Latest news with #DarrenJones
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Government borrowing soars to second highest level on record
Government borrowing rose significantly more than expected last month as debt interest payments soared. Official figures show the cost of public services and interest payments on government debt are rising faster than the increases in income tax and national insurance contributions. It means government borrowing reached the second-highest level last month since records began in 1993, according to the data from the Office for National Statistics. June's borrowing figures - £20.684bn - were second only to the highs seen in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when many workers were furloughed. State borrowing was more than £6bn higher than the same month last year. But despite this latest rise, borrowing this year is in line with the March forecast from the independent forecasters at the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It's bad news for Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has vowed to bring down government debt and balance the budget by 2030 as part of her self-imposed fiscal rules. She's expected to increase taxes to meet the gap between spending and tax revenue. Ms Reeves's deputy, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, said, "We are committed to tough fiscal rules, so we do not borrow for day-to-day spending and get debt down as a share of our economy." "This commitment to economic stability means we can get on with investing in Britain's renewal". This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version. You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.
Glasgow Times
16-07-2025
- Business
- Glasgow Times
'Glasgow must be given the same resources as English city regions'
City regions across these islands – and indeed across our planet – are vital drivers of growth and addressing poverty and inequalities. Glasgow is no exception. In a relatively short space of time, and during some very difficult years, our own City Region has been delivering exactly the types of benefits that people want to see. The City Deal, for example, is transforming not just the look and feel of communities with new bridges and new neighbourhoods but also our very economy. We're right up there with Europe's best for science and technology while creating more employment opportunities for ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, the partnerships between the eight member councils, businesses, and academia are helping ensure Glasgow actually outperforms those UK city regions we're regularly compared to. For example, the total value of what our economy produces here in Metropolitan Glasgow has recently been higher than either the West Midlands or Greater Manchester. At the same time, levels of child poverty and unemployment are lower. We're clearly doing a lot of things right. As chair of the cross-party Glasgow City Region Cabinet, I've always been clear that to take our ambitions to the next level we need more powers and more resources. And that has to come from both the Scottish and UK Governments. So, I was obviously delighted when, at our annual State of the City Economy Conference in December, Scottish and UK ministers pledged to work together with us to drive those ambitions forward. However, over the past month, many of us within these partnerships have become increasingly disappointed with what's emerging from the UK Government. I'll be the first to say that my party colleagues at Holyrood really do have to get a move on delivering on their promises to better empower Glasgow. But what's emerging from Westminster looks increasingly like a rollback. And if that's the case, Glasgow and our fellow City Region authorities will start to fall behind our peers south of the border. The UK Government's Spending Review made clear the gulf in how Scottish and English city regions are resourced. Manchester, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, and several others are provided with large integrated settlements with which they can make their own investment decisions. Yet Glasgow is reduced to administering UK Government programmes. That makes it extremely difficult to grow our economy in the ways we know we can – and must. Now, Scotland's Secretary of State, Ian Murray, and his colleague, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones MP, both insist that the UK Government has no role in delivering for Glasgow the type of devolution deal awarded for our English City Region comparators. It is certainly the case that the vast majority of the powers we seek are in the gift of the Scottish Government. However, devolving powers without the accompanying funding to match would be almost meaningless. The Glasgow City Region partners are clear that we require integrated funding deals, equivalent to those being delivered to our English peers. Those deals have not generated the all-important Barnett consequentials, meaning no equivalent funding has ever been provided to the Scottish Government. It's clear then that the funding for a devolution deal for the Glasgow City Region remains the responsibility of the UK Government. Crucially, the Core Cities Group, which represents the 12 biggest cities outside London and which Glasgow is part of, has collectively called on the UK Government to provide parity of funding support for the city regions in the devolved nations. And it too believes that the Spending Review was a missed opportunity to begin to address the inequities between English city regions and Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast. If the UK Government wants to properly address the very poor growth figures undermining its own economic mission, then it needs to reconsider how it funds city regions in the devolved nations. The Secretary of State for Scotland has asked that I join him in writing to the First Minister in demanding the Scottish Government gives the Glasgow City Region the powers it's been asking for. I'm happy to do that. But a joint letter also needs to go to the UK Prime Minister and Chancellor demanding parity with our English peers. Glasgow needs both of our governments to step up to devolution.
The Independent
15-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Labour wants us live like working people and do whatever working people do – but what exactly is that?
