Markus Andrews

Downing Street is working on plans to cut VAT in a bid to ease the cost of living burden on struggling British households, reports suggest.The Times reported on Thursday that No 10’s chief of staff Steve Barclay had suggested the temporary reduction in the 20 per cent rate of tax in the hope of easing tax bills for millions and blunting the spiralling rate of inflation.It comes after modelling from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the rate of inflation in the UK, at 9.1 per cent, had reached its highest point since at least February 1982.But the plans – which would see VAT cut to 17.5 per cent – have reportedly stirred up controversy within the Treasury, due to fears it could overstimulate the economy and stoke the already raging rate of inflation.The newspaper claims that Mr Barclay, the MP for North East Cambridgeshire, first raised the idea of VAT cuts in talks with the Treasury in the past two weeks, during which he referred to the move as “de-inflationary”.A source familiar with the plans told The Times: “Steve’s been pushing it quite strongly but the Treasury is not buying it.”A second source also claimed that Treasury officials had mooted the idea of potential VAT cuts last month. But, ultimately, the ideas were scrapped over worries it could lead to a short-lived fall in inflation followed by a more severe recession.Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told The Times that cuts to VAT would be “economically inappropriate”.He added: “It would reduce inflation in the short run because it would reduce prices relative to what they would have been. But it would increase inflation next year. It can’t help in the long run.“And it could actually lead to higher inflation overall because you would be pumping extra money into an economy where demand is already outstripping supply. Stimulating demand at the moment would be economically inappropriate. On this one the Treasury is right.”A source close to Mr Barclay said: “Steve has reinforced to ministerial colleagues that decisions on tax need to be taken by the prime minister and chancellor and that in exploring options, colleagues need to follow up on the commitments the prime minister made in his letter to MPs at the time of the leadership vote.” More

The Conservative Party deputy chief whip Chris Pincher has resigned after he is said to have groped two men while he was drunk.In a resignation letter sent to Boris Johnson, he said he had “embarrassed himself and other people” by drinking too much at the Conservative Party’s private members’ club.The alleged incident happened at the Carlton Club, in London’s Piccadilly, on Wednesday night, according to The Sun.The Tamworth MP said in his resignation letter: “Last night I drank far too much.“I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned. “I think the right thing to do in the circumstances is for me to resign as Deputy Chief Whip. I owe it to you and the people I’ve caused upset to, to do this.“I want to assure you that you will continue to have my full support from the back benches, and I wish you all the best as you deal with aftershocks of Covid and the challenges of international inflation.“It has been the honour of my life to have served in Her Majesty’s Government.”The Metropolitan Police said it was not aware of any calls to the location where the alleged incident took place and there was no record on its systems of any related reports submitted on Thursday.A Tory source reportedly said Mr Pincher would not face any inquiry or disciplinary actions. “The PM thinks he’s done the decent thing by resigning. There is no need for an investigation and no need to suspend the whip,” The Telegraph reported.Mr Pincher was first elected as MP for Tamworth – in Staffordshire – in May 2010, and was re-elected in December 2019.His resignation means the Conservative Party is now without a deputy chief whip and a party chairman.Last week, Oliver Dowden resigned as the Tories’ chairman after the party’s double by-election defeat in Tiverton and Honiton and Wakefield.In 2017, Mr Pincher was cleared of breaching the party’s code of conduct after he referred himself to the Conservatives’ complaint procedure. He resigned as the assistant whip after he was accused of making unwanted advances toward former Olympic rower and Tory activist Alex Story, nine years before Mr Pincher became an MP.Mr Pincher said at the time: “I do not recognise either the events or the interpretation placed on them… if Mr Story has ever felt offended by anything I said then I can only apologise to him.”He was later cleared of breaching the Conservatve Party code of conduct over the allegations. Scores of MPs, from a number of parties, have been accused of sexual harassment in recent years.In 2018, the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) was set up as an independent process with cross-party backing amid the so-called Pestminster scandal.Last month, parliament’s independent watchdog said around 15 MPs were being investigated for alleged bullying or sexual misconduct. More

