Category Archives: Mini-budget 2022

Cutting winter fuel payments ‘right decision’, says Reeves, as No 10 says no change to council tax discount for single people – Labour conference live

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Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have put forward motions which were due to be debated on Monday afternoon, with strong support expected from other unions.

Sources said unions were told late on Sunday that the debate is being moved to Wednesday morning.

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King’s speech reference to ‘disastrous’ mini-budget removed after Truss complaint

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Official document updated after ex-PM writes to head of civil service Simon Case calling for investigation

The government has removed a reference to Liz Truss’s mini-budget as having been “disastrous” in an official king’s speech document after the former prime minister complained that this was incorrect and a “flagrant breach” of the civil service code.

Truss wrote to Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, calling on him to investigate the matter and for the wording to be removed.

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Labour shifts poll tactics to target fearful Tory over-65s

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Alarm grows over possible pension cuts as research suggests Jeremy Hunt tax cut announcement was ‘blunder’

Labour is to wage a new campaign to win over Tory-supporting pensioners in an attempt to neutralise one of the government’s last remaining electoral strengths, amid evidence the Conservatives are now performing as badly among the age group as they did under Liz Truss’s leadership.

With less than a fortnight to go until local elections in England, which some Tories fear could trigger an attempt to topple Rishi Sunak, the Observer understands that Keir Starmer’s top officials are reorienting their campaign after detecting alarm among pensioners over the impact a Conservative tax-cutting pledge could have on pensions and the NHS.

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‘You can’t rule out a complete panicked meltdown’: Tories fear wipeout after another disastrous week

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Infighting, suspensions and bizarre allegations have dogged efforts to restore order as the party prepares for May’s byelections

Less than two weeks before local elections that some senior Tories fear could unleash another party meltdown and an attempted putsch against Rishi Sunak’s leadership, Downing Street had hoped that Friday’s prime ministerial speech on the weighty issue of welfare reform might finally begin to restore the party’s reputation for competent governance.

It was a potent sign of Sunak’s struggles in keeping his party on track that, soon after his speech had concluded, some of his MPs found themselves discussing whether or not one of their colleagues had deliberately intoxicated a friend’s dog. “How can somebody possibly get a dog pissed?” wondered one. “Bizarre.”

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Labour motion to ban Truss-style budget meltdowns puts pressure on Tory MPs

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Party loyalty would force Conservatives to vote against plan for fiscal responsibility

Read more: ‘I challenge Rishi Sunak: vote with Labour to stop a Truss-style disaster happening again,’ writes Rachel Reeves

Labour will force a Commons vote this week aimed at creating new legal safeguards against fiscal disasters such as Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-budget, which sent the financial markets into meltdown and drove up mortgage rates.

The party’s plan for a “fiscal lock” to protect personal, family and the national finances from reckless politicians will be contained in an amendment to the king’s speech that will be voted on by MPs on Tuesday. The manoeuvre will present Conservative backbenchers with a dilemma over whether to back a Labour amendment, or vote against what is a plan designed to embed fiscal responsibility into the budgetary process, and protect it from wild or accidental political misjudgments.

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Liz Truss to claim her economic plan would have saved government £35bn

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Former PM set to give speech defending her time in charge and explaining spending decisions

Liz Truss will claim that Rishi Sunak’s government has spent £35bn more than she would have as prime minister, in a speech on Monday.

The short-lived prime minister will use a speech at the Institute for Government to defend and explain her time in charge, nearly a year on from the ill-fated mini-budget that helped end her premiership.

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Labour says ‘Tory mortgage penalty’ costs homeowners extra £7,000 a year

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Opposition finds fallout of Liz Truss mini-budget has raised average mortgage interest payments by £150 a week in two years

Homeowners are being hit with a “Tory mortgage penalty” of £7,000 a year with interest rates triple what they were two years ago, according to Labour.

Pat McFadden, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, blamed what he called the “reckless economic gamble” taken by the Conservatives during September’s mini-budget when Liz Truss was prime minister.

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Kwarteng had ‘all the advice’ but disregarded warnings on mini-budget, MPs told

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Treasury officials tell select committee they set out impacts of £45bn plan for former chancellor

Kwasi Kwarteng disregarded warnings that his £45bn mini-budget could trigger a backlash on the financial markets, Treasury officials told MPs today.

The department’s permanent secretary, James Bowler, said he was “absolutely confident Treasury officials set out the right advice” to the then chancellor.

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UK house prices fall at fastest pace since 2020 amid fallout from mini-budget

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Nationwide warns inflation and rising interest rates will weigh down housing market

UK house prices have fallen at their fastest rate for two and a half years as the fallout from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget put buyers off according to Nationwide, which warned inflation and rising interest rates would weigh on the market in the coming months.

The price of an average home dropped 1.4% to £263,788 in November, according to the lender’s house price index, accelerating a slowdown that saw prices fall 0.9% in October. It was the third monthly fall in a row, and the biggest drop since June 2020.

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How the autumn statement brought back the ‘squeezed middle’

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IFS and Resolution Foundation say Jeremy Hunt’s policies will shock middle England, with higher taxes here to stay


Traditionally elections in Britain are decided by swing voters in a relatively small number of seats. Parties go to considerable lengths to tailor their policies to the perceived demands of those getting by on average incomes. Pollsters have even coined names for the archetypal electors that need to be wooed: Basildon man and Worcester woman.

So it will be of some concern to government strategists that the post-autumn statement analysis by thinktanks focused heavily on how the measures announced by Jeremy Hunt had an effect on those not particularly poor but not especially rich either. Both the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted the return of the “squeezed middle”.

