It is a day after Rishi Sunak s cost of living support package announcement, and his third momentous fiscal intervention of the year, after the February energy bills announcement and the spring statement in March, has turned out to be the biggest worth 15 billion and in some quarters has turned out to be the best received. The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation are about as positive about this as they are about anything.
Sunak finds himself in the situation faced by one of his predecessors as chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell was only chancellor briefly at the beginning of the 1950s but he went on to become a Labour leader and in 1962 he gave a speech opposing membership of the European Economic Community because it would mean the end of a thousand years of history. It was a great speech and received a great reception at the Labour conference. His wife Dora warned that all the wrong people are cheering, as Gaitskell listened to the applause on the platform. They probably feel the same way in the Treasury this morning. The Resolution Foundation says in a new analysis that the impact of all Sunak's measures this financial year is highly progressive that is a compliment. The Resolution Foundation is run by a former Ed Miliband adviser, and the leading Tory newspapers are much more sceptical.
I will post more on the media reaction to the announcement later.
Sunak was interviewing this morning and one aspect of the decision to allow people with second homes to get the 400 energy bill rebate twice for each property. People with even more homes could get even more, according to Sunak.
Sunak said in interviews that it was simplest to distribute these payments per property to get the money out of the house. He told Sky News that he considered using a council tax rebate to help most households, which would have allowed people living in the most expensive homes to be excluded, but he also said that this created other problems. He said something.
We tried to do it with the 150 for most homes announced in February and we tried to do it with a discretionary fund, but there are lots of cases of people who say hang on, I happen to live in a high council tax band house, but I need help. This universal means that we can get help for everyone who needs it.
Sunak said that second homes account for only one or two per cent of the housing stock.
Sunak said he would donate the money to charity as he did not need the 400 payment, and he urged other wealthy people to do the same. He spoke to the Sky presenter Niall Paterson, he said :
The Sunaks have several properties and his charity donations are likely to be more than 400.
I will be posting more from his interviews soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Boris Johnson is in County Durham, where he is expected to record a clip for broadcasters.
11 am : John Swinney, Scotland's deputy first minister, attends the official opening of the Scottish Covid memorial.
I try to follow the comments below the BTL line but it is impossible to read all of them. If you have a direct question, include Andrew somewhere and I'm more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, but if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line ATL, although I can't promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to draw my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.