Downing Street has warned Tory MPs that they will be “putting a gun to the head” of every future Conservative prime minister if they change leadership rules in a bid to remove Boris Johnson.The warning came as the prime minister’s supporters attempted to see off efforts by rebel MPs to bring forward the date of a possible second vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson.One cabinet minister told The Independent that the PM’s critics should bear in mind that the electoral landscape would be very different by the likely date of the next general election in 2024, with economic issues rather than Partygate at the forefront of voters’ minds.In the wake of humiliating results in last week’s by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton, Mr Johnson’s backbench critics are actively seeking new methods to topple him after he narrowly survived a confidence vote by a margin of 211-148.While some are lobbying ministers and party grandees to take a message to the prime minister that he must go or face high-level resignations, others are understood to be preparing an anti-Johnson slate to stand in elections next month to the executive of the backbench 1922 Committee.The executive has the power to scrap a rule that gives the prime minister 12 months’ grace after a confidence vote before MPs can again vote on his future.But a source close to the prime minister today warned that they should think twice before taking that step because of the danger it would inhibit future leaders of the party from taking difficult but necessary decisions.“If the rules were changed, every leader forever more would have a gun to their head,” the source said.“They would never be able to get on with anything because they would be constantly beholden to the whims of MPs.”As the operation to counter rebel plotting picked up pace, a cabinet minister said MPs should not make the mistake of believing that Mr Johnson’s current unpopularity would condemn them to defeat when Britain goes to the polls in two years’ time.Voters’ decisions were more likely to be driven by whether they thought the government had helped them through the cost of living crisis and made meaningful progress on its pledge to level up the country than on the events of the Covid pandemic, he said.Asked whether Tories had time to “detoxify” Mr Johnson’s brand in time for the general election, the minister said: “Politics is very fast-moving nowadays. The result in 2024 won’t be determined by what happened in 2021.“I’m not saying that voters will have forgotten about Partygate, but the questions they will be asking in 2024 will be about how the economy is doing, how their own prospects look, whether the place where they live is improving, not about what happened a few years before.“That is where our focus has to be, rather than on trying to change the way they think about the PM.”The minister conceded that “levelling up” disadvantaged areas of the UK was a long-term project that could not be completed within the timescale of a single election.But he insisted that it would be possible for the government to make significant enough progress by 2024 to convince voters that Mr Johnson was leading the country towards that goal.“Levelling up is a long-term process and we won’t have turned around every part of the country by the time of the election, but it is a matter of ensuring that voters can see evidence of a direction of travel,” he said.Mr Johnson said he was “keen to get back” to the UK after a nine-day trip that has taken in summits of the Commonwealth, G7 and Nato in Rwanda, Germany and Spain – and seen him battered by by-election voters in the UK.“There’s no place like home,” he told reporters.He three times refused to discuss the possibility of an early election, following reports that Downing Street had wargamed the idea of declaring a snap poll if Sir Keir Starmer was forced to give up the Labour leadership by a fine from Durham police for breaching Covid restrictions.“The idea hadn’t occurred to me,” he insisted.But sources close to the PM later poured cold water on the idea, telling reporters: “The PM won an 80-seat majority. People want us to use it to get s*** done, rather than hold another vote.” More

Up to 3,000 primary schools across rural England are to gain access to gigabit-speed broadband as part of a new multimillion-pound investment, the Government has said.A joint £82 million investment from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Education (DfE) will see rural schools have the cost of connecting them to the faster broadband covered by the new programme.The Government estimates the scheme could benefit as many as half a million primary school pupils over the next three years.

Children’s opportunities in school should not be pre-determined by where they grow upNadine DorriesIt is the latest aspect of the Government’s Project Gigabit, the £5 billion programme to roll out more reliable broadband to more of the UK, including hard-to-reach areas.Gigabit broadband means speeds of around 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps) which is significantly faster than the current national average broadband speed of just over 50Mbps.“Children’s opportunities in school should not be pre-determined by where they grow up,” Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said.“Today we’re announcing millions of pounds to get lightning-fast broadband connections to rural schools and level up children’s access to the best possible teaching.“Teaching has been revolutionised by digital technology and we need to make sure all pupils can benefit from the opportunity it brings.”Schools minister Robin Walker said “high speed, reliable internet” was “crucial to helping schools provide the best possible experience for pupils”.“This investment will open a whole world of possibilities for schools and teachers in hard-to-reach areas, whether that is through more access to online resources for children, or fast, top quality video streaming,” he said.“It is more important now than ever for schools to be connected and this welcome investment comes on top of the programme of upgrades to connectivity and wi-fi that we are delivering through our Priority Education Investment Areas.” More