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Truss allies challenge Kwarteng’s claim he tried to slow down tax cuts

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One backer of ex-PM says ‘that wasn’t what was going on’, as Jeremy Hunt also appears to dispute version of events

Kwasi Kwarteng’s claims that he tried to get Liz Truss to slow down her financial plans have been challenged by her allies.

In his first interview since he was sacked as chancellor by Truss, Kwarteng said he had told the then prime minister to be more cautious with their £45bn programme of tax cuts.

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Hunt dismisses Kwarteng’s claim that mini-budget not to blame for state of UK finances – UK politics live

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Latest updates: chancellor says ‘we’ve learned that you can’t fund spending or borrowing without showing how you are going to pay for it’

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has released polling suggesting that half of Londoners are either “financially struggling” (18%) or “just about managing” financially (32%).

According to the polling, 49% of Londoners are also using less water, energy or fuel.

This shocking new polling highlights the realities of the worst cost of living crisis in generations.

With spiralling inflation and soaring interest rates meaning many Londoners are struggling to make ends meet – a situation made worse by the government’s failed mini-budget – the chancellor has a duty to take decisive action on Thursday to support vulnerable Londoners.

In total, the NHS paid more than £3bn to agencies who provide doctors and nurses on short notice. The figure represents a 20% rise on last year, when the health service spent £2.4bn. Trusts spent a further £6bn on bank staff, when NHS staff are paid to do temporary shifts, taking the total spent on additional staff to around £9.2bn.

One in three NHS trusts paid an agency more than £1,000 for a single shift last year, while one in every six trusts paid more than £2,000, results from freedom of information requests reveal.

Taxpayers are picking up the bill for the Conservatives’ failure to train enough doctors and nurses over the past 12 years. This is infuriating amounts of money paid to agencies, when patients are waiting longer than ever for treatment.

Labour will tackle this problem at its root. We will train the doctors and nurses the NHS needs, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status.

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UK house prices fall after ‘significant shock’ of mini-budget

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Halifax reports steepest monthly drop since February 2021 amid interest rate rises

UK house prices fell by 0.4% in October after Liz Truss’s mini-budget drove a sudden rise in mortgage rates, the lender Halifax said.

The decline in the average price to £292,598 was the third in the past four months and the steepest since February 2021. The annual rate of growth in house prices slowed to 8.3% in October from 9.8% in September.

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Rishi Sunak preparing years of tax rises to plug £50bn fiscal black hole

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PM set to hike taxes across the board to repair nation’s finances after Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget

Rishi Sunak is preparing years of tax rises for Britain in an effort to make up for a £50bn fiscal hole left by Liz Truss’s disastrous tenure in Downing Street, according to a Treasury insider.

After a meeting between the prime minister and Jeremy Hunt on Monday to plan the upcoming autumn statement, a Treasury source said things were going to get “rough”.

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Michael Gove says Tories should apologise for Liz Truss’s ‘holiday from reality’

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Reinstalled levelling up secretary says he understands public anger at party’s choice of Truss and her tax cuts for the rich

Michael Gove has said the Conservative party owes the public an apology for installing Liz Truss as leader.

Gove, who was reinstated as levelling up secretary by Rishi Sunak this week, acknowledged that the Tories “made the wrong choice this summer about the path we should take”.

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Suella Braverman replaced by Grant Shapps; Labour motion calling for fracking ban fails – live

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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.

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Minister tries to defend Truss by saying cabinet failed to realise mini-budget would backfire – UK politics live

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Latest updates: James Heappey, defence minister, also claims that Truss deserves credit for admitting she made mistake

Liam Fox, the Tory former international trade secretary, told Sky News this morning that Liz Truss’s future would partly depend on whether the financial markets settle down following the latest mini-budget U-turns. He said:

We can all read the polls and I don’t need to tell you what the atmosphere is like at Westminster. People will be weighing up what the prime minister said last night - that she had made mistakes, that she learned from those, and that the measures that Jeremy Hunt had put in place seemed to be providing the necessary economic stability in the markets.

If the markets don’t believe that a Conservative government is able to manage public finances sensibly then that government has had it.

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Jeremy Hunt to detail mini-budget U-turn to MPs after Penny Mordaunt insists PM had ‘genuine reason’ for missing Commons question – live

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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.

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Liz Truss fights for survival as even allies say she could have only days left

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Prime minister to meet mutinous Tory MPs this week in effort to shore up her position after U-turns on tax

Liz Truss is fighting for her political survival, with Conservative MPs threatening to oust her and even allies warning she has just days to turn around her premiership despite ripping up her economic strategy and appointing Jeremy Hunt as chancellor.

The beleaguered prime minister will attempt to shore up her crumbling support by gathering her cabinet ministers at No 10 on Monday and then embarking on a series of meetings with mutinous Tory MPs before the next budget in a fortnight’s time.

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The unravelling: the full story of how Liz Truss lost her way – and her authority in the Tory party

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The prime minister ditched her close ally Kwasi Kwarteng to save her own job – but now Conservative MPs are openly plotting to replace her

After an astonishing eight-minute press conference, in which Liz Truss attempted to salvage her imploding leadership by firing her closest political ally and ditching a totemic policy that won her the job, the most telling reaction was that of officials who had served in Boris Johnson’s chaotic Downing Street.

Just a few short months ago, they had been forced to endure months of scandal, followed by the resignations of dozens of ministers. They had even awkwardly brushed shoulders with cabinet members gathered in Downing Street to tell Johnson that his time was up. But after watching Truss’s hunted demeanour on Friday afternoon, their suffering suddenly seemed trifling.

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