election looms, with the Conservatives still lagging behind Labour in the polls.

Delivering his autumn statement in the Commons, the chancellor said: “If we want people to get up early in the morning, if we want people to work nights, if we want an economy where people go the extra mile and work hard then we need to recognise that their hard work benefits all of us.”

However, Sky News’ economics editor Ed Conway said the overall tax burden on the public would still remain at a record high as the government continued its freeze on tax thresholds.

Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) showed taxes were still trending upwards, with a post-war high of 37.7% set to be reached by 2028/29 under the current government plans.

They put this down to so-called “fiscal drag”, as while people’s wages may increase, the level at which they start paying tax remains unchanged, and that leads to more people being moved into the higher tax rates – four million more, if the OBR’s prediction is correct.

Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said Mr Hunts announcements owed “more to the cynicism of a party desperate to cling onto power than the real priorities of this high tax, low growth Conservative government”, adding: “So I think we can forgive taxpayers for not celebrating when they see the truth behind today’s announcements.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Hunt confirmed Universal Credit would be increased by inflation next April in line with September’s inflation figure of 6.7% – an average increase of £470 for 5.5 million households – despite rumours the government was planning a smaller rise.

And he said the full state pension would go up by 8.5% to £220 per week – worth up to £900 more a year, honouring the Tories’ commitment to the triple lock.

But the chancellor also announced new tougher measures for job seekers, saying those who fail to find work after 18 months of “intensive support” will be given mandatory work placements.

Those who do not engage with the process for six months will lose their benefits altogether.

Mr Hunt also confirmed the much trailed plans to reform the benefits process for those who are signed off work because of sickness or disability.

He called the over 100,000 people signed off each year a “waste of potential” that was “wrong economically and wrong morally”.

As a result, the chancellor said the government would reform the Work Capability Assessment to “reflect greater flexibility and availability of home working after the pandemic”.

Mr Hunt said: “Our choice is not big government, high spending and high tax because we know that leads to less growth, not more.

“Instead we reduce debt, cut taxes and reward work. We deliver world class education. We build domestic sustainable energy and we back British business”.

He added: “Conservatives say we should unlock the potential we have right here at home, which we do with the biggest set of welfare reforms in a decade.”

Other announcements in the autumn statement included:

• Freezing all alcohol duty until 1 August 2024

• Extend 75% business rates discount for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses for another year

• Increasing the local housing allowance rate, giving 1.6 million households an average of £800 of support next year

• Consult on giving savers a legal right to have one pension pot for life that employers pay into

• Make the super deduction tax break for large businesses investing in the UK permanent

The chancellor insisted the government’s plan for the British economy was “working” as ministers had “taken difficult decisions to put our economy back on track”.

He celebrated a reduction in government borrowing and the halving of inflation since last autumn’s record high after Liz Truss’ disastrous mini budget, saying that gave him the room to make tax cuts.

However, inflation still sits at 4.6% – double the target of the Bank of England.

Labour’s Ms Reeves said: “The chancellor claims the economy has ‘turned a corner’, yet the truth is that under the Conservatives growth has hit a dead end.

“What has been laid bare today is the full scale of the damage that this government has done to our economy over thirteen years, and nothing that has been announced today will remotely compensate.”

She added: “As the sun begins to set on this divided, out of touch, weak government, the only conclusion the British people will reach is this – after thirteen years of the Conservatives, the economy simply isn’t working.

“And, despite all the promises today, working people are still worse off.”

The OBR has upgraded its growth forecast for gross domestic product – a measure of the size of the economy – this year, but downgraded the figure for subsequent years.

The budget watchdog’s forecast in March was for the economy to shrink by 0.2% in 2023, but that has now been revised up to 0.6%.

But in 2024 growth is forecast to be 0.7% rather than the 1.8% expected at the time of the Budget, 2025 is expected to see 1.4% rather than 2.5% and 2026 could be 1.9% instead of 2.1%.

