Conservative leader launches Welfare That Works policy document outlining benefit reductions of £36bn
Kemi Badenoch will claim that spending on working-age benefits is ‘crushing our economy’. Photograph: Kin Cheung/APView image in fullscreenKemi Badenoch will claim that spending on working-age benefits is ‘crushing our economy’. Photograph: Kin Cheung/APFrom 7h agoGood morning. It is quite easy for politicians to declare that they will cut the welfare bill by X amount – but much harder when they have to explain exactly who will lose out. This is summed up by a good anecdote about a former chancellor (Ken Clarke, according to some versions, but it could have been any of them), who gave this reply when asked for cuts that would save £1bn:
So, do you want one million people to lose £1,000 each, or 10 million people to lose £100 each?
Today Kemi Badenoch is giving a speech to launch a policy document, Welfare That Works, explaining how the Tories would cut welfare by £36bn. That’s 36 million people losing £1,000 each, according to the logic of our notional chancellor, although of course it is not quite as simple as that. All of these cuts are ones that the Conservative party has proposed already, but what we are getting today is a bit more detail about how some of them would be implemented in practice, and a big overall argument defending them.
Here is a page from the document summarising where the cuts would fall.
Photograph: ConservativesI will post more on the detail in the document later.
According to extracts from her speech released in advance, Badenoch will say that she is publishing these proposals now so that voters do not get any “nasty surprises” if they elect a Tory government.
It is too late to work out what you think once you’re in government. If you want to change this country, you need to know exactly what you want to do and how you’re going to do it …
We’re telling people what we are going to do now so that there will be no nasty surprises from us such as cutting your winter fuel payment, the jobs tax or the family farm tax once we get into government.
Badenoch will also claim that spending on working-age benefits is “crushing our economy”. More than a third of her proposed savings would come from cuts to sickness and disability benefits, and Badenoch will claim there is a “fundamental difference” between Conservative and Labour thinking on this issue. She will say:
Labour MPs think cutting welfare is always cruel. They believe the kindest thing you can do for someone who is struggling is to tell them it’s okay not to look after themselves. That there’s nothing wrong with a life of dependency. And if you don’t think very hard about it, I can see why you might believe that is kind. Of course, there are people who genuinely cannot work. People with serious illnesses and disabilities. People who need time to recover. We must have a safety net for those people.
But the reality is that millions of people can and do contribute to our economy to their families to their communities even when they face serious challenges. Double amputees run marathons. People who are housebound do wonderful creative work from home. People with autism run some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
If you tell a young person that their ADHD means they are defective and will never amount to anything, that mindset is likely to be more destructive to their future than the condition itself. That is what our welfare system is currently doing. Conservatives believe in a system that looks at people through the lens of what they can do, not what they cannot.
In fact, this is a misleading caricature of Labour thinking on welfare; the government is about to publish a report from Alan Milburn that will be 100% dedicated to making the system more focused on what young people “can do, not what they cannot”. But, as is often the case with Badenoch’s rhetoric, it crystalises an argument and makes for a good headline.
9.30am: Andy Burnham chairs a political cabinet.
10.30am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on her plan to cut benefits by £36bn.
11am: Michael Marra gives what is being billed as his first major speech since becoming Scottish Labour leader.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Alex Norris, the justice secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
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A justice minister has told MPs that the government is “concerned” about the use of injunctions to stop allegations about sexual predators being made public.
Alex Davies-Jones was speaking in the Commons in response to a question from Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, who pointed out that David Walliams had been able to use an injunction to stop allegations about his conduct toward women being made public.
Timothy said that it had also taken time for the full truth about Russell Brand and Mohamed Al-Fayed to emerge, and he asked Davies-Jones what the government was doing to stop injunctions and super-injunctions being abused.
I want to reassure him that this government is determined to do all we can to ensure that anyone who is a perpetrator of these kinds is held to the full force of the law. That includes looking at what we can do regarding injunctions.
