Jeremy Hunt rejects claims about Tory overspending as ‘absolute nonsense’
In interviews this morning Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, rejected Rachel Reeves’ claim that he left a £22bn black hole in the public finances.
Referring to the £6.4bn overspend on immigration and asylum measures, he claimed that this problem was known and that the Conservative government had a policy, the Rwanda plan, to deal with this.
Speaking to Sky News, he said:
We were warned by the Home Office, that the asylum bill could be up to £11bn a year by 2026 – that number was in the public domain.
And so we had a plan to deal with it. It was the Rwanda plan. What Labour did was they cancelled that plan on day one. As a result, all the money was spent on it without any of the benefits.
Referring to Reeves’s claim that the last government had spent the annual reserve three times over within the first three months of the financial year, he said that was “absolute nonsense”.
He went on:
We would have been able to live within our means. You can accuse me of making many mistakes, but not taking tough decisions on the public finances to make sure that they are in order is something that no one would accuse me of.
Key events
Andrew Dilnot says Labour has broken pre-election promise to implement cap on social care costs his report championed
Andrew Dilnot, the economist who produced the report saying adult social care costs should be capped, has accused the government of breaking a promise to implement the policy.
Speaking to Times Radio, he said that during the election campaign Wes Streeting, who was then shadow health secretary and who is now in charge of health in cabinet, said Labour would go ahead and introduce the cap, as planned by the Tories.
Dilnot first proposed a cap in a report published in 2011. Successive Tory governments delayed implementing this plan, but under Rishi Sunak the government was committed to bringing in the cap from October 2025. That would have imposed a cap of £86,000 on how much anyone would have to contribute to the cost of their own care during the course of their life.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on 16 June, Streeting said he was committed to this policy. He told her:
One of the things that we’ve committed to is – obviously the cap on care costs is due to come in, I’ve wanted to give the system the certainty this side of the election of knowing we’re not planning to come in and upend that and scrap that.
When Kuenssberg asked him to confirm that Labour would stick to the plan set out by the Tories, and the October 2025 date, he replied:
Yeah, and I’ve met with Andrew Dilnot. What he set out is a framework that can also be adjusted to make it fair and more progressive when resources allow, but that is something that is already there. I’m not interested in tearing things down, until we’ve got something better to put in its place.
Dilnot told Times Radio this meant Labour had broken a promise made to voters. He said:
I think people have got a reasonable case for breach of promise.
Wes Streeting, who’s now the secretary of state for health and social care, in the run up to the election said one of the things that we’ve committed to is the cap on care costs, ‘I’ve wanted to give the system the certainty this side of the election.’
So they promised they’d do it. Now, of course, we could say that’s just politics. But if we can’t take seriously when members of the shadow cabinet become the members of the cabinet and have made a promise, what are we to do?
This allegation is serious because generally Labour was very careful about not making promises during the election campaign it did not intend to keep.
Although the Tories argue that, if Rachel Reeves raises taxes in the autumn budget, she will be breaking promises, Labour only made a firm commitment not to raise a limited number of taxes (principally income tax, national insurance and VAT). The Tories repeatedly highlighted the multiple taxes where Labour was not ruling out an increase.
They also criticised Labour for not ruling out means-testing winter fuel payments, which meant that when Reeves announced this yesterday, she could not be accused of breaking a pledge.
In his interview with Sky News this morning Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, said that it was “disappointing” that Rachel Reeves had called him a liar. Asked about her comment (see 8.06am), he told Sky:
I think it’s very disappointing that the new government is choosing to do politics this way. I think it actually discredits politics when people call each other liars.
I thought more highly of Rachel Reeves. I actually praised her on election night as being a committed civil servant. I think she can do better than that.
Electoral Commission reprimanded over data breach that left 40m people’s data exposed to hackers
The Electoral Commission has been reprimanded over online security lapses which allowed a database containing details of 40 million voters to be hacked.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a formal reprimand after it found that the Electoral Commission did not ensure its servers were kept up-to-date with the latest security updates.
Stephen Bonner, deputy commissioner at the ICO, said:
If the Electoral Commission had taken basic steps to protect its systems, such as effective security patching and password management, it is highly likely that this data breach would not have happened.
By not installing the latest security updates promptly, its systems were left exposed and vulnerable to hackers.
I know the headline figures of 40 million people affected caused considerable public alarm when news of this breach emerged last year. I want to reassure the public that while an unacceptably high number of people were impacted, we have no reason to believe any personal data was misused and we have found no evidence that any direct harm has been caused by this breach. The Electoral Commission has now taken the necessary steps to improve its security.
This action should serve as a reminder to all organisations that you must take proactive and preventative measures to ensure your systems are secure. Do you know if your organisation has installed the latest security updates? If not, then you jeopardise people’s personal information and risk enforcement action, including fines.
As PA Media reports, the data breach, which has been blamed by the government on Chinese hackers, occurred in August 2021 but was not identified until October 2022.
New redress scheme opens for post office operators affected by Horizon scandal
The new compensation scheme for post officer operators wrongly accused of stealing money because of the Horizon IT scandal is now open, the Department for Business and Trade has said.
In a news release, it says:
Postmasters whose convictions have been overturned by the Post Office Offences Act (including that passed by the Scottish Government) can now apply to a new redress scheme.
