Rachel Reeves tells Labour MPs she is ‘not immune’ to concerns over winter fuel allowance plans – as it happened

A heckler temporarily disrupted proceedings in the House of Lords during a question on tackling anti-Muslim hate crime, PA Media reports. PA says:

A man dressed in a suit sitting watching from one of the side galleries of the upper chamber stood up and shouted “Tell that to Rotherham, tell that Rotherham” before walking out leaving peers and other members of the public looking shocked and bemused.

The incident happened shortly after 3pm.

It is understood the man was subsequently escorted off the parliamentary estate.

Protests by the public looking on in the chamber are prohibited.

The man’s mention of Rotherham was an apparent reference to a high-profile grooming gang scandal, which sent a shockwave across the nation when it was found that at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked and groomed by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in the town between 1997 and 2013.

The case is often cited by members of the far-right, although previous Home Office-commissioned research found most group child sex offenders are white men.

The previous government’s legislation on freedom of speech may have facilitated “hate speech including Holocaust denial” to spread on university campuses, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, told MPs.

As PA media reports, Phillipson has paused the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 to consider other options including its potential repeal. The act was introduced by the previous Tory government and sought to place a duty to “secure” and “promote the importance of” freedom of speech and could have seen universities and student unions fined for failing to do so.

Asked by Gagan Mohindra, the shadow education minister why the act was being paused, and what alternative plans might be introduced, Phillipson said:

Freedom of expression and academic freedom are incredibly important. There are duties that the Office for Students sets out.

Many of these principles are already enshrined in law, but I want to make sure that we get this right, and I am confident that [Mohindra] would not want to be in a position where the act might have opened up the potential for hate speech, including Holocaust denial, to be spread on campus, something that the previous minister in the last government was unable to rule out.

Wes Streeting rubbished the Conservative party’s record on health as he responded to Commons questions about his decision to take advice from his Labour predecessor Alan Milburn.

The full extent of Streeting’s links with Milburn was exposed in a Sunday Times story at the weekend that led to Tories suggesting the former Labour health secretary was getting inappropriate access to official information. In their report Shaun Lintern and Gabrial Pogrund said:

The former health secretary Alan Milburn has been attending meetings with civil servants in the Department of Health and received access to sensitive information despite having no official government role …

The former minister was in the department’s Victoria Street offices every day during a so-called “focus week” running from August 12. He has also had discussions with NHS England officials over the NHS long-term workforce plan and efforts to improve NHS productivity.

Milburn has had access to sensitive documents in printed form because he does not have a government email account or access to internal systems.

He was also present at a dinner between Streeting and Lord Darzi of Denham on Wednesday night prior to the publication this week of the peer’s review of the NHS.

Milburn, 66, has significant private health sector interests via his consultancy firm AM Strategy Ltd, which paid him a personal dividend of £1.27 million last year, and a total of £8.36 million since 2016.

In response to an urgent question tabled by Victoria Atkins, the shadow health secretary, Streeting strongly defended his decision to invite Milburn to meetings, saying:

Unlike our predecessors, this is a government that can’t get enough of experts.

Streeting said that when he became health secretary, replacing Atkins, he was confronted with the “worst crisis in the history of the NHS”, including waiting lists at 7.6m, more than a million patients per month waiting more than four weeks for a GP appointment, junior doctors still threatening strike action and NHS dentist appointments impossible to find. He went on:

We need the best available advice. It’s all hands on deck to fix the mess that they left. And if a single patient waited longer for treatment they needed to because I failed to ask for the most expert advice around, I would consider that a betrayal of patient’s interest.

I decide who I hear from in meetings. I decide whose advice I seek. And I decide what to share with them. And I also welcome challenge, alternative perspectives and experience.

Referring to Milburn, Streeting said that he was a former health secretary, that he did not have a pass for the department and that he only attended meetings at the request of ministers. He went on:

During Alan’s time in office, he gave patients the choice over where they are treated and who treats them, as well as making sure the NHS was properly transparent, so that all patients were able to make an informed choice, a basic right we expect from all other walks of life, which only the wealthy, well connected, were able to exercise in healthcare until Alan changed it.

Atkins said that that Streeting was “betraying his inexperience” in asking for advice because “the rest of us have just got on with the job”. She asked what was being done to manage any conflicts of interest that might have been caused by Milburn’s attendance at meetings. And she claimed this was “just more evidence of cronyism at the heart of this new Labour government”.

