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by Lamiat Sabin
Parliamentary reporter
AT LEAST a million workers facing unemployment when furlough ends will be hit with council tax rises of around £100, Labour has warned.
Labour will be forcing a Commons vote today to press PM Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak into stopping their “bombshell” planned tax rise.
The government’s coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will end on April 31 and will see many workers made redundant.
Unemployment will peak at 2.6m in the second quarter of this year — a rise of one million since the last quarter of 2020 — the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecasted.
During the same month the furlough scheme ends, 2.7m furloughed workers will be hit by Mr Johnson’s plan to raise annual council tax by between £90 and £101 for households in England who live in homes in council tax Band D.
Households in Band D will face an average rise of £93 next year, according to the government’s proposals set out in the Comprehensive Spending Review.
The council tax rises will hit north-west and north-east England hardest because of the high proportion of people currently on furlough, and it is where council tax rises will be higher than the average.
Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick previously said councils would be funded to do “whatever it takes” to support their local areas but later backtracked and suggested councils should share the burden of their lost income.
His Labour counterpart Steve Reed said: “The Prime Minister’s £2 billion council tax bombshell will hit many hard-pressed families at the worst possible time — just as many receive their p45s.
“This government should not be making families pay the price for their broken promises to support councils.
“The Prime Minister must scrap this economically illiterate council tax rise — and if he doesn’t, Conservative MPs need to do the right thing and vote with Labour to protect families’ incomes and help secure our economy.”
Labour will also be forcing a Commons vote to protect the right of legal rest breaks for workers, the right of employees to refuse to work no more than 48 hours a week, and holiday pay to be calculated using the rate of pay that includes regular overtime.
