Officials are also looking at incorporating cut in tax-free allowance for dividends into autumn statement
Treasury officials are examining whether the autumn statement could include changes to non-dom status and moves to raise taxes on dividends by cutting tax-free allowances.
No final decisions have been taken but Whitehall sources said options were being examined by the Treasury’s high net worth individuals policy team.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Peter Hain to table amendment in House of Lords to protect single energy market
A Labour peer is launching a bid to avert a fresh energy crisis with potential power cuts and drastic electricity price rises in Northern Ireland as a result of proposed Brexit legislation.
The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain will table an amendment to the Northern Ireland protocol bill in the House of Lords on Wednesday to protect the so-called single energy market (SEM), which allows power to be traded with the island of Ireland as one economic unit.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour Together leader calls for ‘laser-sharp focus’ on voters and for party’s priorities to be made clear
Keir Starmer has been urged to get Labour on a general election footing with a “laser-sharp” focus on wooing voters with a small number of key pledges that demonstrate the party’s priorities rather than a sprawling plethora of policies.
With activists gearing up to take on Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in 2024, a new head of Labour Together – a network of MPs, staffers, members and thinktanks – has been appointed, who believes the party should build a more “coherent narrative”.
Continue reading...Former DPP Starmer tried to send head of News UK Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking 10 years ago
Ten years ago Keir Starmer attempted to send Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking.
Now Starmer could cause another headache for the boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire. She has to work out how her Tory-backing newspapers – which include the Sun and the Times – handle the growing popularity of the man who is favourite to become the next prime minister.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak needs to clarify whether his home secretary’s security breach contained market sensitive data, Labour says
Rishi Sunak needs to clarify whether Suella Braverman leaked market-sensitive data before she resigned and then was reappointed as home secretary, Labour said on Friday.
Amid further warnings that her re-appointment was a mistake, Pat McFadden, a shadow Treasury minister, said the prime minister needed to clarify urgently whether companies or individuals could have benefited financially from her security breach.
Continue reading...The Labour leader said the shadow cabinet should stick to tried and tested criticism of the new PM
Labour has a stock of well-honed attack lines to use against Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer told his shadow cabinet on Tuesday, though he warned the new prime minister was likely to get “a significant poll bounce” as the UK breathed a sigh of relief over Liz Truss’s departure.
Starmer told the meeting Sunak “has only ever fought one leadership election battle his entire life and got thrashed by Liz Truss. And no wonder he doesn’t want to fight a general election”.
Continue reading...Fabian Society also says Labour needs to be radical and introduce better provision for the lowest paid
Sir Keir Starmer should promise that a future Labour government would introduce a new workplace pension for self-employed workers and more generous retirement provision for the low paid, a leading left-of-centre thinktank has said.
Calling for the biggest shake-up of the pensions’ system in two decades, the Fabian Society said Labour needed to copy the radical approach of the Turner Commission two decades ago, which encouraged saving through opt-out schemes.
Increasing the minimum contributions for workplace auto-enrolment pensions to 12% of total earnings from the current 8%. This would be done by phasing in higher contributions from employers over time.
The introduction of new pension credits for carers, who are primarily women, to reduce the “gender pensions gap”
Changes to how people access pensions at retirement so that separate pensions are automatically consolidated into a single fund and then converted into new whole-of-retirement pension plans designed to increase with inflation.
Continue reading...Home secretary departs after sending an official document by personal email but uses resignation letter to criticise PM
Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow bill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.
Continue reading...Opposition motion drafted to make it very difficult for government to ignore or allow mass abstentions
Labour will attempt to force a binding vote on fracking on Wednesday, as Tory MPs mull backing a bid which would allow the opposition to put down a bill banning shale gas extraction.
The motion submitted by Labour for its opposition day debate is drafted to make it very difficult for the government to ignore the vote or allow mass abstentions.
Continue reading...Latest updates: chancellor to make statement after leader of Commons denied PM was hiding under a desk
Judging by what Conservative MPs have been telling journalists in private over the last few days, the consensus (but not unanimous) view among Tories seems to be that Liz Truss will have to be replaced as party leader before the next election. But very few MPs are saying that in public, and Sky’s Tom Larkin, who is running a spreadsheet of Tories calling for Truss’s resignation, has only got three names on it.
Damian Green, the former first secretary of state, was on the Today programme and you would expect him to be on the Larkin list. He is chair of the One Nation Conservatives caucus, the group most horrified by Truss’s experiment with hardline free market ideology. But he insisted that Truss did have the credibility to carry on as PM, despite the fact she is abandoning most of the key tax policies at the heart of her leadership campaign. He explained:
She is a pragmatist - she’s realised that the first budget didn’t work in spectacular fashion, so she’s now taken the sensible view that we will now try something else, and she’s appointed a very sensible chancellor in Jeremy Hunt.
I obviously don’t know what he’s going to say, but clearly what he’s going to do is already beginning to reassure the markets, and I hope will continue to do so afterwards.