The resignation of the deputy chief whip shows the Conservatives are “mired in sleaze”, Angela Rayner has said.Chris Pincher, who was appointed to the role last February to strengthen party discipline, resigned following a drunken incident in which he said he “embarrassed myself and other people”.He stood down after allegedly assaulting two fellow guests at the Carlton Club – a Tory Party private members’ club in London’s Piccadilly – on Wednesday evening, The Sun claimed.The Metropolitan Police said it was not aware of any calls to that location last night. It also said there was no record on its systems of any related reports submitted today.Reacting to Pincher’s resignation, Ms Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, said in a statement: “This latest episode shows how far standards in public life have been degraded on Boris Johnson’s watch.“Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer about why Chris Pincher was given this role in the first place and how he can remain a Conservative MP.“The Conservative party is so mired in sleaze and scandal that it is totally unable to tackle the challenges facing the British people.“The Conservative MPs who continue to prop up this prime minister’s paralysed administration need to grow a backbone and tell him the party’s over.”In his letter of resignation to the prime minister, Mr Pincher apologised to Mr Johnson, saying it had been “the honour of my life” to have served in the government.The Tamworth MP said: “Last night I drank far too much. I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned.“I think the right thing to do in the circumstances is for me to resign as deputy chief whip. I owe it to you and the people I’ve caused upset to, to do this.“I want to assure you that you will continue to have my full support from the back benches, and I wish you all the best as you deal with aftershocks of Covid and the challenges of international inflation.“It has been the honour of my life to have served in Her Majesty’s Government.”It is the second time he has quit the whip’s office, having resigned as a junior whip in November 2017 following a complaint that he made an unwanted pass at the former Olympic rower and Conservative candidate Alex Story.Having referred himself to both the police and the Conservative Party complaints procedure, he was brought back by Theresa May as deputy chief whip in January 2018.With additional reporting from the Press Association More

