Prime Minister Andy Burnham will have to raise taxes or cut spending to meet his pledges on defence and the cost of living, a major think tank has said.

Burnham has announced a series of new measures since assuming office last week, including cuts to electricity bills and bringing the bus fare cap in most parts of England back down to £2.

But the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) warned the public finances will continue to be squeezed by more persistent inflation as a result of the Iran war.

It questioned whether Burnham had “fully thought through” how his promises would be paid for, but said the prime minister will have to raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere.

Stephen Millard, Niesr’s deputy director for macroeconomics, said: “There’s clearly no scope for increasing borrowing, so it is about choices.”

Labour’s manifesto pledge was to not increase taxes for working people – including income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions – which Burnham has said he will uphold.

Millard said Niesr was advocating for cost-of-living measures to be funded through higher taxes – “which could involve tax reform rather than higher marginal rates” – or spending cuts.

He said: “People have talked a lot about the welfare bill – that is an obvious place to look.

“The triple lock on pensions, that is very, very expensive, and will get more expensive as we age.”

He also pointed to potentially reforming council tax to move towards a land value tax system, or scrapping some VAT exemptions.

“Once you’ve done all of that, then I’m afraid I would break the manifesto promise and would be looking at the income tax rate.”

Niesr also said on Wednesday it expects inflation to keep rising until February 2027, peaking at 3.8% before falling back to the Bank of England’s 2% target.

The think tank said in its latest economic outlook that it does not believe the central bank will cut interest rates until 2028.

Its Director David Aikman said that “treading water is not enough” to prevent the national debt from rising.

“Every major shock this century has ratcheted the debt ratio higher, and none of that increase has been reversed,” he said.

The Treasury said the government will stick to its fiscal rules while investing in “the public services people rely on”.

“Fiscal discipline is the bedrock of economic stability and national security,” a spokesperson said.

The six basic travel adaptors also presented fire safety concerns in tests.

These included missing safety shutters – which protect people from coming into contact with a plug’s live internal parts – missing fuses and oversized pin holes.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards has noted such concerns when issuing alerts for travel adaptors.

For instance, it recently ordered the recall of one product, external it said lacked safety shutters and rejected the import of another, external, saying it presented a serious risk of fire because it did not meet UK plug dimension requirements.

Online reviews seen by ESF also sparked concerns about how widely the devices it tested may have been purchased and used.

In one review on Amazon Marketplace, a user claimed the device “fell apart in their hands” and they “could have been electrocuted” if this had happened during use.

“We require all products offered in our store to comply with applicable laws, regulations and our own policies,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

“The products identified have been removed from sale.”

They added: “If we discover a product was undetected by our automated checks, we address the issue immediately and refine our controls.”

Meanwhile a review of a universal travel adaptor on AliExpress claimed it exploded while in use.

An AliExpress spokesperson told the BBC it had removed the products flagged by ESF and was contacting affected customers to initiate a recall.

“We have also launched a wider review of universal travel adapter listings where all plug pins are shown extended at the same time,” they said, adding AliExpress would restrict listings with this “unsafe characteristic” until corrected by the seller.

An eBay spokesperson said they “combine technology, AI-supported monitoring and specialist teams to help maintain a safe and trusted marketplace,” adding its efforts have “prevented millions of potentially unsafe items from being listed every year”.

TikTok said it “robustly” enforced it policies, “with 99.5% of the violative products we remove taken down before they are listed”.

But ESF believes the government should do more to hold online sellers to account.

“Shopping in the UK is currently far too dangerous,” said Capanna.

“These platforms claim customer safety is a priority, yet our investigations show that, in reality, they perpetually fail to prevent dangerous goods being made freely available to the public.”

It has called for online marketplaces to be made legally responsible for products sold on their sites, saying this would help protect consumers from dangerous electrical goods.

Consumer group Which? recently said it discovered phone chargers for sale online that posed similar dangers to users, external.

“Badly designed electricals can have life-altering – even fatal – consequences,” said head of consumer protection Sue Davies.

“It’s appalling that online marketplaces continue to fail to prevent dangerous products from reaching consumers, despite countless warnings.”

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Sarah James, and I lead the Tech, Media and Telecom News team within S&P Global Market Intelligence. It is my pleasure to moderate today’s webinar, Orbit as the Next Data Frontier: Capital Flows, Risks and Realities.

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Johnson & Johnson (J&J) on Monday said it reached a settlement that it would pay an estimated $5.5 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its baby powder and talc products cause ovarian cancer, which could end years of litigation on the subject.

The company said the proposed settlement would cover about 76,000 claims – including those that have been consolidated in federal court in New Jersey and related cases in state court – to cover nearly all the outstanding claims against J&J.

J&J previously settled most of the cases alleging its talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma.

The deal was confirmed by plaintiffs’ law firms on Monday, saying it was a good resolution after a decade-long court battle. The deal has to be accepted by 95% of the ovarian cancer claimants in state or federal court before it becomes final.

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Johnson & Johnson announced a deal to settle talc powder lawsuits. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

J&J denied wrongdoing in its announcement of the settlement, saying that the plaintiffs weren’t able to prove their claims that the talc products caused cancer cases and that the settlement is a way of efficiently ending the litigation.

“While we are confident the company would ultimately have prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,” said Erik Haas, worldwide VP of litigation at Johnson & Johnson.

The company expects to pay out $3 billion in 2027 and make further payments in 2028, though the deal could be worth more depending on how many people participate in the settlement.

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Chris Seeger, an attorney who represents about 2,500 clients with talc claims and helped negotiate the settlement, said J&J could ultimately pay $7 billion or more as the settlement doesn’t cap the total payout and rather assigns specific values to qualifying ovarian cancer claims.

Seeger told Reuters in an interview that the plaintiffs “got a fair settlement, and our clients are going to be happy with it.”

The settlement comes after J&J secured a series of courtroom victories, including in individual trials, moves to disqualify plaintiffs’ lawyers and rulings against experts used by plaintiffs. The company won a significant court victory last week when a federal judge cast doubt on individual plaintiffs’ ability to prove that talc specifically caused their ovarian cancer.

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Johnson & Johnson has denied that its talc products caused cancer and said the settlement is a way to end the litigation. (Cristina Arias/Cover/Getty Images)

J&J has long denied that its talc products caused cancer, saying the products were safe and didn’t contain asbestos. It stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020 and switched to a cornstarch product.

The company attempted a legal strategy in which shell-company subsidiaries declared bankruptcy in an effort to settle the cases, though that proved unsuccessful.

It had a mixed record when talc cases went to trial, winning some outright and reducing verdicts on appeal, though it was hit with a multibillion-dollar verdict in a case brought by 22 women.

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The new settlement only applies to existing claims and doesn’t address future lawsuits. The exclusion of future claims made more money available to current plaintiffs and also accelerated the payments so that all claims will be paid within 18 months instead of being spread out over more than a decade, Seeger said.

Reuters contributed to this report.