Yes, because if she leads us into the next election, that will mean that the next two years have been a lot more successful than the past four weeks have been. That would not only be good for the Conservative party, that would be particularly good for the country as well, so I think everyone would welcome that.
Continue reading...Former member of Corbyn-loyal wing of party was target of tabloid stories during time in parliament
Labour has blocked the former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad from the longlist to fight the seat at the next election, a move which has sparked outrage among local campaigners.
Dent Coad, who was elected in 2017 in a shock victory over the Conservatives by just 20 votes, is the leader of the Labour group on the council, and lost her seat in 2019 to the Conservatives.
Continue reading...Mark Fullbrook accused of trying to change UK policy by arranging for ministers to meet Libyan politician
Labour has claimed Mark Fullbrook’s position as Downing Street chief of staff is no longer tenable after it was revealed that before his appointment he tried to change UK foreign policy by arranging for two cabinet ministers to meet Fathi Bashagha, a Libyan politician with links to the Russian Wagner Group.
The Guardian had previously reported that Fullbrook, as chief executive of Fullbrook Strategies, had lobbied on behalf of Bashagha, but the Sunday Times alleged he arranged for Bashagha to come to London in June, where he met the then business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, and the education secretary at the time, Nadhim Zahawi.
Continue reading...Scathing posters ridicule Conservatives for damaging Britain’s reputation, lifting mortgages and crashing the economy
The UK’s Labour party is looking to capitalise on the government crisis with a series of new adverts as it gears up for the next general election.
The scathing posters, seen by the PA news agency, attack the Conservatives for damaging Britain’s standing on the world stage, hiking mortgages and crashing the economy.
Continue reading...Chancellor says ‘difficult decisions’ ahead with some departments needing to find savings and some taxes set to rise
Hunt says the UK has a “massive amount going for us”, but the reason it remains a top economy is because the country has been prepared to make “tough decisions” – and this moment is one of them.
The new chancellor says he is “very sensitive” to people at the bottom of the income scale but will not commit to not cutting benefits. “I’ve only been in the job for a matter of hours,” he says, adding that he will be sitting down with the Treasury team later today.
Continue reading...Labour leader says UK is ‘crying out for clear leadership’ and his party ‘must provide it’
Keir Starmer has criticised the “grotesque chaos” of recent weeks and said the government “no longer has a mandate from the British people”.
The Labour leader said there were no historical precedents for the ongoing economic turmoil and that the prime minister, Liz Truss, would not be able to “fix the mess she has created”.
Continue reading...Chancellor does not rule out increasing corporation tax when asked about whether government will perform U-turn
The Home Office has taken the modern slavery brief away from the minister responsible for safeguarding and classed it as an “illegal immigration and asylum” issue, updated online ministerial profiles show.
The move is seen as a clear sign that the department is doubling down on Suella Braverman’s suggestion that people are “gaming” the modern slavery system and that victims of the crime are no longer being prioritised.
The largest single group of modern slavery victims under the referral system last year were British children – including those who were exploited through county lines. The evidence shows the majority of exploitation takes place in the UK rather than across borders.
The government should be treating this as an enforcement and safeguarding issue and taking stronger action against the crime of modern slavery wherever it takes place.
Continue reading...PM suggests borrowing will rise as she surprises MPs by saying she has no plans to cut public spending
Liz Truss has said the Conservatives will push ahead with tax cuts without cutting public spending, instead allowing borrowing to rise over the next few years.
Senior economists had warned on Wednesday that such a strategy, if set out by Kwasi Kwarteng in the chancellor’s fiscal plan at the end of this month, would be likely to spook investors, creating renewed market turmoil.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Labour leader hoping to put party on war footing ahead of next election
In the supreme court Dorothy Bain KC, the lord advocate, the Scottish government’s most senior law officer, is now setting out her case.
Here is the 50-page submission to the court setting our her case that was released in July.
Despite the political context of this reference, the questions the court has to decide are limited to technical questions of law. The court will decide them by applying legal principles.
The court will require time after the hearing to prepare its judgement. The hearing is the tip of the iceberg. We also have more than 8000 pages of written material to consider.
Therefore, as usual, is likely to be some months before we get our judgement.
Continue reading...Restructuring includes departure of Sam White, as party leader seeks to capitalise on slump in Tory support
Keir Starmer has announced a major shake-up of his political team, including the departure of his chief of staff, Sam White, saying Labour was being put on an immediate election footing.
Boosted by turmoil in the Conservative party and a string of hefty leads in opinion polls, Starmer said the party needed to move into the next phase of election readiness.
Continue reading...Exclusive: former veterans minister Johnny Mercer and others had condemned plans to scrap free travel
The government has vowed to guarantee free rail travel for military personnel to attend remembrance services this year after facing criticism over moves to scrap the offer.
Proposed plans to stop the free train travel after the government decided the cost would be “too great” had sparked an outcry and calls for a U-turn from the former veterans minister Johnny Mercer and others.
Continue reading...