Latest news with #workingpeople
Times
20-07-2025
- Business
- Times
Bar, café and retail jobs are society's heartbeat
W hen a government starts expressing reverence for 'working people', run for the hills. Or at least check your savings, start economising and look around for a side hustle. Last October, accompanied by Sir Keir Starmer's rhetoric about 'the dignity of work and of every worker', the chancellor's budget embraced a pig-headed manifesto commitment not to touch individual pay packets in a way that would be noticed. It stealthily froze tax thresholds, raised capital gains and hammered family farms — right on top of a disastrous harvest year — but refused to nudge up even slightly the national insurance element that everyone on PAYE sees in their payslip. It was all on employers instead. This was, frankly, a cosmetic political decision, blowing a kiss to workers and a raspberry to paymasters. But the effect was that while avoiding ripples which might rock little boats it caused a tsunami of lost opportunities. Sure, voters would have grumbled at personal NI rises, maybe reduced consumer spending a bit, but they would soon have got used to the new level. Particularly if chances were visibly burgeoning for everyone in a growing economy.
Daily Mail
20-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
How Rachel Reeves could clobber the middle classes with a wealth tax sneaked through the back door: Money experts reveal what every family and pensioner must know now
Fears are mounting that middle-class families could face a devastating tax raid on their wealth as Rachel Reeves scrambles to find a way to fill the hole in the nation's finances. The Chancellor last week refused to rule out a new wealth tax, while only promising that protections will remain in place for 'working people'.
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?
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Reeves says protections remain for ‘working people' amid wealth tax speculation
Rachel Reeves has not ruled out the possibility of a new wealth tax but insisted commitments not to hike tax for 'working people' remained. The Chancellor said she was not going to comment on speculation around her next budget when a date for the statement had not even been set. But she said promises not to increase income tax, national insurance and value added tax (VAT) remained in place, along with her 'non-negotiable' fiscal rules. The Government's U-turns over welfare reform and winter fuel payments have left the Chancellor with a multi-billion black hole to fill, fuelling speculation she might target the assets of the wealthy. Asked to rule that out, Ms Reeves told reporters: 'We haven't even set the date for the budget yet, so please forgive me if I'm not going to speculate about what might happen at an event that we haven't even decided a date on yet. 'But we've been really clear in our manifesto about the taxes that we won't increase, and we're not going to increase the taxes that working people pay, their income tax, their national insurance and their VAT, because I do recognise the struggle that ordinary working people have faced these last few years with the cost of living.' She added that her fiscal rules were 'non-negotiable' as 'they are what give working people security, around interest rates for example'. The narrow margin by which the Chancellor is on course to meet her goal of funding day-to-day spending through revenues rather than borrowing means she is vulnerable to any increase in debt interest costs or reductions in planned savings, such as on welfare. Ms Reeves said: 'Interest rates have come down four times in the last year under this Labour Government because of the stability that we've managed to return to the economy, which is underpinned by those fiscal rules, which have enabled the Bank of England to cut interest rates.' The Bank's governor Andrew Bailey has suggested there could be larger cuts if the jobs market shows signs of weakness, pointing to the impact of Ms Reeves' decision to hike employers' national insurance contributions (NICs). Businesses are 'adjusting employment' as a result of the NICs increase and workers are 'also having pay rises that are possibly less than they would have been if the NICs change hadn't happened', he said. In an interview with The Times, the governor said the British economy was growing behind its potential. This could open up 'slack' to bring down inflation, he said, meaning prices on goods would rise less swiftly compared with earnings in future. Mr Bailey said he believes the base rate set by the Bank of England would be lowered in future, after it was held in June. The current Bank rate of 4.25%, which has a bearing on all lending in the UK – including mortgages – will be reviewed again on August 7 by the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. 'I really do believe the path is downward,' Mr Bailey told The Times. He added: 'But we continue to use the words 'gradual and careful' because… some people say to me 'why are you cutting when inflation's above target?'' Treasury Chief Secretary Darren Jones said it was entirely normal for firms to adjust their business plans because of a tax hike. He told Times Radio: 'We've also seen the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the country, and it's normal for business to make adjustments to their plans, depending on the cost of business, in the normal way. 'But we're really focused as a Government in supporting business to create more jobs.'
Telegraph
14-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Starmer's promise not to raise taxes on ‘working people' in chaos
Sir Keir Starmer's flagship tax promise was plunged into further uncertainty on Monday amid confusion over the definition of 'working people'. Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said Labour's manifesto pledge not to increase taxes on 'working people' applied to 'anyone that gets a payslip'. He made the comments less than 24 hours after Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, said it referred to 'people on modest incomes', sparking fears of an autumn Budget raid on middle class workers. It is the latest in a long list of examples of senior Labour figures offering different definitions of the phrase 'working people'. Labour pledged in its manifesto: '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 party's ongoing inability to provide a cast iron definition will continue to fuel tax speculation ahead of the Budget. Experts have said Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will almost certainly have to increase some taxes later this year to fill the hole created by the Government's about-turns on welfare reforms and winter fuel payments. Ms Alexander told Sky News on Sunday: 'We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.' On Monday morning, Mr Jones was asked about his Cabinet colleague's comments as he was grilled on which taxes could increase. He told Sky News: 'What Heidi was referring to was our manifesto commitment which said we are not going to increase income tax or National Insurance or VAT on working people…' Asked to define 'working people', Mr Jones said: 'Anyone that gets a payslip, basically. So it is the headline rate of income tax and National Insurance, we have said we are not changing that, that was honoured at the Budget last year, it is a promise that we stand by. 'And then obviously we don't pay VAT in our payslips but it is quite a regressive tax in that people have less money, obviously spend more on things that have VAT, so we promised to keep VAT flat as well. 'That is what Heidi was referring to. That is the promise that we have honoured in the Budget and the promise that we will continue to honour.' Mr Jones's reference to maintaining the 'headline rate of income tax' would appear to leave the door open to Ms Reeves extending a freeze on income tax thresholds. Those thresholds are due to remain frozen until 2028 but it has been suggested Labour could extend the freeze beyond that point in order to boost tax receipts through fiscal drag. Mr Jones also failed to rule out the introduction of a wealth tax after Lord Kinnock, Labour's former leader, suggested the party was 'willing to explore' such a levy. The Treasury minister said: 'All I know is the commitment in the manifesto [on working people] was very specific and very clear as I have set out and that is what we promised to do and what we will continue to do.' Sir Keir suggested before the general election that he did not believe 'working people' had savings but he was swiftly contradicted by Ms Reeves. The Prime Minister also said he did not believe landlords or shareholders fell under his definition. Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, suggested someone on a six-figure salary who goes to work would be covered by the term. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, previously refused to say whether a small business owner who earned £13,000 a year was a 'working person' or not.