[Timothy] will know that applications for privacy injunctions are considered independently to the courts, and it would not be appropriate for the government to comment.
However, we are concerned about the use of these, and the minister for courts is looking at what more we can do with Slapps [strategic lawsuits against public participation] injunctions.
He will know we have already taken action on NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) for sexual abuse cases, and what more we can do to prevent abuse of process throughout the judicial system.
View image in fullscreenAlex Davies-Jones in the Commons Photograph: HoCIn the Commons, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, is responding to an urgent question tabled by the Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith. It was prompted by this story in the Mail on Sunday claiming that Chinese spies were able to obtain the phone records of MPs critical of China, including Duncan Smith.
Jarvis said there was a limit to what he could say, because people mentioned in the report were subject to an ongoing FBI investigation and live Interpol arrest warrants. But he said the government would never tolerate espionage.
Duncan Smith asked Jarvis if he could say what information the Chinese already had on the MPs sanctioned by Beijing. He said that it was not just the MPs themselves who were affected; members of their families needed protecting too.
Jarvis said he had “huge respect” for the way Duncan Smith continued to raise these issues. But he said the MP was inviting him to comment on ongoing investigations, and that it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to do that because he could prejudice future criminal proceedings.
He also offered to meet Duncan Smith in private to discuss this.
Argentina is seeking to inflict “devastating” economic consequences on the people of the Falkland Islands by seeking to block oil exploration and drilling, the government’s top law officer has claimed. The Press Association reports:
Attorney general Ellie Reeves told international judges that Argentina’s objections to the Sea Lion development were rooted in its claim to sovereignty over the South Atlantic territory and are the latest signs in an increasingly assertive campaign by Javier Milei’s government.
Argentina has called for the international tribunal for the law of the sea to order a halt to the Sea Lion project as a provisional measure before a full arbitration hearing.
But Reeves told judges at the Hamburg tribunal today: “In reality, what Argentina opposes is the Falkland Islands government licensing hydrocarbon activities for the economic benefit of the Falkland Islanders. What it wants is to take control of those resources for itself.”
She said the order sought by Argentina “would prevent the people of the Falkland Islands from developing their natural resources, as they are entitled to do so, pursuant to their fundamental right to self-determination”.
“The measures sought would have devastating consequences for the Falkland Islands and its people,” she said.
“They risk losing billions of pounds in revenue, which is essential for the island’s economic development. The measures would also be catastrophic for the companies involved.”
Argentina has long claimed sovereignty over the Falklands and invaded the islands in 1982, triggering a war which saw a British taskforce despatched to successfully retake the territory. The Buenos Aires government has argued that drilling should not take place until the issue of sovereignty has been resolved.
But the UK said the dispute about sovereignty over land territory fell outside the UN convention on the law of the sea’s arbitration process which is aimed at settling maritime disputes.
At the hearing in Hamburg, Argentina’s lawyer Mario Oyarzabal argued that action was needed to block Sea Lion.
“What is at stake cannot be restored,” he said.
“Hydrocarbons are non-renewable resources and their extraction is final.
“Drilling permanently alters the seabed and subsoil. Wells may be plugged, but they cannot be undone. Once extracted, oil cannot be put back.”
The proceedings will continue on Wednesday, although a ruling could take several weeks.
The Sea Lion development is a joint venture in the South Atlantic Ocean between British and Israeli companies, and contains an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of oil.
The Treasury has confirmed that it has launched a leak inquiry into a Bloomberg report ahead of the budget saying the proposed new tax on banks would not be as onerous as the City assumed.
Meg Hillier, the chair of the Commons Treasury committee, asked for confirmation that a leak inquiry would be launched in a letter saying the report was “more than idle speculation”. Today the committee has published a reply from James Bowler, permanent secretary at the Treasury, who said the Government Security Group is now investigating.
The Bloomberg story was published on the morning of the budget, and had an immediate impact on bank share prices, which went up.
