Labour will bring its ‘own reforms’ to benefits system to make £3bn cuts, says work and pension minister
Labour will bring its “own reforms” to the benefits system in order to make £3bn worth of cuts rather than stick to Tory plans, a minister has suggested, reports the PA news agency.
Work and pensions minister Alison McGovern was asked by Times Radio why Labour was pressing ahead with plans made by the previous Conservative government to reform work capability rules.
She replied:
Like all departments, the Department for Work and Pensions has to make savings because we are in a terrible financial situation.
To be clear, on that point we will bring forward our own reforms because the last 14 years have been a complete failure when it comes to employment.”
Pressed if this meant there would be no cuts, she added:
We will not go ahead with the Tory plan because that was theirs. We will need to make savings like all departments, but we will bring forward our own reforms.”
Rachel Reeves will seek to make around £3bn of cuts to welfare over the next four years by restricting access to sickness benefits, it is understood. The chancellor is looking to raise up to £40bn from tax hikes and spending cuts in the budget as the government seeks to avoid a return to austerity, reports the PA news agency.
Elsewhere, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, will join US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin for talks focused largely on how to end the fighting in Ukraine as Russian forces advance in the east and a bleak winter of power cuts looms.
More on that in a moment. In other developments and upcoming events:
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British foreign secretary David Lammy will meet his counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing on Friday to “challenge” China on sensitive issues like Russia’s war in Ukraine, as the two nations seek to rebuild frayed ties. Lammy is the first British cabinet minister to visit China since Labour prime minister Keir Starmer took office in July.
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Rachel Reeves is considering raising the tax on vaping products in her budget this month as figures show that a quarter of 11 to 15-year-olds in England have used e-cigarettes. The chancellor is looking at increasing the tax after a consultation carried out by the last Conservative government.
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The chancellor is taking action to ensure her budget plan for a multibillion-pound increase in government borrowing to fund infrastructure projects avoids a Liz Truss-style meltdown in financial markets. Ahead of her tax and spending event on 30 October, Reeves is convening on Friday the first meeting of a taskforce of leading City figures to advise on infrastructure projects.
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Kemi Badenoch has criticised a Conservative MP’s suggestion she could not head the Tories because she was too “preoccupied” with her children, saying “it isn’t always women who have parental responsibilities”.
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Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, has written to the prime minister urging him to intervene and stop the cuts in this year’s budget. He said, in a letter seen by the PA news agency, that Starmer must “listen to voters and your own cabinet colleagues: intervene now, overrule the chancellor and stop the cuts, or people in Scotland will never forgive the Labour party”.
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The Home Office has recruited 200 staff to clear a backlog of 23,300 modern slavery cases left by the last government, a minister has told the Guardian. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said the department planned to end prolonged uncertainty and anguish for survivors by finalising the cases within two years.
Key events
Small boat crossings are a “national emergency”, The Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick says after French authorities announce a baby died when a boat got into difficulty in the English Channel. Jenrick, who has made opposing migration a central plank of his leadership bid, says:
We’ve seen more deaths this year than ever before. Starmer is condemning people to death for his own ideology.
Rather than strengthening the Rwanda scheme to deter people from making the journey in the first place, he scrapped it all because he didn’t come up with the idea.
Now, European countries are looking to do the same thing. It’s a national emergency and he’s playing politics with it.
The small boats crisis largely arose under the Conservative government of which Jenrick was himself a part. Describing that government’s policy in February 2023, Amnesty International said:
It is a government choice to require refugees wishing to seek asylum in the UK to rely on dangerous journeys and people smugglers.
Instead, hundreds of refugee and human rights organisations have proposed opening safe and legal routes, among other measures, as a way of solving the crisis. Far from settling the problem, those organisations believe Conservative policies such as the Rwanda scheme exacerbated it.
The Rwanda plan cost the UK £700m in the two and a half years between its introduction by the Tories and its scrapping by the current government. Under it, a total of four people went to Rwanda – all of them voluntarily.
Keir Starmer’s thoughts are with Alex Salmond’s family and friends as the former first minister of Scotland’s coffin is returned home, No 10 says.
A spokeswoman also urges people to respect the family’s calls for privacy.
Former archbishop of Canterbury urges C of E bishops in Lords to back assisted dying bill
Harriet Sherwood
George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has urged Church of England bishops in the House of Lords to back a parliamentary bill on assisted dying, saying that in the past “church leaders have often shamefully resisted change”.
