Figures improve chances of fuel duty or other tax cuts but inflation drives up cost of government debt
Rishi Sunak has been handed a boost from figures showing lower government borrowing than official estimates on the eve of the spring statement.
The figures come despite a sharp rise in debt interest payments last month amid soaring inflation.
Continue reading...Chancellor believed to be considering cut in fuel duty among measures to tackle cost of living crisis
Rishi Sunak has promised that tax increases are “done”, as he dropped a heavy hint that he is preparing measures to tackle the rising cost of living in next week’s spring statement.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said this week that Sunak had announced more tax rises in two years – worth 2% of GDP – than Gordon Brown did in a decade.
Continue reading...Unemployment rate falls below pre-Covid level but rising prices and energy bills hitswages
Unemployment in the UK has fallen below pre-Covid levels, but high inflation amid Britain’s cost of living crisis means average wages fell at the fastest rate since 2014.
The Office for National Statistics said the unemployment rate fell to 3.9% in the three months to January, dropping below the 4% rate in February 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the UK.
Continue reading...Proportion of UK worker’s salary covered is typically less than quarter of Germany’s 100% in first six weeks
Asked this week about whether his move to drop Covid isolation requirements would drive infectious workers into the office, Boris Johnson said UK workers should learn from their German counterparts and stay home when unwell.
The prime minister did not mention the stark differences in the support available for British workers compared with Germany and the rest of the world, and whether this could explain their reluctance to take a sick day.
Continue reading...Government’s ‘trickle down disaster’ will further entrench inequality between men and woman, Greens say
Tax cuts planned to take effect in 2024-25 are highly regressive and would pay male beneficiaries twice as much as women, separate analyses by the Australia Institute, the Greens and the Australian Council of Social Service have found.
The so-called stage-three tax cuts will remove the 37 cents in the dollar tax bracket, lower the 32.5 cent bracket to 30 cents, and raise the top tax bracket to start at $200,000 compared with $180,000 now. All up, the cuts will cost about $184bn over the first decade, the groups said.
Continue reading...Plan proposes two ‘green freeports’ based around low-emission industries
UK ministers and the Scottish government have reached a deal over proposed freeports in Scotland, after months of disagreement over what No 10 has billed as one of the main economic benefits of Brexit.
The Scottish government had resisted the idea of freeports – specific areas that offer tax breaks and other incentives to investors – which are intended to revitalise deprived areas but have been accused of encouraging tax avoidance and lower regulation.
Continue reading...Andy Haldane says city’s crucible-like atmosphere created ‘combustion’ for economic prosperity
The government’s new levelling-up strategy should help Britain’s left-behind towns and cities emulate Renaissance Florence in cooking up the “secret sauce” of economic success, according to its co-author Andy Haldane.
The hefty report, published on Wednesday, was mocked by some for its frequent historical references – including to 15th-century Florence under the Medici – but Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist, is deadly serious.
Continue reading...Of those who have heard of it, many doubt the policy will do much to improve their quality of life
It may have been dominating conversation in Westminster on Wednesday, but questions about levelling up were met with blank stares among shoppers on Wednesfield high street in Wolverhampton.
Most had never heard of the concept, while of those who had, many doubted it would do much to improve their quality of life.
Continue reading...We bring you Not the World Economic Forum, where monetary hawks fly and bankers explain why China is all right, really
The purpose of this column is usually fairly clear: to look ahead at the biggest event in the coming week. But this time we are breaking with tradition to bring you the week’s biggest non-event: Davos.
Every year the great and the good gather in the Swiss Alps at the grandly titled World Economic Forum to give their answers to the big questions. But Covid-19, running now into its fourth calendar year, has seen it called off again.
Continue reading...An Opinium poll also found that 42% of people who voted Leave in 2016 had a negative view of how it had turned out
More than six out of 10 voters believe Brexit has either gone badly or worse than they expected – a year after the UK left the EU, according to an anniversary poll for the Observer.
The Opinium survey – coming a week after the minister in charge of Brexit, Lord Frost, resigned from Boris Johnson’s government – also found that 42% of people who voted Leave in 2016 had a negative view of how Brexit had turned out so far.
Continue reading...Those promised rewards for Britain of leaving the EU should surely be with us by now. What have been the costs and gains of ‘taking our country back’?
• UK and the EU set to remain best of enemies as 2022 dawns
On New Year’s Day the UK will have been fully out of the European Union for a year: out of its political and legal structures, out of its single market, out of its customs union.
