Working people would have been better off if Reeves had broken manifesto promise on raising income tax, thinktank says – UK politics live | Politics
important events
Question: OBR chairman Richard Hughes has previously said that none of the measures in the budget in this program are expected by the OBR to boost growth.
reeves It says no individual measures meet the threshold at which the OBR would rate them, which would require the OBR to consider they could boost growth by 0.1%.
But he says they will help grow collectively.
Question: Why should people believe you when you say you will reduce welfare spending?
reeves He says the budget includes measures to reduce fraud and waste in the welfare system.
Robinson He asks how many more people will pay tax or pay a higher rate of tax because of the income tax freeze.
reeves He says he knows the numbers.
We do. IFS announced these yesterday as follows.
Based on current inflation forecasts, extending the freeze on personal tax thresholds, which is due to expire in 2027-28, for a further three years to 2030-31 is expected to deliver an increase of £12.7 billion per year (in 2030-31). The impact of the freeze as a whole, which begins in April 2022, is estimated to increase the number of taxpayers by 5.2 million in 2030-31 and the number of high-rate taxpayers by 4.8 million. However, the actual income return and number of taxpayers will be determined by inflation, which is uncertain; It can easily be larger or smaller.
Reeves said that 60 percent of the families who will benefit from the removal of the 2-child benefit limit have working parents.
Question: Paul Johnson, who used to run the IFS, said yesterday that tax increases are mostly to fund additional spending. But you’re protecting people who don’t work because the relief bill is comingG.
reeves He says 60 percent of the families who will benefit from the removal of the two-child allowance limit have working parents.
Poverty also creates problems for children. He says that while he was visiting a hospital yesterday, nurses told him that his children were going to hospital with respiratory illnesses because they lived in cold houses.
Reeves was interviewed on the Today show
Rachel Reeves He is being interviewed on his show today.
nick robinson asks questions.
It begins by playing a clip of Reeves saying in his budget speech last year that freezing tax thresholds would violate the manifesto.
Q: The OBR says you are £6bn short. But you increased taxes by £26 billion. Are these your choices?
reeves He accepts that these are his own choices.
Question: So this isn’t the fault of the Conservative Party or Donald Trump?
reeves He says his choices are defined by the context he faces. He says there were wrong assumptions about productivity under the Conservatives.
Question: You haven’t told people the truth about what is needed.
reeves He does not accept this. He says he wants working people to pay more. But he keeps his contributions to a minimum. And this will come from 2028. He says he will also cut energy bills starting next year.
Question: Every day during the elections, think tanks were saying that the numbers did not match and that taxes should increase. You denied it. Why don’t you apologize?
reeves He says that he must act within the estimates given to him.
‘An outside party’ may have been accidentally involved in early release of budget reports, OBR chief says
Richard HughesThe head of the Office for Budget Responsibility said yesterday that an “outsider” may have been involved in the mistaken release of the budget report.
In an interview on the Today programme, he said he had written to the chancellor apologizing for the document being made public about 40 minutes before announcing the budget, allowing people to know all the details in advance.
He also said Prof Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, would be involved in the OBR’s investigation into what happened.
Hughes told Today:
The documents were not published on our website. It appears to be a link that an outsider can access.
We need to get to the bottom of what exactly happened. We will do a full investigation. A comprehensive report will be presented to the parliament.
We will do this quickly so that people can have assurance in our systems and that can be restored.
Workers would be better off if Reeves breaks income tax return promise, think tank says
Good morning. Rachel Reeves The Chancellor speaks to broadcasters and defends his budget. It hasn’t been easy, because although it turned out relatively well for Labor MPs and the financial markets (not bad at all; these are two groups whose aspirations are normally not aligned), it is being hammered by right-wing newspapers. Today is the day when the Fiscal Research Institute and the Solution Foundation, two leading think tanks on public expenditures, published their detailed evaluations and had reservations about some budget decisions.
Reeves faces questions over Labor insisting he has failed to deliver on its manifesto promise on taxes. But the Solution Foundation says it would have been better if it had broken it. He explains:
The tax pledge in the manifesto has costs for working people. The chancellor, who had previously hinted that income tax rates would be increased, instead opted to freeze personal tax thresholds for another three years. But increasing all rates by 1p would be less costly than freezing thresholds for everyone with incomes below £35,000. In fact, those outside the top 10% of the income distribution are worse off due to freezing the threshold (generating a similar amount of income) rather than rate increases.
I’ll get into what Reeves said shortly. Graeme Wearden He already has some lines on his work live blog.
Here is the agenda of the day.
9am: Çözüm Foundation is holding a press conference to discuss the budget analysis.
9.30: The ONS publishes net migration figures for year-end June 2025. The Home Office also publishes asylum figures for the year ending September 2025.
10.30: The Institute for Fiscal Studies holds its post-budget briefing.
11.30: A lobby briefing is being held in Downing Street.
Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting Warwickshire. In the afternoon he visits a synagogue in London.
If you would like to contact me, please message below the line during comments open hours (normally between 10am and 3pm currently) or message me on social media. I can’t read all messages BTL, but if you type “Andrew” in a message addressed to me, I’m more likely to see it because I’m looking for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something urgently, it’s best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has stopped posting from their official account on
I find it very helpful when readers point out errors, even minor typos. No mistake is too small to be corrected. I also find your questions very interesting. I can’t promise to answer them all, but I will try to answer as much as I can, either on BTL or sometimes on the blog.