There are 109 paid members of the government (there'd be more if it wasn't limited by law), and, as we've come to learn, each one has their own definition of what constitutes 'working people'. This includes non-definition definitions, such as the one most recently offered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves: 'I don't think we need to define more than that, really. We made a commitment in our manifesto to not increase those taxes. We didn't last year. It remains our commitment for this parliament'. To be fair, she was referring back to her party's well-known manifesto commitment ('income tax, VAT and National Insurance are the key taxes that working people pay'). And that's undeniable to the point of truism. But what that fails to acknowledge is that lots of the idle rich pay considerable sums in VAT every time they buy a private jet or dine out at a fancy restaurant. Should we consider those people 'working people'? Her deputy, Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, has been a bit more specific lately, stating 'working people' covers 'anyone with a payslip'. That could be extremely broad in the figurative sense of doing paid work for an employer – or very narrow if it literally means you get a physical slip of paper with your gross and net pay, tax, NI and pension contributions typed out. Of course, when she was under less pressure, in those easy, balmy days of opposition, Reeves was more forthcoming – well, a bit – when she suggested that 'working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes… There are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up, and those are working people as well.' How big are the savings, though? No figure has ever been suggested. The nearest we've got was when Keir Starmer said that his idea of 'working people' are those 'who earn their living, rely on our services and don't really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble'. That's not bad, except that even the richest people rely on the council to get their gold-plated bins collected – and if, say, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu had gotten run over by one of his fine classic cars and had been taken to an NHS hospital in an NHS ambulance and fixed up by an NHS doctor. More recent still, at the weekend, transport secretary Heidi Alexander had a stab at it – and said working people were folk on 'a modest income'. Then again, Lisa Nandy, culture secretary and professional Northerner, conceded that people with six-figure salaries can be 'working people' too (which is just as well, seeing as she's on £159,851 per annum). In her own words: 'I mean, if they go to work obviously they will be working'. Unarguable, but inconsistent with colleagues. Bridget Phillipson, over on education, meanwhile, refuses to say if the self-employed are 'working people', confining herself to those 'whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day' – which must surely include small business owners who are plumbers, window cleaners or pest controllers; the ones who cannot work from home and whose only boss is themselves. I suppose that trying to define 'working people' is like the old saying about trying to define an elephant – you know one when you see one. On that basis, the endless variety of categorisations offered by Labour politicians make some sense, because nearly everyone works for a living, has worked for a living (pensioners), will work for a living (students) or would work for a living if they could get a job, or, come to think of it, start their own business. If Labour said that they wouldn't put taxes on 'working people' up, then they meant nearly everyone, and that's how they got to win the election – because no one thought that any prospective tax hikes would affect them. This impression was greatly amplified by the high-profile changes they did propose – VAT on private school fees, attacking the super-rich non doms and ending the use of offshore truest to avoid tax. 'Working people' was a way of saying 'not you' to the floating voter of 2024 worried about the state taking even more of their income away. It's better than 'working-class', which is pejorative, or 'middle class', which would be too exclusive – and, besides, we don't like talking about class these days. It's a bit divisive. We can see another reason why Labour relied on such a rubbery concept as 'working people' – it was based on the searing experience of previous – lost – elections. It's because as soon as a shadow chancellor mentioned any kind of figure about who might actually be worse off under a Labour government, the media went mad and the Tories used it as an 'attack on aspiration' and labelled it a 'tax bombshell', even though few people would ever have been injured by this legendary socialist missile. If Labour's tax and spend plans that would revolutionise health and education cost anyone as much as a quid a week, the press crucified the hapless Labour leader of the day. So now they don't get too specific and they left much unsaid in 2024, sticking to the equally banal slogan of 'change'. Well, we all know what happened next. And what was a meaningless but useful slogan for Opposition has turned into a terrible burden in government, precisely because every 'working person' pays council tax (up), income tax (thresholds frozen, probably for the rest of the decade), has savings and a pension (hit by capital gains tax rises), and, realistically, is affected by the rise in employers' national insurance contributions. Starmer and Reeves left themselves no room for manoeuvre even in good times, and were critically vulnerable to making their pledge sound like a sick joke in the bad times. They should never have given the British people the impression that only the richest would have to make any financial sacrifice to put the public finances on a sustainable basis. But, then again, given that the British are a devoutly cakeist people, who think they can enjoy fine public services without paying much for them, Labour would never have won the election if they'd told the truth – which is that Brexit, which we voted for, is still costing us dearly. In the end, it's all our own fault, and we 'working people' have only ourselves to blame. Still, there's always Reform UK, more than happy to tell us we can have our cake and eat it. Irresistible, isn't it?
