Labour MPs must realise welfare system ‘needs reform’, says Reeves
Labour MPs must realise the welfare system needs reform, Rachel Reeves has said, as more than 40 MPs have written to the prime minister urging him to pause and reassess planned cuts to disability benefits (see 10.33am BST).
Asked what her message to Labour MPs worried about the welfare cuts was, the chancellor told broadcasters:
I don’t think anybody, including Labour MPs and members, think that the current welfare system created by the Conservative party is working today. They know that the system needs reform. We do need to reform how the welfare system works if we’re going to grow our economy.
But crucially, if we’re going to lift people out of poverty and give more people the chance to fulfil their potential, the focus has got to be on supporting people into work.
Of course, if you can’t work the welfare state must always be there for you, and with this government it will be. But there are many people that are trapped on benefits that are desperate to work, that have been cut out of opportunity for too long. That will change under this government.
Key events
Libby Brooks
The thinktank Reform Scotland is holding a fascinating event this lunchtime on the rise of Reform UK north of the border.
Pollster Mark Diffley pointed out that Reform UK continues to poll around half of what it does in the rest of the UK, but this won’t necessarily undermine the impact they could have at next May’s Holyrood elections.
He estimates Reform UK could win about 10% of MSPs next year and emphasises “complete change in culture and context” this would bring to the Scottish parliament.
Ailsa Henderson, the Edinburgh Uni professor who runs the Scottish Election study, underlines how deeply unpopular Nigel Farage himself is in Scotland – only Trump is less popular with Scots – but also that there is space for a rightwing party among an electorate that is both small ‘c’ conservative but hate the Conservative party.
She adds that the SNP have done a lot of Reform UK’s groundwork for them, with their constant messaging about the failure of the Westminster status quo.
There was some question of whether lack of Scottish figurehead mattered, given how successful the party has been in tapping into anger and disillusion.
The panel also discussed the likelihood of Reform UK’s success in English local elections bringing the party more into the mainstream in time for Holyrood and Senedd elections next year.
Labour ‘throwing trans people under the bus’ says transgender councillor
Libby Brooks
One of Labour’s only transgender councillors has resigned from the party, accusing it of “throwing trans people under the bus”.
In a post on X on Friday morning, Dylan Tippetts, who has represented Compton ward on Plymouth city council since 2022, wrote: “I cannot continue to represent a party that does not support my fundamental rights. I cannot as a trans person continue to support the Labour party.”
Tippetts, who was the first Labour councillor to represent the area, will now sit as an independent and confirmed he would not seek re-election.
He said: “The Labour party nationally has thrown transgender people under the bus and has taken us backwards decades. Everyone deserves the right to live peacefully, and the Labour party continues to deny transgender people that basic right.”
Tippett’s resignation comes after senior government figures, including Keir Starmer, welcomed the “clarity” provided by the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.
Britain’s most senior statistician has stepped down citing “ongoing health issues”, amid criticism over flaws in recent economic data.
Sir Ian Diamond confirmed he has resigned as head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) with immediate effect.
He said: “It has been an honour and a privilege to lead the ONS over the past five-and-a-half years and I have been immensely proud of the prominent role that independent statistics and data have played in informing the critical decisions of the day.
“Unfortunately I have made the decision that, due to ongoing health issues, I am unable to give the commitment to the role of national statistician that I would like to and feel that it is the right time for somebody else to pick up the baton.”
It comes amid criticism from politicians and Bank of England officials over potential inaccuracies in some of the ONS’s economic data, particularly its labour market survey data.
Downing Street has declined to rule out changes to the digital services tax as part of a future agreement with the US, reports the PA news agency.
Asked whether changes to the tax would be on the table in future negotiations, a Number 10 spokesperson said:
The position on the digital services tax remains unchanged.
Obviously, there are continuing discussions and, as I say, this is the beginning of the process.
This deal marks only the beginning. We are continuing talks on that wider economic deal which will look at increasing digital trade, which is a tremendous opportunity.
And that kind of work on a digital trade deal will strip back paperwork for British firms trying to export to the US, opening up the UK to a huge market that will measurably boost the UK economy.
That deal also opens the way to a future UK-US technology partnership through which our science-rich nations will collaborate in key areas of advanced technology, for example biotech, life sciences, quantum computing, nuclear fusion, aerospace and space.
Conservationists call for new laws to ensure important trees are ‘listed’ for protection
Conservationists are calling for new laws to ensure important trees are “listed” for protection, like historic buildings, after the Sycamore Gap trial.