In reply, Streeting said he was sorry for Atkins because he could seek advice from Labour predecessors who delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction rates. Atkins could not do that with her Tory predecessors, because their records were worse, he said.

He said that Andrew Lansley, a former Tory health secretary, tried to hire Milburn to run a clinical commissioning board his reorganisation was creating. But Milburn turned Lansley down, saying the reorganisation was “the biggest car crash in the history of the NHS”. Streeting went on: “Which just goes to prove that Alan Milburn has sound judgment and is worth listening to.”

Streeting also said, if Atkins wanted to talk about cronyism and lobbying, they should be talking about Owen Paterson and Randox, David Cameron and Greensill and Lady Mone and PPE contracts.

In response to a later question, Streeting said that Milburn had not had any access to “commercially sensitive” information during his meetings at the department.

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Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, and Emma Little-Pengelly, the deputy first minister, have launched a public consultation on their programme for government. Echoing the language used by Keir Starmer and Labour, Little-Pengelly said the executive would be adopting a “missions-based approach”. She said:

With our plan, we have a way forward. It provides a road map for people, organisations and departments.

The programme for government provides a basis for transformational change and the things that really matter. I look forward to us, the Executive and this Assembly working together to make a real difference.

The scale of the challenges we face requires new thinking and structures. A missions-based approach will help us to measure and prioritise our work. These missions are people, planet and prosperity and they are underpinned by a cross cutting commitment to peace.

Conservative leadership contenders have called the lacklustre handling of the contest disgraceful after it emerged they may only get a few minutes each to address the party’s conference, Aletha Adu and Pippa Crerar report.

I have updated the post at 11.32am about the government repealing the legislation intended to force public service unions to maintain minimum service levels during strikes. Originally it said “employers like train companies never tried taking advantage of the [minimum service level] law” because they thought it would be counterproductive. That is not quite right. A reader points out that in January LNER did consider using the new law ahead of a rail strike. But as a result Aslef then announced a further five-day strike in retaliation, and this persuaded LNER to back down.

And here is more from what was said at the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning about the plan to means-test the winter fuel payments.

• No 10 said applications for pension credit are up by more than 100% as a result of the government’s campaign to increase take-up. Around a third of pensioners eligible for pension credit (a benefit for low-income pensioners) do not claim, and the government is now actively trying to change this. The only pensioners who will continue to get the winter fuel allowance this winter are those on pension credit and up to 880,000 who could be eligible are not claiming. The spokesperson said:

We are continuing to urge pensioners who are eligible for pension credit to be applying and receiving that.

As a result of that work and the awareness campaign, we’ve seen a 115% increase in pension credit claims in the past five weeks, compared to the five weeks before.

Asked what that meant in terms of applications, the spokesperson said that there have been 38,500 applications in the past five weeks, compared with 17,900 in the five weeks before then. Asked if the PM was happy with this rate of progress, the spokesperson said there was “still more to do”.

• The spokesperson said the government wanted 100% of eligible people to claim pension credit – even though, if this were to happen, the £1.5bn saving from means-testing winter fuel payments would be wiped out by the extra cost of pension credit. Asked about this apparent contradiction, the spokesperson said “people ought to be receiving what they’re entitled to”. In a thread on social media this morning, ITV’s Anushka Asthana says the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed 100% take-up would eliminate any savings.

Only 63% of pensioners who qualify for Pension Credit actually apply for it (it’s not super easy plus maybe some feel stigma). Which means when it becomes the gateway for Winter Fuel Payments- almost 1m poor pensioners will miss out. Obvs take up of PC will rise - 3/

The govt is actively encouraging more to sign up to Pension Credit and has included in its calculation of the savings from means testing WFP (£1.3bn and then £1.5bn a year) a 5% increase in take up of PC to 68% but that still leaves 32% not claiming and so missing out 4/

And as I can see some pointing out the threshold for PC is quite low so many just above the threshold. I asked @TheIFS how much would it cost if there was 100% take up of PC (which is surely what govt wants). They point out it would never happen but if it it did- over £2bn. 5/

In 2023-24 the government spent about £5bn on pension credit.

