Minister defends disability benefit cuts, saying you can’t ‘tax and borrow your way out of need to reform state’ – UK politics live

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Environmentalists say it's wrong and self-defeating for Badenoch to say net zero can't be reached by 2050

Kemi Badenoch will be giving her speech shortly. She is launching the Conservative party’s policy renewal programme, but she has made splash headlines (at least in the Mail and in the Telegraph) by briefing overnight that she will say reaching net zero by 2050 is impossible.

Environmentalists have strongly criticised the move.

This is from Mel Evans, head of climate at Greenpeace UK.

The past few years have taught us the surest route to falling living standards is staying hooked on volatile, expensive and polluting fossil fuels. Throwing in the towel on our climate goals means giving up on making life better for British people now and in the future. With green industries growing three times faster than the rest of the UK economy, it also means giving up on the economic opportunity of the century.

This is from Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network.

It is a mistake for Kemi Badenoch to have jumped the gun on her own policy review and decided net zero isn’t possible by 2050. This undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments who provided the outline of a credible plan for tackling climate change. The important question now is how to build out this plan in a way that supports growth, strengthens security, and follows conservative, free market principles …

The net zero target is driven not by optimism but by scientific reality; without it climate change impacts and costs will continue to worsen. Abandon the science and voters will start to doubt the Conservative Party’s seriousness on the clean energy transition, damaging both growth and the fight against climate change.

This is from Alasdair Johnstone from Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a research organisation on climate issues.

Given that we need to reach net zero emissions to stop greenhouse gases increasing and so the ever worsening floods and heatwaves driven by climate change, any sense of giving up on the goal 25 years before the finish line, particularly when the UK has made good progress, seems premature.

It is certainly technologically and economically feasible for the UK to hit net zero emissions and the clear majority of the British public back the net zero emissions target seeing renewables and clean technology as the top growth sector. The UK’s net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024, and momentum towards renewables and electrification globally is only going in one direction, so any signal of a slowdown is a recipe for investor uncertainty and economic jeopardy.

It was a Conservative government that provided global leadership in setting a net zero emissions target since which more than three-quarters of global GDP is now covered by a net zero commitment.

And this is from Shaun Spiers, executive director of the Green Alliance, a green thinktank.

As the public continue to experience the catastrophic impacts of an economic crisis driven largely by the price of gas, it is disappointing to see Kemi Badenoch turn her back on cleaner, cheaper, homegrown energy. And given the proud record of the Conservative party on the environmental agenda, it is even more disappointing to see the leader of the opposition take cues from climate deniers across the pond.

McFadden says Labour has 'duty' to reform welfare system because it was elected 'on platform of change'

In his interview on the Today programme, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, suggested Labour MPs had a duty to support the changes to sickness and disability benefits being announced.

Asked what he would say to backbenchers minded to vote against the plans, he replied:

Look, I’m not going to deny that in the history of the Labour party, these issues about welfare and support have sometimes been difficult.

But when you get elected on a platform of change, and when you tell the public, the electorate, that you believe you have inherited a situation which needs change, then my message to any colleague in that position is, we have a duty to make those changes. It was the word on our manifesto.

And part of the change that we need is a welfare state that is better suited to the 21st century, that is sustainable for the future, that is there for people who need it, and that puts work at the heart of it.

And that is fully in line with the values of the Labour party.

McFadden suggests people with most severe disabilities won't have to get their Pip reassessed

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, hinted that one change being announced today will spare people with the most severe disabilities from having their Pip (personal independence payment – a disability benefit) reassessed.

In a report for the Times, Chris Smyth says the current reassessment process (when Pip entitlement gets reviewed, to see if it should continue), will change. He reports:

It is understood that those with conditions that have no prospect of improving will be guaranteed PIPs and told they need never be reassessed. Rather than a list of conditions, this will be ­applied case by case to disabilities that are either permanent or get worse.

For those with other conditions, however, [Liz] Kendall is expected to signal more frequent reassessments. At present claimants are given awards of up to ten years, but there are no clear rules about when they will be reassessed, and ministers want to see a significant increase. It remains unclear whether more reviews will be face to face. A switch to remote assessments since Covid has been suggested as a reason for more people having payments maintained rather than reduced.

Kendall hinted that she favoured this approach in the Commons yesterday.

Asked if the most severely people should be assessed again and again, McFadden told BBC Breakfast:

I don’t want to pre-empt what the announcement will be but I think for people in circumstances where it’s clear they can never work and are not going to get better, and in fact it might be a degenerative condition that gets progressively worse, then people should look out for how that’s treated in today’s announcement, because I think those kind of conditions will feature today.

And obviously you’re not going to treat somebody in those circumstances the same way as someone whose condition might be temporary and with a bit of support they could go into work.

Pat McFadden defends disability benefit cuts, saying you can’t ‘tax and borrow your way out of need to reform state’

Good morning. Nothing is permanent in politics. This year will be the 10th anniversary of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, in a contest where Liz Kendall, seen as the rightwing, Blairite candidate, came last, on a humiliating 4.5% of the vote. A decade on, Morgan McSweeney, who managed her campaign, is now more or less running the country as the PM’s chief of staff, Kendall herself is work and pensions secretary and she is about to announce cuts to disability benefits that may horrify many of the 59.5% who voted for Corbyn in 2015 (some of whom will no longer be party members).

Here is our overnight preview story, by Pippa Crerar, Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot.

Yesterday Diane Abbott, the Labour leftwinger, was saying the government should introduce a wealth tax instead and this morning Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, is making a similar argument in an article for the Daily Mirror. She says:

That is not the sort of society that we want to live in. I can’t understand why we’re making these types of decisions, whether it’s winter fuel cuts or looking at taking Pip away from people with disabilities.

Why are we making those decisions prior to us looking at things like a wealth tax, prior to us looking at things like a profits tax? The richest 50 families in Britain are worth £500bn. That’s the same as half the wealth of Britain. That’s the same as 33 million people in Britain.

It is not just the Corbynites who are thinking like this. Last week, in an interview with Matt Forde’s Political Party podcast (here, at 57:30m in), while not quite advocating a wealth tax, Alastair Campbell did describe it as a reasonable policy “hard choice” rather than a wild leftwing fantasy – which is probably how he would have responded to the proposition in his No 10 days.

This morning Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, has been giving interviews. Echoing the line used by Downing Street yesterday, he said the changes being announced today weren’t just about saving money, but were intended to fix a broken system that can leave sick people trapped on benefits when they would be better off returning to work. Asked why the government wasn’t just taxing the rich more, he replied:

Well, there are always going to be people who say [find the money] elsewhere.

We have a progressive tax system. The top 1% pay about a third of tax.

I don’t think you can, in the end, tax and borrow your way out of the need to reform the state.

The prime minister spoke about reform of the state in a major speech last week. We are reforming the state in more ways than one, and part of an essential reform of the state is to make sure that the welfare state that we believe in as a party is fit for the 21st century.

And we cannot sit back and relax as millions, literally millions, of people go on to these benefits with little or no hope of work in the future.

(McFadden’s figure about the top 1% paying a third of tax is true of the share of income tax they pay, but not the figure for their share of the entire tax burden.)

In interviews, McFadden also insisted that the cabinet fully supports the Kendall plans. “Yes, I believe the cabinet is united behind taking on the issue of the growing benefits bill,” he told Times Radio.

Today will be dominated by the publication of the sickness and disability benefits green paper, but we are getting a speech from Kemi Badenoch first. It is another example of how nothing is permanent in politics. Six years ago the Conservative government passed legislation making reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 a legally binding aim. There was a strong, cross-party consensus in favour of the target. Today Badenoch is dismantling that, with a speech saying “net zero by 2050 is impossible”.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

10.30am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech launching the Conservative party’s policy renewal programme.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Morning: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, meets Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, in London.

After 12.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, makes a statement to MPs about the green paper on changes to sickness and disability benefits.

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