The call by the Woodland Trust to improve protection for thousands of trees that have important ecological, cultural and historical value comes after high-profile felling of landmark trees caused public fury.
Two men have been found guilty of felling the “totemic” Sycamore Gap tree beside Hadrian’s Wall in September 2023, and the Forestry Commission is assessing the felling of a 400-year-old oak in Whitewebbs Park, north London, in April, one of only about 100 oaks of that size in Greater London.
According to the PA news agency, the Woodland Trust said that existing protections such as tree preservation orders and requirements for felling licences had limitations and exemptions, such as the type and location of trees protected, and called for better safeguards for the country’s most precious trees.
The charity wants the government to back a proposed law that would “list” heritage trees with exceptional historic, landscape, cultural or ecological importance, similar to the way historic buildings and monuments are listed or scheduled.
Under the heritage trees bill, put forward by Barbara Young in the House of Lords as a private member’s bill, a list of such trees would be created and maintained by a statutory agency. Trees on the list would have provisions ensuring their protection, requiring landowners and occupiers to advertise the tree’s status and take steps to maintain and conserve it, and there would be additional or higher penalties for breaching new “heritage tree preservation orders”.
Adam Cormack, head of campaigns at the Woodland Trust, said the proposed law would provide “a consistent level of protection, conservation and active stewardship for a listed group of trees”.
Several thousand of the most important trees across England could be protected with the scheme, he said, while different legislation would need to be passed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He highlighted work in Poland, where a “green monuments” system preserves tens of thousands of trees, and a similar scheme in Romania.
Cormack also pointed to a survey after the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree, which found 88% of people supported legislation to protect the most valuable trees. He said:
Special trees provide a living backdrop to our national history and culture, as well as the stories and lives of our local communities, but they have few legal protections in the UK.
Other European countries have recognised this with legislation in place to protect very old and important trees for their immense ecological, cultural and historical value.
His colleague, Jack Taylor, project lead for woods under threat, added:
There’s a strong national identity behind ancient and veteran trees.
We are not one of the most wooded countries across Europe, but we do have a really strong population of ancient and veteran trees, and that resonates with people. When you see trees like the Whitewebbs oak, it stops most people in their tracks.
Labour MPs must realise welfare system ‘needs reform’, says Reeves
Labour MPs must realise the welfare system needs reform, Rachel Reeves has said, as more than 40 MPs have written to the prime minister urging him to pause and reassess planned cuts to disability benefits (see 10.33am BST).
Asked what her message to Labour MPs worried about the welfare cuts was, the chancellor told broadcasters:
I don’t think anybody, including Labour MPs and members, think that the current welfare system created by the Conservative party is working today. They know that the system needs reform. We do need to reform how the welfare system works if we’re going to grow our economy.
But crucially, if we’re going to lift people out of poverty and give more people the chance to fulfil their potential, the focus has got to be on supporting people into work.
Of course, if you can’t work the welfare state must always be there for you, and with this government it will be. But there are many people that are trapped on benefits that are desperate to work, that have been cut out of opportunity for too long. That will change under this government.
On unacceptable care, Jim Mackey said the service must “try to get beyond things that have become a bit normalised over recent years that we would never have accepted”.
He added:
Ten years ago, we would have never accepted old ladies being on corridors next to an [emergency] department for hours on end and they have become normal in the NHS.
We’ve got to get ourselves out of that, and everybody wants to get out of it.
He said that even in places “delivering excellence” there are “still things going on there that are completely unacceptable” as he said that driving down variation would help to improve care.
Mackey continued:
There’s lots of examples like that where I think we just sort of gradually moved to a point where we’ve accepted things that we should not really have accepted, and we need to stop accepting.
The hard bit is what we do about it, most people know that, the worry is when they’re desensitised to it … it’s actually not their problem, they have found a way of walking around it. Colleagues used to describe it as ‘learning walk with a limp’.
Asked about independence from politicians, chief executive of NHS England said:
I’ll have no problem telling anybody what I think – if I have a view, I’m going to express it, and if I think something’s wrong, I’m going to say it.
But I’m very confident in the way that I’ve seen Wes work his political team and the prime minister, that they actually don’t want somebody to just sit, just go along with everything, and just roll over and not say if they have a they have a view, and I’ll take that seriously.
Speaking about the demise of NHS England, Mackey also said that it was “naive” to believe an organisation which “is the biggest consumer of public resource in the country” could be politically independent.