The 26 bishops should “be on the side of those who … want a dignified, compassionate end to their lives”, Lord Carey told the Guardian.
Carey, who retired as leader of the C of E in 2002 and still sits in the Lords, said he would back Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted dying “because it is necessary, compassionate and principled”.
He said it was “ironic that I will represent the vast majority of Anglicans who favour change, and the bishops in the House of Lords will not”.
Carey’s position is in stark contrast to that of the current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who this week described Leadbeater’s bill as dangerous, saying it could put pressure on people to ask for an assisted death.
Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, also said the state “should not legalise assisted suicide”, saying better resourcing of palliative care was the right response to end-of-life suffering.
Alan Smith, the bishop of St Albans and convener of bishops sitting in the Lords, said: “In the past, bishops have consistently opposed legislation to introduce assisted dying/suicide. It is likely that we will do the same in the future.”
According to the Rev Canon Rosie Harper, a former member of the C of E’s ruling body, the General Synod, “there is a real disconnect between the [church] hierarchy and what people in the pews think. And I suspect there’s a disconnect between what the bishops feel they have to say and what many of them actually think.”
You can read the full piece here:
An independent crossbench peer has called for schoolchildren to be taught the “values of British citizenship”, reports the PA news agency.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth has proposed that democracy, the rule of law, freedom, individual worth, and respect for the environment are taught in schools as “values of British citizenship”, as part of the education (values of british citizenship) bill.
Opening the bill’s second reading debate on Thursday, Lord Harries said:
I believe passionately that fundamental values should be taught in schools, at a time when the world has a growing number of dictatorships, autocracies, and managed democracies, it’s vital that pupils in our schools should understand the fundamental political values on which our society is founded.”
Lord Harries added:
For young people this is often the key moral issue of our times. I believe that the addition of respect for the environment would help young people see the importance of this set of values as a whole.”
He went on to say that the bill would “give a boost to citizenship education, it would show clearly the political values that are to be taught, [and] it would give the subject a much sharper focus”.
British values should be taught in schools or the UK will live to “regret” it, Labour peer Lord Blunkett said.
The former education secretary told peers:
We have seen over the summer the riots taking place across our country sadly, and because of course we see the most enormous threats both from the distortion on social media, and the re-emergence of the far right across the world, so this is the moment to reinforce the importance of those values which do hold us together, the ties that bind.
Let us take this bill and use it as a mechanism to go forward, genuinely believing if we don’t teach this now, we’ll regret it later.”
Lord Blunkett also argued that teachers should receive additional training and funding to accomplish the bill’s ambitions, saying:
We must train teachers, we must give bursaries – which we’re not doing – to enable that to take place.”
Richard Partington
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is taking action to ensure her budget plan for a multibillion-pound increase in government borrowing to fund infrastructure projects avoids a Liz Truss-style meltdown in financial markets.
Ahead of her tax and spending event on 30 October, the chancellor is convening on Friday the first meeting of a taskforce of leading City figures to advise on infrastructure projects. The government will also launch a watchdog to oversee public works and ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
It is understood Reeves is preparing to announce changes in the budget to the Treasury’s self-imposed fiscal rules to pave the way for billions of pounds in additional borrowing to finance major public works including roads, railways, schools and hospitals.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, told journalists on Thursday it was important to have “guardrails” to ensure major public works offered value for money, after years of overspending and delays in big projects.
City investors have warned that a badly managed increase in government borrowing risked prompting a “buyers’ strike” in the market for UK debt, threatening a repeat of the turmoil witnessed after Truss’s 2022 disastrous mini-budget.
Sources close to the Treasury said the government understood that if it was going to add to borrowing, it needed to be clear with the public, parliament and the markets that what it was doing was sensible.
Keir Starmer will gather with leaders of the US, France and Germany to discuss the war in Ukraine and spiralling conflict in the Middle East as he visits Berlin on Friday.
The prime minister will be greeted by chancellor Olaf Scholz before holding talks as part of the so-called “Quad” of western allies, reports the PA news agency.
The White House confirmed that US president Joe Biden would meet Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron to discuss “the pathway ahead in Ukraine” and “the ongoing and fast-moving developments across the Middle East”.
The chancellor has warned that a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances – which Labour claims it inherited from the Conservatives – will persist over the next five years, forcing the new government to take “difficult decisions” on spending, welfare and tax.
Rachel Reeves is aiming to make £40bn worth of tax rises and spending cuts a year to overcome the shortfall, in order to meet her “golden rule” of balancing day-to-day spending with tax receipts. This would help to avoid a fresh round of cuts to departmental budgets.
