Category Archives: Labour

No 10 says Starmer ‘shares public anger’ at early prisoner releases but system facing paralysis without it – as it happened

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Downing Street says government ‘shocked’ at inheriting prisons crisis as hundreds of prisoners get early release. This live blog is closed

The funeral of Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister who died suddenly earlier this month after delivering a speech in North Macedonia, will be held on Tuesday 29 October, his family has announced.

The funeral will be at Strichen parish church in Aberdeenshire. It will be conducted by Rev Ian McEwan, a friend of the family, and only family and close friends are invited. Salmond will be laid to rest in Strichen cemetery.

According to the Eurostat data, England and Wales had 144 prisoners per 100,000 head of population, the 8th highest rate among EU countries and the highest amongst western European jurisdictions. Scotland had the 9th highest with 137 prisoners per 100,000. Northern Ireland had 76 prisoners per 100,000 of population and was ranked 24th.

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Cross-party MPs urge Reeves to impose 2% tax on wealth above £10m

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Move could raise £24bn a year say signatories including Jeremy Corbyn as polls suggest public support

A cross-party group of 30 MPs has urged Rachel Reeves to impose a wealth tax on Britain’s rich in next week’s budget rather than announce spending cuts that would hit the most poor hardest.

In a letter to the chancellor, the MPs – including the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his then shadow chancellor, John McDonnell – say she could raise £24bn a year from a 2% tax on wealth above £10m and lay the foundations for a fairer, more sustainable economy.

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UK to lend Ukraine an additional £2.26bn for weapons to fight Russia

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Loans will be repaid using interest generated by $300bn of frozen Russian assets held in the west

Britain is to lend Ukraine an additional £2.26bn and allow Kyiv to spend the money on weapons to fight off the Russian invasion as part of a wider $50bn (£38.5bn) loan programme expected to be confirmed by G7 members later this week.

The loans will be repaid using interest generated by the $300bn of frozen Russian assets held in the west, with the extra funds promised as the US heads towards a presidential election where support for Ukraine is a divisive issue.

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Employment rights bill will cost firms £5bn per year but benefits will justify costs, government says – as it happened

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Analysis from business and trade department says bill will significantly strengthen workers’ right. This live blog is closed

In the past the weirdest budget tradition was the convention that the chancellor is allowed to drink alcohol while delivering the budget speech. But since no chancellor has taken advantage of the rule since the 1990s (and no one expects Rachel Reeves to be quaffing on Wednesday week), this tradition is probably best viewed as lapsed.

But Sam Coates from Sky News has discovered another weird budget ritual. On his Politics at Jack and Sam’s podcast, he says:

Someone messaged me to say: ‘Did you know that over in the Treasury as they’ve been going over all these spending settlements, in one of the offices, its full of balloons. And every time an individual department finalises its settlements, one of the balloons is popped.’

There couldn’t be a more important time for us to have this conversation.

The NHS is going through what is objectively the worst crisis in its history, whether it’s people struggling to get access to their GP, dialling 999 and an ambulance not arriving in time, turning up to A&E departments and waiting far too long, sometimes on trolleys in corridors, or going through the ordeal of knowing that you’re waiting for a diagnosis that could be the difference between life and death.

We feel really strongly that the best ideas aren’t going to come from politicians in Whitehall.

They’re going to come from staff working right across the country and, crucially, patients, because our experiences as patients are also really important to understanding what the future of the NHS needs to be and what it could be with the right ideas.

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Rachel Reeves will tax businesses to plug £9bn black hole in NHS

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The chancellor is set to announce a revenue-raising budget designed to reset Britain’s public finances

Rachel Reeves is set to use one of the most pivotal budgets of recent times to call on businesses to pay more tax to help restore the NHS, amid warnings that the health service has been left with a £9bn hole in its finances.

The chancellor is expected to stake her reputation on a tax-­raising budget designed as a reset of the public finances. She has already had to deal with cabinet skirmishes over funding unveiled alongside the statement. However, Reeves is understood to believe that the public will accept a multibillion-pound hike in business taxes if it is linked to repairing the health system’s finances.

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Quarter of UK summit investment came before Labour win, analysis suggests

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Ministers heralded ‘record-breaking’ £63bn total at London event but £16.5bn appears to have preceded July election

About a quarter of the investment announced by the government at its summit this week appears to have been secured or initiated before Labour came to power.

