UK Treasury chief unveils budget with $52 billion in tax hikes, promising greater investment

LONDON — British Treasury chief Rachel Reeves told lawmakers Wednesday that taxes will rise by 40 billion pounds in order to plug a hole in the public finances and provide new funding for the U.K.'s cash-starved public services, in a wide-ranging budget statement that could set the tone for years to come.

“The choices that I have made today are the right choices for our country,” she said at the end of her statement, which lasted the best part of 80 minutes. “To restore stability to our public finances. To protect working people. To fix our NHS. And to rebuild Britain.” The biggest single tax increase — worth 25 billion pounds — is a rise of 1.2 percentage points in national insurance contributions paid by employers. The levy, which pays for benefits and helps fund the NHS, will remain unchanged for employees. Reeves insisted that many smaller businesses will not be affected as she doubled the salary threshold at which they start paying it.

She also set aside 11.8 billion pounds to compensate those affected in an infected blood scandal that saw tens of thousands of people contracted HIV or hepatitis from transfusions of tainted blood and blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. She also set aside 1.8 billion pounds to compensate victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal, which saw hundreds of branch managers wrongly convicted of theft and fraud as a result of a faulty computer system.

During the election, Labour said taxes on so-called “working people” — a term whose definition has been hotly debated in the media for weeks — will not be raised. Though Reeves did not increase taxes on income or on sales, the increase on employers' national insurance contributions will likely reverberate for a while as Sunak said it was a clear breach of Labour's manifesto commitment and would lead to lower wages.

The Conservatives say they left an economy that was growing, albeit modestly, with debt trending lower.

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UK Treasury chief unveils budget with $50 billion in tax hikes, promising greater investmentLONDON (AP) — British Treasury chief Rachel Reeves told lawmakers Wednesday that taxes will rise by 40 billion pounds ($52 billion) in order to plug a hole in the public finances and investment projects to boost growth.
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UK Treasury chief unveils budget with 40 billion pounds in tax hikes, promising greater investmentLONDON (AP) — British Treasury chief Rachel Reeves is announcing 40 billion pounds in tax hikes in her first budget, saying she will use the money to “invest, invest, invest” and get the economy growing.
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