Category Archives: UK news

Services for most-vulnerable people at risk after NICs rise, charities say

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Care providers, GPs and pharmacists warn increased costs will cause cuts and job losses

Services that support some of England’s most vulnerable people have warned that tax increases in the budget will lead to cuts and closures that could devastate the charity sector.

Although the NHS and councils are protected from the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) announced in Wednesday’s budget, charities that provide services say the increase means they will face “existential” financial pressures.

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More than meatballs: Ikea opens its first UK standalone restaurant in London

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Diners hail ‘great price’ of dishes at Swedish furniture chain’s food outlet next door to its Hammersmith store

Its meatballs are as famous as its flatpack furniture, with a meal in one of its restaurants often the highlight of an Ikea trip.

Now shoppers can enjoy an Ikea meal without lugging around their kitchen sink – literally – as the furniture company has opened its first standalone restaurant on the UK high street in King Street in Hammersmith. Located next door to its west London city store, the space seats 75 people and serves a range of Swedish dishes.

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UK supermarkets using multibuy deals to encourage sales of meat, study finds

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Exclusive: about one in five offers involve meat and dairy and one in ten processed meat despite known health risks

Supermarkets are using multibuy promotional deals to encourage shoppers to buy meat and processed meat, despite the products being linked to a heightened risk of cancer, research reveals.

Almost one in five (18%) of multibuy offers in major British supermarkets involve meat and dairy products, and one in ten (11%) processed meat such as ham, bacon and sausages.

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Imported Christmas trees cost more thanks to post-Brexit checks

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Nearly all are deemed ‘high-risk’ and so will need customs declarations and phytosanitary certificates

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Christmas trees make the journey into the UK to take pride of place in living rooms across the country.

But the the cross-border operation faces a new hurdle this year. Plants coming from the EU will be subject to post-Brexit border checks that importers are warning will increase costs for sellers, and probably push up prices for consumers.

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Head of government’s new value for money office ‘to be paid £950 a day’

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David Goldstone to advise chancellor and chief secretary to the Treasury on ways to cut public spending

David Goldstone, the government’s new value for money chair, will receive a daily salary rate of £950, it has been reported.

The position was announced by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as part of Wednesday’s budget statement. She said Goldstone, who will be in post for a year, would “help us realise the benefits from every pound of public spending”.

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Reeves told she will have to raise further £9bn to avoid UK public service cuts

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Warning from comes after Rachel Reeves’s record tax-raising budget sent tremors through financial markets

Rachel Reeves has been warned an extra £9bn of tax rises may be required to avoid a fresh austerity drive in key public services as her record tax-raising budget sent tremors through the financial markets.

Threatening to undermine the chancellor’s claim that her budget would restore economic stability to Britain, government borrowing costs rose sharply in the City on Thursday as traders turned on Reeves’s tax and spending measures.

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Sara Sharif’s father ‘hit her like crazy’ and made her do sit-ups all night, court hears

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Stepmother’s WhatsApp messages read out at Old Bailey in trial over death of 10-year-old in Surrey last year

The father of Sara Sharif forced his daughter to do sit-ups all night because she hid his keys, a court has heard.

Urfan Sharif was also said to have made the schoolgirl put her hands in the air after beating her so badly her stepmother, Beinash Batool, feared he would break her arms and legs.

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Rachel Reeves’s most irritating manifesto fudge: private equity’s tax loophole | Nils Pratley

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Labour said it would bring taxation of performance-related pay in the industry in line with others – but the chancellor had a change of heart

It has been almost two decades since Nicholas Ferguson, a grand figure in the private equity business, caused a storm by talking out loud about his industry’s dirty little secret. It could not be right, he said, that highly remunerated private equity executives could pay less tax than a cleaner or other low-paid workers.

Things have moved on a bit since 2007. So-called “carried interest”, or carry – the portion of an investment profit that the private equity managers retain as a bonus for success – is now taxed at 28% under the capital gains regime; in the old days, rates in effect as low as 10% could be secured thanks to various exceptions.

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Private schools to take legal action against planned VAT on fees

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Independent Schools Council says its focus is on children and it is concerned about impact on specialist schools

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) has said it will launch legal action against the government’s decision to impose VAT on independent school fees.

The council, which represents more than 1,400 private schools in the UK and abroad, reached its decision after a board meeting held on Thursday.

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EU citizen who applied for pre-settled status is to be deported from Scotland

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Greek Cypriot Costa Koushiappis to be removed from UK even though his application is pending with Home Office

An EU citizen caught up in a Home Office backlog of applications for post-Brexit residency status is to be deported by Border Force officials in Scotland.

Costa Koushiappis, 39, who is Greek Cypriot, has been told to show up at Edinburgh airport at 7am on Friday to be forcibly put on a flight to Amsterdam just weeks after he received an email from the Home Office to say it could take a further 24 months to process his application for status.

