Latest news with #publicspending
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Teenager to run Reform-led county council with multimillion-pound budget
Nigel Farage's Reform UK party has put a teenager in charge of a major county council, overseeing hundreds of millions of pounds of public spending. George Finch, 19, took over temporarily after the previous council leader, also a member of Reform, resigned just weeks after being elected. Now he has been voted in as the leader of Warwickshire County Council, which has £1.5bn of assets and a budget of around £500m. Before the vote, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, Preet Gill, criticised his position, saying the people of Warwickshire 'frankly deserve better'. 'This is not work experience,' she told the BBC. 'This is not about learning on the job.' Reform is the largest party on the council, but it did not have an outright majority. The BBC reported on Tuesday that Conservative members abstained from the final round of voting, leading to a tie with the Liberal Democrat nominee, Jerry Roodhouse, which was ultimately broken by the council's chair, Reform's Edward Harris. As he voted to install Mr Finch as leader, Mr Harris said he was 'disappointed and excited at the same time'. 'It [the tie] is not something I take lightly at all, and something I would rather not have happened,' he added. Last month, Reform's Rob Howard said it was with 'much regret' that he was quitting as the council's leader, citing health challenges which he said prevented him from 'carrying out the role to the level and standard that I would wish'. His resignation came in the wake of the chaos that followed Reform's success at the local elections, when it took hundreds of seats across England. One newly elected councillor resigned from the party just days after being elected. As she left, Donna Edmunds also called for the ousted Reform MP Rupert Lowe to establish a challenger party on the right of the party and said Mr Farage 'must never be prime minister'. Another councillor, Wayne Titley, who was elected in Staffordshire, quit after just two weeks in the wake of criticism over a Facebook post about small boats arriving in Britain. And another Reform councillor's failure to declare that he worked for the council forced a by-election to be announced in Durham just a week after the election. While the chaotic scenes appeared to do little to dent Reform in the opinion polls, a leading pollster has now suggested that support for the party has 'topped out', and that the momentum that was leading it to soar in the polls has ground to a halt. Conservative peer Robert Hayward told The Independent that the results of recent council by-elections, which Reform lost while defending seats, coupled with a small fall in the party's national polling figures, suggest that the march of Mr Farage to Downing Street at the next general election could be facing a setback.
The Independent
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Teenager to run Reform-led county council with multimillion-pound budget
Nigel Farage 's Reform UK party has put a teenager in charge of a major county council, overseeing hundreds of millions of pounds of public spending. George Finch, 19, took over temporarily after the previous council leader, also a member of Reform, resigned just weeks after being elected. Now he has been voted in as the leader of Warwickshire County Council, which has £1.5bn of assets and a budget of around £500m. Before the vote, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, Preet Gill, criticised his position, saying the people of Warwickshire 'frankly deserve better'. 'This is not work experience,' she told the BBC. 'This is not about learning on the job.' Reform is the largest party on the council, but did not have an outright majority. The BBC reported that on Tuesday that Conservative members abstained from the final round of voting, leading to a tie with the Liberal Democrat nominee, Jerry Roodhouse, which was ultimately broken by the council's chairman, Reform's Edward Harris. As he voted to install Finch as leader, Mr Harris said he was "disappointed and excited at the same time". "It [the tie] is not something I take lightly at all, and something I would rather not have happened," he added. Last month, Reform's Rob Howard said it was with 'much regret' that he was quitting as the council's leader, citing health challenges which he said prevented him from 'carrying out the role to the level and standard that I would wish'. His resignation came in the wake of the chaos that followed Reform's success at the local elections, when it took hundreds of seats across England. One newly elected councillor resigned from the party just days after being elected. As she left, Donna Edmunds also called for the ousted Reform MP Rupert Lowe to establish a challenger party on the right of the party and said Mr Farage 'must never be prime minister '. Another councillor, Wayne Titley, who was elected in Staffordshire, quit after just two weeks in the wake of criticism over a Facebook post about small boats arriving in Britain. And another Reform councillor's failure to declare that he worked for the council forced a by-election to be announced in Durham just a week after the election. While the chaotic scenes appeared to do little to dent Reform in the opinion polls, a leading pollster has now suggested that support for the party has 'topped out', and that the momentum that was leading it to soar in the polls has ground to a halt. Conservative peer Robert Hayward told The Independent that the results of recent council by-elections, which Reform lost while defending seats, coupled with a small fall in the party's national polling figures, suggest that the march of Mr Farage to Downing Street at the next general election could be facing a setback.
