The Sun has warm words for Philip Hammond ahead of his Autumn Statement announcement this afternoon. The Chancellor’s plans for a rise in the national living wage, ‘a U-turn on benefit cuts to low-paid workers and a crackdown on exorbitant letting agents’ fees’ are praised for ‘improving Sun readers’ lot’. The paper goes on to concede that Hammond’s room to manoeuvre is limited given the upcoming prospect of Brexit and the ballooning deficit. But the paper says this is still the time to ‘be bold’ – urging him to slash fuel tax and air passenger duty.
But don’t be fooled, says the Guardian: Philip Hammond will take away more than he dishes out in return. It calls the Chancellor’s announcements so far ‘stocking fillers’ and says that instead of pulling ’rabbits out of a hat’ it’s ‘rather small bunnies’ that we’ve seen so far from Hammond. The paper goes on to say that the measures – including upping the minimum wage – cost the Treasury little; and the Guardian urges caution on the ban on letting agency fees – saying that these costs will still end up falling on those renting. For those ‘just managing’, there’s little to salve money worries in the long term the paper concludes: ‘If Theresa May considers this helping, her version of hurting doesn’t bear thinking about,’ the paper says.
Meanwhile in the Daily Telegraph, it’s Nigel Farage who is – once again – the talking point. The Ukip leader seems to be in the news ‘an awful lot’, the paper says, for a man who famously said he wanted his life back after the referendum. But while some – including the government, it seems – are not keen on Farage, it’s time to grow up, the Telegraph says. ‘Few politicians of the past 100 years have had such an impact without being in the government,’ the paper points out – going on to insist it’s time for ministers to put aside their ‘petulance’ and consider the fact that ‘Farage has much to offer’.
The Daily Mail focuses on the controversial news that the NHS could start asking patients to show their passports to access services. The paper says that while that’s a ‘sad’ step, ‘in this age of mass migration and cheap air travel, it is hard to think of practical alternative ways of tackling the modern scourge of health tourism’. So while NHS bosses and the BMA’s Dr Mark Porter have criticised the plans, it’s important to remember the perspective of taxpayers angry at ‘freeloaders’ and put a stop to those from overseas using the NHS for free. The paper says that with growing pressure on hospital beds and doctors, the prospects of not doing so are not worth thinking about.
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