Chancellor John Healey’s plan to let HMRC raid bank accounts over unpaid taxes has sparked fears it could push those on low incomes into financial hardship.
Healey revealed at the Budget that the tax authority will get stronger powers to collect overdue tax “from those who can clearly afford to pay”.
However, there is no guarantee that a minimum amount will be left in the account – raising fears that pensioners and people on low incomes could be left without enough money to pay rent, mortgages or utility bills.
How you ‘smart fridge’ could be hacked
Household appliances, energy meters and even microwaves are vulnerable to hacking from hostile states, experts have warned.
Here’s how…
Fridge hack
Hackers sent temperatures soaring in supermarket freezers across 10 countries on Tuesday – including Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Sweden.
The incident occurred three weeks after an unprecedented cyber attack caused French freezers to heat to 50°C, spoiling millions of euros worth of food.
How was the attack carried out?
Older internet remote-control boxes that manage refrigeration were targeted with an automatic defrost function, triggering dozens of shops, including IKEA.
Security experts believe a state actor like Russia may be to blame for the attacks, which also affected fridges in a small number of British businesses.
While state-linked attackers are more likely to target supply chains or national infrastructure to cause maximum disruption, experts are now calling for homeowners to reconsider if they need appliances that connect to the internet and action from government.
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Warnings from the Government
Millions have ‘smart fridges’
A YouGov poll last year showed more than two million Britons have smart fridges.
MP Graeme Downie said people in the UK should reconsider the connected appliances in their homes.
Cellular modules
Downie warned against the use of smart cellular modules that can connect to the internet or mobile network.
What else is vulnerable?
Luke de Pulford, the co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which monitors the threat from Beijing, said any firmware in devices that requires remote software could be vulnerable to hacking from a foreign-based entity.
- “Energy smart meters, microwaves, smart TVs – those are all things that are vulnerable. But also Chinese-made CCTV equipment. These are all devices that are well known to be vulnerable,” he said.
Taking pets abroad may be about to get easier – here’s why
Pet owners are likely to get easier access to the European Union for their pets under a new UK-EU agreement, it has been reported.
Pet passports
Pet passports will be revived under a new UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement due to be agreed ahead of a joint summit reports.
Post Brexit, pet owners paid £200 to obtain an animal health certificate in order to take them abroad. Under the proposed deal, pets will now be a given a passport.
New deals with the EU
- 1Travellers will be able to bring their dogs, cats, and ferrets into EU territory for the duration of their lifetime without the need for expensive certificates. This will be implemented from 2028.
- 2UK ministers also hope to agree a deal to give car manufacturers access to the EU’s Made in Europe scheme.
- 3The EU is also looking to agree a youth mobility scheme allowing up to 100,000 Europeans to work aand study in the UK a year. Separately, Brussels is also looking for a reduction in tuition fees for EU students.
UK may have to accept almost 100,000 young Europeans a year to unlock Brexit deal
British negotiators think they can strike a youth mobility agreement with the EU while staying under the “psychologically important” figure of 100,000 visas, The i Paper can reveal.
Why Rice Krispies is no longer made from whole grain rice
Kellogg’s has removed rice grains from its Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals after “changing weather conditions” affected the quality and availability of the ingredient, the firm has said.
New formula
Rice Krispies has been reformulated to use rice flour instead of rice, while Coco Pops now contains a blend of rice flour and corn flour in place of rice.
Under the new recipes, the cereals now also contain wheat gluten, meaning they are no longer suitable for shoppers with a wheat allergy or coeliac disease.
Kellogg’s spokeswoman:
“This recent change helps us maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the and grains used in our cereals.”
The change in formula comes after this year’s El Niño weather phenomenon caused widespread droughts, floods and heatwaves across much of Asia where most of the world’s rice comes from.
Watch more from The i Paper
What to know as Republicans suffer brutal election losses
The Democrats have made sweeping gains in a bruising night for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Sweeping victories
The US midterms have seen the Democrats flip key Republican Senate seats in places such as and .
The stunning results have been widely regarded as a consequence of the cost of living crisis which has been driven by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Losing both houses will now make it hard for Trump to drive his legislative agenda.
Key Republican losses in the Senate
Democrat James Talarico defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton in Texas.
Democrat Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, defeating Republican Jon Husted.
Democrat Annie Andrews beat Trump’s hand-picked candidate Darline Graham to take the seat.
The losses keep coming
Democrat Troy Jackson won, taking the state’s Senate seat for the first time in 29 years.
Abdul El-Sayed is projected to win, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history.
Paralympian Josh Turek won a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 18 years.
Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the 100-member Senate to win a majority, while in the 435-member House, they needed three. Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election in Georgia, told supporters “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame-duck President Donald J Trump”.
Trump’s response:
I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, the President sought to defend the bruising results.
While offering to work with opponents, he also posted a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word “Veto”, suggesting he would block legislation they sought to take through Congress.
Watch more from The i Paper
Why you feel completely broke
A decent salary and watching what you spend is increasingly not enough for people to feel well off– here’s why.
Cost of living
The UK is suffering the worst decade in terms of the growth in household incomes since records began.
Due to cost of living pressures and a lack of substantial wage growth, leading think-tanks like the Resolution Foundation predict that a typical working-age household will see their disposable income fall by £1,050 or 3 per cent between now and 2029.
Disposable income growing slower
Slow growth, inflation and stubbornly high housing costs are the main culprits. While disposable incomes fluctuated throughout the 1970s and 80s, they generally rose again after a fall. Not so since the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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House prices rising faster
The average house price in the UK is currently around 6.5 times the average income, compared to around 3.5 times in 1996 and 2.5 times in 1966.
