Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a press conference following her statement to the House of Commons on the findings of the Treasury audit into the state of the public finances, July 29, 2024
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham calls for wealth tax
MORE austerity is on the agenda as Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares a new clampdown on public spending in her autumn Budget.
In a move that risks sparking new divisions and struggle within the labour movement, Ms Reeves is set to prioritise reassuring global money markets over repairing the damage done by the Tories.
She is reported to have been spooked by figures showing public sector borrowing at £3.1 billion in July, £1.8bn more than a year previously and above most expectations.
However, borrowing has fallen over a longer time-frame, but Ms Reeves will pay more attention to the short-term figures and use them as a reason to impose more austerity.
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Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has called for a shift in priorities, saying: “We are the sixth-richest economy in the world, where the 50 richest families are worth £500bn.
“It is clear, irrespective of ‘black holes,’ that we need to consider a wealth tax.”
ENERGY prices are set to rise by 9 per cent in October, experts revealed today — with the “alarming” increase accompanying winter fuel payment cuts.
A typical household’s energy bills are expected to rise to £1,714 a year, up from £1,568, according to energy consultancy Cornwall Insight.
The group said that while the figure is less than the cap previously predicted, there are also likely to be further “modest increases” in January and more rises early in the year due to “recent tensions in the Russia-Ukraine war.”
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End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said that instead of offering help, the government has axed winter fuel payments to millions and refuses to confirm if the Household Support Fund will be extended.
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“The reality is that bills will go up compared to today and will be around 65 per cent higher than they were before the energy bills crisis started.
A poverty reduction of 35% on 2023 levels could avoid 293 infant deaths, 458 childhood admissions with nutritional anaemias and 32,650 childhood emergency admissions. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA
England research shows huge benefits with resulting savings for NHS and councils
Curbing child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap would save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital, the largest study of its kind suggests.
Keir Starmer has faced repeated demands from within Labour ranks and opposition leaders to abolish the policy, which was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, then chancellor. Almost half of all children in some towns and cities now live below the breadline.
Now researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle have shown for the first time the extraordinary impact that reducing child poverty with measures such as ditching the two-child benefit cap could have in England.
Tackling it would substantially cut the number of infant deaths and children in care, as well as rates of childhood nutritional anaemia and emergency admissions, with the most deprived regions, especially in north-east England, likely to benefit the most, the projections indicate.
Osborne– who was chancellor under David Cameron’s government and was instrumental in bringing about austerity – said that the cuts announced by Reeves on Monday were “almost identical in structure and form” to those he made in 2010, when he announced £6.2bn worth of cuts.
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“I don’t think there was anything she announced that I would have violently disagreed with or not done myself.
“In fact, it was almost identical in structure and form to what I did in the first couple of months that I was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“So, you know, ‘Continuity Osborne.”
Sharing a clip from the podcast on social media, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “No comment.”
AFTER months in which Labour argued that such is the dire state of the economy that Tory spending limits must be maintained, the Chancellor of the Exchequer now says that further cuts in public expenditure are needed.
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The question raised by any talk about varying the structure of taxation is where taxes fall. The richest 10 per cent of families hold 43 per cent of all wealth. The bottom 50 per cent — and be sure that this includes the greater proportion of people who see themselves as working class — possess less than 10 per cent of wealth.
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When the overwhelming majority of voters, including Tory voters, see public ownership of rail, mail, water and energy as desirable this is not simply a yearning for the more efficient delivery of these services and utilities than private ownership is able to provide. More, it is an expression of a clear understanding that revenues from these myriad transactions should not be privately appropriated but applied to the common good.
The present Labour administration has, with rare exceptions, ruled out the recovery into public ownership of privatised sectors and, less performatively than Gordon Brown in his day but no less systematically, has assured the corporate world that not only are the foundations of private ownership safe but that Labour, even more than its Tory predecessors, holds appeasing the bond markets a central part of its economic strategy. Hence the cuts announced today.
Reeves’s dilemma is highlighted by the necessity to find £1 billion to fund the juniors doctors’ pay increase; something similar for the teachers and a backlog of other public-sector pay claims.
Under this system spending is always about priorities. But there is money about. She is already committed by Starmer’s diktat to find £57.1bn in defence spending in 2024-25 which is a 4.5 per cent increase in real terms. No cuts there!
A bigger source of revenue would result from taxing wealth at the same level as income by raising the capital gains and dividend tax rates to the level at which workers pay on their wages.
An even bigger windfall would result from a socialist economy in which all rents, interest and profits arising from human economic activity were held in common rather than being privately acquired.
