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Barclays boss indicates that he accepts bank taxes will rise in budget, suggests that’s ‘bearable’, and backs Healey
Kalyeena Makortoff
Kalyeena Makortoff is the Guardian’s banking correspondent.
CS Venkatakrishnan, CEO at Barclays, seems to have admitted defeat over bank tax hikes, which are expected to be a headline measure in Healey’s budget next week.
When asked whether the bank might consider tilting assets or investment out of the UK and to the US – where it also has operations – as a result of higher taxes, Venkatakrishnan gave his full backing to the chancellor.
He told reporters:
I recognise that the chancellor and the government has been entrusted with an important duty by the public and the people. And they have to balance a host of considerations. He [Healey] is the man in the arena, and I deeply respect the responsibility he bears on his shoulders and wish him well.
His long term goal is the same as our long term goal, which is to get growth.
Second, we are already a bank, which makes, effectively, half of our money elsewhere [outside] the UK. And so this is not a question of a financial hit to us. It’s bearable. It is a question of proportion and it’s a question of market signaling. But as I said, I deeply respect the responsibility that the chancellor has and he has our full support and backing.
Bank bosses have been lobbying intensively against bank tax rises since narrowly escaping higher levies during last year’s budget.
That includes JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, who said earlier this year he could scrap plans for a new £3bn London headquarters if the UK government became hostile to banks. News of the tower – which will house more than half of its 23,000 UK staff – was unveiled just days after former Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves spared the sector of further tax rises in her 2025 autumn budget.
Key events
Tories claim crime figures ‘spiralling out of control’ – and why the data doesn’t back this up
The Conservative party seems to have missed the bit in the ONS report on the crime figures where it said “crime against individuals and households has generally decreased over the last 10 years”. (See 9.54am.) Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has issued a statement saying:
Crime is spiralling out of control under Labour. Record numbers of sexual offences, knife crime and shop theft show what happens when criminals know they can get away with it. This is a direct consequence of Labour cutting police numbers by 2,000 and letting thousands of prisoners out of jail early.
The Tories justify this claim by looking at the ONS report and picking out all the worst bits (a technique not unfamiliar in the world of journalism). Their briefing highlights four figures in particular. Here is an extract.
Sexual offences have reached the highest level on record under Labour, with the police now logging around 600 of them every single day. Police in England and Wales recorded 218,994 sexual offences in the year to June 2026, the highest annual total since the series began in 2002-03 …
Police are recording more rapes of women than at any point since records began, at a rate of around 142 every day. There were 51,731 recorded rapes of women aged 16 or over in the year to June 2026, the highest figure since the series began in 2004-05 …
More people are being caught carrying knives and blades than at any point since records began. Police recorded 30,216 offences of possessing an article with a blade or point in the year to June 2026, the highest figure since the series began in 2008-09 …
Thefts and robberies from shops have reached a record high under Labour, with more than 1,500 recorded every single day. Police recorded 519,516 shoplifting offences and 31,089 robberies of business property in the year to June 2026, a combined 550,605 and the highest total since the series began in 2002-03.
But these claims are highly selective – to the point of being misleading.
On sexual offences, and rape, the ONS report points out that much of the increase over time is due to more offences being recorded, and not necessarily more of them taking place. It says “there has been a general increase in police recorded sexual offences over the last decade, largely because of improvements in police recording practices”. And it includes a specific warning about drawing the wrong conclusions from the figures.
Police recorded sexual offences are not a good indicator of trends over time. Improvements in police recording practices, the introduction of new offences, and increased reporting by victims have contributed to the level of offences in recent years.
On knives, while more people may be carrying them, the Tories have ignored the figures suggesting fewer criminals are actually using them. The ONS says:
Knife-enabled crime recorded by the police decreased by 6% in year ending (YE) June 2026 (to 48,615 offences), compared with YE June 2025 (51,567 offences). Levels remained 12% lower than YE March 2020 (55,170 offences).
And, on shoplifting, the Tories are again presenting the data in a misleading way. The ONS says:
Following a period of increases in shoplifting, there has been a 2% decrease (to 519,516 offences) in YE June 2026 when compared with the previous year (530,336 offences).
