UK Politics

The taxman has no idea how much is being collected from billionaires amid mounting calls for a wealth tax, a powerful Commons committee has found. With Rachel Reeves seeking billions of pounds to plug a gaping hole in the public finances, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) cannot identify how much tax is paid by Britain’s billionaires. Despite there being relatively few billionaires, and the group contributing a significant amount to the government’s coffers, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said HMRC “does not know how many billionaires pay tax in the UK or how much they contribute overall”. The authority “can and must” do more to understand how much tax the very wealthiest are paying, it added.Rachel Reeves needs to find billions of pounds in her autumn Budget More

Rachel Reeves vowed to “take the boot of regulation off the throat of businesses” as she unveiled a bonfire of red tape to boost the economy in her keynote Mansion House speech.The beleaguered chancellor has bet her future and her hopes of achieving elusive economic growth on a massive round of City deregulation.It comes as Treasury sources say Ms Reeves wants to see more “risk taking” and move back to the pre-2008 model for financial services, before the banking collapse.In his speech at the same event, however, the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey stressed he could not “underestimate the challenges” involved in the global trade war triggered by US president Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying the current shift in policy was the “most sudden and fundamental in the post-war era”.In a stark warning, he added: “Increasing tariffs creates the risk of fragmenting the world economy, and thereby reducing activity.” Ms Reeves’s speech came just hours after she had also announced the new “Leeds reforms” to the mortgage market in a bid to open up the opportunity of buying a house to more than 30,000 first-time buyers.Rachel Reeves has set out a package of financial services reforms she hopes will deliver a boost to the economy More

The UK’s deep cuts to international aid will be carried out in a “responsible and careful” way – not the “overnight” slashes conducted most obviously by nations such as the US – the government has claimed.Charities and international aid experts have lined up to decry the UK cuts, first announced in February, which will bring spending from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of gross national income (GNI). A report also published on Tuesday by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact found UK aid spending overseas could fall to as low as 0.24 per cent once spending at home on asylum accommodation was factored in. But development minister Jenny Chapman has told MPs that “not all aid cuts are the same and I think the way that we’ve done it… is slowly and in a considered way”. “I would contrast that to the way that others have done it, where medications just stop being distributed overnight, where I know of warehouses with vaccines that there’s no way of distributing,” Baroness Chapman said. “That’s a real problem and that will have a huge impact.”In the US, Trump cut roughly 80 per cent of foreign aid spending virtually overnight, in a move that could cause 14 million extra deaths by 2030. The speed of the cuts caused chaos as clinics closed, access to lifesaving medicines was disrupted and health staff didn’t know if they could turn up to work one day to the next. Baroness Chapman added that the withdrawal of the United States from global health funding was proving a “huge problem” but that, “it isn’t possible for us to backfill that capacity sadly”. Baroness Chapman also confirmed during the session of parliament’s international development committee that a world-leading programme to tackle antimicrobial resistance was being cut and suggested a project giving millions access to contraception was under question.The scale of the UK cuts means they are expected to hit virtually all programmes. Even when it comes to the global vaccine alliance, Gavi, of which the UK has been a major champion and is now the biggest funder, its contribution this year fell by £400 million.Baroness Chapman said antimicrobial resistance and the risk of another pandemic were the two biggest threats facing the UK’s health security, but public health and prevention minister Ashley Dalton confirmed during the session that the Fleming programme, which supports countries in Africa and Asia to monitor and prevent antimicrobial resistance, has already been cancelled. Antimicrobial resistance happens when antibiotics are used too much or incorrectly, causing germs to evolve resistance against them and creating dangerous illnesses that can’t easily be treated with the available drugs. Resistant bug strains can cross borders and the phenomenon is estimated to kill a million people a year. Asked about a programme to family planning access and information to 2.6 million women and girls across West and Central Africa, Baroness Chapman said she was “looking at it”.The minister has previously signalled that specialised programmes for women and girls may be hit hard by the cuts. This piece has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid series More

Perfidious Albion, in modern terms, means that when it comes to international affairs, Britain is seen as treacherous and unreliable – and has turned mendacity into an art.Students of imperial history will recall the hundreds of treaties signed with local chiefs, kings and leaders that were waved aside in the interests of the empire. The French call their deep distrust of Les Anglo-Saxons “Fashoda syndrome” – named after a sordid episode of British duplicity that delivered an obscure bit of southern Sudan to the UK in the 19th century, and triggered the enduring distrust of our closest neighbour up to this day.Now we have the Kabul cock-up. It will inevitably serve to undermine Britain’s woeful and feeble international reputation – and drive some of those who have been betrayed into the arms of our enemies.Afghan special forces soldiers are waiting on help from the UK More

The European Union is seeking updates from Israel on implementation of a new deal to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s foreign policy chief.Foreign ministers from the EU’s 27-member nations are meeting Tuesday in Brussels in the wake of a new aid deal for Gaza largely forged by Kallas and Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar.Saar met with EU leaders on Monday after agreeing last week allow desperately needed food and fuel into the coastal enclave of 2.3 million people who have endured more than 21 months of war.“We have reached a common understanding with Israel to really improve the situation on the ground, but it’s not about the paper, but actually implementation of the paper,” Kallas said before the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council.“As long as it hasn’t really improved, then we haven’t all done enough,” she said, before calling for a ceasefire.Kallas said the ministers will also discuss Iran’s nuclear program, concerns over developments in Georgia and Moldova, and new sanctions on Russia. The EU is readying its 18th package of sanctions on Russia, with holdouts within the bloc arguing over the keystone policy of capping oil prices to cut into Moscow’s energy revenues.European nations like Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain have increasingly called for the EU’s ties with Israel to be reassessed in the wake of the war in Gaza. A report by the European Commission found “ indications ” that Israel’s actions in Gaza are violating human rights obligations in the agreement governing its ties with the EU — but the block is divided over what to do in response. That public pressure over Israel’s conduct in Gaza made the new humanitarian deal possible even before a ceasefire, said Caspar Veldkamp, the Dutch foreign minister. “That force of the 27 EU member states is what I want to maintain now,” he said.“The humanitarian deal announced last week shows that the Association Agreement review and use of EU leverage has worked,” said one European diplomat.Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manual Albares Bueno said details of the deal were still being discussed and that the EU would monitor results to see if Israel is complying with those.“We don’t know whether it we will know how it works,” he said. “It’s very clear that this agreement is not the end — we have to stop the war.”The war began after Hamas attacked Israel in 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage, most of whom have been released in earlier ceasefires. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.The ministry, which is under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.The EU has observed some aid trucks entering Gaza, but “not enough,” said Hajda Lahbib, the EU Commissioner for humanitarian air and crisis management.“The situation is still so dangerous, so violent, with strikes still continuing on the ground, that our humanitarian partners cannot operate. So, this is the reality we need to have a ceasefire,” she said. More

According to Treasury sources, Rachel Reeves wants the public to start taking risks again.The analysis she is working from is that the financial crash of 2008 – which saw several banks go under or need to be nationalised – has made the country too risk-adverse.But the biggest risk taker may well be the chancellor herself, with her plans to free up the mortgage market and slash red tape for financial services in the City.Like many gamblers, though, Ms Reeves’ spin of the financial services roulette wheel, to be announced in her Mansion House speech this evening, is largely prompted by the fact that she is running out of options.Chancellor Rachel Reeves said her fiscal rules were ‘non-negotiable’ (Anthony Devlin/PA) More

Workers on average incomes will not see their taxes go up as Rachel Reeves seeks to find billions in the autumn Budget, a minister has promised.With a series of U-turns having blown a major hole in the public finances, roads minister Lilian Greenwood said “people who earn around average income” will not be targeted. She was asked to clarify comments by transport secretary Heidi Alexander, who said on Sunday that the government would not increase taxes for those on “modest incomes”. Ms Greenwood told Sky News: “I think it means people who earn kind of around average income.Transport minister Lilian Greenwood said those on average incomes will not face higher taxes More