The chancellor is facing questions at the Commons Treasury committee
Reed says the Scotland Act gives the Scottish parliament limited powers. It cannot legislate on reserved matters. Those include fundamental matters, including the union of the UK.
If legislation related to the union, or the UK parliament, the Scottish parliament would have no power to enact it.
Continue reading...Some MPs would like Jeremy Hunt to revise tax rises, fearing impact on ‘squeezed middle’ and backlash from red wall areas
Tory MPs are desperately hoping that a surprise spring economic revival will allow Jeremy Hunt to alter his tax-raising plans, amid warnings that the chancellor’s “stealth tax” autumn statement will extinguish the party’s election hopes.
While concerns have already been raised on the right of the party over the extent of the £25bn in tax rises announced by the chancellor last week, figures from across the party said that “emotional and mental exhaustion” had blunted a greater immediate backlash.
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt’s plans criticised for delay to reform, shifting burden to local authorities and ‘skewing the system’
Jeremy Hunt’s decision to fund more social care through increases in council tax will deepen inequality and undermine the cause of “levelling up”, the architect of the government’s planned reforms said last night.
The criticism from Andrew Dilnot, the economist whose blueprint for reform was delayed by another two years in Hunt’s first budget on Thursday, was echoed by senior figures in local government who said it would leave poorer areas at a disadvantage and was not the answer to the social care crisis.
Continue reading...Chancellor defends tax rises as Institute for Fiscal Studies says UK now entering a ‘new era’ of higher taxation
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has conceded that Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit deal has caused damaging trade barriers with the European Union, as he said immigration will be “very important” for the economy.
Hunt insisted the UK would find a way to improve trading ties with the EU without rejoining the single market.
His comments came after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said Brexit caused a “significant adverse impact” to trade volumes and business relationships between UK and EU firms.
Asked if rejoining the single market would boost growth, the Chancellor told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I think having unfettered trade with our neighbours and countries all over the world is very beneficial to growth.
I have great confidence that over the years ahead we will find outside the single market we are able to remove the vast majority of the trade barriers that exist between us and the EU. It will take time.
I don’t think it’s the right way to boost growth because it would be against what people were voting for when they supported Brexit which was to have control of our borders and membership of the single market requires free movement of people.
So I think we can find other ways that will more than compensate for those advantages.
There needs to be a long-term plan if we’re going to bring down migration in a way that doesn’t harm the economy.
We are recognising that we will need migration for the years ahead - that will be very important for the economy, yes.
They don’t look obviously deliverable. If you take the spending cuts that are in place and subtract out the protected departments like health and defence, you end up with really big falls in those unprotected departments.
Hard to see how given the legacy of austerity, given public sector wages are already lagging behind and given this is effectively tying the hands of governments, it’s really hard to see how those will be delivered.
What we saw yesterday was the biggest deterioration in the overall forecasts since the OBR started producing these forecasts.
What is doing the damage here is higher interest rates.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...Resolution Foundation says had wages grown at the same rate as before 2008, pay would be £15,000 a year higher by 2027
Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement will result in extending wage stagnation for Britain’s workers to two decades as the chancellor’s tax-heavy budget piles more pressure on the nation’s “squeezed middle”, a thinktank said.
The Resolution Foundation said on Friday that the dire economic outlook meant that real wages were not expected to return to 2008 levels until 2027.
Continue reading...Fiscal watchdog’s figures show eight years of growth wiped out; chancellor announces higher taxes and some cost of living support
In the Commons Rishi Sunak is making a statement about the G20 summit. These statements are normally routine, and just summarise what was said or decided at the meeting. They don’t normally include fresh announcements.
Sunak started by talking about the missile incident in Poland. He said Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles on the day that he “confronted the Russian foreign minister across the G20 summit table”. He said the blame for the missile landing in Poland lay with Russia. Ukraine could not be blamed for defending itself, he said.
During the bombardment of Ukraine on Tuesday an explosion took place in eastern Poland. The investigation into this incident is ongoing and it has our full support.
As we’ve heard the Polish and American presidents say, it is possible the explosion was caused by Ukrainian munition which was deployed in self-defence.
In just a few moments the chancellor will build on these international foundations when he sets out the autumn statement, putting our economy back on to a positive trajectory and restoring our fiscal sustainability.
Continue reading...Chancellor hopes to emulate Thatcher’s chancellor Nigel Lawson with bonfire of red tape, but move had its critics
Jeremy Hunt doled out the bad news in an autumn statement laden with tax rises and spending cuts, but he sought to buoy the fairly muted Tory benches behind him with a few nods to Thatcherism.
It was not the “iron lady” herself he channelled, but rather her second chancellor, Nigel Lawson, and his famed “big bang” deregulation drive that unshackled the financial markets and let business boom in the City.
Continue reading...Shadow chancellor attacks ‘crisis made in Downing Street’ but there are few signs of anger on Tory benches
Jeremy Hunt has seemingly escaped public pushback from fellow Conservative MPs over his tax-raising autumn statement, but he was lambasted by Labour for trying to blame global factors for a crisis sparked by Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
While there had been mutterings of dissent in advance at the idea of Hunt trashing Truss’s embrace of tax cuts, in the lengthy Commons debate after his statement there were only a few fairly muted quibbles.
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