Summary of the day …
Thank you for reading the blog today, which I am just about to wrap up. Here are the headlines …
Without specifically naming any one person, Post Office minister has said Kevin Hollinrake has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail” in an interview on BBC Breakfast. He claimed he has instructed government officials to “just settle” compensation cases where “it looks right”
No 10 has told MPs to be cautious about unsolicited messages after an attempted “honeytrap” scam appears to have targeted a dozen MPs
Keir Starmer has said “nobody is interested” in Angela Rayner’s tax affairs, as the Daily Mail continued to try to apply pressure about her domestic arrangements a decade ago
Downing Street has responded to a report that the Foreign Office has an identity that is “somewhat elitist and rooted in the past” by saying that Rishi Sunak does not think it is, and that it should not remove colonial-era artworks from display in its premises
Reform UK says it published it candidates list early so media could help vet it. Several have been stood down, and leader Richard Tice warned activists not to drink and then post on social media
An episode of shadow foreign secretary David Lammy’s LBC programme is being investigated by Ofcom
A review into the Ofsted’s response to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry will begin this month, led by a former Ofsted chief inspector
Gordon Brown has written for the Times criticising Sunak over his threats to leave the European court of human rights (ECHR), which Brown says “plays into Putin’s hands”
Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride has agaain refused to commit Sunak’s government to paying compensation to the Waspi women campaigners over changes to their state pension
That’s a wrap from me, Martin Belam. Assuming the solar eclipse doesn’t whisk us all up into the rapture, I will see you tomorrow. You can follow the eclipse live here by the way, the photos should be great, and you might even be able to see a partial one from bits of the UK – Robyn Vinter has our guide to that.
Our political correspondent Aletha Adu has this report for us on Richard Tice saying that Reform UK had released its candidate list early in order to aid scrutiny, in which he said “Every party has their fair share frankly of muppets and morons. You’ve seen it with sexual weirdos in the Tory party, you’ve seen it with antisemitism in the Labour party and George Galloway’s party. So I say yes we’ll get rid of anybody with inappropriate behaviour.”
He also suggested Reform UK were going to use AI to monitor candidate’s behaviour in real-time, and that his party made “the fastest decisions when someone does or says or writes something completely inappropriate”.
Read more here: Reform UK says it published candidates list early so media could help vet it
Here is a clip released by the Labour party from Keir Starmer’s campaign visit to an east Midlands hospital today. He was talking about Labour’s plans to digitise the children’s health record – known as the “red book” – to help parents manage the healthcare of their infants.
In the clip he says that “everybody will know the NHS is absolutely on its knees”, promising that a Labour government would “pick the NHS up … and that’s where reform comes in.”
My mission-driven government will get our NHS back its feet and deliver the reform needed to make it fit for the future. pic.twitter.com/l6PR7dMPo8
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 8, 2024
Downing Street has responded to a report that the Foreign Office has an identity that is “somewhat elitist and rooted in the past” by saying that Rishi Sunak does not think it is, and that it should not remove colonial-era artworks from display in its premises.
Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reported this morning on the report written by former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, former No 10 foreign policy adviser Tom Fletcher and former Foreign Office director general Moazzam Malik, among others.
In it, the report said the Foreign Office is “struggling to deliver a clear mandate, prioritisation and resource allocation”, adding it “all too often operates like a giant private office for the foreign secretary of the day.”
It suggested a model similar to Canada and Australia, where a revamped international department has a strategic oversight over not just aid and diplomacy, but the climate emergency and trade. It also mentioned that “modernising premises – perhaps with fewer colonial-era pictures on the walls – might help create a more open working culture and send a clear signal about Britain’s future.”
It is that comment that a Downing Street spokesperson has seized upon, with PA Media reporting that the prime minister does not agree that the Foreign Office is “elitist”, or that it should remove colonial-era paintings.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
I don’t think he would agree with that assessment at all. The Foreign Office is doing vital work to protect and promote UK interests abroad and he fully supports the work of the Foreign Office and indeed the foreign secretary in achieving those objectives.
Rejecting the idea of removing artworks, they said:
We’ve previously talked about being proud of the UK’s history and looking forward, the Foreign Office is at the forefront of efforts to promote UK interests at home and abroad.
The new tax year brings with it increases in benefits payments, in particular the state pension and universal credit. Over on our money desk, Miles Brignall has put together this explainer of what is changing and how it might affect you, and he has almost certainly done it much better than my attempt to summarise pension changes earlier on today.
