Evening briefing Wednesday 26th November

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters? PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk This is the Times evening briefing on Wednesday the 26th of November. One in four workers will be paying the 40 or 45 % rate of income tax by 2030 because the Chancellor has frozen thresholds for another three years in her budget.

0:48Rachel Reeves has acknowledged millions of people will end up paying more in income tax. I know that maintaining these thresholds is a decision that will affect working people. I said that last year and I won't pretend otherwise now. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am asking everyone to make a contribution. Other tax rises include capping tax-free salary sacrifice pension contributions at£2 ,000 a month and reducing tax-free cash ices by£8 ,000. The Chancellor has also removed some property tax exemptions. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says savers will be among the hardest hit.

1:24The salary sacrifice thing, it doesn't kick into April 2029, but people don't like their idea of being penalised for saving. and salary sacrifice is a very straightforward scheme that works well. The increased taxes on savings and property income, in future you'll be paying 2 % more, so 22 % if you're a basic rate taxpayer, 42 % and 47%. I think people don't like that idea. There are also tax increases on online gambling and a new council tax surcharge on homes worth more than£2 million. The government's estimated to be spending£9 billion more on welfare by the end of the decade, partly because of the Chancellor's scrapping the two-child benefit cap in April.

2:02This is the Conservative leader Kemmy Badenoch's reaction. That smorgasbord of misery we just heard from her can be summed up in one sentence. Labour are hiking taxes to pay for welfare. This is a budget for Benefit Street, Madam Deputy Speaker, paid for by working people. The Times' chief political commentator Patrick Maguire thinks while the budget will go down well within Labour, it won't with the wider public. I've just had a text I was speaking to you from a senior Labour figure who said it's a disaster, we're on the wrong side of every statistic and public opinion. And I think that ultimately sums it up.

2:36You know, in Number 10 they used to speak of grafting realists and striving moderates as their two key constituencies, the sort of Mondeo men and women of the age. They are not going to be feeling any better off as a result of these decisions. At midday, in an unprecedented mistake, most of Rachel Reeves' budget was revealed half an hour before she announced it because the Office for Budget Responsibility published its assessment early. The OBR chair, Richard Hughes, hasn't ruled out resigning. We apologise to the Chancellor and members of Parliament for this technical error and have initiated an investigation into how this happened.

3:09It'll be reporting to our Oversight Board, the Treasury and the Commons Treasury Committee on how this happened and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. The OBR says national debt will rise as a proportion of GDP by the end of the decade and it's downgraded its growth forecast for every year after this one. The Sunday Times economics editor David Smith says the budget did little for growth. It's difficult to see what the levers of growth are. There are plenty of nods in the direction of entrepreneurship and more investment but very little that was concrete, very little to suggest that we're going to get that growth mojo back I think.

3:43Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify, and for more budget analysis, listen live to Times Radio online.

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