Money news

A former policeman has been sent to jail for organising a huge VAT fraud involving bogus sales of mobile phones.

Prime minister's comments follow call from leading City figures for 50p rate to be scrapped in order to boost economic growth

David Cameron has indicated that the top rate of income tax will stay in order to ensure that the deficit reduction programme is fair and that "those with the biggest shoulders bear the biggest burden".

The prime minister's comments followed calls from leading City figures for the 50p tax rate to be axed to boost economic growth.

Cameron insisted he wanted to see responsibility at the top as well as the bottom of society as he also signalled that the government could block a proposed £500m bonus payout for investment bankers at the largely state-owned RBS.

But he said he had no intention of getting into a war of words with the banking sector over the next six months, vowing to do all he can to "keep the economy safe" amid lower than predicted growth and ongoing turmoil in the eurozone.

Cameron made his comments on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show after the chancellor, George Osborne, was urged to accelerate plans to scrap the top rate of income tax.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, more than 30 of the City's top figures said scrapping the top rate of tax and increasing the tax-free personal allowance by £1,000 more than planned next year would have a "disproportionately positive impact" on stimulating growth.

Senior Tories have been calling for the levy on those earning more than £150,000 to be dropped, arguing that it is counter-productive. But there are fears that such a step could be politically explosive amid austerity measures.

Cameron told Vine he had been "very clear" that the deficit reduction programme had to be carried out in a way that was fair.

"We have to try and do this in a way that is fair so that the broadest backs bear the biggest burden. That's why we haven't changed, for instance, the 50p tax rate," he said.

"That's why we have put in place a whole series of changes to tax allowances that have meant that the people at the top who are earning the most are actually contributing the most to cutting the deficit."

Asked about the anger of those who feel ordinary people are paying the price for a crisis caused by the banks, Cameron said there was "a lot of truth in that".

But he insisted the government was not "sitting back", citing the bank levy that raises £2.5bn a year, what he called "tougher controls" on bonuses, more transparency on pay and the guaranteed lending targets to businesses under the auspices of the Merlin project.

"That's the nature of the deal we needed to do, and I think the right thing," he said.

He was also asked about reports that RBS planned to hand out up to £500m in bonuses.

The bank's pay pool, from which salaries and bonuses are paid, is understood to stand at £1.99bn, only marginally lower than the 2010 figure of £2.14bn.

Cameron said: "Let's be clear – that is not the agreed figure. The British government is a major shareholder in RBS. That is a proposal I have read about in the newspapers, that's not agreed. We have a very big influence over it. We can stop the £500m, absolutely."

Cameron said Britain was going to face a difficult time because of the eurozone crisis but that he wanted to ensure the country came "safely through the storm".

Earlier, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said cutting the top rate of tax while millions of people on ordinary incomes were struggling to make ends meet was the not the right priority "regardless of what people say in letters to newspapers".

Speaking during a visit to a childcare centre in north London, he said: "I do not believe that the priority at a time like that is to give a tax cut to a tiny, tiny number of people who are much, much better off than anyone else."

The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, reiterated his view that the government needs to change course on the economy, accusing Cameron of being a prime minister who "only wants to blame the eurozone" for Britain's woes.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Balls said the economy needed tax cuts and increased spending on infrastructure to boost demand, but argued that abolishing the 50p rate would not be the right change to make.

He said: "I don't think that is the right stimulus myself – but I think a tax cut and spending on infrastructure now is the only way to get the economy moving, unemployment down and to get our deficit down.

"Our chancellor's head is buried in the sand. The prime minister only wants to blame the eurozone. This will not work. It is grossly irresponsible, and we need a change of course."

• Tax and spending
• Income tax
• Tax
• David Cameron
• George Osborne
• Economic policy
• Liberal-Conservative coalition
• Nick Clegg
• Conservatives
• Liberal Democrats
• Ed Balls
• Labour
• Banking
• Financial sector

Hélène Mulholland
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Pushing people to file tax returns online has been a real achievement but it is unclear whether it provides value for money, a report says.

Some 140,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds could qualify for free nursery places under a scheme due to be rolled out in England.

