Category Archives: Labour conference 2024

Starmer says Tories should apologise for winter fuel payments cut ahead of possible conference defeat – UK politics live

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Labour party delegates expected to condemn decision to means-test winter fuel payments as prime minister says Conservatives should apologise

One of the most significant passages in Keir Starmer’s conference speech yesterday was the passage where he talked about trade-offs in politics, and how it was important to tell people that to achieve positive outcomes, they sometimes had to accept consequences they might not like.

Speaking to reporters on his flight to New York, Starmer said this was something politicians did not talk about enough. Talking about his speech, he said:

It’s the first [conference] we’ve had for 15 years with Labour in government, but also really importantly, the first big opportunity to say not only what are we doing – the sort of ‘what did we inherit’, the doom and gloom if you like, and the immediate difficult decisions – but also why are we doing it …

I’m convinced that if we take the difficult decisions now, we can get to where we need to. So that was part of it.

Under the plans, teams of leading clinicians are being sent to hospitals to roll out their reforms and get patients treated faster.

Top doctors who have developed new ways of working are delivering up to four times more operations than normal. Operating theatres at Guys and St Thomas’s in London run like a formula one pit stop to cut time between procedures.

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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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‘Davos on the Mersey’: key conference takeaways as Labour tries to woo business

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As the budget looms, where the party stands on investment in the UK economy, workers’ rights and more

For a second year running, corporate Britain descended on Liverpool for Labour’s annual conference, in an event so packed with executives that some insiders joke the socialist gathering has developed into a full-blown “Davos on the Mersey”.

Like last year, the exhibition and conference fringe had sponsored events, lounge areas and advertising from exhibitors including Gatwick, National Grid, Ikea and Specsavers. This year, however, business leaders were looking for clues about how Labour will govern after July’s election landslide.

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Keep the faith, Starmer urges as he vows to build ‘a new Britain’

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PM tells Labour conference he will not con people with false hope but says difficult trade-offs will help bring ‘national renewal’

Britain can become a country of pride, wealth and stability if the public accepts a series of difficult “trade-offs”, rejects nimbyism and sees through the Conservatives’ populist “lies”, Keir Starmer has said.

In his first Labour conference speech as prime minister, he urged the public to keep faith amid difficult and sometimes unpopular choices made by the government, telling them he understood their impatience for real change.

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Starmer needs the public’s trust to be able to make the hard choices to come

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Labour needs voters to believe politics can make their lives better not that politicians are all the same, hence why the donations row was so damaging

When Keir Starmer wanted to inject a moment of levity into his first speech as prime minister at the Labour conference, he told a story about visiting a holiday cottage in the Lake District where the owner joked about wanting to push him down the stairs.

As lighter moments go, it had a dark edge. It is British humour, of course, but there is a reason it made an impression on Starmer – it’s a microcosm of what he and his closest advisers see as their greatest threat: the cynicism and disdain with which ordinary people view politicians. The view that they are all the same, all on the take. The widespread lack of trust that politics can make lives better.

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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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Reeves packs up her troubles until budget day and smiles, smiles, smiles | John Crace

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The chancellor beamed her way through a conference speech that offered hope at least but little of substance

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. If you had thought that maybe today was the day when you made that call to Dignitas, then think again. Cancel that flight to Zurich. At least postpone it. Things might not be quite as bad as you had been led to believe. Or rather, they are that bad but there is some small flicker of hope if you can hold on long enough. There will be pain in the short and medium term. There’s no avoiding that. Try to think of it as character building. But possibly, just possibly, you might come through. We happy few. Blinking into the light of the promised land.

This was Rachel Reeves’s day. And she knew everything was going to be just fine the moment she woke up to find that Liz Truss had posted yet another cry for help on X. You can now follow the Trusster’s decline in real time on social media. It’s got so bad that she now films herself in front of a bookcase where everything is arranged by colour. The kindest explanation is that she thinks she’s filming a hostage video and the books are a coded message for “I’m being held against my will”.

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Sue Gray ‘shot JFK’ and is ‘hiding Lord Lucan’, jokes Wes Streeting

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Health secretary shares light-hearted quip at party’s conference over embattled No 10 aide

Wes Streeting has joked that Keir Starmer’s embattled senior aide Sue Gray also “shot JFK” and was “hiding Lord Lucan” amid a continuing row over her salary.

The health secretary made light of suggestions of mounting acrimony at the heart of government as he spoke at an event on the sidelines of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

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Rachel Reeves orders investigations into £600m of Covid contracts

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Chancellor will confirm inquiries in conference speech as Labour tries to move on from donations scandal

Rachel Reeves will announce on Monday that she has ordered investigations into more than £600m worth of Covid contracts awarded under the Conservatives as Labour struggles to get back on the front foot over questions of ethics.

After days of bruising allegations over donations, the chancellor will confirm that she will refer more than half of contracts for material such as masks to the incoming Covid corruption commissioner, after the previous government recommended dropping any attempt to investigate them.

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Ofsted cannot be allowed to reform itself, say teachers’ unions

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Sister of headteacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself last year, joins call for ‘complete reset’ of schools inspectorate

Education unions are to warn that Ofsted cannot be trusted to reform itself, as headteachers ­continue to report that school inspections are leaving their staff feeling distressed.

Prof Julia Waters, sister of the Reading headteacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself last year after an inspection downgraded her school from outstanding to inadequate, will call on the government to make deeper reforms of the inspectorate at the Labour party conference on Sunday. While welcoming the government’s recent confirmation that Ofsted’s single-word judgments will be scrapped, Waters, along with all four teaching unions, said the inspector still operated with a culture of “fear and terror”.

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Drones seized in Liverpool after breaching Labour conference airspace

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Police warn unauthorised drone users could be prosecuted as restrictions are in place for conference week

Drones have been seized by police after they were flown in breach of airspace restrictions during the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

Merseyside police said they seized three drones on Saturday after a temporary airspace restriction covering much of Liverpool city centre was put in place.

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Huge crowds expected at pro-Palestine march ahead of Labour conference

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Protesters in Liverpool to call on government to implement full arms embargo against Israel over Gaza war

The UK’s first pro-Palestine national march to be staged outside London is expected by organisers to attract tens of thousands of people on the periphery of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

The 19th “national march for Palestine” will start at midday on Saturday near Lime Street railway station and end near King’s Dock, where Keir Starmer’s party is gathering this weekend.

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