- One could argue that it is why Andy Burnham thinks Britain should rejoin the European Union and why we’ve heard so much about growth – now rebranded as “good growth” – in order to improve incomes.
More people paying higher rate income tax
One of the major reasons behind stagnated income growth is the constant freezing of tax thresholds – levels that won’t change until 2030.
You are now dragged into paying the higher tax rate of 40 per cent if you earn £50,271 or more. You stay in that bracket until you earn £125,000, but at £100,000 a year you lose your personal tax-free allowance and your entitlement to state-funded free childcare.
The NHS blood test which could find several cancers
Blood tests capable of detecting signs of several cancers from a single sample will be offered to NHS patients in a world-first trial.
New blood tests
Thousands of patients will be invited to take part in the Stride-RCT study, which aims to catch cancers at a time when treatment is more likely to succeed.
The tests – which use AI and other cutting-edge technology – could also help GPs identify patients with cancers that are difficult to diagnose.
How will the tests be rolled out?
Who is eligible?
More than 20,000 patients aged 45 or older will be invited to take part.
The tests will be offered to patients who present with symptoms such as persistent bloating or abdominal discomfort.
Where will they be available?
The £8.5m government-funded trial will be offered in more than 200 GPs across England.
How do the tests work?
The tests are designed to detect signs of cancers including bowel, pancreatic, ovarian, stomach, liver, kidney, bladder and prostate cancer.
Some work by identifying tiny fragments of DNA that are shed into the bloodstream by tumours. Others measure proteins in the blood, or use AI to analyse results.
The tests aim not only to identify possible cancer cells but also to indicate where in the body it may be developing.
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Watch more from The i Paper
HM Revenue & Customs will also be able to take money directly from a couple’s joint bank account to pay for just one partner’s tax debts, if no sole account is accessible.
Here, The i Paper takes a closer look at exactly how money could be seized – and from who.
Who the policy is designed to catch
The new powers are aimed at recovering cash from people with low-value debts “who can afford to pay but repeatedly fail to do so”, the Treasury has said.
The maximum debt pursued would be £5,000 for individuals and £10,000 for companies.
However, unlike previous debt recovery schemes, there is currently no plan to leave a minimum amount in someone’s account, raising fears it could leave some people without enough to pay their bills.
The Government said it did not “think that a minimum account balance is a necessary safeguard” because other measures “would provide enough protection”.
These will include a “tailored affordability assessment” before taking any money, and giving people the right to appeal.
People will also get a 28-day notice period before deductions begin.
How the tax raid could affect couples
From July 2029, HMRC will be able to order banks to start taking regular deductions from a person’s current account to recover tax debt that is owed.
The Government will be able to recover money from a couple’s joint account to pay for just one partner’s debt.
It will not recognise how much the partner who does not owe tax has contributed to the joint account.
The Government has said it will “only consider joint accounts if there was no viable sole account” available.
However, this could mean that debts are recovered partially from somebody who does not owe them. “Where HMRC holds the necessary information” it “will notify the non-debtor prior to any deduction and provide an opportunity to object”, the Government said.
Nimesh Shah, of tax firm Blick Rothenberg, told The i Paper that the new powers could become a “sledgehammer” that would unfairly hit pensioners, people on low-incomes, and those living with mental health issues.
Shah said he feared there was a lack of clear enough safeguards to stop money being taken from someone who might struggle to pay their mortgage or rent – pushing them into serious financial trouble.
“My concern is that vulnerable taxpayers, pensioners, those with mental health challenges, and people facing short-term financial hardship could be caught in the net,” he added. “Losing access to funds can have serious implications for paying rent, mortgages and household bills.”
The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG) highlighted that a person’s non-engagement with HMRC might reflect genuine financial problems or difficulty understanding tax debt requests, rather than a refusal to pay.
The group said it was not clear how HMRC would assess whether someone could afford to have regular debt payments deducted. “Safeguards must ensure that powers are used appropriately and deductions do not leave people struggling to meet day-to-day living costs,” Sarah Weston, LITRG technical officer, added.
A spokesperson for HMRC said the new powers would be “subject to robust safeguards, including checks to ensure instalments are affordable”, and would only be used “after repeated attempts to contact customers who have the means to pay, but refuse to engage with us”.
Draft legislation on the debt recovery plan is expected to be ready for next summer, with any seizures to start from July 2029. The measure is expected to raise £320m by 2031-32.
DWP powers to ‘snoop’ on benefit claimants
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) already has new powers to ask banks to check on the accounts of benefit claimants, in a bid to crackdown on fraud.
The first “eligibility verification measures” (EVMs) were issued last month, asking banks to identify claimants who may have undeclared savings or remain abroad longer than benefit rules allow.
These checks can be made on people receiving universal credit, pension credit, and employment and support allowance. The powers were introduced in legislation last year, aimed at saving taxpayers £1.2bn by the end of the decade.
Charities and privacy campaign groups oppose the policy, with Big Brother Watch claiming it amounted to a “snooper’s charter”.
Disability Rights UK said it remained worried that the DWP could use EVMs to “undertake fishing exercises with absolutely no evidence of fraud” – putting claimants at risk of having payments stopped “without any good reason”.
Defending the powers, Lilian Greenwood, DWP minister for fraud and debt, has said the Government was “not interested in where people do their weekly shop or how much they’re spending on new clothes”.
Banks would only be asked “to identify if somebody may no longer meet the rules for the benefits they receive, allowing us to investigate further where necessary”, she added.