Reeves confirms Treasury reviewing gambling taxes – UK politics live | Politics
Reeves confirms Treasury reviewing gambling taxes, hinting she is open to Brown’s plan to use them to tackle child poverty
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has suggested that she is open to the idea of raising taxes on the gambling sector to fund the removal of the two-child benefit cap.
The idea is being strongly promoted by Gordon Brown, the former Labour PM who also spent 10 years as chancellor. He has been making this case today, in an interview on the Today programme and with an article in the Guardian. (See 9.14am.)
Asked on a visit in Port Talbot if she was considering Brown’s plan, Reeves said:
I talk to Gordon regularly, and saw him last week when I was in Scotland.
Like Gordon, I am deeply concerned around the levels of child poverty in Britain. No child should grow up hungry or parents not be able to afford the basics for their family.
We’re a Labour government. Of course, we care about child poverty. That’s why one of the first things we did as a government was to set up a child poverty taskforce that will be reporting in the autumn and [will] respond to it then.
On gambling taxes, we’ve already launched a review into gambling taxes. We’re taking evidence on that at the moment, and again, we’ll set out our policies in the normal way, in our budget later this year.
Reeves was speaking during a visit to a coal tip, where she was promoting an announcement about £143m being spent securing coal tips in Wales.
Key events
Treasury says more than 130 disused coal tips in Wales to be secured with £143m funding from Westminster
The Welsh government has lobbying Westminster for years for money to help it deal with the problem posed by disused coal tips in the country. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is in south Wales today to publicise Treasury funding that will address the problem, although some council leaders claim the sum allocated “only scratches the surface”.
In its new release the Treasury says more than 130 coal tips will be secured as a result of the £143m it is spending. It says:
Disused coal tips remain a legacy of Wales’ coal industry, and present severe risks for Welsh communities from landslides or flooding. Just last November, a disused coal tip in Cwmtillery, Blaenau Gwent, partially collapsed, forcing around 40 homes and families to be evacuated.
The £118m provided at the spending review by the chancellor to protect Welsh communities comes in addition to £25m from last year’s autumn budget, amounting to £143m to deliver the essential funding to protect existing homes whilst enabling new areas of land to be secured for future housebuilding by the Welsh government. When combined with funding from the Welsh government, £220m has now been invested to make coal tips in Wales safe.
Reeves says interest rates coming down under Labour in part because it has returned ‘stability’ to economy
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has also welcomed today’s interest rate cut. She told broadcasters:
I welcome the fact that interest rates have come down today.
That’s good news for homeowners, good news for businesses.
Interest rates have now come down five times since Labour came into office, in part because of the stability that we’ve managed to return to the economy after the chopping and changing, the mini-budget under the Conservatives and Liz Truss.
What that means, that fifth cut in interest rates, is that if you’re taking out a mortgage for £215,000, you’re going to be paying on a variable rate around £140 less a month than when we came to office just over a year ago.
So, this is good news for people wanting to get on the housing ladder, people remortgaging and also businesses borrowing to grow.
Reeves confirms Treasury reviewing gambling taxes, hinting she is open to Brown’s plan to use them to tackle child poverty
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has suggested that she is open to the idea of raising taxes on the gambling sector to fund the removal of the two-child benefit cap.
The idea is being strongly promoted by Gordon Brown, the former Labour PM who also spent 10 years as chancellor. He has been making this case today, in an interview on the Today programme and with an article in the Guardian. (See 9.14am.)
Asked on a visit in Port Talbot if she was considering Brown’s plan, Reeves said:
I talk to Gordon regularly, and saw him last week when I was in Scotland.
Like Gordon, I am deeply concerned around the levels of child poverty in Britain. No child should grow up hungry or parents not be able to afford the basics for their family.
We’re a Labour government. Of course, we care about child poverty. That’s why one of the first things we did as a government was to set up a child poverty taskforce that will be reporting in the autumn and [will] respond to it then.
On gambling taxes, we’ve already launched a review into gambling taxes. We’re taking evidence on that at the moment, and again, we’ll set out our policies in the normal way, in our budget later this year.
Reeves was speaking during a visit to a coal tip, where she was promoting an announcement about £143m being spent securing coal tips in Wales.
Tories call for Rushanara Ali’s resignation over rent hike after tenants told they would have to move
The Conservative party is now calling for the resignation of Rushanara Ali, the homelessness minister, after she told tenants in a house she owns they would have to move, and then increased the rent by £700 a month when it was relet after they had moved out. Ali says she wanted to sell the house, and only relisted it for rental when she could not find a buyer, but she has been accused of hypocrisy because the government is legislating to stop landlords who evict tenants on the grounds they want to sell from then swiftly re-letting.
In a post on social media, Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, said:
This is staggering hypocrisy from Rushanara Ali.
It is totally unacceptable for the Government minister in charge of Labour’s new renters laws and homelessness to have turfed out her own tenants in order to hike the rent (by over 20%)
I’m sorry, but she must resign.
A spokesperson for Ali said: “Rushanara takes her responsibilities seriously and complied with all relevant legal requirements.”
Matthew Weaver has the full story here.
JD Vance reportedly set to start family holiday in UK by staying with David Lammy at Chevening
JD Vance, the US vice president, will start his summer holiday in the UK by staying with David Lammy, the foreign secretary, at Chevening, Lammy’s grace-and-favour country home, the Telegraph reports.
In his story, Rob Crilly says Vance and his family will arrive on Friday and that, as well as staying with Lammy, they will visit Hampton Court before heading for the Cotswolds, where they are spending most of their break.