One thing worth noting, whatever the outcome of the next election, the pensions triple-lock appears here to stay. In March the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said the Conservatives would continue it if they won, and Labour has also said it is “committed to retaining” it.
The triple-lock came in under the Conservative-led coalition government in the 2011/12 financial year, and is a commitment to increase state pensions by whichever is highest of average earnings growth, CPI inflation, or 2.5%. The SNP and the Liberal Democrats also back it.
Earlier today Reform UK leader Richard Tice attacked Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting for not being ambitious enough in his suggestion that Labour would use spare capacity in the private healthcare industry to try to drive down NHS waiting lists in England.
The Green party of England and Wales have also been critical of what Streeting said, although as you’d expect, not for the same reasons. Co-leader Carla Denyer said:
It is inadequate funding that has left our NHS in a poor state of health, not lack of reform. To say that the public is paying a heavy price for failure is an insult to hard-working NHS staff, who are doing their level best despite being overworked and underpaid. It is the failure to invest adequately and pay staff properly that is at the root of dissatisfaction with the NHS.
The public agrees. They don’t want endless reforms; neither do they share the Conservative or Labour appetite for creeping privatisation. They want the current model to work and to see the NHS available to everyone free of charge and primarily funded through taxes.
A tax on the super-rich billionaires and multimillionaires can provide the funds needed to fix our cherished NHS. The Green Party has never had any truck with the profit motive in health care and will continue to push for a fully publicly funded NHS.
The Mirror has named Liz Truss among 25 MPs it says have not spoken in the Commons yet this year. Kevin Maguire suggests it hasn’t prevented her being able to earn a living. Truss’s first chancellor during her 49-day stint as prime minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, is also among those the paper says have not to have spoken in the Commons in 2024.
She's very happy to sing for her supper when a fat fee is dangled, Truss registering £280,000 from speeches plus hefty expenses since a disastrous if mercifully brief Premiership.
— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) April 8, 2024
"Liz Truss among over 25 MPs not to speak in Commons this year."https://t.co/dizRSo8cKo
It should be noted that sometimes when the media produce lists like this, it ends up including MPs who, it later transpires, have been ill or unable to attend parliament for other reasons.
A review into the school’s watchdog’s response to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry will begin this month, led by a former Ofsted chief inspector.
Dame Christine Gilbert will lead the independent learning review, which was announced in January, in response to the Coroner’s Prevention of Future Deaths report from Perry’s inquest.
The headteacher died by suicide after an Ofsted report downgraded her Caversham Primary School in Reading from the highest grade Outstanding to its lowest, Inadequate over safeguarding concerns.
In December, a coroner concluded the Ofsted inspection in November 2022 “likely contributed” to Perry’s death.
On Monday, announcing Dame Christine’s appointment, Ofsted said the review would not examine the inspection of Caversham Primary School or the judgments made.
Dame Christine, who was a teacher for 18 years, served as chief inspector at Ofsted from 2006 until 2011.
School leaders’ union the NAHT said the review must be independent and impartial, noting a concern some might have that it is being led by a former Ofsted chief.
Dame Christine said she will take a “detailed and thorough” look at events from the end of the school inspection to the conclusion of the inquest, and will speak with Perry’s family.
She said:
The death of Ruth Perry was a deeply sad and shocking event. Ofsted has accepted that it is vitally important for it to learn from this tragedy and has asked me to help them do that.
I intend to take a very detailed and thorough look at all areas of Ofsted’s work – from the moment the Caversham inspection ended, through to the conclusion of the Coroner’s inquest.
I will scrutinise the approach taken and advise on future actions and revisions needed to improve Ofsted’s policies and processes for dealing with any tragic incident.
Importantly, I will hear first-hand from the family of Ruth Perry to gain a better understanding of the impact of Ofsted’s work. I would like to thank them in advance for agreeing to engage with my review.
Current chief inspector of Ofsted, Sir Martyn Oliver, said: “I am very grateful to Dame Christine for agreeing to lend her valuable experience and expertise to leading this important review.”
Reform UK leader Richard Tice has told candidates it is “not sensible” to use social media after drinking alcohol, and said they should avoid posting “inappropriate” comments after complaints were made about several posts.
The party has ditched seven candidates for the upcoming election following complaints about their social media posts. He warned that in the future, the party would “part company” with candidates making similar posts.