My colleague, Richard Partington who is the Guardian’s economics correspondent, has written an explainer on the tax raising options under consideration. You can read it at the link below.
Rachel Reeves considers raising tax on vapes in autumn budget
Rachel Reeves is considering raising the tax on vaping products in her budget this month as figures show that a quarter of 11 to 15-year-olds in England have used e-cigarettes.
The chancellor is looking at increasing the tax after a consultation carried out by the last Conservative government.
In his budget in March, Jeremy Hunt announced a tax on vaping products, which is due to take effect in October 2026, in a move to make vaping unaffordable for children.
NHS figures on Thursday revealed that one in four children aged 11-15 in England tried vaping in 2023 – up from 22% two years earlier – with almost one in 10 (9%) using e-cigarettes regularly. By comparison, 11% said they had tried cigarettes.
Matt Fagg, NHS England’s director for prevention and long-term conditions, said the statistics were “incredibly concerning. It means they are at risk of becoming hooked on one of the world’s most addictive substances, and that is before we consider the longer-term impacts which are still unclear.”
Andrew Gwynne, a health minister, also said the figures were worrying. “The health advice is clear that children and adult non-smokers should never vape, so it is unacceptable to see unscrupulous retailers marketing them at children,” he said.
An increase in the tax on vaping products would probably go hand-in-hand with an increase in tobacco duty so as not to encourage people to switch to smoking.
The move could raise hundreds of millions of pounds for the exchequer. The vape tax as designed by Hunt is due to raise £120m in 2026-27, rising to £445m by 2028-29, according to estimates from the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
You can read more on this exclusive by Eleni Courea, Peter Walker and Andrew Gregory here:
Tory MP’s Badenoch comments prompt backlash from across political spectrum
A veteran Conservative MP has sparked outrage after saying he would not support Kemi Badenoch to be the Tory party leader because she is “preoccupied with her own children”.
Sir Christopher Chope told ITV News that the frontrunner in his party’s leadership race would be unable to commit to the role of leader of the opposition as she has young children.
Chope said he would support Badenoch’s opponent, the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, adding:
I myself am supporting Robert Jenrick because I think he’s brought more energy and commitment to the campaign, and being leader of the opposition is a really demanding job.
Much as I like Kemi, I think she’s preoccupied with her own children, quite understandably. I think Robert’s children are a bit older, and I think that it’s important that whoever leads the opposition has got an immense amount of time and energy.”
Both candidates have three children. Badenoch’s youngest is five and Jenrick’s is eight.
Chope’s comments were quickly condemned by members of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, with Jenrick also distancing himself from them.
Christopher Chope is not a serious person. No one should be surprised by stupidity it’s a regular occurrence. Luckily he’s as influential as an empty space.
— Jess Phillips (@jessphillips) October 17, 2024
Liz Jarvis, the Liberal Democrat MP, tweeted: “Diminishing women’s ability to play leading roles in public life because they have young families is an attitude that should be in the distant past.”
Helena Dollimore, a Labour backbencher, posted: “I thought nothing could shock me about the state of the Conservative party, but that was before I had to sit through Christopher Chope MP opining about whether mothers can lead political parties.”
Her Labour colleague Stella Creasy added: “This is why we urgently need paternity leave sorted. Because until people start wondering if dads get distracted by their kids as much as they do mums, we will always have dinosaurs walk amongst us … or in this case on the modernisation committee in parliament …”
This is why we urgently need paternity leave sorted. Because until people start wondering if dads get distracted by their kids as much as they do mums, we will always have dinosaurs walk amongst us …or in this case on the modernisation committee in parliament …🫨 https://t.co/7YpqS6Ykk4
— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) October 17, 2024
A spokesperson for Jenrick also disowned Chope’s comments, saying: “Rob doesn’t agree with this. He’s raising three young daughters himself.”
Home Office hires 200 staff to clear huge backlog of UK modern slavery cases
Rajeev Syal
The Home Office has recruited 200 staff to clear a backlog of 23,300 modern slavery cases left by the last government, a minister has told the Guardian.
Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said the department planned to end prolonged uncertainty and anguish for survivors by finalising the cases within two years.
It follows reports that some trafficked survivors have been waiting years to be defined as victims of modern slavery.
There are an estimated 130,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK, trapped in sectors including agriculture, prostitution and care. Most have suffered traumatic sexual, physical and economic abuse but face long delays in having their status confirmed through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).
