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.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
No 10 says David Lammy was wrong to tell MPs government thinks Israel has broken international law in Gaza
Yesterday, in the House of Commons, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, said that Israel was in breach of international law because of the way it has been withholding aid from Gaza. In response to a direct question from Labour’s Rupa Huq, he replied:
My honourable friend is right. This is a breach of international law. Israel, quite rightly, must defend its own security, but we find the lack of aid – and it has now been 15 days since aid got into Gaza – unacceptable, hugely alarming and very worrying. We urge Israel to get back to the number of trucks we were seeing going in – way beyond 600 – so that Palestinians can get the necessary humanitarian support they need at this time.
But this morning Downing Street failed to back Lammy, and said instead that the government’s position is Israel is “at clear risk” of breaching international law. At the lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:
Our position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are at clear risk of breaching international humanitarian law, and we continue to call on the government of Israel to abide by its international obligations when it comes to humanitarian assistance.
The spokesperson at first said that Lammy yesterday used this formula. When it was put to him that Lammy told MPs Israel had breached international law, not that it was at risk of doing so, the spokesperson said “there hasn’t been a change in policy here”. He claimed Lammy’s position was that Israel was at risk of breaching humanitarian law.
Asked if Lammy went further than he should have done, the spokesperson said that was a matter for the Foreign Office.
Asked if Lammy would be making a correction, the spokesperson again said that was a matter of the Foreign Office.
Farage accuses Badenoch of ‘hypocrisy’ over net zero, saying she could have opposed plans in 2019
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has accused Kemi Badenoch of performing an U-turn on net zero. In a statement issued this morning, under the headline ‘Farage responds to Kemi’s net zero hypocrisy’, he said:
Kemi is fooling no-one. Let’s not forget that she happily waved through Conservative government legislation on this, including enshrining net zero by 2050 into law.
If she truly believed this would bankrupt the country, why didn’t she voice her opposition sooner?
This is a desperate policy from a leader and party floundering in the polls in an attempt to hitch themselves onto Reform’s momentum. We have been consistent from the start: scrap net zero and save our country from economic catastrophe. Only Reform will cut your energy bills.
During the Q&A, Badenoch denied changing her mind on net zero. (See 11.01am.) Here is her answer on this in full.
I haven’t changed my mind. What you’re describing is called collective responsibility.
I was a member of the government. I sat in the committees where people were trying to make the plans work, and I could see that they were not going to deliver. I said so in 2019 when I asked the question, when it was first announced.
I said it again in 2022 when I first ran for leadership. I said it in 2023 when I lobbied to reduce the ZEV mandates that was being imposed on the car manufacturers who were coming to my office telling me it couldn’t work. And I said it again last year.
When talking about the 2019 “question”, Badenoch was referring to the fact that she was one of the MPs present when the Commons debated the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 that set 2050 as the net zero target. She also mentioned this in her speech (see 10.47am), saying she was one of only two MPs who expressed caution.
Here is the Hansard transcript of that debate in June 2019. And here is Badenoch’s (very short) intervention.
Many of my constituents, especially schoolchildren, will be delighted by this announcement, but others are rightly sceptical about the costs. What steps will the minister take to ensure that the plan will be achievable and affordable?
The order was approved without a vote.
At the time of this debate, Badenoch was not a minister, and so she was not really bound by “collective responsibility”, a term that normally just applies to members of the government. Technically, she could have tried to force a division in that debate in June 2019. But given the strong cross-party support for the measure, and the fact that few, if any, other MPs were actively opposed to the law at the time, it would have been an eccentric move, especially for a backbencher with ambitions.
Badenoch says she won’t commit to leaving ECHR without plan to make it work, because that was flaw with Brexit
Q: What is your thinking on leaving the European convention on human rights (ECHR)?
Badenoch says what she said during the leadership campaign still holds. She is not ruling it out, but if the party is going to commit to this, it needs a plan.
I remember voting before I became an MP on the 2016 Brexit referendum, only to become an MP the next year and see that we’ve made a decision, but a lot of the thinking had not been done, and we were making it up on the fly. We cannot do that again.
Even leaving the ECHR is not enough to solve the myriad problems that we have. That’s why I talked about lawfare in its entirety.
Q: Will you set a new target for net zero?
Badenoch says she is not going to make a target now. That would be making the same mistake.
If all the experts say there should be a date, she will set one.
But she wants to include people like businesses and sceptics in the decision making process.
Q: What do you to cut emissions yourself?
Badenoch says she does everything possible. She does not buy many clothes for her children, she says. She says recycling is cheaper.
Badenoch does not commit to Tories maintaining support for triple lock at next election
Q: Will you maintain the pension triple lock?
Badenoch says at the moment the party is committed to the triple lock.
When we are changing policy, I will stand on a stage like this, and I will announce that we’re changing policy. Until then, the policy stays.
That sounded like Badenoch keeping the door very open to the possibility of changing this policy before the election.
Q: Should MPs get a vote before the UK deploys troops on the ground?
Badenoch says there should be consensus. That would be a very significant decision, she says.
Q: Aren’t you just trying to trump Reform UK with this policy?
Badenoch says there was no Reform UK in 2019 when she started talking about this.
Q: Labour says it can reduce energy bills by £300. Can you do that?
Badenoch says she wants to start from objectives that are not abstract. Net zero by 2050 is an abstract objective, she says.