Tice said every party has their share of “morons” but added that he is committed to kicking them out quickly.
At a press conference in London, he said:
We’re very clear to all our candidates, for heaven’s sake if you’re going to have a glass on a Friday night then don’t use social media.
It’s not sensible, if someone lets us down hereafter, then frankly if it is inappropriate, if it is unacceptable, then we’re going to part company.
So you can have your freedom of speech, your freedom of expression, that doesn’t mean you have the right to represent Reform UK as a parliamentary candidate, because that’s our choice.
Campaign group Hope Not Hate found tweets by candidates Jonathan Kay and Mick Greenhough in which they made derogatory comments about Muslims and black people.
Kay, who was standing for election in South Ribble, tweeted in 2019 that Muslims “never coexist with others” and should be deported, and claimed Africans had IQs “among the lowest in the world”.
Greenhough, who was the Reform candidate in Orpington, tweeted in 2023 that “the only solution” was to “remove the Muslims from our territory” and in 2019 said Ashkenazi Jews were a “problem” and had “caused the world massive misery”.
Both men were removed as Reform candidates, after the publication of Hope Not Hate’s findings last week.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the Conservatives are “chasing a smear” in raising questions about deputy leader Angela Rayner’s taxes.
We reported earlier that he said “nobody is interested” in questions about the living and tax arrangements of his deputy Angela Rayner from a decade ago, and criticised Conservatives for focusing on that rather than improving the state of healthcare.
Rayner has faced questions about whether she paid the right amount of tax on the 2015 sale of her ex-council house due to confusion over whether it was her principal residency.
Sir Keir defended Rayner and said people were more interested in “problems caused by this government.”
He said:
Angela Rayner has been asked no end of questions about this. She’s answered them all. She said she’s very happy to answer any further questions from the police or from any of the authorities.
I don’t need to see the legal advice. My team has seen it. But I will say this, that on the day that the A&E figures, people are waiting more than 24 hours in A&E, we now know that they are 10 times as high as they were five years ago.
The idea that the Tories want to be focusing on what Angela Rayner, how much time she spent with her ex-husband 10 years ago, I can tell you here at this hospital, nobody but nobody is interested in that. They’re very, very interested in what are you going to do about the A&E problem caused by this government.
Sir Keir added that it was “not appropriate” for him to see Rayner’s legal advice personally.
But I do know this, that if you’re waiting more than 24 hours for A&E, you’re much more interested in why the government is not absolutely laser focused on that, which is what they should be, than chasing this smear against Angela Rayner and how much time she spent with her husband over 10 years ago.
Sally Weale is the Guardian’s education correspondent
A former head of Ofsted is to lead an independent review into the inspectorate’s response to the death of head teacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself last year after her school was downgraded following inspection.
The announcement about the appointment of Dame Christine Gilbert, who served as Ofsted’s chief inspector from 2006 to 2011, comes after complaints from Perry’s family about the length of time it was taking to start the learning review.
It will consider the actions Ofsted took in response to Perry’s death and whether internal policies and processes for responding to tragic incidents need to be revised.
Gilbert will also look into Ofsted’s communications, engagement with stakeholders and information-sharing within the inspectorate about the incident, as well as the support offered internally to staff.
It will not however examine the inspection of Caversham primary school in Reading, which Perry had led for more than a decade, nor the judgments reached. The school was downgraded from Ofsted’s highest grade, outstanding, to its lowest, inadequate.
The independent review was among the measures promised in Ofsted’s response to Berkshire senior coroner Heidi Connor’s report concluding that Perry’s suicide was “contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.
Gilbert, who is currently chair of the Education Endowment Foundation, said: “I intend to take a very detailed and thorough look at all areas of Ofsted’s work – from the moment the Caversham inspection ended, through to the conclusion of the coroner’s inquest.
“I will scrutinise the approach taken and advise on future actions and revisions needed to improve Ofsted’s policies and processes for dealing with any tragic incident.
“Importantly, I will hear first-hand from the family of Ruth Perry to gain a better understanding of the impact of Ofsted’s work. I would like to thank them in advance for agreeing to engage with my review.”
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
Starmer: 'nobody is interested' in Angela Rayner’s tax affairs
On a campaigning trip to a hospital in the east Midlands, Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that “nobody is interested” in questions about the living and tax arrangements of his deputy Angela Rayner from a decade ago, criticising Conservatives for focusing on that rather than improving the state of healthcare.