“I understood the logic at the time, I think it was probably, in hindsight, a bit naive to think that we could make something politically independent and less directly controlled by the political system for something that is the biggest consumer of public resource in the country,” he said.
The NHS has “maxed out on what is affordable”, Jim Mackey has said as he called on the service to “accelerate” improvements and stamp out unacceptable care which has become “normalised”.
The new chief executive of NHS England described the “shock and worry” of discovering that “undeveloped” plans for the NHS in England projected a multi-billion deficit for this year, reports the PA news agency.
While expecting “some growth” from the Treasury in the upcoming spending review, he said the service faces “big choices” to “tackle variation” and “improve service standards”. Meanwhile, Mackey said he will have “no problem” expressing his views to prime minister Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting.
Speaking at an event for the Medical Journalists Association in London, Mackey criticised “unacceptable” care – particularly for elderly people, which has become “normalised”. He also expressed concerns over staff being “desensitised” to poor care – such as elderly people facing long waits on trolleys in A&E departments, according to the PA news agency.
On spending he said:
The NHS is such a big part of public spending now we are pretty much maxed out on what’s affordable.
It is really now about delivering better value for money, getting more change, getting back to reasonable productivity levels, but in a way that’s human and is about standards and about quality.
He went on:
In the planning round, it was starting to look like, on a nearly £200bn pound budget, we were going to go into this year with undeveloped plans – but they were plans at the time – with a £6.6bn deficit, £2.2bn that could come off that for deficit support. But that’s still a huge deficit.
And the shock that that was creating, the worry that was creating, the anxiety about what that meant for the economy, and the international instability that we’ve got, what it meant for growing a society in this country, and with that the real expectation and need for us to improve much more quickly.
I think we could argue we’ve been improving gradually over recent years, but this is a time for a really big wake up moment about we need to really accelerate improvement.
In the end, it will be about how we get better value for the money that we’ve got, and we’ll get some growth in the spending review, but it’s never enough.
So we’ll have choices to make and the biggest choices we have to make about how we tackle variation and improve service standards and productivity in this next period.
The first opening road bridge across the River Clyde could create about 1,400 jobs, according to officials, reports the PA news agency.
The Renfrew Bridge opens to traffic at 12pm on Friday, marking the completion of the Clyde waterfront and Renfrew riverside project. The bridge, which connects the town of Renfrew with Yoker in Glasgow, is a £117m project by Renfrewshire council, supported with £39m from the Scottish and UK governments, and a further £1.17m from Transport Scotland.
It is expected the bridge will open up work, health, education and leisure opportunities on both sides of the river, with the potential for 1,400 additional jobs, investment and developments to be brought to the riverside, reports the PA news agency.
The 184-metre bridge uses a cable stay system, similar to the Queensferry Crossing, and provides two lanes for vehicles, pedestrians and active travel. It runs from Meadowside Street in Renfrew to Dock Street in Yoker, and can open for ships to pass through as and when required.
Renfrewshire council leader Iain Nicolson said:
I’m delighted to see the opening of the new Renfrew Bridge as we successfully complete this transformational project which will enhance the local economy, attract new investment and developments to the riverside, and create thousands of new job opportunities for local people.
It is another example of the council’s ability to deliver nationally significant infrastructure projects and the benefits will be felt immediately by road users, local residents and businesses, as well as the long-term economic boost to Renfrewshire and the Glasgow city region.
Minister for employment and investment Tom Arthur said:
Renfrew Bridge’s opening is a historic moment, and it will be a welcome addition to the Clyde, creating opportunities for communities and businesses on both sides of the river and supporting 1,400 new jobs.
This delivers our programme for government commitment to invest £1.9bn in growth deals, benefiting people across Scotland. Other measures include delivering 100,000 additional GP appointments by March 2026 and a ‘best in the UK’ cost-of-living guarantee, including the permanent abolition of peak rail fares.
Civil engineers Graham completed the project construction, which has supported more than 950 jobs and generated hundreds of subcontract and supplier opportunities, many of which were completed by local businesses.
The UK’s trade deal with the US is unlikely to boost the economy much, experts have said, but some praised the lack of concessions on the UK side as a success, reports the PA news agency.
The agreement, which removes tariffs on UK metals exports to the US and reduces a levy on cars, was confirmed in a call between Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump on Thursday. Starmer said it was a “historic” deal, while business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said thousands of people were perhaps “days” away from losing their jobs without it.