Ministers touted £63bn of investment at the summit on Monday, where they hosted hundreds of company bosses in a showcase of the UK’s pro-growth policies.

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Rachel Reeves expected to extend ‘stealth’ freeze on income tax thresholds

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Policy known as ‘fiscal drag’ could bring in as much as £7bn a year after 2028, while dragging workers into paying more tax

Rachel Reeves is expected to extend a “stealth” freeze on income tax thresholds beyond the 2028 deadline set by the previous Conservative government to raise billions of pounds in the budget.

The chancellor is contemplating the move, first reported by the Financial Times, as she seeks tax-raising measures to plug a £40bn shortfall in the public finances that Labour claims was left by the Conservatives.

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Use of ‘culture wars’ phrase ‘a dog whistle to attack the right’ Badenoch tells GB News Tory leadership special – as it happened

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Contender says ‘it is about being brave and not being scared that the Guardian is going to mock us’

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has told MPs that magistrates are getting powers to sentence offenders for longer – to reduce the number of prisoners being held on remand and to cut the backlog in crown courts

In a statement to MPs, she said that, although this would increase the prison population slightly, by reducing the number of offenders being held on remand it would free up spaces in reception prisons where overcrowding is particularly serious.

Unless we address our remand population, we could still see a collapse of the system, not because of a lack of cells, but because we do not have those cells in the places that we need them. It is therefore crucial that we bear down on the remand population.

This government inherited a record crown court backlog. Waits for trials have grown so long that some cases are not heard for years.

The impact on victims of crime is profound. For some justice delayed is, as the old saying goes, justice denied as victims choose to withdraw from the justice process altogether rather than face the pain of a protracted legal battle.

I have made it my personal mission to constrain the Kremlin, closing the net around Putin and his mafia state using every tool at my disposal.

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Great British Energy can become a major power generator, says its chair

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Jürgen Maier’s vision for company includes the potential to borrow its own money in order to rival multinationals

Britain’s new national energy company will eventually become a major power generator, running its own windfarms, tidal power and carbon capture schemes and potentially borrowing its own money, according to its new chair.

Jürgen Maier, the chair of Great British Energy (GBE), told the Guardian in an interview that his vision for the company far outstrips its current scope and would put it on a par with multinational firms such as Denmark’s Ørsted or Sweden’s Vattenfall.

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UK asylum backlog lower since Rwanda plan scrapped, figures show

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Refugee Council says nearly 120,000 people await case processing with 63,000 set to be granted asylum by Labour government

Nearly 63,000 people who were waiting for their cases to be processed at the time of the general election are expected to be granted asylum by the Labour government, an analysis has found.

The Refugee Council said the government’s decision to scrap the plan to deport people to Rwanda and accelerate claims meant the asylum backlog was forecast to be 118,063 at the start of 2025 – 59,000 cases lower than if the government had continued with the policy.

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Cabinet ministers contest chancellor’s planned cuts to their departments

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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.

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PMQs live: Keir Starmer faces Rishi Sunak in the Commons

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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.

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David Lammy urged to raise human rights concerns on China trip

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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.

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Labour to set up review after carer’s allowance overpayments scandal

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Exclusive: overhaul of system that imposed draconian penalties for innocent and minor errors in benefit claims is expected

Draconian penalties levied on unpaid carers who unwittingly rack up “overpayments” running into thousands of pounds after falling foul of benefit rules are to be overhauled, the Guardian understands.

The move comes six months after a Guardian investigation revealed tens of thousands of vulnerable unpaid carers were being ordered to repay hefty overpayments – and even threatened with criminal prosecution – over minor breaches of earnings rules.

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Rachel Reeves tells cabinet UK still faces £100bn black hole over next five years

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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.

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Alan Milburn to be given lead role in Labour’s health ministry

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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).

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Who are the key New Labour figures in Keir Starmer’s government?

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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.

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Badenoch accused of ‘stigmatising’ autism and mental health issues in comments over support – UK politics live

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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.”

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Budget could include rise in employers’ national insurance, minister suggests

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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).

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UK government must say what Brussels ‘reset’ means, says EU delegation head

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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”.

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