Boris Johnson faced pressure yesterday
from his cabinet to cut taxes this year
to save his premiership as senior Tories
accused his government of being
unconservative and socialist.
The prime minister made a broad
pledge to deliver tax cuts once the
economic outlook improved, in an
effort to shore up his authority after
Monday’s damaging confidence vote.
Leading Tory MPs accused him of
failing to move quickly enough and said
they wanted to see Rishi Sunak, the
chancellor, deliver personal tax cuts in
his autumn budget.
Sunak is planning to focus his budget,
which is pencilled in for November, on
cutting business taxes to incentivise
investment rather than cutting person-
al taxes such as income tax or VAT. He
has said that borrowing more to fund
tax cuts will only fuel inflation, which is
predicted to rise above 10 per cent.
Johnson and Sunak are expected to
make a further intervention on the
economy next week but will focus on
cutting regulations to increase growth
rather than setting out a path for
further tax reductions.
One minister said if the government
failed to bring in tax cuts soon, the
Tories would lose the next election. “If
we keep taxation at the rate it is now we
are going to struggle,” they said. “We
are not in a good place. We have to
reduce both personal and corporation
Steven Swinford Political Editor
Henry Zeffman Associate Political Editor
Britain’s railways will grind to a halt for
three days this month when workers
stage the biggest strike in a generation.
The RMT union said it would shut
the network on June 21, June 23 and
June 25 in a dispute over proposed job
losses. There is a risk that each 24-hour
Biggest rail strike for 30 years will cause week of disruption
Ben Clatworthy
Transport Correspondent
walkout will spill into the following day,
leading to a week of disruption.
More than 40,000 workers, including
those employed by Network Rail and at
13 train operating companies, will walk
out on the three dates. A further 10,
London Underground workers will
picket on June 21, virtually closing the
network. It will be the largest strike on
the railways since 1989.Those striking include signallers and
maintenance workers, prompting fears
that rail freight could be hit, resulting in
empty shelves and a petrol shortage.
Mick Lynch, the RMT general secre-
tary, said: “Railway workers have been
treated appallingly and despite our best
efforts in negotiations, the rail industry
with the support of the government has
failed to take their concerns seriously.“We have a cost of living crisis, and it
is unacceptable for railway workers to
either lose their jobs or face another
year of a pay freeze when inflation is at
11.1 per cent and rising. Our union will
now... shut down the railway system.”
The strikes have been planned for
maximum disruption. Tens of thou-
sands of revellers will head for Glaston-
bury on June 23; the England cricketteam face New Zealand at Headingley
in Leeds on June 23-27; the UK Athlet-
ics Championships take place in Man-
chester on June 24-26; and Armed
Forces Day is on June 25, the same day
the Rolling Stones play in Hyde Park,
central London.
Grant Shapps, the transport secre-
tary, said the strikes were “incredibly
Continued on page 2, col 5Cut taxes
if you want
to survive,
PM urged
tax levels. We can’t call ourselves a
Conservative government if we have
the highest tax burden since the 1940s.”
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business
secretary, told the BBC yesterday that
he wanted to see “very radical” tax cuts
as soon as possible. He said he
remained opposed in principle to the
government’s windfall tax on oil and
gas companies, which Sunak is consid-
ering extending to electricity suppliers.
The levy is likely to be the subject of a
Tory rebellion in the Commons.
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who
was one of three cabinet ministers last
year to oppose the 1.25 percentage
point rise in national insurance contri-
butions that took effect in April, said
that the government’s agenda had to
include “getting taxes down and getting
the economy going”.
Johnson was also urged by allies to
sack 13 ministers and government aides
who have not said they backed him in
the confidence vote. Five ministers
including Alex Chalk QC, the solicitor-
general, and John Glen, who serves at
the Treasury, have defied pressure to
reveal whether they were among the
148 MPs who voted against Johnson.
Eight parliamentary private secretaries
have not said how they voted.
Sir Graham Brady, head of the back-
bench 1922 Committee, which oversaw
the vote, called on Sunak to bring for-
ward his plan to cut income tax by 1p in
the pound in 2024. “The best contribu-
tion a government can make to tackling
Continued on page 2, col 3Sad exit Emma Raducanu, 19, was forced by an injury to abandon her first match at
the Rothesay Open in Nottingham, imperilling her Wimbledon plans. Sport, page 68Covid-19 jab
inspires a
vaccine to
stop cancer
Eleanor Hayward
Health Correspondent, ChicagoA vaccine using the same mRNA tech-
nology as Covid jabs has raised hopes of
a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Half of patients given the vaccine,
which is designed to prevent tumours
from returning after surgery, remained
free of the disease 18 months later.
The vaccine was developed by
American scientists in collaboration
with BioNTech, the German company
behind Pfizer’s coronavirus jab.
Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest
common cancer: nine in ten patients
die within two years of diagnosis. It kills
10,000 people a year in the UK.
A groundbreaking trial, the results
of which were presented at the
American Society of Clinical Oncology
conference in Chicago, revealed vacci-
nes could train the immune system to
kill pancreatic cancer cells. A similar
trial is under way for bowel cancer.
Most tumours spread unchecked
because the immune system does not
recognise cancer cells as foreign. How-
ever, mRNA vaccines hijack the body’s
immune system so that it identifies mu-
tated proteins found on the surface of
cancer cells. This puts the immune
system on high alert to detect cancer
cells that remain in the bloodstream
after surgery, which are then destroyed.
The early-stage pancreatic cancer
trial involved 16 patients, who were
each given eight doses of the vaccine
intravenously after surgery to remove a
tumour. The vaccine triggered a
response in half the patients, who all re-
mained cancer-free throughout the
study. In six of the eight patients who
did not respond to the vaccine the
cancer recurred, in some cases fatally.
Dr Vinod Balachandran from the
MSK Cancer Centre in New York, the
lead author of the study, said the “very
exciting” results paved the way for
other cancer vaccines.
Dr Chris MacDonald of Pancreatic
Cancer UK hailed the “genuinely thrill-
ing progress”, adding: “Such a vaccine
would be a vital new weapon against the
deadliest common cancer.”Cabinet ministers demand action to fix economy
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