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‘We will not go ahead with the Tory plan,’ Alison McGovern says, adding: ‘We will bring forward our own reforms’
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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”.
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.
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