Last year, the UN said that ‘the UK government is in a state of denial about the impact of austerity on the poor’. Funnily enough, the government ‘completely disagreed’ that there is a problem. Now teachers are telling us that ‘pupil poverty has increased significantly’ with one headteacher saying ‘when schools have to buy shoes for children to wear to school on a regular basis, we must have a problem.’ They can’t all be rabid leftie Remainers, can they? This week’s education minister Damien Hinds has responded by promising more support and counselling for teachers suffering from stress. Unbelievable.
“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”
A couple of other Statement Highlights (in my world, anyway). A welcome ‘nothing happened’ on the treatment of pensions on death. They were never going to be liable to IHT (too complicated with trusts and trust law) but there was talk of making them income-taxable on the recipients at whatever age you die.