He told the media:
Angela Rayner has been asked no end of questions about this. She’s answered them all. She said she’s very happy to answer any further questions from the police or from any of the authorities. I don’t need to see the legal advice. My team has seen it.
But I will say this, that on the day that the A&E figures – people are waiting more than 24 hours in A&E, we now know that they are ten times as high as they were five years ago – the idea that the Tories want to be focusing on what Angela Rayner, how much time she spent with her ex-husband ten years ago, I can tell you here at this hospital, nobody but nobody is interested in that.
Updated
Keir Starmer has been making a campaign visit to Kings Mill hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield in the east Midlands, to back up Labour’s announcement that it intends to digitise the NHS “red book” that parents use for their children’s medical records.
Previous health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock had both hoped to implement a digitisation policy, but it was yet to happen, a fact pointed out by shadow mental health minister Abena Oppong-Asare on Sky News during the morning media round, when she said:
This is something that the government had previously announced that they would implement in 2017. And there is money already put aside for NHS digital moving forward, but that hasn’t been implemented.
We do need to move with the times. The equipment that’s being used is massively out of date, a quarter of a century out of date, and conversations that I’ve had with healthcare professionals, they feel massively frustrated that they don’t have the relevant technology.
Oppong-Asare said she believed that digitising the records and incorporating them into the NHS app might help with the low uptake of some childhood vaccines in the UK, specifically mentioning measles.
David Lammy LBC programme to be investigated by Ofcom
PA Media reports that an episode of shadow foreign secretary David Lammy’s LBC programme is being investigated by Ofcom.
The Labour MP’s show, broadcast on 29 March, is being looked at over whether it broke broadcasting rules on politicians acting as news presenters.
Ofcom’s rules on due impartiality state: “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified. In that case, the political allegiance of that person must be made clear to the audience.”
Last month, episodes of GB News programmes presented by Conservative MPs were found to have broken broadcasting rules by them acting as newsreaders, for example when Jacob Rees-Mogg presented news coverage as a jury returned a verdict in a case involving Donald Trump, or when Esther McVey and Philip Davies offered their personal opinions on stories while interviewing GB News reporters live on air.
In that instance, Ofcom said:
We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news – including reporting breaking news events – without exceptional justification. News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality.
Ofcom took no action against the channel beyond a warning not to break the rules again. This was the 12th time GB News breached the broadcasting code. GB News described the ruling as a “chilling development for all broadcasters”.
Mel Stride, the government Work and Pension secretary, was also talking about mental health and young people’s mental health on the media round earlier, although with a slightly different tack. He was saying the government was aiming to get more people who had been experiencing mental health issues back to work.
He told listeners to the BBC’s Today programme:
We need to be having a grown up and sensible conversation about where we’re going with mental health. It is very good news that we are more open about discussing mental health, far too many people suffered in silence in the past.
However, I think we also need to look very carefully about whether we are beginning to label or medicalise conditions that in the past would have been seen as the ups and downs of life. We all go through difficult times in our life. That is regrettable, but it is part and a natural part of the human condition.
None of that is to suggest that there aren’t additional pressures that have contributed to mental health problems … Covid and lockdown and so on, and I would add to that, incidentally, particularly for young people, social media and the impact of that. But we do need to have this grown up discussion.
Stride went on to say:
At the heart of the approach that I’m taking is perhaps it’s an old fashioned belief – but I think it’s one that needs to come back into fashion – is that work is good for you.
Work is good for your mental health. Getting up in the morning, having a sense of purpose, interacting with other people in the workplace, having a conversation at the water-cooler, or whatever it may be, is good for our mental health.
And there’s plenty of evidence that shows that, so my mission is to get as many people into work as possible. And I care the most about those who can benefit from work in the way that I’ve described. And that’s why I’m reviewing the process by which people go onto these long term benefits.
There is quite a healthcare theme developing today, and Wes Streeting has also been commenting this morning on a pledge made by London Mayor Sadiq Khan that if he is reelected in May, he would pledge £800,000 to “plug gaps” in mental health support for the most deprived schools in the capital.
Streeting said he was “delighted to see children and young people’s mental health high on Sadiq’s agenda. Really excited by these plans – and a Labour government working with our Labour Mayor will be able to go even further.”