But, accoding to the PA news agency, economists were sparing in their praise for the deal, with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Neisr) saying the boost for UK gross domestic product (GDP) will be minimal. That is partly because a blanket 10% tariff imposed on imports of most goods by Trump as part of his sweeping “liberation day” announcement remains in place, though talks are ongoing in a UK effort to ease it.
Ben Caswell, Neisr’s senior economist, said:
While the new trade deal with the US constitutes a political win for the government, the direct impacts on UK GDP are likely to be very small, given we export just £9bn worth of cars to the US each year and the vast majority of goods won’t benefit from this tariff relief announcement.
But he added that it would “deliver a welcome boost to business confidence amid the UK’s fragile economic outlook this year”.
Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at finance company Ebury, added that while it “unlikely to have any real implications for the UK economy”, and added that the terms of the deal are “not overly favourable” for the UK. He said:
Let’s not forget that this is also far from a full-blown trade agreement, which will likely take months, if not years, to be finalised, and it will still be some time before the finer details are ironed out.
Nonetheless, others said the lack of significant concessions demanded of the UK by Washington was a plus, reports the PA news agency.
While tariffs on American beef will be dropped, ministers have said there will be no downgrade in British food standards, which is a more significant barrier to entry for US-reared meat.
“Crucially, that means the US deal won’t jeopardise British attempts to build closer trade ties with the European Union,” wrote economists at the banking company ING in a note on Thursday evening.
And the UK’s digital services tax, which mainly applies to US tech companies, was not revised as part of the deal, as had been speculated. Nor does the deal include any concessions on the Online Safety Act or the NHS, the business secretary has said.
“As far as we can see, the concessions offered by the UK aren’t considerable,” the ING economists wrote. “At face value, the UK seems to have done quite well,” they added.
Hospitals in England reducing staff and services as part of NHS ‘financial reset’
Denis Campbell
Hospitals in England are cutting staff, closing services and planning to ration care in order to make “eye-watering” savings demanded by NHS bosses.
Rehabilitation centres face being shut, talking therapies services cut and beds for end-of-life care reduced as part of efforts by England’s 215 NHS trusts to comply with a “financial reset”.
Sir Jim Mackey, NHS England’s new chief executive, has ordered them to make unprecedented savings during 2025-26 to avoid a projected £6.6bn deficit becoming a reality.
But trust bosses are warning that delivering what for some equates to 12% of their entire budget in “efficiency savings” will affect patients and waiting times.
“These [savings targets] are at eye-wateringly high levels”, said Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts. “It’s going to be extremely challenging.”
Trusts have to make, in some cases, deep cuts in order to stay in the black this year, despite the government having given the NHS an extra £22bn for last year and this one.
A survey it conducted among trust leaders found that diabetes services for young people and hospital at-home-style “virtual wards” were among the areas of care likely to be scaled back.
Trusts are planning to shrink their workforce by up to 1,500 posts each to save money, even though they fear that could damage the quality or safety of care provided.
Cordery said the looming cuts were so significant that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and health secretary, Wes Streeting, may not be able to fulfil promises to revive the NHS, such as pledges to improve waiting times for diagnostic tests, surgery and A&E care.
She said:
We’ve got the narrative of the ‘three shifts’ … and those are driving the decisions that the government is making, alongside the imminent delivery of the [NHS] 10-year plan and pressures on transforming the NHS for the future.
But we’ve got to question whether those are compatible with the needs of delivering the financial recovery and for trusts to really meet the operational challenges they face.
Foreign secretary David Lammy joined talks in Ukraine on Friday alongside other leaders, who expressed their support for a “special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine”.
According to the PA news agency, Lammy told reporters:
It is hugely important that we stand with the special tribunal.
What we have seen is a crime of aggression, and just as the international community has in the past brought war criminals to account for their acts, it is absolutely clear that when this war is over, those who have perpetrated it in Russia must account for their crimes of aggression and their crimes against humanity.
Keir Starmer said that he will be announcing the “largest package of sanctions yet” on Russia.
Posting on X this morning, the prime minister wrote:
The threat Russia poses to our national security cannot be underestimated.
To ramp up the pressure on Putin, I’m announcing the largest package of sanctions yet.
I will always do what it takes to safeguard working people.
Security at home. Strength abroad.
The UK-US trade agreement will provide greater market access for the beef industry, a leading food industry executive said.
