“Kemi Badenoch has dismissed Rachel Reeves’s welfare giveaways as “a Budget for Benefits Street”. The Conservative leader hit out at the Chancellor’s decision to abolish the two-child benefit cap and warned that working people would end up paying the price. Ms Reeves scrapped the two-child limit at a cost of £3bn a year following more than a year of pressure from backbench Labour MPs on the Left of the party. Welfare spending is expected to climb £16bn higher by 2030 as a result of the Government’s policy changes and higher-than-expected unemployment. In a highly personal response to Ms Reeves’s speech, Mrs Badenoch told the Commons: “At the last Budget, she said she was proud to be the country’s first ever female Chancellor. “After this Budget, she will go down as the country’s worst ever Chancellor. Labour are hiking taxes to pay for welfare. This is a Budget for Benefits Street, paid for by working people. This Budget increases benefits for 560,000 families by an average of £5,000.Benefits Street was a controversial Channel 4 documentary first aired in 2014, which followed the lives of welfare claimants in Birmingham and Stockton-on-Tees.” – Daily Telegraph
Comment
Today
The guiding principle of modern budgets is simple: seedcorn is delicious
“Rachel Reeves has used her budget to take taxes to the highest level in history and fund record amounts of benefit spending, hitting workers, savers and businesses. The chancellor announced £30 billion worth of tax rises over the next five years and said that everyone will have to make a “contribution” towards ending the “cycle of austerity”. The tax burden will rise to 38 per cent of national income, an all-time high, after Reeves announced an array of rises, including a three-year freeze on income tax thresholds. The stealth tax means that one in four taxpayers, equivalent to 10.6 million people, will be higher or additional rate taxpayers by 2030. It will raise £12.7 billion for the Treasury and mean that all those in receipt of the full state pension will have to pay income tax for the first time. Reeves was left facing accusations that she had broken her manifesto promise not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.” – The Times
Comment
Today
“If budgets are about choices, as Rachel Reeves likes to say, then hers were there in black and white before she had even started speaking. An extraordinary leak by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) meant the entire contents of her budget were published an hour before she stood at the dispatch box. Reeves has unveiled more than a dozen tax rises on workers, pensioners and savers while prioritising welfare spending, investment in the NHS and protecting low earners. The dangers for Reeves as a result of the budget are twofold. The first is political. Many of the main tax rises she has announced will take effect at exactly the point that Labour is asking voters to give them another term in office. The decision to freeze income tax thresholds for two more years will leave someone earning £50,000 up to £1,500 worse off by the end of the parliament than they would have been otherwise. Someone earning £100,000 a year is likely to be more than £4,000 poorer. Equally her plans to raid salary sacrifice pensions and impose a mansion tax on the most expensive properties are also due to come into effect in 2028 — at exactly the point that Starmer (or his successor) is thinking about when to call the next election.” – The Times
Editorial
Comment
“The head of the Office for Budget Responsibility is under pressure to resign after the forecaster mistakenly published all of Rachel Reeves’s budget almost an hour before she was due to deliver it. Richard Hughes, who has been chairman of the OBR since 2020, may be forced to stand down after the findings of an internal investigation into what caused the unprecedented leak are published. A government minister told The Times that the leak, which disclosed £30 billion of tax increases, was “a huge f*** up” and that “lots of people are saying [Hughes] should go”. A Treasury source said: “I still can’t believe it happened. It was totally mad. We’re livid. It’s a shame. You build up to this moment, and the whole thing is put out there without any context or narrative.” – The Times
Comment
“Can you tell a farmer just by looking at them? That was the question for the police on a cold bright Wednesday morning in Westminster. As Rachel Reeves prepared to deliver her Budget and the Office for Budget Responsibility prepared to scoop her, the Met was tasked with getting Britain’s beleaguered farmers to stand in the right place. “You are clearly farmers,” one officer said to a group of young men and women wearing wax jackets and boots, before telling them to move on from the roundabout at the top of Whitehall. “I just happened to be here today. I’m not taking part,” replied one young man, adding that he didn’t want to be arrested for wearing a check shirt. He struck at the heart of the dilemma for the Met: all farmers wear green, but in 2025 not everyone in a Barbour is a farmer. The tractors were more of a giveaway. After weeks of negotiation between the Berkshire Farmers Group, which was organising the march, and the Metropolitan Police, over where and how they were allowed to protest, it was only late on Tuesday evening that Scotland Yard informed the farmers that they would not be allowed to drive their tractors down Whitehall.” – Daily Telegraph
Comment
“More than 53,000 illegal migrants have absconded and are missing, according to internal Home Office figures. A leaked document headed “absconder pool” suggests that, as of October, there are 53,298 migrants who have breached their immigration bail or escaped from detention whose whereabouts are unknown. A further 736 foreign offenders have also absconded and gone missing after being released from prison or from detention, according to the data. Most are believed to be facing deportation. The figures have been obtained from a “whistleblower” by Rupert Lowe MP, who was formerly a member of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. The Home Office has refused to confirm whether the figures are accurate, saying it does not comment on speculation. However, the numbers correspond to similar data previously revealed by the chief inspector of borders and immigration in a 2016 report, when there were almost 60,000 absconders.” – Daily Telegraph
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