Khan made the pledge late last night in the Mirror, saying it would “plug some of the gaps left by cuts and provide young people, their schools, and youth workers with the proper support they need”.
He said “Children and young people’s mental health is a public health emergency. It’s shocking that so many of our young Londoners are facing mental health difficulties. This is a crisis of the Tories’ making.”
In the Reform UK briefing, Richard Tice was dismissive of those comments by Labour’s Wes Streeting, saying “he must have heard what our conference was about because he wrote a few lines in a daily newspaper this morning.”
Tice compared Labour’s oft-cited pledge to spend £28bn on what he described as “their ridiculous green agenda that would have achieved nothing” to the £1bn figure he said they had pledged to use private healthcare capacity, saying Labour were showing “weak ambition”.
He said Streeting had claimed it would take a decade to sort out healthcare, but Reform UK were aiming for a zero patient waiting list within two years.
Tice claims that three main prongs of their policy would drive up capacity in the healthcare sector in the UK, proposing to vastly increase tax relief on private healthcare to drive uptake, use money to procure spare private healthcare capacity for the NHS, and that to attract and retain frontline healthcare staff they will pay zero basic rate income tax for three years.
He also claimed that Labour had a secret plan “to put VAT on all independent healthcare”, and said that instead of giving more money to “bungling NHS bureaucrats” he wanted to bring in logistics people from the likes of FedEx, Amazon and the military to sort out what he said was “the lack of productivity” in the NHS.
One part of the Reform UK briefing was directly addressed at Labour’s shadow health spokesperson Wes Streeting, who was also on the media round this morning.
Here is a flavour of what Streeting was setting out earlier as Labour’s plans for health. Describing it as a “pragmatic” argument, he told GB News:
It seems mad to me that we’ve got spare capacity in the private sector and we’re not using it.
You’ve got a situation today where middle and upper class people who can pay to go private are being seen faster, getting diagnosed more quickly and treated more quickly, which is certainly better for their quality of life but better for their outcomes.
And then working class people are left behind because they’re priced out of this two-tier system.
What I’m proposing is the Labour government would use spare capacity in the private sector to bring down waiting lists faster, but no one will have to worry about the bill.
I’m not happy about this because I think the NHS should have the staff, the equipment, the technology it needs without relying on the private sector, but I’ve got to deal with the world as it is after 14 years of Conservative government, not the world as I would wish it to be.
Of course, in the longer term Labour’s ambition is through workforce expansion, doubling the number of scanners and building on our proud record as a party of making sure that in future the NHS has the staff, the equipment and the technology it needs to treat patients, and to honour that founding principle of the NHS as a public service free at the point of use there for us when we need it.
On the Today programme, asked about the future of social care, Streeting said he would not be bounced into announcing something from the next Labour manifesto, but told listeners:
I would hope that the next Labour government won’t just provide an answer to the immediate crisis in social care but will set out a long-term direction for investment and reform that can command consensus across the divide and can last for generations, as we did on the NHS in 1948.
I’ll come back with some key points from the Reform UK briefing in a moment – essentially as expected Richard Tice has said the party would scrap net zero targets and use the money to fund a huge expansion of private healthcare provision – but my main takeaway was tonally it was pitched as if the party were the main opposition to an expected Labour government, and there was very little in there addressing the current administration.
Labour leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, has written for the Daily Record today repeating his attack on what he has called “the SNP’s financial mismanagement”.
It is not those with “the broadest shoulders” bearing the brunt of the SNP’s tax rises, as Humza Yousaf promised – it is ordinary working people, many of whom are struggling with high bills, soaring rents, and rising food prices.
Nurses, teachers, and council workers are all seeing their tax bills rise while they watch their services decline.
Sarwar has been criticising the SNP tax policy for raising taxes for those earning £29,000 and above, although some analysis has shown tha UK-wide national insurance changes will cancel out much of the rise for higher earners.
Richard Tice has opened up this Reform UK briefing by talking about “the woke managerial middle class who happen to be eco-zealots” and has introduced Lee Anderson who is reminiscing about coal-mining and is talking specifically about the mineworkers’ pension scheme.
I mentioned in the introduction that Reform UK are giving a press briefing that they have billed as being about “Labour’s betrayal of the working class”. That will be starting in a few minutes and I will bring you any key lines that emerge …
John Harris writes for us today, cautioning against schadenfreude at the Tories’ apparently inevitable defeat in the next election. He writes:
The Conservatives’ seemingly unstoppable lurching to the right is actually a grave cause for concern, for a few key reasons. One is to do with the basic functioning of our systems of power, and the fact that governments need to be held to account. Effective opposition, in other words, is a very important job, which an unhinged rabble will not be able to carry out.