I suspect that yet another inquiry into the leak of budget measures will turn up no evidence of a breach but plenty of reassurance that next time it will be even more secure. And so the cycle continues.
We cannot continue to accept this doom-loop of dead-end investigations in which everybody in the Treasury throws their hands up in despair, but nobody is ever found to have done anything wrong.
The Treasury still has questions to answer on how market-sensitive information which was likely to affect the share price of banks was circulating around newsrooms before it was given to parliament. I will be pushing for those answers when the chancellor appears in front of the committee tomorrow afternoon.
David Walliams has membership of the Labour party suspended in the light of the revelations about his behaviour towards young women revealed by a joint Guardian/ITV News investigation today.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested the Conservative proposals to save £36bn through welfare cuts might not be realistic.
In a snap assessment, the IFS has highlighted two main problems with the plans (see 9.14am), and it says these potential loopholes mean the savings might not be as large as the party is claiming.
But the IFS accepts that substantial welfare savings are possible, and it welcomes some elements of what is being proposed.
The IFS says (bold text from the original):
Two proposals make up more than half the proposed saving, and both come with significant uncertainties.
Cuts to working-age health-related benefits, scored at £14bn, are based on a reform under which “claims for mild mental health conditions and routine back and joint pain will no longer be accepted”. Under the existing system, claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) are assessed based upon what the individual is unable to do (such as cooking, or getting around) and claims for the health element of universal credit are assessed based upon the individuals’ capacity to work. Neither benefits’ assessment is linked to specific conditions. To cut benefits for people with particular conditions might imply adding a requirement to have a diagnosis from a specified list. But this could well save less than expected, as many health-related benefit claimants have multiple health problems. Previous IFS research found that two-thirds of those on disability benefits (PIP) with a mental health diagnosis also have a physical health diagnosis. Such a reform would also incentivise claimants to obtain a diagnosis to make them eligible.
A further £9.5bn per year saving is envisaged from ending access to the benefit system for foreign nationals (except those with EU settled status). Currently 526,000 universal credit claimants are in this category, around 63% of whom are not in work (and often will get much of their income from benefits). The key uncertainty here is how many people would respond to the reform by applying for citizenship, and hence remain eligible for benefits. Many of those with indefinite leave to remain (who make up 233,000 of the above 526,000) are able to apply for citizenship. Making it harder to obtain citizenship if one has claimed benefits in the past (as some Conservative policies imply) would reduce the scope for this response.
But the IFS also says there are two ideas in the Tory document that would improve the way the benefits system operates.
Under the current housing benefit system, housing benefit is set according to the local housing allowance (LHA) and the LHA is meant to be pegged to the 30th percentile (the cheapest 30%) of local rents. But successive governments have often just frozen it, creating uncertainty for tenants and landlords. The Tories say they would in future peg the LHA to the 10th percentile (ultimately making it less generous), but guarantee uprates every year (so housing benefit payments rise as local rents rise). The IFS says this would be “a clear improvement in design”.
The IFS has also welcomed the Tory plan for old people with a disability. Under the current system, anyone who has an appropriate disability before they reach state pension age can get Pip (the personal independence payment), and they continue to get it after they reach state pension age. But if they acquire the same disability when they are already a pensioner, they get the less generous attendance allowance. The Tories are saying they would move Pip claimants on to the attendance allowance at pension age. The IFS approves, saying there is “a clear advantage in treating people similarly in retirement regardless of whether their disability started before or after state pension age”.
Commenting on the overall IFS assessment, Tom Waters, an IFS associate director, said:
Substantial savings from the benefit system are absolutely possible. But some savings are much more certain than others, and the Conservatives’ proposals are at the more uncertain end of the spectrum – though, if realised, they would undo all the growth in real working-age benefit spending since the pandemic.
The cuts are also fairly narrowly targeted, implying large losses for a small number of people. In particular, some of the foreign nationals affected get most or all of their income from benefits, and under this plan would see a substantial increase in hardship.
