Today’s newspapers – and the weekend press for that matter – are dominated by the story that refuses to go away. David Cameron must be wishing he could turn back time after a week defending his personal finances following the publication of the ‘Panama Papers’.
The leak of more than 11 million papers documenting the tax affairs of the rich and famous included information about the Prime Minister’s late father’s offshore fund. Amid mounting pressure and criticism over his handling of the revelations about his father, Cameron attempted to defuse the row by publishing data on his 2009-15 tax and earnings including a £200,000 gift from his mother.
The debacle has reignited the debate over inheritance tax thresholds and also led to calls for the Chancellor to publish details of his own finances.
Today the Prime Minister will face MPs for the first time since the leak. He will tell the Commons that the government is bringing forward plans for criminal penalties on companies whose employees encourage or enable tax evasion. It was announced yesterday that the government is to set up a new task force to investigate allegations of tax-dodging and money laundering.
In other news, it has been revealed that UK banks have paid out £53 billion in fines and repayments for their misdeeds over the past 15 years – £37 billion of that on Payment Protection Insurance alone – according to research by the New City Agenda think tank. Its founder, Lord John McFall – former chair of the Treasury Select Committee – told the Today programme that £53 billion would have paid for the Scottish education budget for the past decade and have given every working Scot an income tax cut of £1,000 for the next ten years.
The Guardian reports that tens of thousands of low-paid working families can expect to lose up to £200 a month as a result of changes to universal credit introduced today – the first wave of £3 billion in welfare cuts that will affect 1 million households by 2020. Ministers have said households affected by the changes could work extra hours to make up the difference, but charities have said that will be impossible in many cases, and that the cuts will push more families into poverty.
According to The Telegraph, the first ever online-only mortgage broker is set to challenge the traditional brokering model after clinching £1.55 million in seed funding. Habito claims that, in half an hour, it can find ‘the very best mortgage for each applicant’ from more than 100 lenders in the market, and process the application without any paperwork or phone calls. The firm claims that many existing brokers are able to scan just 10 per cent of the market to isolate a relevant deal before the start of a two to three week mortgage application process.
Over in the Daily Mail is a report that tens of thousands of women in their 50s and 60s will be worse off under the new state pension because of changes buried in the small print. The new state pension, which launched earlier this month, was supposed to be fairer to newly retiring women and the self-employed. But it is claimed that millions of older workers nearing retirement will miss out on the full payout because of hidden shortfalls in their National Insurance records.
There’s more bad news. The cost difference between the cheapest and average motor insurance premiums has hit new heights for the second quarter running, according to the latest findings from comparethemarket.com’s index, Premium Drivers. The price difference between average and cheapest premium now stands at more than £110 – the largest gap since records began. The year 2015 saw a £71 increase in average premiums on 2014 compared to a £2 increase the year before. And ‘premium inflation’ is hitting the youngest generation hardest – the average premium for under 30s is now over £1,000.
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