Starmer and Reeves need to find ‘escape route’ from winter fuel payments row, says Ed Balls – as it happened

Labour shadow chancellor said that, while he did not think a straightforward U-turn would be acceptable, ministers needed to find another way to stop the controversy destabilising the government.

Balls said that Reeves needed to be “really quick”, and that she could not afford to wait until the budget, which is on 30 October.

Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with George Osborne, the Tory former chancellor, Balls said:

If you’re Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves and their teams, you’ll be looking at the polling, you’ll be looking at the focus groups. They will be saying, ‘This is a big problem, and it’s going to get worse’.

I don’t think you can just plough on. I don’t think you can do a U-turn, but what they need is an escape route.

They need to find a creative way to do what they said they were going to do, close the in-year black hole, and find an alternative way to do it which could either be modifying what they’re doing on the winter allowance or finding some other way to close the black hole … I would be thinking creatively.

Balls also said that, although Reeves was “very skilled”, she may be regretting her decision to announce the winter fuel payments cut in July. He said:

I think she will have been given a list of things and told she has to do one of them, and I think she’s probably, in retrospect, quite annoyed at the Treasury for pushing her into an immediate decision like this. She may have felt, in retrospect, it was bad advice.

And she’ll be acutely aware of the politics, because the reality is this isn’t just a storm in a teacup. This is one of those big cut-through issues which has real momentum. It unites the left and the right.

In January, also speaking on his podcast, Balls said Labour should abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on its green jobs plan. About two weeks later that is exactly what Starmer did.

For two decades Balls was a key figure in Labour, first as Gordon Brown’s most powerful adviser, then as a cabinet minister, and finally as Ed Miliband’s shadow chancellor.

Now he works primarily as a presenter, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and as a podcaster. His wife, Yvette Cooper, is home secretary.

1.12pm.)

Speaking during a private notice question (the Lords equivalent of a Commons urgent question), Lord Strathclyde, a former leader of the Lords, and a hereditary peer himself, said that what the government was planning was “a high-handed, shoddy, political act” that would remove some of the most experienced peers from the house.

And Lord True, the current Tory leader in the Lords, described the bill as “divisive and partisan legislation”. He said it was best for constitutional reform should go ahead by consensus.

But, generally, Tory criticism was relatively restrained, and Strathclyde and True mostly complained about the bill being published with an announcement being scheduled in the House of Lords. Labour’s Angela Smith, the leader of the Lords, accused them of “faux anger” and pointed out that Labour’s plans were included in its manifesto, and in the king’s speech.

Although the House of Lords has regularly blocked attempts to reform it over the past century, by convention peers do not vote down policies included in a governing party’s manifesto and none of the opposition peers speaking on the topic today argued that the bill should be rejected.

Ironically, one of the peers most critical of the bill was Lord McNally, a Labour No 10 adviser in the 1970s who subsequently defected to the SDP and who was Lib Dem leader of the Lords when the coalition was in power. McNally, who is in favour of an elected Lords, said that when 92 hereditary peers were allowed to stay when Labour passed a bill in 1999 removing all the others, a “solemn promise” was made that they would stay until more extensive Lords reform happened.

McNally said it was wrong to go back on that promise. He told peers:

I’m afraid simply to abandon that deal that was made 25 years ago, without the substantial reform of the Lords, is a sham.

Smith said she did not agree. She said she accepted constitutional reform should be taken “with care and with consideration”, adding “25 years seems a fair amount of care and consideration”.

In response to another question, Smith also confirmed that some of the 92 hereditary peers affected by the government’s bill could end up returning to the Lords as life peers. She told the house:

I can confirm that if members leave this house as hereditary peers, there is no block at all on them coming back as life peers, if their party so wishes to introduce them.

11.04am.)

@Andrew – there are 650 MPs, approx 100 are members of the govt. So wouldn’t it be fairer to divide 550 into the numbers of PMQs in a Parliamentary year and allocate MPs for each PMQ. The tombola method suggests some MPs may never ask a question, whilst others could ask several questions … or once they have asked a question are they not included for several weeks?

What an antiquated parliament we have.

Lots of people don’t realise that a tombola-type system is used to decide who gets to ask questions at PMQs – or at least some of the people who will get a question. But it is done electronically, using a process called the shuffle, not the glass jar method used for private members’ bills.