Japan Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Japan Times
France's PM wants to scrap two public holidays to help fix government finances
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou proposed scrapping two public holidays and freezing most public spending as part of a €43.8 billion ($50.88 billion) budget squeeze he outlined on Tuesday. Bayrou's plan involves freezing welfare spending and tax brackets in 2026 at 2025 levels, not even adjusting for inflation, which was immediately criticized by leftwing and far-right politicians. Defence spending, however, will increase. France saw its budget deficit hit 5.8% of gross domestic product last year, nearly double the official EU limit of 3% of GDP, as a political crisis left four successive governments paralysed and incapable of tackling an unexpected drop in tax income and surge in spending for a second year.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
HMRC does not know how many billionaires pay tax in the UK, MPs claim
His Majesty's Revenue and Customs is failing to identify how much tax is paid by billionaires, which could have an impact on public spending, according to MPs. A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is calling on the tax office to publish its plan for increasing the tax take from wealthy taxpayers both domestically and offshore. It found HMRC does not use its data to identify wealthy people and publish transparency about how much tax they pay. There are just a handful of billionaires in the UK, but they have wealth and assets 500 times greater than a person who meets HMRC's definition of 'wealthy'. Since 2019/20, HMRC has defined wealthy individuals as those with incomes of £200,000 or more, or assets equal to or above £2million, in any of the last three years. While HMRC has increased the amount of tax revenue from the wealthy - from £2.2billion in 2019/20 to £5.2 billion in 2023/24 - the report found that the tax gaps are 'particularly difficult to measure'. PAC says HMRC is 'overly confident and optimistic' the wealthy tax gap - the difference between what's owed and what's actually paid - is £1.9 billion, and that an offshore tax gap of £300million seems 'far too low'. The very wealthiest paid £119billion in personal taxes in the 2023/24 tax year, around £140,000 per person, and made up a quarter of the UK's personal tax receipts. However, a recent report by the National Audit Office found tax avoidance and evasion could be much higher than previously estimated. The complexity of wealthy people's tax affairs made it more difficult for HMRC to identify any tax owed, the NAO said. Lloyd Hatton MP, member of PAC said: 'We already know a great deal about billionaires living in the UK, with much information about their tax affairs and wealth in the public domain.' However, a recent report by the National Audit Office found tax avoidance and evasion could be much higher than previously estimated. The complexity of wealthy people's tax affairs made it more difficult for HMRC to identify any tax owed, the NAO said. 'So we were disappointed to find that HMRC, of all organisations, was unable to provide any insight into their tax affairs from its own data - particularly given that any single one of these individuals' contributions could make a significant difference to the overall picture. 'We found a similar apparent lack of curiosity in how wide the tax gap is both for the very wealthy and for wealth stashed away offshore.' What is PAC calling for? Among its recommendations, PAC is calling on HMRC to close the tax gap further and publish a plan and timeline for increasing its tax take. MPs also claim that HMRC cannot identify how much tax is paid by billionaires, despite the relatively small number of individuals involved. As such, it is calling for a plan to understand how much wealth is held by billionaires using publicly accessible data, like the Sunday Times Rich List. This would be similar to the US, where its Inland Revenue Service has worked with researchers to link its data with the Forbes 400. Another one of the committee's recommendations is a review into whether segmenting wealthy customers according to their levels of wealth could help assess risk better. Currently, wealthy individuals are treated as a single group, but it's understood that the tax office looks at who poses the biggest risk based on all taxable income and gains, rather than wealth alone. Hatton said: 'Our report shows that, however you slice it, there is a lot of money being left on the table. HMRC must, under its new leadership, begin collecting the correct amount of tax from the very wealthiest - and this must include wealth that is currently squirreled away in tax havens.' An HMRC spokesperson said: 'The government is determined to make sure everyone pays the tax they owe. 'Extra resources were announced in the recent spending review which allows us to significantly step up our work on closing the tax gap amongst the wealthiest. This includes recruiting an extra 400 officials specialising in the wealthy and offshore tax gap, and increasing prosecutions of those who evade tax.' The Government has said it plans to crack down on tax-dodging, with the Chancellor vowing to collect over £6billion a year during her first Budget. In her spring spending review, she increased this amount to £7.5billion, announcing plans to reward informants within businesses that are not complying with the tax regime.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
French PM may scrap two public holidays to reduce country's crippling debt
France's prime minister, François Bayrou, has proposed scrapping two public holidays as part of radical measures aimed at reducing the country's ballooning deficit, boosting its economy and preventing it being 'crushed' by debt. Outlining the 2026 budget on Tuesday, Bayrou suggested Easter Monday and 8 May, when France commemorates Victory Day, marking the end of the second world war, although he said he was open to other options. The centrist prime minister said: 'The entire nation has to work more so that the activity of the country as a whole increases, and so that France's situation improves. Everyone will have to contribute to the effort.' France is under pressure to bring its public deficit, running at 5.8% of GDP, under the 3% figure required by EU rules, and to rein in €3.3tn of public debt – on which the annual interest, of €60bn, could soon become its biggest budget outlay. The debt mountain represented a 'mortal danger' for a country 'on a cliff edge' and 'still addicted to public spending', Bayrou said, outlining steps he said would cut €43.8bn from the budget, reducing the deficit to 4.6% next year and 3% by 2029. Other measures would include an across-the-board freeze on government spending except for debt servicing and the defence sector, which President Emmanuel Macron demanded should be increased by €3.5bn next year and more in 2027. The budget squeeze will also entail keeping pensions at their 2025 level, capping welfare spending and reducing healthcare expenditure by €5bn. Civil service and government agency salaries would be frozen and public sector job numbers cut. The move to scrap public holidays is likely to meet strong resistance, although France has previously discussed combining VE Day with Armistice Day on 11 November, creating a single memorial day for the victims of the first and second world wars. 'Cancelling two holidays is a direct attack on our history, our roots and on working France,' said Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally (RN), the largest single party in parliament. 'No RN MP will accept a measure that amounts to provocation.' Other party leaders were equally damning. The proposals were 'an organised hold-up', said Fabien Roussel of the French Communist party. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical left LFI said it was 'time to expel Bayrou' and 'end this destruction, these injustices'. A Socialist party MP, Boris Vallaud, condemned it as 'a brutal and unacceptable budget'. He added: 'Asking always more from those who have little, and so little from those who have much, is neither serious, effective, nor just.' Macron's decision to call a snap election last year delivered a hung parliament in which Bayrou does not have enough votes to pass a budget without the support of the left or the right, both of which oppose his proposals for different reasons. Without an agreement, the veteran prime minister could face a no-confidence motion similar to the one that toppled his predecessor, Michel Barnier, as early as October, when his detailed budget bill is due to go before to parliament.