The SNP has said that it is not logical for Labour to resist a second referendum on independence now that Scottish Labour favours overturning the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Commenting on Michael Marra’s speech (see 12.28pm), Keith Brown, the SNP’s depute (deputy) leader, said:
It is good that Scottish Labour has finally accepted the obvious fact – that the UK ripping Scotland out of the EU against our will has been a disaster.
Having accepted that people are able to revisit the EU referendum decision taken 10 years ago, how can any Labour party politician now seriously claim Scotland can’t revisit the independence referendum decision taken 12 years ago?
The UK Labour government’s position is as clear as mud – the fact is the only way to guarantee Scotland’s EU membership is to rejoin as an independent member state.
And after we do so, an independent Scotland would absolutely welcome the remainder of the UK back into the EU.
The Commons is sitting at 2.30pm today. (Normally proceedings start at 11.30am on a Tuesday, but the Monday hours apply today because the house was in recess yesterday.)
After justice questions, there will be an urgent question at 3.30pm, tabled by Iain Duncan Smith, about the Chinese government obtaining phone records and financial information about MPs sanctioned by China. Then there will be two ministerial statements: the Foreign Office minister Chris Elmore on Chogm, and then the children’s minister Josh MacAlister on regulations about mobile phones in schools (see 10.04am).
Responding to Kemi Badenoch’s speech on welfare cuts this morning, a Labour spokesperson said:
The Tories’ so-called ‘plan’ is a charter for homelessness and human misery that would push people into hardship and end up costing the state more.
The crude cuts they want to make would compound the mistakes they made in government, which led to the welfare bill rocketing by nearly £114bn and a Neets crisis.
Unionists in the Northern Ireland assembly have been accused of “blatant sectarianism” in response to a move at Stormont that provides fresh evidence that power sharing is collapsing.
As the Press Association reports, relations between parties in the power-sharing executive have soured in the fallout from the Drumcree parading dispute, which has seen Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill being interviewed by police in relation to her participation in an allegedly unlawful protest on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown in September that was held to try to block an Orange Order parade from Drumcree Church proceeding down the predominantly nationalist road. PA says:
The row has had political consequences at Stormont, with DUP deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly having stopped joint engagements with O’Neill.
In a new development, today the DUP said it would use a petition of concern in an attempt to block legislation around Irish-medium education proposed by a Sinn Féin MLA. Pat Sheehan has proposed a private member’s bill to require Stormont’s Department of Education to prepare a workforce plan for Irish-medium education.
The bill is scheduled to go through its final stage at the assembly tomorrow. The petition of concern forces a cross-community vote, and requires majority support from both unionist and nationalist MLAs to pass. Other unionist parties have indicated they will support the DUP petition, meaning the bill would fail.
In a comment on social media, O’Neill said:
The DUP, TUV, and UUP have used a Petition of Concern to block a Sinn Féin Bill that would have ensured teachers and staff are in place in Irish-medium schools to meet growing demand.
Using the Petition of Concern to deny children the support they deserve is despicable.
It is blatant sectarianism and anti-Irish bigotry, and yet another desperate attempt to drag us backwards.
Sinn Féin will continue to stand up for people’s rights, and face down those who want to drag us back.
Lord Ashcroft has published the full details of his latest polling. He outraged Nigel Farage at the weekend when he revealed that it gave the Tories an eight-point lead over Reform UK. In part this might be explained by the fact that conventional polls ask how people would vote if there were an election now, but Ashcroft gets his main headline figure by asking how people will vote at the next election.
He polled on lots of other questions. One was about how people would vote in a referendum on joining the EU. Some 53% of people would vote to join, and 29% to stay out, the poll suggests.
Interestingly, 28% of those who voted Tory at the last election would be voting to join.