The UK’s expanded £1bn commitment to military aid for Ukraine will be partly funded through underspending on climate finance, the business minister Kwasi Kwarteng has said. Following the British government’s announcement it would nearly double support to Ukraine to help stave off the Russian invasion, Mr Kwarteng tweeted: “My department has contributed to the effort by surrendering climate finance and foreign aid underspends.”The admission comes a month after The Independent revealed the UK government failed to deliver almost a quarter of a billion pounds in green projects aimed at hitting net zero emissions even as Boris Johnson urged governments around the world to drastically raise their investment in tackling the climate crisis.Some £241m earmarked for cancelling out UK carbon emissions by 2050 was handed back to the Treasury in the last financial year by the business department. But it appears the underspent money now going to Ukraine may have originally been earmarked for international climate projects and could represent further underspending by the department.An official at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) told The Independent they could not provide figures for how much of the underspend would now be used by the Treasury for military assistance in Ukraine. However they did identify the underspend as being in the International Climate Finance (ICF) programme, and money from Official Development Assistance (ODA), which is government aid money that promotes and targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries.The admission of the underspend by BEIS comes months before the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, where climate finance is set to be on the top of the agenda, and also just hours after the climate change committee said there were “major failures” in government plans to reach net zero emissions.Ami McCarthy, a political campaigner for Greenpeace, told The Independent: “It’s incredibly jarring that one day after government climate advisers called out the UK’s lack of climate action, our business secretary is boasting about having climate money left over.“The government now finds itself in the astonishing position of still paying fossil fuel money to [Vladimir] Putin, while sending its climate underspend to [Volodymyr] Zelensky – it’s gross.”She added: “At a time of a fossil fuel-funded war, an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis and a climate crisis, the government should be throwing the kitchen sink at climate solutions – not ending up with leftover cash that’s unspent.“The business secretary needs to get on with his job, and take action now to roll out heat pumps, home insulation, and onshore wind; cutting our own energy usage and reducing our reliance on Russian gas and oil. This would stop us funding Putin’s war, it would tackle the climate crisis and bring bills down too. For all these crises the solutions are the same.”Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, told The Independent: “We have to question how on earth a government that claims to be a leader in tackling climate change could have an underspend on tackling this global threat. It is understandable that the government wants to spend more helping Ukraine, but this money should come out of budgets that will further damage our climate: pots such as the £28bn earmarked for road building, and ending tax breaks for fossil fuel projects.” The announcement of new funding for military aid to support Ukraine brings the UK’s support to Kyiv to a total of £2.3bn.The UK has also spent £1.5bn on humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine since the invasion in February.On Thursday, Mr Johnson also committed to raising UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.But Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chairman of the Commons defence committee, said it is “too little, too late”.Mr Ellwood, who has called for per cent of GDP to be spent on defence, also condemned Mr Johnson for going ahead with planned cuts to the size of the Army.“This is NOT the time to cut the Army by 10,000,” he said on Twitter.“And moving to 2.5 per cent defence spend by 2030 is too little too late.”Conservative MP Julian Lewis, the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, described the spending increase as “feeble”, accusing the prime minister of “an inability or unwillingness to face up to the gravity of the current crisis”.It is understood the pledge could amount to an extra £55.1bn cumulatively over the rest of the decade, based on Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts of the size of the economy.Speaking at the end of a Nato conference in Spain, Mr Johnson urged struggling Britons to accept that the “cost of freedom is always worth paying”, amid fears of Ukraine war “fatigue” as living standards fall at home.The prime minister sought to bolster faith that funding Ukraine would be worth it, arguing a Russian victory would worsen the economic situation. “Unless we get the right result in Ukraine, Putin will be in a position to commit further acts of aggression against other parts of the former Soviet Union more or less with impunity,” he said.“That will drive further global uncertainty, further oil shocks, further panics and more economic distress for the whole world.” More

Boris Johnson sought to heal a cabinet rift by promising to hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Britain’s economic output by the end of the decade. The prime minister wrapped up the Nato summit in Madrid with a pledge that could see more than £55bn added to military budgets this decade, following Ben Wallace’s pleas for more money. However, senior Conservatives said the PM’s ambition remained “feeble” and the target too far off, given the gravity of the immediate threat from Vladimir Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.Defence committee chair Tobias Ellwood MP, for 3 per cent of GDP to be spent on defence, said Mr Johnson’s end-of-decade commitment was “too little too late”, pointing to current budget cuts set to see 10,000 troops slashed from the Army.Julian Lewis, chair of the intelligence and security committee, noted that the UK spent between 4.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent of GDP on defence during the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War.“Announcing at the height of a deadly confrontation in Europe in 2022 that we aim to achieve just a feeble 2.5 per cent in eight years’ time, shows an inability or unwillingness to face up to the gravity of the current crisis,” said Mr Lewis.Defence sources said the target to hike from the current figure of 2.3 per cent of GDP would mean huge sums committed each year during the second half of the decade – since the recent spending review means nothing more will be given before 2025. It is understood the pledge would require an extra £55.1bn cumulatively over the rest of the decade in order to hit the 2030 goal, based on official government forecasts about the size of the economy.Mr Wallace – having launched a stringing attack on Britain’s “smoke and mirror” defence spending and “fantasy savings” this week – welcomed the 2030 announcement.A source close to Mr Wallace said: “The defence secretary has always been clear that as the threat changes, so should the defence spending,” adding that Mr Johnson had “rightly responded to Russia’s danger”.Labour said the current plan to cut 9,500 troops from army were “embarrassing” for the UK when the government was trying to push allies into boosting their forces. Mr Johnson appeared to concede troops numbers would have to be boosted, telling LBC: “You’ve got to have enough troops, you got to have enough muscle power to do what you need to do.”The UK also used the Nato summit to promise an extra £1bn of military aid for Ukraine, as he again warned against pushing President Volodymyr Zelensky into a “bad peace” deal. The PM hailed the country’s “amazing ability” to take back occupied territory.He pointed to the Putin’s decision to withdraw troops from the hotly-contested Snake Island in the Black Sea was an indication that Russia will not be able to hold all the ground he has taken.The prime minister also told LBC that Putin still has a way to get out of the Ukraine conflict without losing his grip on power. He claimed the tyrant had “considerable political margin of manoeuvre” to withdraw his forces and “seek a new arrangement”.It came after the Russian president appear to suggested that the British prime minister would look “disgusting” topless. Speaking to reporters, Putin said that Western leaders abuse alcohol and don’t do enough sporting activities.Earlier this week, Mr Johnson had jested that G7 leaders could take their clothes off and “show our pecs” – a reference to the infamous photos of Mr Putin’s bare chested horse riding.Despite an estimated 35 nuclear threats by Putin and his regime in recent weeks, Mr Johnson said: “I think it’s very, very important that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be sidetracked by this kind of sabre-rattling.He added: “Because fundamentally, what Putin is trying to do is to reframe this as about Russia versus Nato. It’s not. It’s about his attack on an entirely innocent country.”The gathering in Madrid also saw Nato take a much firmer view on China – stating that Beijing now challenges the western defence alliance’s “interests, security and values”.Mr Johnson told reporters: “We have huge economic relationship with China … but at the same time, we’ve got to understand that there are areas where we need to compete, contest and sometimes challenge what China is up to.” More