But an even bigger cause for alarm centres on a possibility too easily written off. British politics now moves at a breakneck pace: less than five years ago, let us not forget, the party now apparently on its last legs won an 80-seat Commons majority. The state of politics in many of our neighbouring countries speaks for itself. The Tories’ immediate future, therefore, may not be quite the comical sideshow some people assume.
Even in the event of a Labour landslide, the likely survivors will include Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch. Regardless of who becomes the next party leader, post-Brexit Toryism is now built around a solid set of factors that will ensure that the most paranoid, belligerent views will remain noisy and untamed: a reactionary activist base, plenty of supportive media outlets and the element personified by Farage – present both inside and outside the party, and set on constantly yanking the Tories even further to the right. If a Labour government hits the skids, therefore, the consequences could be terrifying.
Read more here: John Harris – The Tory party has lost the plot, and could be bad news for Labour
Gordon Brown has written for the Times criticising prime minister Rishi Sunak over his threats to leave the European court of human rights (ECHR), which Brown says “plays into Putin’s hands”.
Last week Sunak told The Sun “I do believe that border security, and making sure that we can control illegal migration, is more important than membership of a foreign court.”
Brown writes:
When Sunak arrived in No 10, he had an opportunity to reaffirm core British values after the years of Johnson and Truss playing fast and loose with them.
Under this Conservative administration, the whole system of international law – not just the ECHR, but also the Refugee Convention and general human rights and humanitarian law – is being systemically undermined.
The result? Russia will exploit the British retreat to ridicule the legitimacy of international human rights law and our voice in the world will increasingly go unheard.
The Liberal Democrats have called for the formation of a national agencyto support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Ed Davy said: “Parents of children with special educational needs across the UK are facing a postcode lottery.
“The Conservative Government has woefully underfunded both schools and local authorities, meaning that many parents simply can’t get their children the support they deserve.
“That is unacceptable. No child, or their family, should have to wait so long or fight so hard to have their needs met.”
PA Media reports Davy said called for the government to cut the amount schools pay towards the cost of a child’s additional SEND support – currently £6,000 per child.
Davy claimed this would help to remove the financial disincentive that stops schools from identifying pupils’ needs as early as possible.
While he was on the media round, Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride was questioned on why the government would raise pensions in line with inflation, but had fought against inflation level pay rises for the public sector. He told Times Radio:
Pensioners are on fixed incomes, they don’t have the ability to adjust their economic circumstances as other people who might go out and work more hours or get a different job or seek a promotion or a salary increase or whatever it may be. Those things are typically not there for pensioners.
Work and Pensions secretary again refuses to commit to paying Waspi compensation
Appearing on the BBC Today programe, Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride has agin refused to commit Rishi Sunak’s government to paying compensation to the Waspi women campaigners over changes to their state pension.
At the end of last month the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said those affected should be compensated with recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950 a person.
Stride told listeners this morning that “as the ombudsman report was published, at the earliest opportunity I personally appeared at the dispatch box in parliament. I made an oral statement … [and] took an hour and a half of questions from colleagues from right across the house and I have reassured them that … we will come back without undue delay.”
However, pressed on timing, Stride said he would not be “coaxed” into making an announcement, saying:
I’m not going put a precise time limit on it, but we do need to look at these things very carefully. This was a report that was five years in the making. It does relate to matters that started with legislation in 1995. So over 30 years ago, people have very strong feelings on both sides of the argument here.
I think I owe it to everybody to really make sure that the guiding light in this process is that it is thorough, and that it is conclusive, because it has gone on for an awfully long time – under governments of different colours incidentally – and going back 30 years.
The state pension is increased from today, raised to £11,500 a year from £10,600.
The Liberal Democrats have claimed the extra pension support would be largely wiped out, as more pensioners are dragged into paying income tax as a result of threshold freezes.
Work and pensions spokesperson Wendy Chamberlain said: “This Conservative government is picking pensioners’ pockets to try to fill the black hole caused by their disastrous economic policy.
“These are people who have played by the rules their whole lives, paid their taxes and contributed so much to our society. They expect that in their older years the government would look after them, not place even more financial hardship upon them during a cost-of-living crisis.”