I don’t think your suggestion would work. MPs don’t want to be told they will get to ask a question in January when they might want to ask a question next week because of an urgent matter in their constituency.

As far as I know, MPs who get a question one week don’t get excluded from the shuffle the following week. But this is not the only way questions are chosen. The shuffle decides who gets to be on the order paper, but if there are two Labour questions in a row, the speaker will alternate with an opposition question and may choose someone not on the order paper. And if there is a good constituency reason to call an MP, they will get called. The speaker’s office also keeps track of how often people get called and this is taken into account.

ditching his government’s commitment to universal free school meals for primary pupils, the day after making the eradication of child poverty the “foremost priority” of his administration.

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross asked why that had now been limited to those P6 and P7s in receipt of the Scottish child payment, while Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, described it as a “betrayal”, pointing out this was a commitment originally secured by her party at the 2021 budget, due to be rolled out by 2026.

Swinney repeated the “acute financial challenges” facing his government – blaming Tory austerity, inflation and public sector pay claims – and said it was “a difficult decision that the government had to make”.

There’s been a lot of discussion of the SNP’s fondness for universal freebies that largely benefit the middle classes – like free prescriptions or cutting peak rail fares – and how this sits with the current financial crisis. But there’s an extra dimension with free school meals – research consistently finds that means-testing this benefit causes stigma for children in receipt of it.

The fall-out from Swinney’s programme for government continues today; the very first bill to be published from it this morning is in fact a climate bill that would scrap its critical 2030 targets to reduce emissions.

Lewis Ryder-Jones, Oxfam Scotland’s advocacy adviser, said:

Instead of being entirely focused on fairly cutting emissions, the Scottish government is cutting green budgets and moving the climate goalposts because of its own inadequate climate action.

Slater’s attack in the chamber came as the Scotsman published an interview with her in which she raised serious doubts that the Greens would support Swinney’s budget, as she underlined her anger at cuts to climate and active travel commitments too. With the SNP a minority government, this significantly deepens the Scottish government’s financial crisis.

its House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill, that will remove the right of 92 hereditary peers to retain seats in the House of Lords. It is a very short bill, with just five clauses.

Here is Eleni Courea’s story about what it says.

Conservatives to investigate Labour appointing a donor to a civil service job and giving another access to Downing Street, PA Media reports. PA says:

Shadow Commons leader Chris Philp told the Commons that he will write to the adviser on ministerial interests and the civil service commissioner to ask them to look into the initial appointment of Ian Corfield as director of investment at the Treasury, and Lord Alli being given a security pass for 10 Downing Street.

It has since emerged that Corfield will work as an unpaid adviser rather than a salaried civil servant.

He had donated £20,000 to Labour politicians in the last decade, including £5,000 to chancellor Rachel Reeves in 2023.

Keir Starmer has said Lord Alli, who has also donated to the party, was “doing some transition work with us” and he no longer has a pass given the work has finished.

In the Commons today Philp said: “The independent civil service commissioner, a former Labour MP [Gisela Stuart], has had to initiate an inquiry into improper appointments by this government. A ‘government of service’, it turns out, they mean just service to their cronies and their donors. It is just wrong to stuff party donors and cronies into what are supposed to be impartial civil service positions.”

Commons leader Lucy Powell said: “We will take no lessons from the party opposite on cleaning up politics. The party opposite, who partied in Downing Street while the rest of the country was locked down. He knows that we all strive to get the best talent into Government, and that is why there is a policy of exemptions appointments.”

11.48am), Reed said that this option is not on the table for a so-called radical review and restructuring of the water system which he announced. He said:

Nationalisation would cost billions of pounds and take years to unpick the current ownership model leaving sewage pollution in the meantime to get worse and halt the much needed investment. I am more interested in a model that works.

Reed said today’s legislation to jail water bosses who cover up pollution and ban bonuses for CEOs of failing companies is just the start and there is going to be a radical review of the water sector to make it financially sustainable and end sewage spills for good. The review will involve extensive consultation, he said.

We will ensure the framework that underpins our water system achieves long term stability, and we will invite views from a range of experts from environmental to public health, consumers, economists and campaigners.

Further details for this review will be laid out in the autumn.

Source: theguardian.com