Rachel Reeves aims to find £40bn in budget but several ministers have written to Keir Starmer about spending cuts
Cabinet ministers have pushed back against planned cuts to their departments in the upcoming budget, with several writing to Keir Starmer to contest them.
Several are understood to have shared their concerns at the likelihood of deep cuts to unprotected departments such as housing and transport.
Continue reading...Latest PMQs comes as sources say chancellor is briefing ministers that £40bn will need to be found in the budget
Robert Jenrick has finished his speech, and he is now taking questions.
Q: Kemi Badenoch says she is Labour’s worst nightmare. Is she right?
I think that our party faces an existential challenge right now. Our party has no divine right to exist. That’s why we need to get the choice right in this leadership election, and that’s why I stand for ending the drama, ending the excuses, and actually delivering for the British people.
Continue reading...Payments such as universal credit linked to previous September’s figure, meaning a rise of just 1.7% in April
Last month’s surprise fall in UK inflation lands with bad timing for millions of people who receive state benefits linked to the figure, who can now expect their payments to rise by just 1.7% next April.
A number of benefits, including universal credit, are increased each tax year in line with the cost of living figure for the previous September.
Continue reading...Surprise annual drop to 1.7% in September raises chance of interest rate cuts, increasing budget leeway
Inflation in the UK has fallen to its lowest level in three and a half years, giving a pre-budget boost to Rachel Reeves as expectations grow for the Bank of England to cut interest rates.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the consumer prices index dropped sharply to 1.7%, down from 2.2% in August, in a bigger fall than anticipated in financial markets, driven by lower air fares and petrol prices.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Group of UK MPs says foreign secretary must ‘engage with China as it really is’ amid rapprochement drive
David Lammy must “engage with China as it really is under the leadership of Xi Jinping” and raise human rights concerns during his trip to the country, UK parliamentarians who have been hit with sanctions by Beijing have said.
The foreign secretary is expected to hold high-level meetings in China this week. The visit forms part of an effort by Labour to improve relations with China after they deteriorated under successive Conservative governments. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, plans to travel to the country next year and restart high-level economic dialogue.
Continue reading...Source says backstage ‘brush-by’ did not include discussion of VIP protection given to star, a decision made by Scotland Yard
Keir Starmer met Taylor Swift at one of her London concerts days after a decision was taken to grant her a “blue light” police escort, No 10 sources have confirmed.
The prime minister and his family had a 10-minute meeting with the pop megastar and her mother, Andrea, backstage at Wembley on 20 August, with the conversation covering the Southport murders, which took place at a Swift-themed holiday club.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s words will be interpreted as signal she will not give in to ministers over cuts she imposes in budget
Rachel Reeves has told the cabinet that the UK still faces a £100bn black hole in the public finances over the next five years amid concerns that ministers are yet to grasp the full scale of the fiscal deficit ahead.
At a meeting of the political cabinet, the chancellor said the £22bn gap this year – which the government has blamed on their poor economic inheritance from the Tories – would be a recurring cost each year of this parliament.
Continue reading...Move reignites row over Labour figures with private interests having access to government
Wes Streeting is to hand Alan Milburn a lead role in the running of his health ministry, in a move that has reignited the row over Labour figures with private interests having access to government.
The health secretary is preparing to appoint Milburn, who was a radical reformer of the NHS in his time in that post under Tony Blair, as the lead non-executive director of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Continue reading...The PM is surrounded by Blairites, from Pat McFadden and Liz Kendall to Jacqui Smith and Jonathan Powell
In the run-up to the general election, Keir Starmer was regularly compared to Tony Blair. When the parallels were highlighted by the left, they were often intended as insults. When they came from the Labour right, particularly after the landslide result, they were compliments.
Starmer has mirrored Blair so far in his ruthlessness towards his own party, his efforts to build relationships with business and his pursuit of public service reform. But he is also more cautious, less seduced by glitz and more to the soft-left in his own views.
Continue reading...Foreign Office declines to penalise two Israeli ministers as ex-foreign secretary David Cameron had planned
The UK Foreign Office has announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government as the former foreign secretary David Cameron had been planning.
Cameron told the BBC on Tuesday that he had intended to impose sanctions on Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and said he was concerned that the Labour government had not adopted his proposal. He said he had only held back from taking the step in the spring because he had been advised that it would be too political during the general election.
Continue reading...Health secretary announces trials to assess impact of medicines such as Ozempic or Mounjaro on worklessness
New weight-loss jabs could be given to unemployed people to help them get back into work, Wes Streeting has suggested.
The health secretary said “widening waistbands” were placing a burden on the NHS.