Liberal Democrat analysis suggest up to 1.6 million more pensioners will be paying income tax within the next four years due to the threshold freezes.
Writing in the Telegraph, political correspondent Dominic Penna described the freezes in the threshold as “stealth taxes”. Pensioners start paying income tax at £12,570.
Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “Thanks to the triple lock and our efforts to drive down inflation, we are putting money back in the pockets of pensioners. This is only possible because we have stuck to our plan and our economy has turned a corner.”
The UK economy went into recession in the last two quarters of 2023. Inflation in shop prices in the UK has eased to the lowest level for more than two years, but food inflation is still running at 3.7%, higher then the Bank of England’s 2% target for inflation.
Minister claims he has instructed officials to 'just settle' Post Office Horizon compensation claims where 'it looks right'
While appearing on BBC television this morning, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has claimed that he has instructed government officials to “just settle” compensation cases where “it looks right”.
Hollinrake was being asked by an East Yorkshire subpostmaster about the legal costs involved in claiming compensation.
Lee Castleton, who was made bankrupt after he lost his legal battle with the Post Office over an alleged £25,000 shortfall, told the minister “we’re currently looking at paying £2 in legal fees for every £1 in compensation”.
Castleton said “it’s very adversarial, and people are talking about sitting in these meetings having to re-go through this criminal investigation. Why is that right for the taxpayer?”
In response, Hollinrake said:
Lawyers are a fact of life, and they have an important role to play, of course, but we’re keen to try reduce the legal argument over these processes.
We need to simplify the process, take the common sense view. I’ve said to our officials, and to legal representatives, “if it looks right, it is right, just settle it” – that’s what we need to do.
Post Office minister: people responsible for the Horizon scandal 'should go to jail'
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail” in an interview on BBC Breakfast.
Without specifically naming any one person, he told viewers:
The inquiry is unearthing the evidence, what you see now is a result of the inquiry, the statutory inquiry.
The Metropolitan police are undertaking an investigation – the Government doesn’t do that, the police do that.
When evidence has been established, people should be prosecuted – that’s my view.
And I think you, and other people I’ve spoken to, and I certainly feel, people within the Post Office, possibly further afield, should go to jail.
He continued:
We have to go through a process, we believe in the rule of law – lots of people in this room, and other people, have not had the benefit of the rule of law.
It has failed, failed these people, inexcusably.
We do believe in process, that’s the country we are very proud to live in.
But if the threshold is met, the evidence is there, where criminal prosecutions can be undertaken – and that those people are found guilty – I have no reservation in saying people should go to jail.
The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office while it routinely denied there was a problem with its Horizon IT system, has already forfeited her CBE for “bringing the honours system into disrepute” over her handling of the Horizon crisis.
Fujitsu’s Europe chief Paul Patterson has said it was “shameful and appalling” that courts hearing cases against post office operators over missing funds were not told of 29 bugs identified as early as 1999 in the accounting system it built.
The former chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, and the campaigner Alan Bates will give evidence this week as the public inquiry into the scandal enters its next phase.
Welcome and opening summary …
Good morning, it should in theory be a quiet week for politics in the UK, as it is Easter recess. However there are local election campaigns ongoing in England, we are expecting a Reform UK press briefing mid-morning which is billed by them as an attack on Labour’s betrayal of the working class, Aslef’s train driver strike reaches its final day, and there is a total eclipse of the sun in North America which some people are claiming will herald the rapture, so let’s keep an open mind on where the day might lead. Here are your headlines …
Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail”
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has declined again to put any timetable of paying the compensation to the Waspi campaign women recommended by an ombudsmen report
A cross-party group of MPs is proposing to make abortion access a human right in England and Wales, putting forward legislation that would decriminalise abortion up to 24 weeks
Labour has announced plans to digitise the NHS “red book” that parents use for their children’s medical records
The Foreign Office has been criticised as “elitist and rooted in the past” in a new report
UK rent rises are forecast to outpace wage growth for the next three years
People receiving the state pension will get a 8.5% increase worth an extra £900 a year to full rate claimants starting from today. Universal credit claimants will receive a 6.7% increase
It is Martin Belam here with you this week. I do try to read all your comments, and dip into them where I think I can be helpful, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – martin.belam@theguardian.com – especially if you have spotted my inevitable errors and typos, or you think I’ve missed something important.