The Tories have justified their “record high” claim by combining the shoplifing figures with the figures for robberies from business properties. They describe this as “shop crime” – even though many business properties are not shops. And the ONS has a caveat about these figures too.
The number of robbery of personal property offences fell by 7% (to 57,193 offences) compared with the previous year, however, overall robbery increased by 10% (to 88,282 offences) mainly because of improvements to recording practices for robbery of business property.
And the ONS says, with shoplifting, more offences are also now being recorded than in the past.
Recent increases in police recorded shoplifting likely reflect both growth in offences and improved reporting resulting from closer engagement between police and retailers. Reporting rates for shoplifting are known to be very low and police are actively encouraging the reporting of all incidents and the submission of supporting evidence, such as CCTV, to strengthen intelligence, identify offenders, and link related offences.
Gender pay gap continuing to decline, ONS says
The Office for National Statistics has also published a report on the gender pay gap. It says:
The gender pay gap for full-time employees has continued to decline in the UK. It was 6.8% in April 2026, down from 7.2% in April 2025. This compares with 9.4% a decade ago and 16.4% 25 years ago.
This chart shows the pay gap trend over time.
Patrick Maguire was not the only person to interview John Healey yesterday. Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, spoke to the chancellor too, and he has written a blog about the most interesting points to emerge. This is what Peston says about Healey’s comments about the banks. (See 10.41am.)
Secondly, I asked Healey whether he sees the banks as making excessive profits, which would be the coherent justification for him to increase the surcharge on bank profits – as he is expected to do in the Budget next week.
He said: “You know the banks are the engine of investment in this country. The banks are doing well at the moment and that is good to see.
“It’s good for Britain – and the budget is where I’ve got decisions to take across the economy, across the tax system. I will set those out on Wednesday next week.”
This sounded like he will increase the surcharge but doesn’t have an economic rationale for doing so.
Survey shows ‘significant increase’ in proportion of adults in England and Wales experiencing domestic abuse, ONS says
There has been a “significant increase” in the proportion of adults in England and Wales who have experienced domestic abuse, the Press Association report. In its report on today’s crime figures (see 9.54am), PA says:
Some 9.6% of people aged 16 and over are estimated to have been the victim of domestic abuse in the year to March 2026, or around 4.7 million people.
This is up from 7.8%, or around 3.8 million people, in the year ending March 2025.
The rise indicates “real change” in the prevalence of domestic abuse and is a “significant increase”, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which carried out the survey.
The jump has been driven by a rise in partner abuse, experienced by 7.9% of people aged 16 and over in the latest figures, compared with 6.1% in the previous year.
Some “minor changes” to the way the survey is carried out are likely to have influenced the size of the increase, the ONS said.
But their best assessment is there has been a genuine rise in the level of domestic abuse.
While there has been a jump in the prevalence of partner abuse, figures for family abuse are broadly similar, at 2.8% of adults in the year to March 2026, compared with 2.7% in the previous 12 months.
Meghan Elkin, ONS head of crime statistics, said: “While minor survey changes and the usual uncertainty around gathering data on this sensitive topic are likely to have affected these estimates, our assessment is that the rise in domestic abuse includes real change.
“More data points are needed to further understand the uncertainty and what this tells us about trends in domestic abuse.”
Badenoch criticises government for not sending minister to speak at Police Federation conference
Kemi Badenoch has criticised the government for not sending a minister to address the Police Federation’s conference.
Addressing the federation this morning, she said she was “not scared to wade in” and not scared to “back the police”.
She told the audience:
Too often these days, we fail to recognise sacrifice and service. Whether it’s hounding brave and elderly veterans through the courts, hounding police officers who try to do the right thing, or even ordinary members of the public who step in to help only to find that they’re in trouble themselves.
It’s no wonder the people in this country are becoming too scared to wade in, too scared to do the right thing. Well, I am different. I am not scared to wade in, and I am not scared to back the police.
I think it is telling that for two years in a row, the Labour government has not sent anyone to address this conference – not the policing minister, not the home secretary.
But Badenoch also said she would not promise police officers a big pay rise.
Now, I know that you would also like a massive pay rise as well.
I’m sorry that I can’t promise that just yet – at least not on day one.
I am not going to stand here and promise something without a plan to pay for it.
Too many politicians have done that, and it only leads to disappointment.
Criminals who refuse to attend sentencing face losing prison privileges under new rules
Offenders who refuse to face their victims’ families in court for sentencing could be stripped of privileges or kept in cells for weeks under government changes granting wider powers to judges in England and Wales, Geneva Abdul reports.
Barclays boss indicates that he accepts bank taxes will rise in budget, suggests that’s ‘bearable’, and backs Healey
Kalyeena Makortoff
Kalyeena Makortoff is the Guardian’s banking correspondent.
CS Venkatakrishnan, CEO at Barclays, seems to have admitted defeat over bank tax hikes, which are expected to be a headline measure in Healey’s budget next week.
When asked whether the bank might consider tilting assets or investment out of the UK and to the US – where it also has operations – as a result of higher taxes, Venkatakrishnan gave his full backing to the chancellor.
He told reporters:
I recognise that the chancellor and the government has been entrusted with an important duty by the public and the people. And they have to balance a host of considerations. He [Healey] is the man in the arena, and I deeply respect the responsibility he bears on his shoulders and wish him well.
His long term goal is the same as our long term goal, which is to get growth.
Second, we are already a bank, which makes, effectively, half of our money elsewhere [outside] the UK. And so this is not a question of a financial hit to us. It’s bearable. It is a question of proportion and it’s a question of market signaling. But as I said, I deeply respect the responsibility that the chancellor has and he has our full support and backing.
Bank bosses have been lobbying intensively against bank tax rises since narrowly escaping higher levies during last year’s budget.
That includes JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, who said earlier this year he could scrap plans for a new £3bn London headquarters if the UK government became hostile to banks. News of the tower – which will house more than half of its 23,000 UK staff – was unveiled just days after former Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves spared the sector of further tax rises in her 2025 autumn budget.
Healey argues his budget will refute Andy Haldane’s claims about Tory policies being better for growth than Labour’s
Here are some more lines from Patrick Maguire’s interview with John Healey in the Times. This passage sums up the overall picture very well. Maguire writes:
So what is the chancellor now concentrating on? One could be forgiven for thinking him utterly unreconstructed: a party man and proud of it. There is no such thing as Healeyism, he says when the conversation turns to Anthony Crosland’s evangelism for the mixed economy: “I’m just Labour.”
“Just Labour” is exactly what the bond markets fear — and, indeed, it is what gives Kemi Badenoch hope of pulling off a comeback to rank alongside Lazarus and Bobby Ewing for utter implausibility.
As explained earlier, while not going into specifics, Healey was keen to present himself as someone reducing the burdens facing businesses – especially smaller businesses. (See 9am.) But here are some other lines.
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Healey argued that his budget next week would refute the claim made by Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, about Labour not having the right policies to promote growth. In an article for the Financial Times, Haldane said Conservative policies were better for the economy, partly because they were more likely to support “cuts to business and employment taxes and regulation to unleash animal spirits”. In his write-up, Maguire says:
It was Haldane who also said, memorably and mercilessly, that the markets had concluded that this was a “traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos”. At Westminster, this sort of criticism is at risk of curdling into thick and immovable consensus. What does Healey say to that? “I’d say to Andy Haldane,” he growls, fixing me with a cold stare, “speak to me next Thursday.” And, for the record, he speaks explicitly of “making an argument for how you bring welfare costs down” — albeit not via the “crude cuts” that were Starmer’s undoing.
[Healey] is “acutely conscious”, too, of the “trade off” between an ever-increasing minimum wage — particularly for the youngest workers — and levels of employment.
He knows the many businesses who “want to employ young people” sometimes cite that upward ratchet as a reason they cannot.
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Healey defended the part he played in bringing down Keir Starmer. Healey resigned from Starmer’s government over defence spending, and this contributed to the loss of support for Starmer in the parliamentary party that led to him standing down. Referring to this period, Healey said:
The country was ready for a change … Wherever you stood on the spectrum of the [parliamentary Labour party], there was a recognition that we needed a change.