How much does the government help graduates get a paid job? We look at what the Graduate Talent Pool website has to offer

• Get the data

This week The Guardian championed the country's unpaid interns and challenged the assumption that to gain experience graduates should work for extended periods for free.

To research this news piece the data team scraped the government's Graduate Talent Pool website run by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

The aim of the website is stated as:

The Graduate Talent Pool is designed to help new and recent graduates gain real work experience. It makes finding, applying for and starting an internship as easy as possible.

But does this mean mostly working for free?

We scraped the website on the 11th October this year. Of the 621 job postings 315 were paid and 306 were not. Here the unpaid jobs includes those listed on the website as 'Not paid' or 'Expenses only'. You can see the breakdown in this pie chart:

But some of the job postings were for more than one job. If we take this into account then there was a total of 3,886 jobs posted; 1,254 of which were unpaid and 2,629 paid. Bear in mind, though, that one of the paid job posts was for 1,000 jobs, which could be a typo, but certainly has skews the results.

To see how long the unpaid internships lasted we put together this pie chart:

You can see that almost 30% of the unpaid posts were over four months long.

To find out where these jobs were based we put together this chart:

Are the jobs mostly in places where living costs are low? No, you can see that overwhelmingly the posts are London based, with 61% in inner and outer London. Of these purely London based postings, 124 where paid, 190 were not paid and in two cases the pay was unknown.

If we break this down further then the number of London based paid jobs is 1176 and 310 unpaid. This, again, is largely because of one of the paid London postings is for 1,000 jobs.

When we look at the agencies advertising there are 333 different companies advertising on the website. The company that posted more jobs than any of the others is "Inspiring Interns" with 8.3% job postings, followed by "Student Gems" with 5%.

Here is all of the data in a Google spreadsheet and there is a summary of the data below. Please let us know what you think in the comments.

Data summary

Download the data

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

More data

Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

World government data

• Search the world's government data with our gateway

Development and aid data

• Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?

• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group
• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory
• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook

• Student finance
• Employee benefits
• Student politics
• Students
• Student work
• Government data

Lisa Evans
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

They can sometimes be a good way of saving money, but do homemade presents just make the giver too Scrooge-like?

Britons are slashing the amount they spend on Christmas this year, but are planning to make and bake more presents than ever, according to a survey by Good Food magazine.

The magazine found that 31% of us are planning to cut present spending this year, with just 11% planning to spend more. But instead of cutting friends and relatives off the gift list altogether, 33% are planning to make and give homemade presents – up from 8% last year.

The first part of this contradicts other surveys, which have indicated that people don't intend to cut back at all. But the second part definitely rings bells with me at least.

In the past couple of months I have made jars of quince jelly and bottles of chilli sherry to give away as Christmas presents – partly because I love these two things myself, so can't imagine anyone not wanting to get them as a gift, but also, I admit, to make use of the autumn glut in the garden and save money.

But there's the rub. Does making or baking a gift actually save money?

One colleague who shall remain nameless moaned that making coconut ice for her uncle last year cost more than she would normally spend on him. She admits, somewhat grudgingly, that she did benefit from a fair amount of tasting during production, but adds: "I had to buy a bag of desiccated coconut (88p for 250g), two tins of condensed milk (£1.44 for a 397g tin) and a jar to put it in (£4), so altogether it came to about £7."

Another colleague, who is intending to make pickled ginger and chilli oil for the second year running as gifts, says it does save him money: "I'm so lazy about buying presents, it's just easier to buy expensive ones – never less than £10 and often up to £30. So even though I buy the jars and bottles it does save me money."

Not all homemade gifts work. One relative knits jumpers or other garments for my daughter every year. When my daughter was little I could get her to wear them, especially if they had a horse or cat on the front. Now she's a teenager, they are instantly discarded.

But personally, I would rather receive a homemade jar of pickled ginger than a box of Thorntons chocolates, which seems to be the default present of choice in my family. Much better for the waistline, and apparently better than fresh ginger when used in cooking (according to the colleague who makes it).

So does this make my colleagues and I look like cheapskates? What homemade gifts would you be happy to receive, if any?

• Saving money
• Family finances
• Consumer affairs
• Christmas

Jill Insley
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds