What Rachel Reeves does next? Surprised no thread on this yet. It's all over Twitter

[Sharingsomewisdom]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13764547/Rachel-Reeves-mulls-tax-hikes-spending-squeeze-raising-rents-social-housing-Chancellor-sees-Government-borrow-3bn-forecast-month.html

Or am I the only one interested what she is eying next? Any comment on the reasonableness or otherwise of Rachel's next focus?

HMRC say that around £40 billion of Tax was unpaid last year.

So double the Black Hole, running down HMRC over the last decade or so, has costs.

We'll never reduce the tax gap to zero but it shouldn't be £40 billion either.

It was a Treasury tradition either way

It clearly wasn't.

£26bn of that is small traders fiddling their tax.

Why are Labour claiming they didn't know about the overspend on asylum costs?

28 February 2024

The Government is forking out £15 million a day on putting up asylum seekers in hotels, spending £4.3 billion more of taxpayer money than budgeted on asylum support in the last year, Labour has said.

The Opposition party pointed to Treasury figures that estimate the Home Office spent £5.4 billion on asylum accommodation and support.

The Home Office’s top civil servant said the extra money claimed in the Treasury “supplementary estimates” was “a result of record levels of small boat arrivals since the Spending Review 2021”.

Ms Cooper said:

“Despite promises of action from the Prime Minister, they have not delivered and now the Home Secretary has been forced to go to the Chancellor with a begging bowl because he’s bust his budget by over £5 billion...

Labour has set out a clear plan to save billions of pounds for the taxpayer ...”

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/government-labour-yvette-

Why are Labour claiming they didn't know about the overspend on asylum costs?

Because the last government hid them.

But they did know since they pointed it out that that there was an overspend.

1.6 million people in social housing do not get benefits.

Your Guardian link says;

the ballooning costs linked to asylum and immigration have been well documented

It was even reported on GB News;
https://www.gbnews.com/news/migrant-crisis-bill-asylum-hotels

Labour also knew that funding was being diverted from the overseas aid budget towards housing asylum seekers in the UK - is Rachel Reeves discounting that funding?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13478487/Keir-Starmer-vows-foreign-aid-budget-NOT-used-pay-housing-asylum-seekers-hotels.html

They hid the extent. They managed to spend the entire year’s contingency reserve in three months hiding it.

Women are more likely to have career gaps, work in low paid jobs, work part time, be unpaid carers. There wouldn’t be an opportunity to save for an adequate private pension.

I am not surprised, at all.
More issues will come up as they go through the actual accounts, I have no doubts.
Surely no one is surprised.
We need to focus on the solutions to the problems, instead of carry on hiding them underneath rugs. And we cannot spend much money on it at all, as we clearly do not have it.
To be honest, using foreign aid may be needed for this. It is a chilling idea, with all the massive amount of people displaced and in serious need at present.
But if we do not have the money, we cannot make it appear..

It's not clear who has spent the Reserve - the previous government or the current one;

When Rachel Reeves pointed to a £6.4 billion in-year spending pressure on the asylum system, she was in effect pre-recognising the top-up that the Home Office was banking on receiving later in the year. The problem is that this time around, with major spending pressures elsewhere, there does not seem to be enough left in the Reserve for such a top-up.

There's £5 or £6 billion to be saved here - the article says the Conservatives were preparing to ditch the pledge;

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/ed-miliband-labour-honour-pledge-11bn-overseas-climate-aid

Also, I don't understand why the IFS hasn't mentioned the foreign aid budget in their analysis - surely it's a political choice on how to spend the funds;

April 2024
The Foreign Office statistics reveal £4.3bn of its foreign aid budget went on supporting refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
That represents a 16% increase from the £3.7bn that was spent in 2022.

Much of the £4.3bn is spent by the Home Office (about £2.9bn), mostly on housing for asylum seekers. The rest covers education, health and other social needs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68781450

Given that it was all spent between April and July, it’s pretty obvious. It had been going on for years and still Hunt gave away two lots of unaffordable NI cuts. He spent like a sailor on shore leave.

Here you go Clav

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/home-office-budgeting-and-asylum-overspends

I quoted from that article in my post.

Shame you didn’t read it.

BIossomtoes
Given that it was all spent between April and July, it’s pretty obvious

Do you have a breakdown? How much was the reserve? Where do the recent pay settlements fit in?

I did.

Hansard
Budget Resolutions
Volume 746: debated on Wednesday 6 March 2024

Keir Starmer
Because we have campaigned to lower the tax burden on working people for the whole Parliament—and we will not stop now—we will support the cuts to national insurance.

"April 2024
The Foreign Office statistics reveal £4.3bn of its foreign aid budget went on supporting refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
That represents a 16% increase from the £3.7bn that was spent in 2022.

Much of the £4.3bn is spent by the Home Office (about £2.9bn), mostly on housing for asylum seekers. The rest covers education, health and other social needs.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68781450"

An entirely predictable result - and it was predicted - of the Illegal Migration Act.
Don't process asylum applications. Let the applications pile up whilst we pay for housing.

The state pension is not exactly tens of thousands each year.

They should get rid off public sector pensions and just pay the going rate eg put new qualified teachers on £40,000 etc and then it’s a fairer comparisons pear and pears. Even investing in a pensions privately comes with the 1% charge of a financial adviser.

@Noras the public sector employees should get what private sector get. Company cars at a certain level, medical and dental insurance and bonuses. My friend who works in a call centre gets some medical insurance.

You want NHS workers to get private health care because the service they provide in the NHS is so shit? That's actually hilarious.

Maybe instead, public sector workers should have their pay linked to productivity? Might save a few billion while encouraging them to up their game.

@MauveCrow you want to take away pension benefits public sector staff get to make it fair with the private sector, but ignore the benefits private sector get that the public sector do not get?
Public sector do not usually even get a paid for xmas party.

The whole thing that's even more bizarre in this whole thread is the thought that 22 billion even registers as its such small change in the grand scheme of the wider economy.

Almost anyone could shave 22 billion off government spending if they sat down for 20 minutes with a red pen.

It's all political bluster and there are much much deeper economic problems.

Unfunded pensions, inefficient public sector, net zero lunacy, money printing and inflation.

The only thing Starmer has said correctly since becoming PM, is things are going to get worse.
Much worse.