Starmer urged to introduce wealth tax instead of cutting disability benefits – UK politics live | Politics![]() Peter Walker has more from Diane Abbott’s interview on the Today programme this morning. Good morning. “You want me to cut £1bn. Shall I take £100 each off 10 million people, or £1,000 each off 1 million people?” The former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke is credited with coming up with this explanation of what big number spending cuts actually mean, but every chancellor has probably thought the same. Tomorrow the government is expected to announced disability cuts said to be worth at least £5bn. You can work out the maths. That is more than three times as much as the £1.5bn saved by cutting the winter fuel payment, the single policy decision that as done more than anything else to make the government unpopular. So it is not hard to work out why Keir Starmer is facing Labour turmoil over this decision. (To be fair, the winter fuel payment was an immediate cut. The figures briefed about how much money the government wants to save by cutting disability benefits seem to refer to savings by the end of the decade. But we don’t know the details at this point. Last week the New Economics Foundation, a leftwing thinktank, claimed that cuts could be worth as much as £9bn by 2029-30.) Hard facts might be in short supply this morning, but comment isn’t. With 24 hours to go before one of the biggest announcements of the Keir Starmer premiership, lots of people are staking out positions. Here are some of the key developments.
This is broadly similar to what the Green party was proposing at the last election.
He says Greater Manchester’s Live Well initiative is a model for how people who are ill can be supported back into work.
When it was put to here that she was saying some of their concerns might be addressed when they read the actual proposals, Reynolds said there had been “a lot of speculation about what we might or might not do”.
Here is the agenda for the day. 9.30am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is meeting the heads of regulatory agencies in Downing Street to discuss their plans to boost growth. Later Reeves is recording broadcast interviews. 11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. Noon: Nigel Farage and other Reform UK MPs hold a press conference to make what they call “a special announcement”. 2.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons. After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement about Ukraine. After 4.30pm: MPs start debating the remaining stages of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. 5.35pm: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech at the CPS’s Margaret Thatcher Conference on Remaking Conservatism. Other speakers earlier in the day include George Osborne, the former chancellor, who is doing a Q&A at 3.35pm. Early evening: Keir Starmer meets Mark Carney, the new Canadian PM, in Downing Street. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. Source link Posted: 2025-03-17 10:46:13 |
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