• The spokesperson said there was no discussion of trying policies that might soften the impact of the removal of the winter fuel allowance at cabinet. Asked if Diana Johnson was wrong to say in an interview this morning that ministers were looking at watering down the policy (see 9.36am), the spokesperson said Johnson’s comment was corrected. Asked if the government was considering further measures that might mitigate the impact of the change, the spokesperson said there were “no plans” for any.

• The spokesperson played down criticism of the application process for pension credit, which has focused on the need for people to fill out a form with 243 questions. She said around 80% of applications are online, “where the forms are much shorter”. And support is available for people needing help with the paper forms, she said.

• The spokesperson said there was no criticism of the decision to means-test the winter fuel payment at cabinet.

• And the spokesperson refused to say what might happen to Labour MPs who do not support the government in the vote tomorrow. She said whipping arrangements were not discussed at cabinet, and were not a matter for her to comment on anyway because they are party political.

Keir Starmer chaired a cabinet meeting this morning, because on Tuesday, the normal day for cabinet, he has another engagement. At the meeting this morning he and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended their decision to means-test the winter fuel payment for pensions. In a read-out of what was said at cabinet, a No 10 spokesperson said:

The prime minister opened cabinet by stating the importance of fixing the foundations of our economy in order to carry out the government’s mandate of change.

He said that, given the scale of inheritance, this will be difficult and that tough decisions are unpopular decisions. It is the tough decisions that will enable change for this country.

The chancellor added that, unless we grow our economy, we will not see the improvements in living standards and public services the country deserves, that we must first restore the state of public finances to deliver that central mission of government.

I will post more on what was said at the lobby briefing about winter fuel payments shortly.

9 Sept 202413.30 BST

Heather Stewart

Delegates to the TUC’s annual congress in Brighton could be given the opportunity to express their disapproval of the government’s decision to cut winter fuel allowance.

Amid growing dissent about the measure, public sector union the PCS has tabled an amendment to a motion on universal credit, which is slated to be discussed tomorrow.

The amendment says:

Congress agrees to oppose cuts to the winter fuel allowance and demands appropriate taxation of corporations and the super-rich to fund the social security improvements identified in this motion.

Fran Heathcote, the general secretary of the PCS, said her members in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) administer the payments. “There are going to be real decisions between heating and eating - whether to put the heating on. We hear quite heartbreaking stories first hand,” she said.

Heathcote added “what’s slightly galling is that this wasn’t a manifesto commitment”, pointing out that Keir Starmer had promised to be on pensioners’ side.

The universal credit motion, along with the PCS’s amendment, is slated for discussion on Tuesday, but it could be rescheduled or even timed out.

Peter Lilley’s article in the Times endorsing Kemi Badenoch (see 1.12pm) is helpful to her – but potentially also to Keir Starmer. That is because Lilley says that Britain is “broken” and and that “nothing works”, which was at the heart of Labour’s message during the election campaign. Here is the relevant passage.

The fact that Kemi graduated in engineering is hugely important. Since Margaret Thatcher, a science graduate, nearly every prime minister and party leader of both the Tories and Labour has been a wordsmith. They mostly studied politics, philosophy and economics, or law. They were good at using words, all too often twisting words to explain away failure and rationalise broken promises, or finding out what people want then telling them what they want to hear. But they lacked the mindset to organise and plan the deployment of resources and people.

The result is that Britain is broken — nothing works. And people have lost faith in political wordsmiths. Restoring trust will be as difficult and important as rebuilding our economy and public services.

Lilley argues that science graduates, like Margaret Thatcher and Kemi Badenoch, are more likely to be practical.

For engineers and scientists facts are sovereign. Theories are useless if they don’t accord with the facts. As Kemi said at her campaign launch: “Engineers are realists. We see the world as it truly is but we can also dream and plot a path from idea to reality. We don’t make things better just by using words”.

The reference to PPE (politics, philosophy and economics, a course taught at Oxford) makes it clear that Lilley’s remark is directed at his own party. Of the last five Tory prime ministers, three of them (David Cameron, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak) studied PPE. The other two also studied non-science subjects at Oxford (Theresa May, geography; Boris Johnson, classics).

But Lilley is talking about Labour too. Tony Blair and Keir Starmer are both law graduates, and Gordon Brown studied history.

Lilley himself studied natural sciences at Cambridge, but then switched to economics,