Brexit has had ‘severe and long lasting’ impact on economy, says Reeves, as she confirms budget tax rises – UK politics live | Politics
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Tory claims about ‘millions’ of people getting Motability cars for anxiety or ADHD wholly wrong, experts say
Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, misled Conservative members when she told them “millions” of people on benefits get a free Motability car, according to Radio 4’s fact checking programme, More or Less.
In her speech to the conference last week, Whately said:
Millions of people right now, are sitting on the sofa at home.
Millions have got themselves a sick note from the GP and signed onto sickness benefits with just a form and a phone call.
Millions are getting benefits for anxiety and ADHD, along with a free Motability car.
But, in an episode of More or Less broadcast this morning, Tim Harford, the presenter, said that there were only around 200,000 people working age people getting disability benefits for anxiety disorders or ADHD with the enhanced mobility component that would make them eligible for a Motability car. And many of them will not be using the Motability scheme. So the claim that “millions” of people are getting a car on this basis is just wrong, Harford said.
Tom Waters, an economist from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, told the programme that the total number of people with a Motability vehicle is 860,000, and that figure includes scooters and wheelchairs. So, even if all benefit claimants are included, Whately’s assertion that “millions” of people are getting cars is still wrong.
Kemi Badenoch also mentioned Motability in her speech, saying people should not be able to get these cars on the basis of having ADHD.
Waters told the programme that there are around 43,000 people on Pip (the personal independence payment – a disability benefit) with the enhanced mobility component, that means in principle they could qualify for a car. But this number was “fairly small” as a proportion of the total, he said, and many of them would not have a Motability car. They might also have other conditions affecting their mobility.
Harford also said that, of those 43,000 people, almost half of them were aged 16 to 19. He also said Pip was assessed not on what conditions people have, but on what they can do. He went on:
This means that it’s not at all clear how Kemi Badenoch would fulfil her promise of preventing people with specific conditions, such as ADHD, from receiving Motability cars, because assessments aren’t determined by specific conditions. That promise wouldn’t just be a tweak. It would require a radical rethinking of how disability benefits work.
This is not the first time Tories have made dubious claims about the Motability scheme. Archie Bland published a Guardian explainer on this earlier this year.
After PMQs there will be an urgent question in the Commons, on “the adequacy of Jhoots as a pharmacy provider”, followed by two ministerial statements: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretrary, on Ukraine, and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the communities minister, on the Pride in Place scheme.
People in poor health more likely to vote Reform UK, research suggests
People in poorer health are more likely to vote Reform UK, PA Media reports. PA says:
Experts from Imperial College London looked at voting patterns in last year’s general election, when Reform secured 14.3% of the votes and five seats.
Three of the five areas (60%) returning a Reform MP were in the most deprived fifth of the country, compared with 103 (29.7%) of Labour constituencies, according to the study published in BMJ Open Respiratory Research.
Reform UK areas had the highest proportion of people aged over 65, and people were more likely to suffer from 15 out of 20 health conditions compared to other regions.
The illnesses included asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic kidney disease, coronary heart disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, learning disabilities, arthritis and obesity.
The study found that the strongest links between voting for Reform and having a condition were for obesity, COPD and epilepsy.
A deep analysis showed that Reform constituencies had an average asthma prevalence of 7.44% and an average COPD prevalence of 2.85%, compared with 6.58% and 1.99% for Labour areas.
Reform areas also had an average prevalence of coronary heart disease of 3.90% compared with 2.98% in Conservative areas, and an average depression prevalence of 14.05% compared with 12.84% in Liberal Democrat areas.
The researchers concluded: “The main finding of our analysis was an association between poor health metrics at a constituency level and votes for Reform UK.
“The results are consistent with work showing a relationship between poor healthcare measures and Republican voting in the US and data from Italy linking dissatisfaction with public services and voting for the far right.
“In the UK, closure of local healthcare facilities has been shown to reduce reported patient satisfaction and increase support for populist right parties.
“Lung health is particularly influenced by health inequality, and conditions causing breathlessness (obesity, COPD as well as asthma and cardiac disease) appear in turn to be linked to voting patterns.”
Steven Swinford, the Times’ political editor, says he thinks the government will decide it has to publish the witness statements it provided to the Crown Prosecution Service to support the China spy prosecution that was dropped. This is what he says about what they might show.
What the evidence from Matthew Collins, the deputy NSA says, will be fascinating.
Did it make any reference to threats posed by China at all? Did it draw on evidence from the home office or MI5? Did it flag the public descriptions of China as a threat to national security by the heads of MI5 and MI6? Or was it solely based on the integrated review and a speech by James Cleverly?
What threshold did Collins use when he reached his apparently unilateral conclusion that China was not a threat to national security at the time of the alleged offences?
And as people are asking today is it really appropriate for a single civil servant to be making a decision of such magnitude given the consequences for the case, the security of MPs and British-China relations?
If No 10 decides it is going to publish this evidence, and assuming it does not contain any material that undermines what the government has been saying about this up to now, then it might come just before PMQs. This would help Keir Starmer in his exchanges with Kemi Badenoch because she would not have time to prepare the best questions based on what the documents reveal.
Lib Dems urge Reeves to rule out extending freeze on income tax thresholds
And this is what Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, is saying about the Rachel Reeves interview.
Millions of people up and down the country are worried they could face more damaging tax hikes, after the Conservative party saddled them with a stealth tax and this government hit them with an unfair jobs tax.
Prolonging this uncertainty for weeks will leave people deeply worried about what this could mean for their payslips and bills.
Rachel Reeves must rule out a cloak-and-dagger effort to raise revenue by extending the Conservatives’ stealth tax and dragging even more working people into higher tax rates. What we need is a proper growth plan and for the big banks, social media giants and gambling companies to pay their fair share of tax.
By “stealth tax”, Cooper is referring to the freeze on income tax thresholds.
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride claims UK in ‘tax doom loop’ and Reeves to blame
In his Sky News interview with the chancellor, Sam Coates put it to her that the UK was in a “doom loop” where the government needed to come back every year with higher taxes to fill a black hole in the public finances. Rachel Reeves replied: “Nobody wants that cycle to end more than I do, Sam.”
But, when Coates asked her if she could rule out having to put taxes up again in 2026, Reeves just avoided the question, telling him:
Our economy is doing well. I recognise that the cost of living challenges are still very real for people. In the last parliament, living standards fell. That’s the first time that’s ever happened. Living standards are rising today because of the increases in the national living wage, the national minimum wage, and because inflation and interest rates are lower than they were under the previous government.
Is there more to do? Absolutely, but I will never take risks through the public finances because when you do, it is ordinary people that pay the price.
In truth, no chancellor would rule out tax increases 13 months ahead of a budget, and so the fact that Reeves did not answer the question is meaningless. (But I quoted her words anyway because they tell you something about the story she wants to tell about the economy.)
In a post on social media, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, has claimed the UK is in a doom loop, and Reeves is to blame. He says:
Last year Rachel Reeves raised taxes by £40 billion. She said she wouldn’t come back for more. Now the Chancellor has confirmed she’s about to break her promise.
Rachel Reeves doesn’t need to raise taxes. She needs to get a grip of government spending – including the welfare bill.
Be in no doubt, this tax doom loop is down to the Chancellor’s economic mismanagement.
Under Rachel Reeves we have seen inflation double, debt balloon, borrowing costs at a 27-year high, and taxes up – with more pain on the way in the autumn.
A theme is emerging: when the numbers don’t add up, it’s never Rachel Reeves’ fault – but it’s always your family that pays the price.
Pressure on Downing Street to release evidence in collapsed China spy case
Downing Street is under pressure to publish its evidence in the collapsed China spy case after the Crown Prosecution Service denied having blocked its release, Emine Sinmaz reports.
Brexit has had ‘severe and long lasting’ impact on economy, says Reeves, as she confirms taxes to rise in budget
Good morning. In a much-praised FT column yesterday, Stephen Bush argued that one problem facing the Conservatives today is that “an essential condition for entry into the upper echelons of [the party] is being willing to at least pretend that you think taking Britain out of the EU was a good idea”. As Bush memorably put it, “this is a never-ending lobotomy for the Tories”.
But, to a much lesser extent, Labour has also had a problem with Brexit truth telling. At the last election Keir Starmer knew that he would only win with the support of people who voted to leave the EU in 2016 and as a result Labour avoided any language on Brexit that implied that this group might have been wrong.
Gradually that is changing and at the weekend the Times ran a story saying that Starmer and Rachel Reeves plan to make the argument that, with a downgrade in productivity forecasts set to necessitate huge tax rises in the budget, this will be at least in part due to Brexit. In their story Steven Swinford and Oliver Wright said:
Starmer and Reeves are expected to argue that, if it hadn’t been for Brexit, this type of downgrade would not have been needed, and to cite official figures suggesting that if Britain had not left the European Union the economy would be about £120bn bigger by 2035 than current forecasts suggest it will be.
The message is simple: [Nigel] Farage is ultimately to blame as the man who delivered Brexit with “easy sloganeering” then walked away from the aftermath rather than putting in the hard yards. Or, to put it another way: Farage, not us, is responsible for putting up your taxes.
Referring to the story, Wes Steeting, the health secretary, told a book festival at the weekend: “I’m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.”
This morning Sky News has broadcast an interview with Reeves, who will be in Washington today for IMF and World Bank meetings, and Sam Coates asked her if it was true that the government is now blaming Brexit for the anaemic productivity figures that have led to the Office for Budget Responsibility warning Reeves she will have to raise more tax. Reeves replied:
Austerity, Brexit, and the ongoing impact of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, all of those things have weighed heavily on the UK economy. Already, people thought that the UK economy would be 4% smaller because of Brexit. Now, of course, we are undoing some of that damage by the deal that we did with the EU earlier this year … but there is no doubting that the impact of Brexit is severe and long lasting and that’s why we are trying to do trade deals around the world, US, India, but most importantly with the EU.
“Severe and long lasting” is stronger than the language that Reeves normally uses when talking about the negative impact of Brexit. The Times were probably onto something.
In the interview Reeves also confirmed that tax rises are coming in the budget. (Asked if tax rises were coming down the track, she replied yes before swiftly moving on.) Perhaps more surprisingly, she also implied she is looking at potential spending cuts. “Of course, we’re looking at tax and spending as well,” she said at another point.
Graeme Wearden has more on Reeves at the IMF on his business live blog.
Will the Reeves interview come up at PMQs? Probably not. Instead, Kemi Badenoch is likely to challenge Starmer over the collapse of the China spy prosecution. With the CPS now saying it has no objection to the release of the three witness statements the government prepared ahead of the trail, Starmer is under pressure to either publish them – or come up with a decent reason why he can’t.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: The high court starts hearing a claim by Epping Forest council saying the Bell hotel in Epping should not be used to house asylum seekers. (This is the main case; legal action earlier this year only focused on the narrow issue of whether asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in the hotel, or have to leave, before the main hearing.)
Morning: Ruslan Stefanchuk, chair of the Ukrainian parliament (their equivalent of the Speaker), gives a speech to MPs and peers, before attending PMQs.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Afternoon (UK time): Rachel Reeves is in Washington for IMF meetings where she is expected to speak to the media.
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