View image in fullscreenPolling on rejoining EU Photograph: Lord AshcroftDowning Street has issued a readout from the political cabinet this morning. Most of it is about the Alan Milburn review being published next week. Here is an extract.
The prime minister said there needed to be a shift from paying for failure to investing in success, as he said those around the Cabinet table knew from their own constituencies that the right support had not been there to allow young people to seize opportunities.
Ministers highlighted how Labour had already made good strides since the general election. The prime minister welcomed figures showing there are now a record level of children starting school ready to thrive. More than 72% had a good level of development according to government data for 2025/26, up four percentage points in just a year.
Ministers also discussed Europe, the readout says.
Turning to the UK-EU summit, the prime minister said that no sensible person thought the Brexit deal negotiated by the Conservatives was working for the country. He argued there could be a significant prize next week if we successfully secure practical agreements that make the country better off.
Ministers said the government would put Britain’s interests first by taking opportunities next week that cut red tape on businesses and ease prices for consumers.
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Michael Marra, the Scottish Labour leader, has called for the UK to fully rejoin the EU, claiming he wants Scotland to help shape the debate on reversing Brexit.
Less than two months after succeeding Anas Sarwar as Scottish leader, Marra said the economic, security and political case for rejoining the EU was overwhelming – a position the UK Labour party and UK government have not yet adopted.
Marra said he had spoken to Andy Burnham, the prime minister, on Tuesday to tell him of his change in Scottish Labour’s policy. While the Scottish party has historically more Europhile than the UK party, its official policy has until now been aligned with the UK government’s.
Marra said Burnham’s conference speech, where the prime minister said a conversation about reversing Brexit had to begin, opened the way for Scottish Labour to take a clear position now.
Speaking at Edinburgh University, Marra said he wanted rejoining the EU to be part of the next Labour general election manifesto, but acknowledged to reporters there was no guarantee that would happen.
His dramatic change of stance is designed partly to attract former Labour voters who deserted the party in favour of the staunchly pro-EU Scottish National party. The SNP has insisted the only clear route to EU membership would come through independence.
I also know as much as I need to persuade people in my own party about this destination, I need to persuade people in my own country.
One million Scots voted leave [in 2016]. Many did so out of a desperate desire for change. My approach will be to listen and persuade them, not berate them.
This is what Scottish Labour will do. Bring people together. Find common ground. Make the case for change and unite people in that endeavour.
The truth is that Scotland’s best chance for re-entering the EU is by the UK rejoining. We can build a case through honest deliberation and careful compromise. We can build a coalition of those seeking change.
We can build a consensus. The SNP tells Scots they must leave one union to join another. I’m not asking Scotland to choose.
I’m asking Scotland to help bring the whole United Kingdom back into Europe. Let’s use one union to join another.
View image in fullscreenMichael Mara speaking at Edinburgh university today. Photograph: Andrew MacColl/ShutterstockQ: [From Peter Walker from the Guardian] Do you back the plans in the budget to ringfence preventative spending?
Badenoch said she would not guarantee to keep these proposals in place. She did not comment in details on the advantages or disadvantages of the PDEL plan, but she said the government could only protect budgets if it had money.
Q: How do you respond to child poverty groups saying these proposals could lead to the biggest increase in child poverty in history?
That is a reference to Sara Ogilvie, policy director at the Child Poverty Action Group policy director, issuing this comment this morning about the Tory proposals.
These proposals would take the UK back to the dark ages, causing the biggest overnight increase in child poverty since records began. We need all our politicians to commit to a plan to reduce child poverty rather than condemn the next generation to a future of struggle.
Badenoch said child poverty groups were set up to campaign on this issue.
Child poverty groups are there to say that there’s going to be more and more child poverty unless their demands are met.
We have to balance what they’re saying with what the facts say and with what we are seeing on the ground. We are MPs as well. We see what’s happening in constituencies.
Of course, we don’t want to see child poverty, but the best way to stop child poverty is to make sure their parents have well paying jobs. That is our plan.
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