Telegraph
14-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Reeves's deputy dismisses Bank of England's job market fears
The Treasury has dismissed Andrew Bailey's warnings that Rachel Reeves's £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid is hitting Britain's jobs market. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, insisted that 'hundreds of thousands of new jobs' have been created, despite the Governor of the Bank of England raising concerns that the tax changes were damaging hiring and hitting pay packets. Mr Jones claimed that National Insurance contributions (NICs), paid by bosses on their employees' pay packets, protect workers rather than harming their wages and their job prospects. 'There have been hundreds of thousands of new jobs created across the economy and we, in the first quarter of the year, were the fastest growing economy in the G7,' Mr Jones said in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. 'We are doing everything we can to create the conditions for business to be profitable and to be able to grow, of course we had to take that particular tax decision in the Budget last year because our commitment was to protect working people in their pay slips.' He was speaking after Mr Bailey warned companies were 'adjusting employment and hours, and also having pay rises that are possibly less than they would have been if the NICs change hadn't happened'. 'I think we're getting more consistently the story that [businesses], if you take the National Insurance change, are adjusting via the labour market. I don't think we're getting to a tipping point in the sense that it's becoming a sort of flood,' he said in an interview with The Times. Softening labour market It is not the first time the Governor has raised concerns over the impact of the tax. Last month, Mr Bailey told the House of Lords: 'We are starting to see softening of the labour market and that's the message I get when I go around the country talking to firms. 'I am hearing more firms telling me they are making adjustments on both of the labour market sides, so both quantities and prices.' Regular wages in the private sector in April grew by 5.1pc on the year, according to the Office for National Statistics, the slowest pace since February 2022. Tax data indicates there were 30.2m payrolled employees in May, down by 0.9pc, or 274,000, compared with the same month of 2024. Even as the number of people employed in health and social work increased by 62,000 on the year, jobs in accommodation and food services plunged by 124,000. The ONS found 736,000 job vacancies advertised in May, down from the post-lockdown peak of 1.3m two years earlier, and the lowest number since the depths of Covid in 2021.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Treasury minister says ‘headline' rate of income tax won't go up, in hint thresholds might be frozen in budget
Update: Date: 2025-07-14T08:31:38.000Z Title: Darren Jones Content: Good morning. This is the last full week the Commons is sitting before the summer recess starts (on Tuesday next week) and, although there is a fair amount coming up (see below), there is no big story dominating the news agenda. The national newspapers are all splashing on different items – which is normally a sign that it was a slow news day yesterday. The government wants to talk about its new £500m 'better futures fund'. And , chief secretary to the Treasury, has been in the broadcast studios this morning to promote it – as well as giving an interview to my colleague Heather Stewart. But, as is often the case, in search of stronger news, broadcasters have been trying to tease out details of what might be in the budget in the autumn. And they may have made a tiny bit of progress. At PMQs last week Keir Starmer said that he remained committed to the tax pledges that Labour made in its manifesto. That might sound straightforward, but it isn't, because there is some ambiguity as to what they mean. People thought Labour promised not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance contribtions – which are levied on employers and employees. But in the budget last year Rachel Reeves did put up employer NICs and, when accused of breaking a manifesto promise, she highlighted the eight-word preamble to the pledge, which in retrospect could be read as a hint that employer NICs were not exempt. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT. The person who wrote the manifesto clearly knew what was coming – but the clue was hidden so well that almost no one managed to decypher it. In an interview on ITV's Good Morning Britain Jones said this. The thing I can tell you is that our manifesto commitment coming into this election was that we were not going to increase the headline rate of income tax or employee national insurance on working people in the pay slips that people get when they go to work or on VAT because we know that that disproportionately affects people on lower incomes because they spend more of their money on the day to day shop, essentially. In fact, the manifesto does not mention the 'headline' rate of income tax. But the fact that Jones sees this as relevant can be seen as yet another hint that Rachel Reeves is considering extending the freeze on income tax thresholds in the autumn. This is seen by economists as very likely, and was not ruled out by Starmer at PMQs last week. Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a broadcaster and podcaster, regularly argues on his Political Currency podcast that freezing tax thresholds would in practice be a breach of the manifesto, because it would amount to a tax increase for workinng people. Jones's comment can be seen as the rebuttal argument. In his interviews Jones also declined to rule out a wealth tax, as other ministers, have done. But he also suggested that people were 'getting a bit carried away' in interpreting what Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, said about tax yesterday. Alexander told Sky News: We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. The Telegraph has interpreted this as meaning that taxes will rise for middle-class workers. But, in his Good Morning Britain interview, Jones said Alexander was just referring to the manifesto promise. Asked what 'modest incomes' meant, he went on: Modest income means different things to different people. But it's not entirely relevant, because the thing that is relevant is our manifesto commitment not to increase national insurance or employee national or income tax in the payslips that people receive every month. Jack Maidment from the Telegraph argues that the mixed messaging is a bit of a mess. Treasury minister says Labour's 'working people' tax pledge refers to 'anyone that gets a payslip, basically'. Significantly broader than Transport Sec Heidi Alexander's definition yesterday of 'people on modest incomes'. What a mess, and not for the first time. Here is the agenda for the day. 10.30am: Sajid Javid, the former Tory health secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry about the impact of the pandemic on the care sector. Morning: Rachel Reeves, chancellor, speaks to broadcasters on a visit in Wigan where she is promoting plans for a £500m 'beter futures fund'. 11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 2pm: Wes Streeting, health secretary, gives evidence to the health committee. 2.30pm: Angela Rayner, deputy PM and housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons. After 3.30pm: Ed Miliband, energy secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the state of the climate report. Afternoon: Keir Starmer hosts Petr Fiala, prime minister of the Czech Republic, at Downing Street. 5pm: Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the joint national security strategy committee. And at some point today the Department for Business and Trade publishes a green paper on the Post Office. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can't read all the messages BTL, but if you put 'Andrew' in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @ The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can't promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