This was what Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – who led the Leave campaign – had wanted. No awkward halfway house like Theresa May had negotiated. No Brexit light. Out completely. Gone. Brexit well and truly done.
Continue reading...Analysis: chancellor left with little choice but to go PM’s way, though one passage of his speech was telling
Rishi Sunak may see himself as a future prime minister but this budget confirmed he is very much Boris Johnson’s chancellor.
Rumours about ructions between the pair have gripped Westminster for months. Sunak, who told last year’s Tory conference his party had a moral duty to fix the public finances, was known to be queasy about the government’s national insurance increase, for example.
Continue reading...Next boss, thinktanks and unions criticise Boris Johnson, saying ‘shortages cannot be blustered away’
Boris Johnson’s vision for the UK has had a frosty reception with business and union leaders, with one thinktank condemning the prime minister’s speech to Conservative conference as “economically illiterate”.
The Adam Smith Institute’s head of research, Matthew Lesh, also called Johnson’s address “bombastic but vacuous”, while the travel industry union chief, Manuel Cortes, said it was “nothing but hot air”.
Continue reading...PM’s remarks come as Liz Truss insists it’s the role of business, not ministers, to resolve such problems
Queues for petrol and mass culls of pigs at farms because of a lack of abattoir workers are part of a necessary transition for Britain to emerge from a broken economic model based on low wages, Boris Johnson has argued.
His comments, on the first day of the Conservative conference, came as Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, insisted it was the role of business, not ministers, to sort out such problems.
Continue reading...President wants to spread ‘common prosperity’ but Covid and material shortages could spell trouble
For decades the aim in China has been the pursuit of growth, building the world’s second-largest economy from a relative backwater on the international stage. Now, the promise from Beijing is to enlarge the economic pie and divide it well.
President Xi Jinping announced plans this month to spread “common prosperity” in what is one of the world’s most unequal major economies, signalling a shift from his predecessors’ pursuit of growth and heralding a tough crackdown on wealthy elites – including China’s burgeoning group of technology billionaires.
Continue reading...Poor pay and conditions for HGV drivers and the loss of many thousands of EU workers are plunging the UKs supply chain into crisis
Gaps on supermarket shelves. Fast food outlets pulling milkshakes and bottled drinks from their menus. Restaurants running out of chicken and closing. Empty vending machines. Online grocery orders full of substitutions. Fruit and vegetables rotting in the fields.
These are just some of the most visible signs of Britain’s deepening supply chain crisis, which has seen stocks in shops and warehouses slump to their lowest levels since the Confederation of British Industry began surveying in 1983.
Continue reading...Foreigners could be placed on an anti-sanctions list and denied entry into China or expelled from the country
China has passed a law to counter foreign sanctions in response to US and EU pressure over trade, technology, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
Individuals or entities involved in making or implementing discriminatory measures against Chinese citizens or entities could be put on an anti-sanctions list and may be denied entry into China or be expelled from the country. Their assets within China may be seized or frozen and they could be restricted from doing business there.
Continue reading...Last year, the population of Europe’s fourth biggest economy dropped by the equivalent of a city the size of Florence. Yet the northern hamlets of Val d’Ultimo have found ways to buck the trend
Read more: As the global family shrinks, migrants and the planet benefit
As if having a baby wasn’t expensive enough, fathers of newborns in the mountain hamlets that make up Italy’s Val d’Ultimo have an additional cost.
In a revival of an ancient myth that white storks deliver babies, carved wooden storks carrying a newborn child in a sling are a common feature outside homes in the valley.
Continue reading...For decades, scientists and economists have been making wagers about the outcome of human population growth. Now, more than ever, their speculations need to be taken seriously
In 2011, when the global population hit 7 billion, economist David Lam and demographer Stan Becker made a bet. Lam predicted food would get cheaper over the next decade, despite continuing population growth. Becker predicted that food prices would go up, because of the damage humans were doing to the planet, which meant that population growth would outstrip food supply. Becker won and, following his wishes, Lam has just written out a cheque for $194 to the Vermont-based nonprofit Population Media Center, which promotes population stabilisation internationally.
$194, about £140, equates to the amount by which a basket containing five food types – oils and fats, cereals, dairy, meat and sugar – and worth on average $1,000 in the decade to 2010, increased in price over the following decade, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index (FFPI) and allowing for inflation.
Continue reading...Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends
The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.
The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Continue reading...