The aim of the NRM is to protect people from further abuse once they are no longer being controlled by their traffickers by providing safe housing, counselling and other support to help them recover from their ordeal.
Phillips, who met survivors of modern slavery on Thursday at Salvation Army premises in Denmark Hill, south London, said that the government was attempting to right a wrong by issuing a final decision in the process.
“For too long, modern slavery survivors and the harrowing experiences they have lived through have not been given the attention and support they deserve,” she said.
“This is going to change. The actions I have announced today are a first step towards putting survivors first, eradicating the backlog of modern slavery cases to give victims the clarity and peace of mind they need to move on with their lives.”
Murray Foote was praised by first minister and SNP leader John Swinney, who hailed his “significant contribution” to the party.
“When I became leader of the SNP, I promised to deliver a professional, modern, dynamic, election-winning organisation – and Murray’s successor will build on the work he has started,” he said.
He added:
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Murray for his commitment and dedication to the Scottish National Party, and to independence, and I wish he and his family all the best for the future.”
Foote said he would “always be grateful” for being given the role, adding:
I also believe that in first minister John Swinney, our party has the right leader at the right time to advance the cause of Scottish independence and I look to the future with renewed optimism as I support him in that cause.”
My colleagues Peter Walker and Rosie Anfilogoff have put together this handy piece on the five key takeaways from last night’s Tory debate.
Badenoch and Jenrick spar over visions for future of Tory party in TV debate
Peter Walker
Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have attacked each other’s visions for the future of the Conservative party, in a sometimes low-key debate which could nonetheless prove significant in who becomes the next opposition leader.
The event on GB News, the only debate scheduled, involved the pair taking turns to tackle questions from audience members rather than going head to head, but featured notable differences of opinion on strategy and policies such as immigration.
Jenrick, going first, repeatedly pledged to “end the drama” in the Tory party, seen as a coded reference to Badenoch’s sometimes combustible approach.
Badenoch was polite about her opponent as a person but scathing when it came to his suite of headline policies, notably Jenrick’s repeated pledge to immediately quit the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which he again styled on Thursday as a Brexit-type “leave or remain” issue.
Badenoch argued the idea was a distraction from bigger worries and not properly thought-out.
“We need to stop blaming the EU or international agreements and start fixing problems here ourselves,” she said.
Leaving the ECHR was “not dissimilar to leaving the EU in terms of the consequences”, Badenoch said, in that there could be significant repercussions for Northern Ireland, where the convention forms an integral part of the peace process.
Badenoch, who gained noticably more applause than Jenrick from the audience of Tory members and won a post-event show of hands, criticised Jenrick’s policy focus, saying that with an election still far away, the party needed to first look at its fundamentals.
You can read the full recap by Peter Walker here:
SNP chief executive Murray Foote announces he will stand down
SNP chief executive Murray Foote has announced he will stand down, saying in a statement he could not make the “necessary personal commitment” to delivering change in the party ahead of the 2026 Holyrood election, reports the PA news agency.
The former Daily Record editor was appointed to the role in a surprising move in 2023 after previously resigning as the party’s head of communications in a row with former chief executive – and Nicola Sturgeon’s husband – Peter Murrell over membership numbers.
“The SNP has recently embarked on a substantial process of internal reorganisation and renewal to better equip it for current electoral contests and to prepare for the critical Scottish parliament elections in 2026,” he said in a statement.
He added:
While I agree these changes are both essential and appropriate, I also recognised after a period of reflection that I could not make the necessary personal commitment to leading the delivery of these changes into 2026 and beyond.
In the circumstances, I concluded it would be in my best interests and the best interests of the party that I step down to give my replacement the time and space to mould and develop these changes in a manner they deem appropriate.”
The PA news agency reports that Foote will stay in the role until a successor is appointed.
The chancellor will hold talks with City bosses on Friday at the first meeting of Labour’s British infrastructure taskforce, as the government seeks advice on how to boost investment in the UK.
Finance leaders from HSBC, Lloyds and M&G will be among those involved in the discussions, which the Treasury says will take place regularly.
Rachel Reeves said their expertise will be “invaluable in the weeks and months ahead” as the government pursues its “number one mission to grow the economy and create jobs”, according to the PA news agency.
Chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said the taskforce would aim to end “the cycle of underinvestment that has plagued our infrastructure systems for over a decade.”
Rachel Reeves will seek to make about £3bn of cuts to welfare over the next four years by restricting access to sickness benefits, it is understood, according to the PA news agency.