Continue reading...The Tory leadership contender came under fire from a former cabinet colleague over her comments in a foreword to an essay
More than 100 venues are backing Martyn’s law to help protect the public from terror attacks, ahead of the second reading of the terrorism (protection of premises) bill in the House of Commons today.
Parts of the bill are named for Martyn Hett, 29, who was killed along with 21 other people when suicide bomber Salman Abedi attacked the Manchester Arena in 2017 at the close of an Ariana Grande concert.
Certainly I feel this is the beginning of the end of the campaign, although there’s a bit to go still. But, yeah, I can see it’s coming to fruition now, finally.
Martyn’s law is never meant to be punitive or onerous, like some people may suggest; it literally is very proportionate.
It depends on the size of the venue, and it’s obviously in two tiers as well, and the standard tier is actually far less restrictions than the bigger venues, 800-plus, who may have to put more stringent measures in place.
One Home Office adviser said the contract notice was signed off while the immigration minister was … Robert Jenrick himself. They argued that his plans would’ve cost nearly £200 million more, over a shorter, six-year period, and lacked the break clauses that the government has now included. Another Labour official added: “It seems Jenrick has lost his memory as well as all that weight.”
Continue reading...Thinktank reports saying sector should be hit with extra £900m to £3bn in levies prompts market selloff
Shares in British gambling companies have dropped sharply, reducing the stock market value of large operators by more than £3bn, after the Guardian reported that Treasury officials could tap the sector for between £900m and £3bn in extra taxes.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has come under pressure from two influential thinktanks to raise taxes on the industry, as she pulls every available lever to plug a £22bn “black hole” in the nation’s finances.
Continue reading...SpaceX owner would be invited in future if he had investment streams the UK could bid for, says Peter Kyle
Elon Musk would be welcome at future UK investment summits if and when he had investment programmes the UK could bid for, a cabinet minister has said before a major business event in London.
The remarks came as a group of private equity firms, insurers and tech firms joined five major banks in writing a joint letter saying it was “time to invest in Britain”, in a boost for Keir Starmer, who was opening the event on Monday.
Continue reading...Former first minister established party as a political force but questions later emerged about influence he wielded
Alex Salmond cemented his place in British political history in May 2011 when he and the Scottish National party did something extraordinary.
They won an overall majority at Holyrood, under a proportional system designed to promote coalitions, not one party’s domination. With the SNP winning 69 of Holyrood’s 129 seats, the result delivered two things that defined Salmond’s legacy.
Continue reading...First minister John Swinney says predecessor, who died on Saturday, ‘had a huge impact on our public life’
John Swinney has paid tribute to Alex Salmond’s “colossal contribution” to Scottish and UK politics, as allies of the former first minister mourned his sudden death on Saturday.
Swinney, the incumbent first minister, said Salmond had had a huge impact on public life by forging the Scottish National party into a force capable of winning successive elections and then by bringing Scotland “incredibly close” to independence.
Continue reading...Jonathan Reynolds says Labour pledge not to increase NICs applies to employees and does not rule out other changes
The business secretary has said Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise national insurance applied to employees but he did not rule out raising employers’ contributions in the budget.
Speaking on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Jonathan Reynolds was asked if the pledge applied to employees’ and employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs).
Continue reading...Sandro Gozi calls for detail from Labour administration and says ‘new phase in bilateral relationship’ is possible
Keir Starmer’s government must spell out what it wants from a reset of Britain’s relationship with the EU, the European parliament’s lead MEP on the UK has said.
In his first interview since being elected chair of the European parliament’s delegation to the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly earlier this month, Sandro Gozi, an Italian former European affairs minister, said there was potential for a reset with the Starmer government, which had shown “a change in attitude”.
Continue reading...The PM has backed transport secretary Louise Haigh after she called ferry firm a ‘rogue operator’, threatening investment summit
Keir Starmer expressed his full confidence on Saturday in the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, after an explosive cabinet row cast fresh doubt over his Downing Street operation and threatened to overshadow a key international investment summit in London.
Government sources said the prime minister and Haigh had spoken and made up on Saturday after Starmer appeared to rebuke her on Friday for branding P&O Ferries a “rogue operator” in a statement and then calling for customers to boycott the company in a subsequent media interview.
Continue reading...Ex-leader of the SNP, who has died at 69, described by Keir Starmer as a ‘monumental figure of Scottish and UK politics’
Politicians and commentators in the UK have been paying tribute to Alex Salmond after the death of the former first minister of Scotland on Saturday.
Keir Starmer called Salmond a “monumental figure of Scottish and UK politics”.
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