Category Archives: Welfare

Housing, social care and universities: who lost out in the UK budget?

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Rachel Reeves made funding the NHS a priority but people working in other areas said they were disappointed

Rachel Reeves’s first budget emphasised raising taxes to help the NHS, as the health service tries to cope with huge waiting lists and an ageing population. Funding the NHS was a top priority but people in other sectors – from universities to social care – feel the budget was a missed opportunity to tackle impending crises or introduce desperately needed reforms in their areas.

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Rachel Reeves has promised not to raise taxes, so how can she fill budget coffers?

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Chancellor said to be planning measures including raising employer NI contributions and capital gains tax rates. We consider the likelihood of each and the potential for a row

During the general election campaign, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal studies repeatedly accused both main parties of indulging in a “conspiracy of silence” over their economic policies. Neither Labour nor the Tories would admit, he complained, that if they won they would have to announce huge tax rises or spending cuts to restore the public finances to anything resembling good health.

On Wednesday, 118 days after Labour won the election, Rachel Reeves will prove Johnson right. In her first budget she will spell out plans to raise an eye-watering sum of about £40bn from tax rises and spending reductions to wipe the slate clean and to pump funds into public services. She will also confirm changes to debt rules that will release up to £50bn more to borrow for long-term investment in new national infrastructure.

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Albanese government pauses controversial debt recovery method until appeal resolved

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Legality of income apportionment has been under question for years but social services says it is confident system is lawful

The Department of Social Services will pause work on recovering debts using its income calculation method while it awaits the outcome of an appeal against an administrative appeals tribunal (AAT) decision in the federal court.

The legality of income apportionment – where a recipient’s job income is divided over fortnightly periods in order to calculate support payments – has been under question for years.

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Surprise fall in UK inflation badly timed for benefit recipients

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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.

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Reeves’ economy inheritance claim one of Labour’s ‘biggest lies’, Hunt tells Tory conference – UK politics live

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The shadow chancellor said he ‘would have died’ to have had the legacy Rachel Reeves had when he took over

Robert Jenrick has used a campaign rally just outside the Conservative conference to paint the issue of migration in highly stark terms, saying his party will “die” if it does not commit to quitting the European convention on human rights. (See 8.23am.)

Speaking to supporters in a studio theatre at Birmingham Rep, Jenrick repeated his styling of the issue in Brexit terms, saying the choice was between the “leave” of leaving the ECHR or “remain” of staying in it, and that this was a chance to “get migration done”.

This is more than just, ‘leave or amend’ – frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem. It’s leave or die for our party – I’m for leave.

Foreign national offenders in our country,who we have struggled to deport because of our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights – that’s the issue I was raising.

What is the biggest challenge we face as a party?

Our biggest strategic challenge is the fact that the average age above which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is now over 60.

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Kemi Badenoch faces backlash after comments on ‘excessive’ maternity pay – as it happened

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Conservative leadership contenders Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat reject rival’s comments, while Rosie Duffield criticises Keir Starmer

Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?

Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.

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Winter fuel cut savings will be far less than Reeves expected, new analysis finds

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A surge in claims for pension credit will make thousands more people eligible for the payments and other benefits

Rachel Reeves has been warned that her cut to pensioner winter fuel payments risks saving hundreds of millions less than anticipated, in a new blow to her attempts to close the hole in Britain’s finances.

The chancellor and her Treasury team are already re-examining parts of a plan to crack down on non-dom tax status over concerns that it may not raise any money.

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NSW public housing official allegedly told woman she would get a home faster if she had sex with him

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Exclusive: Woman says she was ‘desperate’ to find a home for her and her child and was ‘preyed’ on by the staffer

Police are investigating a Homes New South Wales employee, who is alleged to have propositioned a woman on the waitlist for public housing, claiming that if she had sex with him he would arrange for her and her child to get into a home faster.

The woman, who is a survivor of domestic violence and had fled in order to escape her ex-partner, said the man sent her explicit text messages from his work phone and picked her up to take her for sexual encounters in his work car.

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Long-term sick need to get back to work where they can, says Starmer

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Labour leader says there should be more support to help people back into jobs, vowing to do ‘everything we can to tackle worklessness’

People who have been on long-term sickness leave and claiming benefits will need get back into the workplace “where they can”, Keir Starmer has said.

The prime minister said he wants more schemes across the country that support people back into work from long-term sickness because he believes in the “basic proposition that you should look for work”.

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Winter fuel: thousands more could lose benefit if it becomes means tested, data suggests

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A further 175,000 pensioners are likely to stop receiving allowance under such plans, official figures show

A further 175,000 pensioners could lose the winter fuel allowance if the benefit becomes means tested, data suggests.

About 11.6 million people in the UK received the benefit last winter, an increase of 214,000 on the previous year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The overwhelming majority are to have this removed this winter under plans announced by the Labour government to cut spending on the benefit.

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Cutting winter fuel payments ‘right decision’, says Reeves, as No 10 says no change to council tax discount for single people – Labour conference live

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Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have put forward motions which were due to be debated on Monday afternoon, with strong support expected from other unions.

Sources said unions were told late on Sunday that the debate is being moved to Wednesday morning.

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Scotland could extend winter fuel allowance, Scottish Labour argues

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Further devolution next year will bring allowance under Scottish control just months before Holyrood elections

Scottish Labour believes access to the winter fuel allowance could be widened in Scotland as it tries to fight off its opponents’ attacks before the next Holyrood election.

Scotland will be able to decide which pensioners get the allowance from October next year under further devolution of benefits to Holyrood, eight months before a Scottish parliamentary election that Labour sees as critical to its revival.

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Benefit sanctions more likely for minority ethnic claimants, UK data shows

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Black universal credit claimants 58% more likely to get sanctions than white people, while mixed ethnic groups are 72% more likely

Black and minority ethnic benefit claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions – financial penalties typically running into hundreds of pounds – according to official statistics unveiled for the first time.

Black universal credit claimants were 58% more likely to be sanctioned than white claimants, mixed ethnic groups were 72% more likely and Asians 5% more likely, according to the figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

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Shorten furious over robodebt department head’s attempt to position herself as ‘scapegoat’

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Kathryn Campbell defends her role in unlawful scheme and rejects claim she came up with program with former prime minister Scott Morrison

Bill Shorten has launched an excoriating attack of former public servant Kathryn Campbell after she claimed she was unfairly blamed in the robodebt scandal and defended her decisions around the scheme.

“Robodebt was a shocking betrayal and failure of empathy towards vulnerable people who needed support from the government,” Shorten said on Saturday.

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Starmer says rebuilding UK means painful decisions, not just ‘a lick of paint’

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PM defends choices such as cutting winter fuel allowance as long-term remedies as polls show his popularity falling

Keir Starmer has said painful decisions such as cutting winter fuel payment to save £1.4bn a year are necessary as failure to act would be simply “putting a lick of paint over the damp”.

The prime minister described the process of taking decisions “that aren’t going to be popular” as part of a strategy of “strip down the joint, rebuild the house”.

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We did not do impact assessment of winter fuel payment cut, No 10 admits

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Spokesperson for Keir Starmer says focus was instead on encouraging pensioners to seek additional support

Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said.

After days of No 10 refusing to comment, Keir Starmer’s deputy spokesperson said the only assessment made before the policy announcement was a standard legal one of potential equalities impacts.

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Winter fuel allowance cut: who voted for this? – Politics Weekly UK

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The government saw off a rebellion over its plans to cut winter fuel allowance this week. John Harris speaks to Caroline Abrahams from Age UK about what this winter will look like for millions of pensioners losing out. Plus, he talks to columnist Rafael Behr about whether the technocrats (Starmer and Reeves) are taking the Labour party in the wrong direction

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UK government will stand firm on plan to cut winter fuel payments, says minister

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Housing minister says policy will not be watered down day after dozens of Labour MPs abstained in key vote

Plans to scale back winter fuel payments for pensioners will not be watered down, a UK government minister has said, after dozens of Labour MPs abstained on a key Commons vote on Tuesday night.

The housing and planning minister, Matthew Pennycook, was speaking the morning after MPs voted to remove the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners in England and Wales.

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Woman, 86, told she no longer has to repay £13,000 in benefits in DWP U-turn

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Exclusive: Case of Sia Kasparis, who has dementia, had been highlighted in Guardian investigation into unpaid care

An 86-year-old woman with advanced dementia has been told by the government she no longer has to repay a £13,000 benefit debt after her case was highlighted by the Guardian.

Sia Kasparis, who is partially blind and has been bed-bound for two years, was ordered to repay the huge sum after officials said she had failed to notify them her son had taken up caring duties.

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Regulator may take action against three energy retailers over alleged misuse of Centrepay system

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Australian Energy Regulator weighs up enforcement options against AGL, Origin and Ergon Energy after landmark court win

The national energy regulator is weighing up whether to take new action against three retailers for their alleged use of the Centrepay system after a landmark court win against AGL.

The Australian Energy Regulator won a major case in the federal court against AGL in August after alleging the energy giant used the government-run payment system to wrongly take welfare money from almost 500 customers for years after they ceased being customers.

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