He also argued that changing leader had been good for the party.
We have a very rare moment now. We’re in the middle of a parliament, the second half of a parliament, and we’ve got a chance of a new hearing. People are at least willing to listen again … the Labour party is actually quite determined and disciplined, and in any party, the second half of a parliament starts concentrating minds.
Robbery up 10%, while overall crime rates generally going down, ONS figures show
The Office for National Statistics’ latest report on crime figures is out. It covers crime in England and Wales in the year ending June 2026 and it starts:
Crime against individuals and households has generally decreased over the last 10 years with some notable exceptions, such as fraud.
This chart shows some of the key figures. The crime survey figures are based on what people tell researchers about the crimes they have experienced; the other figures related to the crimes reported to the police.
At this stage of the budget process, John Healey has almost certainly made all his key decisions. But, just in case he hasn’t, he could try our budget interactive. It allows you to make a decision on some of the options facing the chancellor, and then it will tell you what the impact would be on budget headroom, and how the markets and the polls might react.
Healey accepts Labour has put a ‘lot of pressure’ on business and says helping entrepreneurs will be a budget priority
Good morning. A week today John Healey, the chancellor, will be doing a media round defending the budget he is presenting on Wednesday next week. Ahead of that, he has given an interview to Patrick Maguire from the Times. As you would expect, there is no real detail in it about the measures he will be presenting to MPs. But the big picture message is very clear – and quite surprising, coming from a chancellor serving a PM who in some respects is steering left compared to his predecessor. Healey says that he wants to be on the side of bloody-minded entrepreneurs who make a profit, he acknowledges that government has made their life harder over the past two years, and he suggests that cutting the ‘cost of living’ for business is just as important as cutting the real cost of living for families.
In the quote that gives the Times its splash headline, Healey says:
I want to be a chancellor who backs business in Britain making a profit, and those entrepreneurs who, in the end, are the ones who challenge the status quo, come up with innovative ideas and are trying, some of them through sheer bloody-mindedness, to keep going through these sorts of pressures …
If you’re not making a profit, you’ve got nothing to put back into the business. And for the people who start up these businesses, the ones who really thrive and grow, they have to make a profit — and they will be much more inclined to put it back into their own business. But we want it to grow here and stay here.
And this is what he says about the government has recently been putting “a lot of pressure” on business.
If you talk to any of the businesses that have come in and have either had one-to-ones or round tables with me, I have recognised that in recent times there’s been a lot of pressure: employment law, regulation, tax, input costs, supply chains.
And so when I talk about the cost of business, and recognising that in the same way as we’re recognising the cost of living pressures, I’m conscious of that as I go into the budget for both businesses and households.
All chancellors – including all Labour chancellors – say they want to help businesses make a profit. But many people in the business community suspect that, when they face fiscal pressure, Labour government will usually default to treating business as a cash machine.
Healey’s comments about wanting to be seen as “a chancellor who backs business” and about how tax rises and the Employment Rights Act have increased costs sound like an implicit rebuke to Rachel Reeves, his predecessor. In his interview Healey defends her decision to increase employer national insurance, saying she had to deal with the “dereliction of duty” of the last Tory government on the economy. But Healey still gives the impression of wanting to be seen as markedly more pro-business than Reeves.
In his interview Healey does not give details of how he will cut costs for business next week. But, in his write-up, Maguire says:
[Healey] is expected to use the budget to make significant cuts to regulation on businesses that one senior Treasury source described as “the sludge choking firms”. Reporting requirements are likely to be abolished for many smaller enterprises, The Times understands.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes crime figures for England and Wales and – separately – annual gender pay gap figures.
10am: Ofgem chief executive Tim Jarvis and Department for Energy and Net Zero permanent secretary Jonathan Brearley give evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about achieving clean power by 2030.
10.15am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech at the Police Federation’s annual conference.
Morning: Andy Burnham is in Manchester where he is getting a flu jab, and also holding a meeting with mayors at No 10 North about mayors retaining revenue from business rates.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, speaks at a lunch at the Commons hosted by lobby journalists.
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