Cardiff bus strike action on hold after 'improved offer'
The union said the new offer also included proposed changes to conditions including longer breaks and improved sickness terms.Cardiff Bus have been asked to comment.It is publicly-owned, and provides a large network of services in Cardiff and the nearby towns of Penarth and Barry, Vale of Glamorgan.
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The Sun
6 minutes ago
- The Sun
UK benefits bill will hit £100bn with one million more on Universal Credit under Labour – I know how to fix it
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves is walking Britain into an alligator pit of maxed-out borrowing, higher taxes and stuttering growth. But there is something else now snapping at her high-tax heels — the soaring number of people on out-of-work benefits. 2 2 New figures this week showed that, since Labour took office, there are now over one million MORE people on Universal Credit — that's the size of the population of Birmingham. By 2030, the cost of sickness benefits alone will reach £100billion — more than the entire defence budget. Thousands of people are being written off, their potential wasted. And with hardworking families set to be clobbered by further tax hikes this autumn, Sun readers will rightly ask, 'What is going on?'. As the Work and Pensions Secretary responsible for getting Britain to record employment levels in the 2010s, I know that unless they get welfare under control, taxpayers face a tax bomb overwhelming them this autumn. 'Work instilled pride' To recap, before Covid, my reforms put a hard cap on unemployment benefits and combined them so that jobseekers were always better off in work. We brought in tough new rules and a contract for claimants to sign in return for their benefits, ensuring they looked for a job and took one, with a work coach's help. With this approach, we got 1,600 people into jobs every single day. Workless households fell to their lowest level ever. And half a million more children grew up seeing a parent going out to earn a living — changing their life chances forever. I took the view that work was more than just a paycheck but, importantly, it instilled purpose and pride in your life. Sadly, in 2020, Covid lockdowns saw benefit assessments massively relaxed and sanctions suspended. Meetings were shunted online and never held in person again — a terrible error. Meanwhile, perverse incentives crept into the system, allowing more and more people on to (significantly more generous) sickness benefits. Since then, long-term sickness claims have exploded, rising to almost 3,000 per day. The number of people receiving Personal Independent Payments for anxiety and depression has trebled. Meanwhile, the number of households where no one has ever worked has also risen. Analysis by the think tank I set up, The Centre For Social Justice, found that once all benefits are totted up, you can now receive £2,500 a year more on benefits than someone would receive on the national living wage after tax. In other cases, such as a single parent claiming for anxiety and a child with ADHD, total annual support can reach nearly £37,000 — over £14,000 more than the same person would earn through wages alone. A system designed to protect disabled people in genuine need has morphed into one that too often disincentivises work, traps people in long-term dependency and leaves them without meaningful support to recover. This isn't the whole story. There are, at the extremes, young and old at both edges of the welfare crisis. With almost one million youngsters not in education, employment or training (NEET), the epidemic of school absences could yet see an extra 180,000 pupils join their ranks. And we are leaking talent and experience out of the workforce at an alarming rate, with record numbers of people aged 50-64 on out-of-work benefits. The government must start by addressing the surge in claims since the pandemic, particularly for mental health. But the government has got off to a bad start. The Treasury's push to get quick savings in time for the spring resulted in a rebellion by Labour backbenchers and a U-turn costing £3billion. Yet this ballooning welfare bill has to be tackled, and the CSJ has shown there is a way. First, tighten eligibility for benefits to people with more severe mental health conditions while reinvesting the savings in the support we know genuinely helps people to recover. In-person assessments and benefit sanctions for those failing to seek work must be restored in full. The CSJ shows that this would save over £7billion, a large portion of which should be spent radically expanding NHS therapy and back-to-work help. Second, we need to stop people falling out of work in the first place. 'Young hardest hit' Medicalising the ups and downs of life has resulted in 93 per cent of consultations with a GP ending up with someone signed off altogether rather than keeping them in their job. A proper work and health system should take 'sick notes' provision off GPs, allowing them to devote their time to people, particularly those aged 50–64, needing workplace adjustments. Third, I worry more each day about Britain's young people. The government's National Insurance rises have put up wage costs, making businesses less likely to give them a chance. Young people are the hardest hit by the £25billion jobs tax. Instead, the Chancellor should cut taxes on jobs and introduce a new tax credit for businesses hiring young British NEETS, a CSJ proposal backed by many employers who have called for this. Our post-Covid ballooning welfare bill has to be tackled urgently. But as employment numbers fall in response to higher taxes, Reeves has made it harder to do this. Getting people back to work is critical for us all.
Times
6 minutes ago
- Times
Ex-Reform MP James McMurdock cleared by watchdog over Covid loans
A former Reform MP has been told to officially declare his directorship of a company that is facing questions over government-backed Covid loans. The parliamentary commissioner for standards said that James McMurdock should formally register his role in Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited after a complaint that he had broken Commons rules. However, the commissioner cleared McMurdock of withholding the information after hearing evidence that he was advised by the Commons authorities that it was unnecessary. McMurdock quit Reform in July after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans taken by companies with which he was associated under the government's bounce back loans scheme during the pandemic. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the scheme for medium-sized businesses. For a company to have received such a loan, it would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000. The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year it borrowed £20,000, which would have required a turnover of £80,000 under the bounce back scheme. Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act 2006. As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets would have been seized by the Crown. However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood that this was related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House. McMurdock said that he was pleased to have been cleared by the commissioner, adding that he had spoken to other government agencies and there was 'no other investigation that I am aware of that requires my support'. He added: 'This was a malicious attack, without substance, designed to damage my reputation. It has failed.'
Telegraph
6 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Labour's inheritance tax must be scrapped
How have we managed to create a world where a dwindling band of taxpayers is funding a growing number of able-bodied people to live relatively comfortably on benefits without even being required to look for work? As the welfare bill balloons, the Government has to find more money because its own MPs will not let it cut payments or tighten the rules. Since the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised not to increase borrowing or add to the taxes of so-called 'working people' she is forced to look elsewhere, notably at pensions and savings. Now she is targeting inheritance tax (IHT) to plug holes in the finances ahead of an autumn Budget. Treasury officials have been told to examine greater restrictions on gifting money and assets. The tax burden is at its highest for nearly 80 years. Taxpayers who are by no means rich are dragged into paying higher rates by the pernicious freezing of allowances. The minority of earners who contribute the most in taxes have gone along with this in the expectation of being able to help their children with any accumulated wealth left to them by a rapacious state. If the morality of this tax is questionable, tougher rules are not even politically advantageous. Polling shows it is probably the most unpopular tax of all, even among people who are unlikely to have to pay it. It would be a desperate act to tighten the rules further, but Ms Reeves is cornered. IHT is a tax on the prudent and family-minded. It involves being taxed when you die on wealth that was taxed while being accumulated in life, and therefore discourages wealth creation and retention. In drawing up their new policies, the Tories should commit to its abolition.