The chancellor is expected to commit to the previous Tory government’s plans to save the sum by reforming work capability rules, as first reported by the Telegraph.
Under Conservative proposals, welfare eligibility would have been tightened so that about 400,000 more people who are signed off long-term would be assessed as needing to prepare for employment by 2028/29, reducing the benefits bill by an estimated £3bn.
The PA news agency reports that tt is understood that Reeves will commit to the plan to save £3bn over four years, but work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall will decide how the system will be changed in order to achieve this.
A government spokesperson said:
We have always said that the work capability assessment is not working and needs to be reformed or replaced alongside a proper plan to support disabled people to work.
We will deliver savings through our own reforms, including genuine support to help disabled people into work.”
Reeves is looking to raise up to £40bn from tax increases and spending cuts in the budget as the government seeks to avoid a return to austerity.
Keir Starmer on Thursday faced a cabinet backlash over the planned measures, with several ministers writing to the prime minister directly to express concern about proposals to reduce their departmental spending by as much as 20%.
Downing Street warned that “not every department will be able to do everything they want to” and “tough decisions” would have to be made.
According to the PA news agency, the prime minister’s official spokesperson confirmed Starmer and Reeves had agreed on the “major measures” of the budget, including the “spending envelope” that sets out limits for individual Whitehall departments.
While some spending cuts are all but inevitable, tax rises are expected to form the centrepiece of Reeves’ plans to fill what the Labour government calls a “black hole” in the public finances left behind by its Tory predecessors.
Reports suggest capital gains tax and inheritance tax are among some of the levers the chancellor will pull to raise revenue as she seeks to put the economy on a firmer footing.
Labour will bring its ‘own reforms’ to benefits system to make £3bn cuts, says work and pension minister
Labour will bring its “own reforms” to the benefits system in order to make £3bn worth of cuts rather than stick to Tory plans, a minister has suggested, reports the PA news agency.
Work and pensions minister Alison McGovern was asked by Times Radio why Labour was pressing ahead with plans made by the previous Conservative government to reform work capability rules.
She replied:
Like all departments, the Department for Work and Pensions has to make savings because we are in a terrible financial situation.
To be clear, on that point we will bring forward our own reforms because the last 14 years have been a complete failure when it comes to employment.”
Pressed if this meant there would be no cuts, she added:
We will not go ahead with the Tory plan because that was theirs. We will need to make savings like all departments, but we will bring forward our own reforms.”
Rachel Reeves will seek to make around £3bn of cuts to welfare over the next four years by restricting access to sickness benefits, it is understood. The chancellor is looking to raise up to £40bn from tax hikes and spending cuts in the budget as the government seeks to avoid a return to austerity, reports the PA news agency.
Elsewhere, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, will join US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin for talks focused largely on how to end the fighting in Ukraine as Russian forces advance in the east and a bleak winter of power cuts looms.
More on that in a moment. In other developments and upcoming events:
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British foreign secretary David Lammy will meet his counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing on Friday to “challenge” China on sensitive issues like Russia’s war in Ukraine, as the two nations seek to rebuild frayed ties. Lammy is the first British cabinet minister to visit China since Labour prime minister Keir Starmer took office in July.
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Rachel Reeves is considering raising the tax on vaping products in her budget this month as figures show that a quarter of 11 to 15-year-olds in England have used e-cigarettes. The chancellor is looking at increasing the tax after a consultation carried out by the last Conservative government.
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The chancellor is taking action to ensure her budget plan for a multibillion-pound increase in government borrowing to fund infrastructure projects avoids a Liz Truss-style meltdown in financial markets. Ahead of her tax and spending event on 30 October, Reeves is convening on Friday the first meeting of a taskforce of leading City figures to advise on infrastructure projects.
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Kemi Badenoch has criticised a Conservative MP’s suggestion she could not head the Tories because she was too “preoccupied” with her children, saying “it isn’t always women who have parental responsibilities”.
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Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, has written to the prime minister urging him to intervene and stop the cuts in this year’s budget. He said, in a letter seen by the PA news agency, that Starmer must “listen to voters and your own cabinet colleagues: intervene now, overrule the chancellor and stop the cuts, or people in Scotland will never forgive the Labour party”.
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The Home Office has recruited 200 staff to clear a backlog of 23,300 modern slavery cases left by the last government, a minister has told the Guardian. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said the department planned to end prolonged uncertainty and anguish for survivors by finalising the cases within two years.