Neil Shand, chief executive of the National Beef Association, said 13,000 tonnes of US and British beef would be eligible to export to either country as part of the agreement but added the industry “remains very nervous” about the current government’s policies.
Asked what the UK would gain from the deal, he told Times Radio:
We have access to the US market. We had limited access – there’s a carryover of a WTO (World Trade Organization) deal that the US had, that existed from pre-Brexit times, and we were allowed to send small amounts of beef to the US, but this will allow our market to grow as well.
In volume terms, there is an argument that they have a bigger access or a larger quantity into our market. But in the overall scheme of things, 13,000 tonnes is not a huge amount of beef, if you consider last year we imported 241,000 tonnes.
We’re not self-sufficient, and it is important that we are able to provide beef eating consumers with a product.
Shand said it was likely the US-imported beef would be used in the services industry instead of being sold on supermarket shelves, as leading retailers “are not going to break rank” on British beef agreements.
At the mass picket and rally in Birmingham (see 10.57am BST), train drivers’ union Aslef’s general secretary, Mick Whelan, thanked trade unionists in the crowd for their support during previous rail disputes and said he was proud to be with them.
Accoding to the PA news agency, Whelan said:
It’s to our shame that we have to stand here today in a Labour-controlled authority talking about people’s wages being changed without agreement.
Turning the effects of 14 years of austerity back on workers could not be right, Whelan said, adding:
I can’t articulate this dispute as well as the people involved in it – because it’s their futures, it’s their livings, it’s their families. But we do know from what we have seen in the past, if we don’t stand together, they will defeat us. If we don’t behave as a collective, they will hurt us.
If we don’t send the messages we need to see, they believe they can turn us over.
We will be with you today, we will come back tomorrow, we will come back another day until you win.
Kate Taylor, of the Birmingham branch of the National Education Union (NEU) and also a national executive member of the union, told the crowd:
This bin strike is for all of us – it’s for all trade unionists. That is why so may of us are here today showing solidarity and fighting with you.
Representatives of the Fire Brigades Union and other groups also addressed the crowd, including Artin Giles of the Jeremy Corbyn-founded Peace and Justice Project.
Offering both Corbyn’s and the project’s full solidarity, Giles said:
I think we really are at a moment where people are realising that no matter if it’s a red rosette or a blue rosette, the rich get richer while the working class gets cuts to services that we all rely on. And that’s the case whether we talk about schools, health clinics or refuse collection.
Unite organiser Pete Randall told the picket that he believed “victory” in the dispute was not too far away. He said:
It’s been an absolute honour to stand here with our members.
I remember the very first day rocking up at the top of Lifford Lane/Ebury Road.
I have got to know the members. I can see it in their eyes. I can see how it feels for them. And that’s what it’s all about – understanding from a striker’s perspective.
I praise every single worker that is out on the picket lines. This is what a union looks like.
Birmingham’s striking bin workers have received backing from the leaders of Aslef and the National Education Union (NEU) at a collective action “megapicket” outside a depot and recycling centre, reports the PA news agency.
About 200 people gathered in Ebury Road, in the Kings Norton area of the city, to hear NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede describe the all-out strike by members of Unite, which began almost two months ago, as a fight against “a race to the bottom” on working people’s wages.
Birmingham city council declared a major incident relating to the strike by Unite members on 31 March after estimating that about 17,000 tonnes of waste was uncollected.
Kebede, who represents around half a million teachers and support staff, told the picket line:
We bring our solidarity to this picket because the Birmingham bin strike is a strike of national importance.
If a Labour council – a Labour council – can get away with cutting the wages of these workers, then a Labour government can get away with attacks on the rest of us.
Claiming that the Labour government was “lining up attacks” on education and would be the first Labour government since the 1970s to do so, Kebede said:
We are standing here with the bin men and bin workers today because it could be us tomorrow. This solidarity … is showing what we can do when we unite across our sectors and across our industries.
Without the people here, not a single cog would turn. It wasn’t the councillors who were sat in city hall who were making the difference during the pandemic.
To loud applause from protesters, Kebede went on:
It was the refuse workers keeping the streets clean. It was the teachers who kept education going, it was the doctors and the nurses. So let’s stand together as working people and say that we absolutely refuse to endure a race to the bottom.
Let’s push back against this austerity government and ensure that our society can flourish.
The UK and US have announced a new trade deal, or at least some elements of it, after a slightly chaotic transatlantic speaker phone call between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump, writes Peter Walker.
Here is what we know and don’t know, via Walker’s handy explainer: