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5 hours ago
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Good morning. Much of Keir Starmer’s time at the moment is spent dealing with the latest outbursts from the White House. It is not easy, partly because the tone and policy tend to flip 180 degrees hour by hour, and this morning there are developments on the two issues at the top of Starmer’s in-tray.
On the Ukraine war front, with the US and Ukraine agreeing potential ceasefire terms, things are looking up. Jakub Krupa has all the latest on this on his Europe live blog.
But, on the trade war front, it’s not looking so good, because Starmer’s White House charm offensive, and the state visit invite, have not spared the UK from steel and aluminium tariffs that came into force earlier today. Julie Kollewe has the latest on this on the business live blog.
Both of these topics are likely to come up at PMQs today.
But there is another issue in Starmer’s in-tray that is potentially more problematic. Labour MPs and supporters are broadly very supportive of how Starmer is handling Trump. However dozens of government MPs are said to be deeply unhappy about the proposed cuts to working-age sickness and disability benefits that are due to be announced next week, and overnight there are have been two developments in this story that won’t help the PM.
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Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has denounced the proposed cuts, saying they will push people into hardship, alienate the public and repeat the mistakes of Tory austerity. The Mirror has the story, and Ashley Cowburn has the full quote. Nowak said:
A major lesson from the Tory years is that austerity damaged the nation’s health. We must not make the same mistake again. Pushing disabled people into hardship with cuts to support will only make the current challenges worse and will not win public support.
Trade unions share the government’s ambitions to improve the nation’s health and to help more people into good quality work. After 14 disastrous years of Tory rule - including massive failures to provide the health services and employment support people need - there is much that can be done to improve public services. And the government’s plan to Make Work Pay will ensure more better jobs. But cutting Pip [the personal independence payment] is not the solution - not least because it enables many disabled people to access work so that they do not have to rely on out of work benefits.
Reforms to Pip are needed. The assessment process has too much of a one- size-fits all approach. The assessors lack medical expertise. And it’s a missed opportunity to identify support that could transform the lives of people with a wide variety of impairments. The government should prioritise fixing these problems, with input from trade unions and organisations led by disabled people.
The government is reportedly planning to cut Pip by £5bn. The TUC does not have a vote on these cuts. But Starmer can’t easily ignore what it says. Nowak is a moderate, who is normally supportive of the government, and if he is speaking out like this, it is because his concerns are widely shared.
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And the Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a report saying that more people are claiming disability benefits because more people are suffering from mental health problems. That might sound obvious. But it undermines claims made by supporters of the planned cuts that the main reason why the disability benefit caseload is rising so sharply is because the system incentivises people who are able to work to claim sickness or disability benefits instead because they are worth a lot more than standard unemployment benefit. Summarising the report, Eduin Latimer, an economist at the IFS and one of the report’s authors, said:
The rise in the number of people on disability benefits is a key motivation for the government’s upcoming green paper. A range of evidence suggests that mental health across the population has worsened, and – consistent with this – more than half of the rise in disability benefit caseload comes from claims for mental health and behavioural conditions. As well as obviously bad news on their own terms, mental health problems may also be contributing to the rising benefits bill.
Anna Bawden has a story on it here.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: MPs resume the report stage debate on the employment rights bill.
5.30pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, and other European defence ministers are due to holda press conference after talks in Paris about Ukraine.
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