Growth is then expected to go beyond the previous forecast, with 2% in 2027, slightly above the 1.9% predicted in March, with 1.7% in 2028.

“If we want those numbers to be higher, we need higher productivity,” the chancellor said.

On the eve of the autumn statement, the Treasury confirmed it would be increasing the national living wage, rising from £10.42 to £11.44 from April, and that it will benefit workers aged 21 and over, rather than 23 and over.

It will mean an £1,800 annual pay rise next year for a full-time worker on the living wage, while 18 to 20-year-olds will receive a £1.11 hourly rise to £8.60.

The changes are expected to impact about two million people.

UK

Sara Sharif: 10-year-old’s stepmother said girl’s father beat her up ‘like crazy’, according to WhatsApp messages read in court

Published

1 hour ago

November 1, 2024

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Sara Sharif: 10-year-old's stepmother said girl's father beat her up 'like crazy', according to WhatsApp messages read in court

Sara Sharif’s stepmother sent her sister some pictures of the 10-year-old looking bruised and miserable – and told her to “delete” them, a court has heard.

“Look what he’s doing,” Beinash Batool told Qandeela Saboohi, referring to the beatings Sara was allegedly getting from her father, Urfan Sharif.

“Delete the pictures.”

A series of WhatsApp messages exchanged between 2020 and 2023, in which Batool told her sister about the physical attacks Sharif was allegedly inflicting on his daughter, were read out to a jury at the Old Bailey.

Batool repeatedly told her sister that Sharif was hitting Sara for being “naughty”, “rude and rebellious”, and because she had cut up his clothes, hidden keys and torn up documents.

Batool, 30, Urfan Sharif, 42, and Sara’s uncle, 29-year-old Faisal Malik, are accused of carrying out a campaign of abuse culminating in Sara’s murder on 8 August last year.

As early as February 2020, Batool described Sharif as going on a “rampage” after spilling hot tea, saying he was “possessed”.

Writing about 10 photographs of Sara, she wrote: “This is how bad he is beating her… I feel really sorry for her. He beat the crap out of her.”

On another occasion, Batool said Sharif “went ballistic” and “beat Sara up like crazy”. She expressed fears he could break an arm or leg.

In May 2021, Batool told Ms Saboohi: “Not great in our house, it’s all a bit manic. Urfan beat the crap out of Sara and my mind is all in bits. I really want to report him.

“Why the hell doesn’t Urfan learn – she’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.”

Afterwards, Sharif sat “on his fat bum” and played the board game Ludo, she said.

She went on: “Why the hell I’m even letting him in the house. I’m sorry for Sara, poor girl cannot walk. She literally fainted in the kitchen in the morning. He made her do sit-ups all night.”

Asked what Sara had done, Batool said: “Because she hid the keys.”

By 2022, Batool said she was planning to get some “legal advice” but was advised by her sister to give it time and not to rush.

In an update later that year, Batool said she was thinking about taking Sara out of school, saying: “I don’t want to but kinda don’t have a choice.

“I’m just fed up of her behaviour and Urfan’s. Sara’s body is literally bruised because Urfan beat her up. I cannot even cover it up.

“He beat Sara up yesterday and I can’t send her to school on Monday looking like that.

“She ripped Urfan’s documents in front of him and was being rude and rebellious.”

Referring to an image of Sara in a hijab, Batool wrote: “You haven’t even seen her body, it’s a whole lot worse.”

Days later, she said Sara’s school was worried about her and Sharif was “stressed” about it.

In an apparent reference to Sara’s injuries, she wrote: “Urfan told me to cover it up with makeup and she’s going to wear sunglasses.”

Two months before Sara died, Batool referred to “Sara’s antics”, telling her sister: “Urfan beat the crap out of Sara… Yeah, he beat her up like crazy.

“Her oxygen level dropped really low, she’s finding it hard to stay awake.”