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Housing, social care and universities: who lost out in the UK budget?

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Rachel Reeves made funding the NHS a priority but people working in other areas said they were disappointed

Rachel Reeves’s first budget emphasised raising taxes to help the NHS, as the health service tries to cope with huge waiting lists and an ageing population. Funding the NHS was a top priority but people in other sectors – from universities to social care – feel the budget was a missed opportunity to tackle impending crises or introduce desperately needed reforms in their areas.

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Ofcom fines GB News £100,000 for breach of impartiality rules over Sunak interview

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GB News to challenge decision and watchdog will not enforce sanction until proceedings are concluded

Ofcom has fined the rightwing broadcaster GB News £100,000 for “breaking due impartiality rules” after an interview with the former prime minister Rishi Sunak earlier this year.

The media regulator said it chose to impose a fine over the programme titled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister because it considered the breach serious, and because of GB News’s track record of breaking impartiality rules.

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Reeves’s long-term spending figures almost as unrealistic as Tories’ were, IFS says – UK politics live

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Institute for Fiscal Studies says budget ‘looks like the same silly games’ as seen under the Conservatives

Rachel Reeves is now being interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

She is being interviewed by Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a TV presenter. He asks her to confirm that workers will end up losing out because of the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) increase.

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Rachel Reeves may have to find more money to fix public services, says IFS

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Institute for Fiscal Studies says budget allows for rise in public service spending this year and next, but not thereafter

Rachel Reeves could be forced to find more money to fix public services after her budget made a start at reversing the “unrealistic” and irresponsible spending plans of the Conservatives, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said.

Britain’s leading experts on the government’s finances said the chancellor’s tax measures on Wednesday had allowed for a substantial short-term increase in public service spending this year and next, but not thereafter.

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Lloyds shareholders could take £1bn hit over car finance crisis

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Analysts forecast bank will have to halve £2bn buyback plan, as ex-boss of City regulator blames watchdog for crisis

Lloyds Banking Group could give almost £1bn less to shareholders this year as a result of the car finance crisis, analysts have said, as the City regulator’s former boss blamed the watchdog for the chaos.

The estimated size of a multibillion-pound compensation bill for motor lenders has grown after a shock court of appeal ruling last Friday, which said customers could not consent to motor loans that involved “secret commission” payments to brokers and car dealerships.

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Ed Davey: care sector will be ‘pushed to brink’ by national insurance hike and should be exempt

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Lib Dem leader says rise in employer’s contribution risks worsening NHS crisis

The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to exempt the social care sector from the increase in national insurance in Labour’s budget, as an organisation representing many smaller care providers warned that the impact would be substantial.

In the biggest fiscal measures of Wednesday’s budget, raising an additional £25bn a year by the end of the parliament, Rachel Reeves announced an increase of 1.2 percentage points on the national insurance paid by employers, with the salary threshold at which this begins falling from £9,100 a year to £5,000.

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Budget 2024: what the UK papers said about Rachel Reeves’ statement

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Headlines featured numerous ‘nightmare’ allusions for budget delivered the day before Halloween

After Rachel Reeves‘ first budget as chancellor, which included £40bn in tax rises, newspaper headlines in the UK featured “nightmare” and “horror show” allusions as it came a day before Halloween.

The Financial Times’ front page featured a picture of smiling Reeves headlined “Reeves unveils £40bn budget tax rise”. The paper reported the chancellor’s aims of fixing public services, and the “broken” finances, saying businesses and the wealthy would “bear bulk” of the “heaviest fiscal burden” in a generation.

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Teenager found guilty of murder after Hackney woman was shot through her front door

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Lianne Gordon, 42, was hit in the head at her home as she tried to shield her two children from a gang feud

A teenager has been found guilty of murdering a mother who was shot in the head through her front door as she tried to shield her two children from a gang feud.

Lianne Gordon, 42, had only just returned from a holiday in Jamaica when she was attacked in her home in Hackney, east London on 5 December 2023, the Old Bailey was told.

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The budget: Labour returns to tax and spend – Politics Weekly UK

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Rachel Reeves has finally laid out Labour’s spending plans in the party’s first budget in almost 15 years. The Guardian’s John Harris is joined by political editor Pippa Crerar and political correspondent Kiran Stacey to discuss the fallout

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Reeves accused of betraying small family firms with inheritance tax rises

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Chancellor also criticised for letting the very rich off the hook with a lower than expected rise in capital gains tax

Tax rises aimed at inherited wealth are at risk of backfiring, after the chancellor was accused of betraying small family businesses while letting private equity bosses off the hook.

Labour’s first budget in 14 years included measures to close inheritance tax (IHT) loopholes and press ahead with scrapping the controversial non-dom tax status, as well as levying higher taxes on private jet flights.

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