Lammy knew Vance before he became vice president and he descibes him as a friend. Speaking about the relationship to the BBC last year, he said:
We share a similar working-class background with addiction issues in our family. We’ve written books on that. We’ve talked about that. And we’re both Christians, so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.
Tories call for asylum seekers caught working to be automatically disqualified from having claim accepted
The Conservative party is also calling today for all asylum seekers caught working illegally to be automatically disqualified from having their claim accepted. In a news release, the party says:
The Conservatives are setting out new proposals that would mean asylum seeker caught illegally working should have their claim rejected automatically and face immediate deportation, either to their country of origin or to a safe third country.
The scale of this failure was laid bare when Chris Philp MP, the shadow home secretary, exposed this issue after a visit to a taxpayer-funded asylum hotel in June and found it operating as a delivery hub. Illegal working was taking place in plain sight, security guards did nothing, and the platforms continued to profit from this racket despite previous Home Office agreements.
Chris Philp MP also wrote to Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats, and the home secretary calling for an immediate crackdown on illegal working by asylum seekers. His demands included urgent enforcement against any company failing to uphold immigration law, the removal of all illegal workers from delivery platforms, and action to stop illegal working from Home Office-run asylum accommodation.
The following month, the home secretary announced a measly agreement between delivery companies and the Home Office to share information on the location of asylum hotels. It does nothing to punish offenders or close loopholes, such as account sharing, and therefore, did absolutely nothing to tackle this problem.
Labour’s failure to enforce the law is creating a pull factor for illegal immigration, leading to record crossings, a collapsing border, and a booming black market in taxpayer-subsidised gig economy jobs.
The alternative view is that asylum seekers should be allowed to work in the UK while their claim is being considered. It is one of the arguments that the journalist Nicola Kelly makes in her excellent book Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All. She says:
By allowing asylum seekers to volunteer and use the skills they have – and loosening, or ideally lifting, the ban on the right to work – research shows that the government could save £1bn over a 10-year period. Germany and France allow asylum seekers to work after six months; Sweden after just one day. The US, too, gives people permission to work while their claims are being processed. We could do the same. There is a net benefit to the economy from immigration.
Kelly’s book is well worth reading. It explains in detail how the asylum system in the UK does, or rather doesn’t, work, but it’s a book about people, not policy, with vivid, compassionate, first-hand reporting, and a strong narrative pull. I found it powerful and revealing. Emine Saner wrote about it in much more detail in an interview with Kelly we published earlier this year.
Bank of England cuts interest rate for fifth time in a year to 4%
The Bank of England has cut interest rates for a fifth time in a year amid mounting concern about the strength of the economy, Richard Partington reports. The Bank’s monetary policy committee voted by a majority to reduce its key base rate from 4.25% to 4%.
The Conservatives say they are not impressed by the news that the first small boat migrants have been detained under the “one in, one out” deal with France. In a statement, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said:
Keir Starmer’s promise last year to ‘smash the gangs’ has turned out to be nothing more than a gimmick that didn’t work, and this is just the same.
They are detaining a token handful of arrivals and in return we accept unvetted migrants from France. The whole thing is riddled with loopholes, opt-outs and legal escape routes that will make removals near-impossible.
One clause exempts anyone with a claim certified as ‘clearly unfounded’ pending court proceedings, creating a field day for human rights lawyers. Anyone claiming to be under 18 or making a modern slavery claim gets to avoid the scheme too.
94% of illegal arrivals will still remain in the UK under this deal. How exactly is that supposed to deter anyone?
DfE welcomes improvement in school absence figures for England, though problem still worse than pre-Covid
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s eduction editor.
School attendance in England continued to slowly improve last year, according to new data published this morning by the Department for Education which claimed it was a “dramatic improvement”.
The figures for the autumn term of 2024-25 showed that absence rates in state secondary schools fell by half a percentage point to 7.7% compared with the year before, while primaries also showed a slight improvement to 5%. Persistent absences – the proportion of pupils who missed 10% or more of time in the classroom – also fell, from 19.5% in 2023-24 to 17.8% in 2024-25, and well below the 24% rates seen around 2022.
However all the indicators remain above the rates of absence seen before the Covid pandemic, while severe absence – pupils missing 50% or more – rose slightly to 2%, and remains at record levels, as do absences caused by unauthorised family holidays.
The DfE emphasised that 140,000 fewer pupils were persistently absent in autumn, including 45,000 children and young people from deprived backgrounds.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said:
The record improvement in school attendance shows we are turning the tide on a crisis that saw a generation go missing from England’s schools.
Getting children back in classrooms, where they belong, is non-negotiable if we are to break the unfair link between background and success so we can build a fairer country …
When we tackle attendance head-on, everyone benefits – pupils get the consistent education they deserve, teachers can focus on driving up standards, and we build the stronger workforce our economy needs.
Green party backs Brown’s call for taxes on gambling industry to fund abolition of two-child benefit cap
The Green party has backed Gordon Brown’s call for new taxes on the gambling industry to fund the abolition of the two-child benefit cap. The party issued this statement from Natalie Bennett, a Green peer and former party leader.
Having been at the heart of the New Labour government, which unleashed the toxic, destructive gambling industry that we have today with the 2005 Gambling Act, it is good to see Gordon Brown now calling for fair taxation of the massive cash cow.
And excellent that he is calling for that to money to be used to end the two-child benefit cap, a policy deliberately causing child poverty that is astonishingly still in place a year into this Labour government.
And this is from Adrian Ramsay, the current co-leader.
Gordon Brown is right: we can’t let Reeves’s obsession with her fiscal rules push more children into poverty The answer is simple: tax wealth fairly