Vladimir Putin still has a way to get out of the war in Ukraine without losing his grip on power in Moscow, Boris Johnson has suggested.Ever since Russia’s invasion of its neighbour on 24 February, Mr Johnson has made clear that, while supporting Ukraine’s efforts to drive Putin’s troops out of the country, he was not seeking regime change in the Kremlin.He has previously been critical of Western leaders, like France’s Emmanuel Macron, who have suggested that Putin must be offered a ladder to climb down to allow him to end the conflict without losing face.But in an interview at the conclusion of the Nato summit in Spain, Mr Johnson said that the Russian president enjoys sufficient support at home to give him the political space to withdraw his troops.He told LBC radio’s Nick Ferrari: “A point that I think everyone needs to bear in mind, is that the Russian president actually enjoys very considerable levels of public support at the moment in Russia.“He has, I think, considerable political margin of manoeuvre to say ‘Look, you know, I went in, I had to achieve certain things’ – and it will be up to him to specify what he thought those were – ‘but in the interests of peace, in the interests of the world, I think the time has come now to bring the technical military operation to an end, and to withdraw and to seek a new arrangement’.“That, I think, is what he should do.”Mr Johnson said that the Russian president’s decision to withdraw troops from the hotly-contested Snake Island in the Black Sea was an indication that Putin will not be able to hold all the ground he has taken in eastern and southern Ukraine.“It’s about it’s about, now, changing the dynamic,” he said.“Volodymyr Zelensky has some ideas about how to move things forward, (how) the Ukrainians can recapture ground.“Look at what’s just happened in Snake Island today. Putin has had to concede that and there’s a lesson from this: He is in the end going to find it impossible to hold down a country he doesn’t own.”The prime minister played down the threat that Mr Putin might escalate the conflict by unleashing nuclear weapons if he is unable to overcome Ukrainian resistance by conventional means.Despite an estimated 35 nuclear threats by Putin and his regime over recent weeks, Mr Johnson said: “I think it’s very, very important that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be side-tracked by this kind of sabre-rattling.“Because fundamentally, what Putin is trying to do is to reframe this as about Russia versus Nato.“It’s not. It’s about his attack on an entirely innocent country, with conventional weapons, with artillery, bombardments with planes, shells and so on.“And it’s about the Ukrainians’ right to protect themselves. That is what this is about.“And what we had today at Nato was, yet again, the alliance being tested, being asked, being interrogated. Are we resolved? Are we determined? Will we give the Ukrainians the means to protect themselves?“And the answer was absolutely yes and, if anything, the strength of the unity is greater than it was before.”-  The full interview will be broadcast on Friday 1 July from 7am on LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast More