Heidi Alexander: ‘Tackling child poverty is in the DNA of the Labour Party’
The expectation is that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ upcoming budget will lift the two child benefit cap. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg suggested that Labour have been giving mixed messages, with the chancellor saying she was determined to get welfare spending under control. Alexander said that growing up in poverty creates a ‘lifetime of consequences’, and three quarters of children in poverty are in households where both parents work. The transport secretary said she was confident that there would be fewer children in poverty at the end of Labour’s term. However, when pushed to confirm that the two child cap would be removed, Alexander said she couldn’t ‘get ahead of the budget’.
Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik: ‘We want the war to end, but not at any price’
President Trump has said that his Ukraine ‘peace plan’ is not his ‘final offer’, as officials gather in Geneva to negotiate a plan that has caused outrage in Ukraine and across Europe. Trump’s document would require Ukraine to give up territory to Russia, and reduce the size of its military. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips told Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik that there was a risk Trump ‘might not be bluffing’, and asked if she and her colleagues would advise President Zelensky to reject the deal or not. Rudik said that that wouldn’t be the right way ‘to deal with President Trump’, and Zelensky should say that Ukraine is ‘ready to discuss, point by point’, to get a deal that is acceptable for Ukrainians. Rudik stressed that Ukraine wants the war to end more than anyone else, as ‘people are being killed every single night’, but they need a ‘clear understanding’ of the security guarantees that the US would be offering in Trump’s plan. She referenced the return of forcibly deported Ukrainian children and a prisoner of war exchange as a couple of ‘good points’ in the document.
Government announces rail fare freeze for 2026
On Sky News, Heidi Alexander noted that the government’s confirmed rail fare freeze was the first of its kind in 30 years. Trevor Phillips pointed out that 66% of people drive to work, and asked if a freeze on fuel duty would also be in the budget. Alexander said she couldn’t ‘speculate on what is going to be contained in the budget’, and emphasised that the rail fare freeze would affect over a billion journeys next year. She also said the new nationalised Great British Railways would ‘stop the leakage of public money to the private shareholders’. Phillips asked why Alexander could tell him about rail fares but not fuel duty. Alexander said that matters of ‘tax and duties’ had to be left to the chancellor.
Zack Polanski: ‘I’m talking about borrowing for… investment’
Laura Kuenssberg also spoke to Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who said that taxing the super rich was more about reducing wealth inequality than generating public money. Polanski argued that the government should borrow more, claiming that living standards are much higher in Japan, despite their 270% debt to GDP ratio, and said the government should be more worried about ‘people on the ground’ than the financial markets. Kuenssberg pointed out that the markets were ‘freaked out’ by the unfunded tax cuts in Liz Truss’ budget, and politicians have to keep national debt in mind in the ‘real world’. Polanski said he is talking about borrowing for ‘capital infrastructure and investment… that creates spending multipliers that come back into the economy’. He suggested that the money the government borrows is money from the Bank of England that ‘we owe to ourselves’ and isn’t a ‘debt in any real sense’. Kuenssberg asked if Polanski would set any limits in borrowing, and he said yes, ‘you have to watch inflation’, but we are in an ‘ecological emergency’.
Mel Stride on government’s Covid response: ‘Inevitably mistakes will have been made’
Baroness Heather Hallett’s COVID-19 inquiry has concluded that the government’s failure to lock down sooner in 2020 cost 23,000 lives. On GB News, Camilla Tominey asked Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride if he thought it was fair to lay the blame with Boris Johnson. Stride said that it was impossible to get everything right when something of that magnitude happens, and we can’t know ‘what the counterfactuals would have been’ if a different course had been taken. Stride also argued that the Conservatives were ‘world leading’ when it came to the vaccine rollout, and had created an economy that was ‘strong enough to withstand the impact’ of the pandemic.
Zia Yusuf: what Nathan Gill did was ‘treasonous, horrific, awful’
Reform UK’s former leader in Wales has been jailed for 10 years for taking bribes in exchange for pro-Russia speeches. He received £30,000 while serving as an MEP. Trevor Phillips pointed out that Nigel Farage has claimed the West is partly responsible for provoking Russia into its Ukraine invasion, and asked Reform’s Zia Yusuf why the public should trust what the party has to say about Russia. Yusuf condemned Gill’s actions and said he deserved his sentence, but called him ‘ancient history’ and said he had never heard of him before seeing him in the news. Yusuf said it was ‘unreasonable to besmirch everybody else at Reform’.
Comments