She says:
We need to start with, how we making people’s lives better? Is this going to keep businesses going? How do we make those cheaper?
The Tories need to make policies based on how they will impact on ordinary people, she says.
Badenoch denies changing her mind about net zero target
Q: Why have you changed your mind on this?
Badenoch says she has not changed her mind. As a member of the government, she abided by collective responsibility. She says in government she regularly questioned the case for net zero.
The person who’s been consistent in all this is me.
Q: What do you say to your critics who argue that the party made a mistake picking you as leader?
Badenoch says:
I’m not going to pretend that I won’t have critics … This is politics. Being a politician is about being criticised.
What I’m asking people to do is listen to what I’m saying. I am not doing what all the other parties are doing. We are changing the way we do things.
The Conservative Party is under new leadership, and we have to make sure that we think things through and don’t just give announcements without the proper plan to back them.
Badenoch is now taking questions.
Q: You don’t wnat to get to net zero by 2050, but what is your date? What do you say to people who argue that, without a date, you don’t have a plan?
Badenoch replies:
That’s not how it works. You can’t just pull [a date] out of the air. And what we did was pick a target and then start thinking of how to get there.
We need to start thinking about it in a different way. How does this impact families? How is business going to help us deliver? And that’s what the policy commissions are going to do.
Badenoch says Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, will review policy in this areas.
Labour may not be interested in these questions, but we are, we are interested because as Conservatives, we want to protect our environment, we want to secure our energy and deliver a better world for our children.
Someone has to save these noble objectives from the zealots who have hijacked this agenda.
She says this wlll be the start of what she describes as “the UK’s biggest policy renewal programme in 50 years”.
Badenoch explains three reasons why she’s ‘net zero sceptic’
Badenoch says reaching net zero by 2050 is impossible.
Net zero by 2050 is impossible.
I don’t say that with pleasure.
Or because I have some ideological desire to dismantle it – in fact, we must do what we can to improve our natural world.
I say it because to anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it can’t be achieved without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us.
Badenoch says she has three truths about net zero.
First, the published plans are completely muddled.
It is true that the UK has made the greatest progress on carbon emissions in the developed world, yet we are only responsible for 1% of global emissions. Even if we hit absolute zero, we will not have net zero around the world …
Second, even where there is a plan we are behind.
Let’s look at one easy example. By 2040 the Committee on Climate Change says more than half of UK homes need to rip out their boilers and replace them with a heat pump. There is no way we can do this quickly enough.
On that time scale, 17m houses need to be fitted with an expensive heat pump in just 15 years. How many houses have one now? Fewer than 300,000 because heat pumps one only lots of expensive electricity, and it turns out many people just don’t like them …
Third … we are massively exposing ourselves to countries who do not share our values.
Take solar panels. The good news is that costs have dropped in the last decade. The less good news? 10 years ago, we were heavily dependent on China for all of the key components. Today, we’re even more dependent.
Look at the top dozen makers of solar panels. They are nearly all Chinese. That’s an extraordinary dependency, given what we learned during Covid about over reliance on these supply chains …
Those three truths are why I call myself a net zero sceptic.
Badenoch claims parliament legislated for net zero without plan for how to achieve it
Badenoch is now speaking about net zero.
Let’s start by telling the truth on energy and net zero.
Every single thing we do in our daily lives is dependent on cheap, abundant energy. When energy became cheap and abundant, living standards began to rise, health and life expectancy grew.
Cheap, abundant energy is the foundation of civilization as we know it today. We mess with it at our peril.
But that’s exactly what’s been happening for 20 years, and it’s now starting to cause real pain for everyday people and businesses.
But energy costs are now too high, she says.
She says government policy is trying to do two things – bring energy costs down, while protecting the environment.
She says when the Commons legislated for net zero in 2019, it did so after a 90-minute debat without a vote. She goes on:
Of the 22 MPs who spoke that day, only two sounded notes of caution. I was one of them.
I asked for the plan. I asked for it that day. I asked for it many days after and I waited and waited and waited. 840 days later, a plan came, and it wasn’t enough, so much so that environmental bodies are taking the government to court and winning, because there isn’t enough detail.
We are closing down oil fields in Scotland that we need from transition from gas to renewables, because the plan doesn’t make sense.
Let’s think about it for a minute. We are already a sixth of the way through net zero, 2050, that we planned that day, and we are still arguing about what the plan is to get there.
And all the politicians who gloss over the lack of a plan will be long gone when those targets are missed in the future and our children suffer.
Badenoch says that, when Nick Clegg was deputy PM, he dismissed the idea of building more nuclear power stations because they would not be ready until 2022. “That decision has cost us billions,” she says.
And she says Ed Davey, the current Lib Dem leader, was energy secretary at the time.
Badenoch says Britain ‘stagnating or going backwards’, and people wrong to assume prosperity always guaranteed
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now.
She starts by saying that we are living off the inheritance of our ancestors.
That led to an assumption that prosperity was guaranteed, she says.
We are a wealthy country, but we are becoming weaker through complacency. We are losing our resilience. We can’t make things like we used to. We don’t build as quickly. We are spending too much on debt, too much on welfare and too little on defence. We are not growing like we should be …
if you look at real disposable income or GDP per capita or home ownership, you will see that things are stagnating or going backwards. In 1974 you could save up for a deposit to buy a house in less than six months. Now, the average time is more than 11 years.
She is also showing graphs to her audience, including ones showing other countries growing more quickly.
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.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
