Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rules out bringing back cap on bankers’ bonuses – UK politics live | Politics
[ad_1]
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rules out bringing back cap on bankers’ bonuses
Good morning. Keir Starmer has said that he is “bomb-proofing” Labour’s policy offer before the election, which largely consists of identifying any proposal likely to be criticised as leftwing, radical or anti-aspiration by the Daily Mail and consigning it to the bin. The latest example has emerged today.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has said Labour would not reinstate the cap on bankers’ bonuses that was introduced in 2014, as part of an EU initiative intended to limit the risk-taking in the financial sector blamed for the 2008 crash, and abolished by Liz Truss in her mini-budget.
In an interview with the BBC, Reeves said:
The cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances.
But that has gone now and we don’t have any intention of bringing that back.
And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.
The announcement won’t come as a huge surprise, and it will be welcome in the City, where analysts argued the cap never worked anyway because all it did was encourage banks to pay much higher basic salaries as an alternative. But it is another example of the gap between Labour and the Conservatives on economic policy narrowing.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: James Cleverly, the home secretary, gives evidence to the home affairs committee.
9.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, holds a press conference on independence in Cardiff.
10am: Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, gives evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in Edinburgh. We will be covering that on a separate live blog.
12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, makes a statement to the Commons about the deal with the DUP to restore power sharing.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
James Cleverly gives evidence to Commons home affairs committee
James Cleverly, the home secretary, is giving evidence to the home affairs committee. It is his first appearance before them since he was appointed in November last year.
He is appearing with Sir Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office.
Rycroft’s last appearance at this committee was a disaster, and so Cleverly is unlikely to get an easy ride.
According to the committee, the hearing will cover small boats and Rwanda, legal migration, the Home Office’s culture, violence against women and girls, and policing.
There is a live feed here.
Luke Tryl, who as UK director for the campaigning group More in Common carries out extensive research into public opinion, says Labour may be making a mistake in ruling out restoring the cap on bankers’ bonuses. (See 8.57am.)
Of course Labour needs to build good relations with business but they risk missing how the mood of the country has shifted on business/banks. Among the angriest I have heard people in focus groups is on the lack of a windfall tax and sense some are profiting from other’s misery.
Of course Labour needs to build good relations with business but they risk missing how the mood of the country has shifted on business/banks. Among the angriest I have heard people in focus groups is on the lack of a windfall tax and sense some are profiting from other’s misery. https://t.co/muTm6Fg3PU
— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) January 31, 2024
Dame Andrea Leadsom, the health minister and a former business secretary, has played down complaints that Brexit has led to higher costs for businesses, saying there are always costs to doing business and that Brexit brings opportunities.
On Sky News this morning, asked to respond to the case of a florist struggling to import flowers from the Netherlands because of the cost of post-Brexit checks, she replied:
Businesses always face the cost of doing business. Businesses knew at the time of Brexit that in leaving the European single market there would be additional checks at the border because, by definition, we were no longer in that single market. There was no surprise about that.
I can certainly remember as business secretary myself back in 2019 every day meeting with businesses, roundtables, to help them to prepare for us actually leaving the European Union and to understand the additional checks that would be required.
So businesses are used to the costs of doing business. I understand that today is a big news story because it is something that finally has come home to roost.
But the fact of the matter remains that businesses have huge opportunities with other parts of the world which are the direct benefit of us leaving the European Union.
Yesterday, as Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, set out details of the deal he has got from the UK government to adjust the Windsor framework, there were no senior figures from his party speaking out to denounce the deal. Full details are only being published this afternoon.
But there was mostly silence from Tory Brexiters. During the Brexit negotiations, the DUP and the hardline Brexiters were aligned in their opposition to Theresa May’s plans, but it has been reported that the new deal might limit the extent to which the UK diverges from EU rules, and this is something liable to provoke the Tories.
Today the i says Brexiters may claim Brexit has been betrayed. In their story, Arj Singh and Hugo Gye report:
But the Tories are said to be concerned about the extent of the screening mechanism, after the Telegraph reported that all legislation would need to be accompanied by a ministerial statement saying it did not have an adverse effect on internal UK trade.
While this would not stop ministers diverging from the EU, even if it created trade barriers in the Irish sea, Brexiteers are concerned that it is a significant extra hurdle.
A source from the Tory European Research Group (ERG) told i it “amounts to much the same” as alignment with the EU.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rules out bringing back cap on bankers’ bonuses
Good morning. Keir Starmer has said that he is “bomb-proofing” Labour’s policy offer before the election, which largely consists of identifying any proposal likely to be criticised as leftwing, radical or anti-aspiration by the Daily Mail and consigning it to the bin. The latest example has emerged today.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has said Labour would not reinstate the cap on bankers’ bonuses that was introduced in 2014, as part of an EU initiative intended to limit the risk-taking in the financial sector blamed for the 2008 crash, and abolished by Liz Truss in her mini-budget.
In an interview with the BBC, Reeves said:
The cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances.
But that has gone now and we don’t have any intention of bringing that back.
And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.
The announcement won’t come as a huge surprise, and it will be welcome in the City, where analysts argued the cap never worked anyway because all it did was encourage banks to pay much higher basic salaries as an alternative. But it is another example of the gap between Labour and the Conservatives on economic policy narrowing.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: James Cleverly, the home secretary, gives evidence to the home affairs committee.
9.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, holds a press conference on independence in Cardiff.
10am: Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, gives evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in Edinburgh. We will be covering that on a separate live blog.
12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, makes a statement to the Commons about the deal with the DUP to restore power sharing.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
[ad_2]
Source link