Key events
Burnham cuts tax on electricity bills in first major policy announcement as PM
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. Andy Burnham has announced an £850m tax cut on electricity bills to help ease cost of living pressures in his first significant policy announcement as prime minister. It means that electricity bills will be reduced by an average of £45 a year from October.
Downing Street said the move will be partly funded by scrapping Keir Starmer’s digital ID scheme, which would have cost an estimated £1.8bn over three years.
The newly appointed chancellor, John Healey, said the cut will “bring down inflation while supporting households in every postcode”, signalling the political direction of the new cabinet. While welcomed as a positive initial step to help people save money off their bills, the policy has been criticised, including by Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, for not going far enough.
In an extraordinary intervention this morning, Darren Jones, Starmer’s former chief secretary, said the money had not been set aside for the digital ID scheme, which Burnham says will pay for the VAT tax cut. Jones, who was sacked as the Dunchy of Lancaster, wrote in an X post:
double quotation markGood news that VAT will be cut on electricity bills. It’s a simple way for families to save a few quid, and to mechanically help to keep inflation that little bit lower. But the DigitalID program was unfunded. The government will have to set out how it will pay for its new policies at the budget.
Burnham will chair his first Cabinet meeting at 12.30pm after having removed Starmer loyalists from it yesterday. The ministers to lose their jobs included Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Darren Jones, Steve Reed, Peter Kyle, Richard Hermer, Liz Kendall, Jo Stevens and Hilary Benn. But Reeves was understood to have turned down another job to return to the backbenches. We will bring you the latest throughout the day, which promises to be a busy one. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the members of the new cabinet:
Chancellor: John Healey
Foreign secretary: Ed Miliband
Home secretary: Shabana Mahmood
Health secretary: Yvette Cooper
Work and pensions secretary: Pat McFadden
Housing secretary: Angela Rayner
Business secretary: Jonathan Reynolds
Education secretary: Lucy Powell
Equalities minister: Bridget Phillipson
Culture secretary: Lisa Nandy
Defence secretary: Wes Streeting
Justice secretary: Alex Norris
Environment secretary: Angela Eagle
Energy secretary: Miatta Fahnbulleh
Scottish secretary: Douglas Alexander
Welsh secretary: Stephen Kinnock
Northern Ireland secretary: Chris Bryant
Transport secretary: Heidi Alexander
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Louise Haigh
Share
Source:
www.theguardian.com