From today, postmasters are invited to come forward and register for the scheme, known as the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme (HCRS). Once eligibility is confirmed the new scheme will provide swift and fair redress, allowing those affected to rebuild their lives …
Postmasters eligible can either accept a fixed settlement of £600,000 or those who believe their losses exceed that amount can choose a full claim assessment route. This will mean their application will be fully examined by a team of dedicated caseworkers in the Department for Business and Trade.
The scheme will be delivered by the Department for Business and Trade with a key aim of providing as much transparency as possible about how it will operate and how decisions will be taken on redress. Guidance has been published today which will allow postmasters to see how much redress they may be eligible for and what will be taken into account when assessing applications.
These posts on X are from George Eaton from the New Statesman on the difference between George Osborne and Rachel Reeves.
Reeves rewarding a key voter constituency – public-sector workers – under the guise of austerity is Osborne-esque but definitely not Osbornite.
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) July 30, 2024
Reeves rewarding a key voter constituency – public-sector workers – under the guise of austerity is Osborne-esque but definitely not Osbornite.
Osborne froze public sector pay and refused to means-test pensioner benefits. Reeves has done the opposite. It’s almost as if Labour and the Tories have different electoral coalitions…
Reeves refuses to say HS2 will definitely run to Euston station in London
In her interview with LBC this morning, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, refused to say the HS2 high-speed rail line will definitely reach Euston station in London.
When Rishi Sunak axed plans for the Birmingham to Manchester phase of HS2 last year, he also left a question mark over the future of the final 4.5 mile stretch into Euston.
The line will definitely run from Birmingham to Old Oak Common, a station in west London. Sunak said he wanted the line to run to Euston, but the last link is dependent on the project securing private sector funding.
Asked if HS2 would definitely run to Euston, Reeves told LBC:
We will look at the details of all of the projects that we have inherited. But look, we’ve made some difficult decisions yesterday on road and rail.
Jeremy Hunt rejects claims about Tory overspending as ‘absolute nonsense’
In interviews this morning Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, rejected Rachel Reeves’ claim that he left a £22bn black hole in the public finances.
Referring to the £6.4bn overspend on immigration and asylum measures, he claimed that this problem was known and that the Conservative government had a policy, the Rwanda plan, to deal with this.
Speaking to Sky News, he said:
We were warned by the Home Office, that the asylum bill could be up to £11bn a year by 2026 – that number was in the public domain.
And so we had a plan to deal with it. It was the Rwanda plan. What Labour did was they cancelled that plan on day one. As a result, all the money was spent on it without any of the benefits.
Referring to Reeves’s claim that the last government had spent the annual reserve three times over within the first three months of the financial year, he said that was “absolute nonsense”.
He went on:
We would have been able to live within our means. You can accuse me of making many mistakes, but not taking tough decisions on the public finances to make sure that they are in order is something that no one would accuse me of.
Reeves refuses to say if Labour will impose cap on adult social care costs before next election
Yesterday Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said the government was shelving plans to impose a cap on the amount adults might have to pay for their own social care. This is something governments have been promising, but repeatedly delaying, since Andrew Dilnot recommended one in a report published in 2011.
The report published by the Treasury was unclear as to whether the plan was being shelved for good, or just for the foreseeable future. It said the government was “not proceeding with adult social care charging reforms” and went on:
The previous government committed to introduce these in October 2025 but did not put money aside for them. The reforms are now impossible to deliver in full to previously announced timeframes.
In her Today programme interview, asked if a cap would be imposed during this parliament (ie, before 2029), Reeves replied:
Wes Streeting [the health secretary] will work with the sector to now take forward plans to improve social care, and indeed to improve the crumbling state of our hospitals, because of the mess left by behind by the Conservative government.
But the worst thing that I could have done yesterday was to just accept that we were going to have to borrow £22bn more. That would have put at risk our economic and our financial stability.
We saw what happened when the previous prime minister, Liz Truss, did that. It resulted in pensions being put in peril, financial market turbulence and mortgage rates, interest rates and rents all going through the roof.
Reeves claims £350m cost of 22% pay rise for junior doctors ‘drop in ocean’ compared to overall cost of NHS strikes
In her interview on Times Radio this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said that funding the 22% pay rise for junior doctors would cost about £350m. She said that was “a drop in the ocean” compared to the £1.7bn direct costs of the NHS strikes. (See 8.16am.)
The £1.7bn figure is what the Treasury said in its document yesterday was the direct cost of strikes to the NHS. The report says the strikes also had a direct and indirect impact on the wider economy. It says:
Direct economic impacts. ONS GDP data covering previous strike days highlights lost activity across the health sector. In July 2023, one of the main contributors to the fall in monthly output was the human, health and social work activities sub-sector, which fell by 1.2%. This was attributed to a 2% fall in the human health activities industry amidst strike action from healthcare workers (senior doctors, radiographers and junior doctors).
Indirect economic impacts. There are also likely to be indirect economic effects from the impact of industrial action on health outcomes. The NHS elective waiting list in England reached a record high of 7.8 million in September 2023 up from 4.6 million in December 2019, in part exacerbated by industrial action. Over a similar period, ill-health related inactivity has increased sharply and has been the leading reason for rising economic inactivity, standing at a near-record 2.8 million people in the three months to May 2024. Analysis by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has highlighted that the record size of healthcare waiting lists has likely contributed to the increase in ill-health related inactivity.