Asked if Sharif had hit her on the head, Batool said: “Nah, but she’s breathing really rapidly.”

The day before Sara died, Ms Saboohi tried to make contact but Batool told her she was “not in the mood to speak”.

Two days later, the defendants were captured on CCTV as they prepared to board a flight to Pakistan from Heathrow Airport.

That CCTV has now been shown to the jury.

On 10 August last year, police found Sara’s body in a bunkbed after Sharif called from Pakistan to say he had beaten her up “too much” for “being naughty”.

William Emlyn Jones KC, the prosecutor, has previously told jurors it was disputed whether messages Batool sent to two of her sisters were accurate or gave a full picture.

All three defendants, formerly of Hammond Road in Woking in Berkshire, have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.

The trial continues.

UK

Budget: Hostile market response as chancellor suffers Halloween nightmare

Published

7 hours ago

October 31, 2024

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Budget: Hostile market response as chancellor suffers Halloween nightmare

First things first: don’t panic.

What you need to know is this. The budget has not gone down well in financial markets. Indeed, it’s gone down about as badly as any budget in recent years, save for Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

The pound is weaker. Government bond yields (essentially, the interest rate the exchequer pays on its debt) have gone up.

That’s precisely the opposite market reaction to the one chancellors like to see after they commend their fiscal statements to the house.

In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, the new government just committed itself to considerably more borrowing than its predecessors – about £140bn more borrowing in the coming years. And that money has to be borrowed from someone – namely, financial markets.

But those financial markets are now reassessing how keen they are to lend to the UK.

The upshot is that the pound has fallen quite sharply (the biggest two-day fall in trade-weighted sterling in 18 months) and gilt yields – the interest rate paid by the government – have risen quite sharply.

This was all beginning to crystallise shortly after the budget speech, with yields beginning to rise and the pound beginning to weaken, the moment investors and economists got their hands on the budget documentation.

But the falls in the pound and the rises in the bond yields accelerated today.

This is not, to be absolutely clear, the kind of response any chancellor wants to see after a budget – let alone their first budget in office.

Indeed, I can’t remember another budget which saw as hostile a market response as this one in many years – save for one.

That exception is, of course, the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget of 2022. And here is where you’ll find the silver lining for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

The rises in gilt yields and falls in sterling in recent hours and days are still far shy of what took place in the run up and aftermath of the mini-budget. This does not yet feel like a crisis moment for UK markets.

But nor is it anything like good news for the government. In fact, it’s pretty awful. Because higher borrowing rates for UK debt mean it (well, us) will end up paying considerably more to service our debt in the coming years.

And that debt is about to balloon dramatically because of the plans laid down by the chancellor this week.

And this is where things get particularly sticky for Ms Reeves.

In that budget documentation, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the chancellor could afford to see those gilt yields rise by about 1.3 percentage points, but then when they exceeded this level, the so-called “headroom” she had against her fiscal rules would evaporate.

In other words, she’d break those rules – which, recall, are considerably less strict than the ones she inherited from Jeremy Hunt.

Which raises the question: where are those gilt yields right now? How close are they to the danger zone where the chancellor ends up breaking her rules?

Short answer: worryingly close. Because, right now, the yield on five-year government debt (which is the maturity the OBR focuses on most) is more than halfway towards that danger zone – only 56 basis points away from hitting the point where debt interest costs eat up any leeway the chancellor has to avoid breaking her rules.

Now, we are not in crisis territory yet. Nor can every move in currencies and bonds be attributed to this budget.

Markets are volatile right now. There’s lots going on: a US election next week and a Bank of England decision on interest rates next week.

The chancellor could get lucky. Gilt yields could settle in the coming days. But, right now, the UK, with its high level of public and private debt, with its new government which has just pledged to borrow many billions more in the coming years, is being closely scrutinised by the “bond vigilantes”.

A Halloween nightmare for any chancellor.