Rachel Reeves is preparing to announce billions of pounds’ worth of extra spending for areas outside south-east England at next month’s spending review, after rewriting Treasury investment rules.
Reporting on the story, the Guardian’s political correspondent, Kiran Stacey writes:
The chancellor will unveil the extra capital spending after a review of the Treasury’s “green book”, which determines how officials calculate the costs and benefits of a scheme.
Critics say the rules are biased in favour of more economically productive areas of the country, and Reeves has promised a review to be published on the same day as the spending review.
The announcement, which was first revealed by the Times, comes as ministers look for ways to combat the threat of Reform UK in the “red wall” of seats in the north and Midlands, which were won by the Conservatives in 2019 and taken by Labour last year. Those areas are likely to be hit by reduced departmental spending, which Reeves will also lay out at the spending review.
In other news today, the government is setting out funding allocations for building repairs, with ministers saying children and patients deserve to be safe and comfortable in schools and hospitals across England.
Schools minister Catherine McKinnell and shadow paymaster general Richard Holden are on morning media round, so we’ll be hearing from them soon. And, Farage has announced Reform UK are now accepting donations in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
More on all of the above in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:
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The UK is on the brink of signing a £1.6bn trade agreement with Gulf states, amid warnings from rights groups that the deal makes no concrete provisions on human rights, modern slavery or the environment. The deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council – which includes the countries Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – is within touching distance, making it a fourth trading agreement by Keir Starmer after pacts were struck with the US, India and the EU.
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Andrew Bailey has urged the UK government to deepen ties with the EU, as he warned a breakdown in global trade would make it harder for the Bank of England to control inflation. In a speech in Dublin on Thursday, the Bank’s governor said a stronger relationship between London and Brussels could “minimise negative effects” of Brexit on trade.
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Kemi Badenoch has accused the Labour and Reform leaders of asking people to “fund unlimited child support for others” by scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Writing in the Daily Mail, the Tory leader accused Starmer and Farage of engaging in a “race to the bottom” on welfare.
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Nigel Farage has launched a second attack video aimed at Anas Sarwar and accused the Scottish Labour leader of being “obsessed about race”, escalating the increasingly personal row before a key Holyrood byelection. The campaign for the central Scotland seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse is rapidly evolving into a head-to-head contest between the two party leaders. A Reform UK advert that incorrectly claims Sarwar has promised to prioritise Pakistani communities is now subject to formal complaints to Meta from Scottish Labour and the SNP.
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“Millionaires” should not get “subsidy for their energy bills from the government”, a Treasury minister has suggested. Darren Jones has said that winter fuel payments will “still be targeted to those that need it the most”.
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The treatment of autistic people who are referred to the government’s deradicalisation scheme could be in breach of equality laws, a human rights charity has claimed. In a pre-action letter to the Home Office, Rights & Security International (RSI) said it was “deeply concerned about a potential ongoing failure to collect and analyse data on the protected characteristics of those referred to Prevent and that this constitutes an ongoing failure to comply with their public sector equality duty”.
Ministers are considering tweaks to soften their controversial welfare cuts before a crunch vote in parliament next month.
The government is examining a potential change that could allow up to 200,000 people to keep their disability benefits by tweaking assessment rules.
In March, Labour announced plans to save £5bn a year by overhauling the welfare system, including by cutting personal independence payments for disabled people…
Nigel Farage has become a crypto convert.
My colleague Henry Dyer has charted how the Reform UK leader came round to admiring virtual currencies after dismissing them as “pure speculation”.
In April 2022, Farage appeared in a video titled “New Money, New Rules” from Southbank Research, offering “the truth about crypto”, in which he said he had bought cryptocurrencies.
He said: “Five years ago, cryptocurrencies were pure speculation. Yet now, making crypto a part of your plans just makes sense, doesn’t it? I have. A short while ago, I took a small amount of my money, I opened an account, I invested in cryptocurrency. It wasn’t difficult, but I’m glad I did it and I’m not alone.”
Farage apparently loves crypto now and even has his own coin named after him, “$FARAGE”.
Cryptocurrency is a precarious form of digital money, tied to no nation and based on no intrinsic value. It’s often used in so-called pump-and-dump scams online. Typically, an online influencer will endorse a cryptocurrency on social media without disclosing their stake. As a result, their followers will buy it, which raises the price, and then the owners of the currency sell en masse, significantly lowering the price.
Read Henry’s full report here…
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said ministers needed to vigorously investigate breaches of minimum wage rules, following reports that high street chains such as Pizza Express, Lidl and Halfords were named by the government for failing to pay some of their staff the National Minimum Wage.
“Wage theft is bad for workers, families, and the economy,” he said. “Every pound stolen from a worker’s pocket is a pound not spent in local shops, cafes and high streets.”
The “national living wage” for workers aged 21 and over rose in April from £11.44 an hour to £12.21 an hour.
The Guardian has been reporting on the developing ADHD crisis in the health service.
My colleague, Tobi Thomas, health and inequalities correspondent, has written a piece detailing how more than half a million people could be waiting for an ADHD assessment.
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a neurological disorder with symptoms including but not limited to inattentiveness, hyperactivity, impulsivity and emotional dysregulation.
Henry Shelford, the chief executive of ADHD UK, said the NHS was presiding over a “wildly failing system” for the condition.
“At ADHD UK we did this same population analysis years ago and arrived at similar numbers,” he said. “While it is great to see NHS England catching up, we need to note that Nice first published guidelines for ADHD in the year 2000. For NHS England to take 25 years to create any population estimate is an expression of their abject failure to properly manage and resource ADHD. That failure has meant ruined lives, wrecked families, and lost lives.”
Read more on this story here …
The attorney general “regrets” remarks in which he compared calls for the UK to leave international courts with 1930s Germany, his spokesperson has said, reports the PA news agency.
In a statement, Richard Hermer’s spokesperson said the peer acknowledged his “choice of words was clumsy” but rejected “the characterisation of his speech by the Conservatives”.
Hermer has faced criticism for a speech on Thursday in which he criticised politicians who argued that Britain “abandons the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”. Arguing that similar claims had been made “in the early 1930s by ‘realist’ jurists in Germany”, Hermer added that abandoning international law would only “give succour to [Vladimir] Putin”.
He also said that because of what happened “in 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law”. That is the year that Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.
The speech prompted Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who has suggested the UK would have to leave the European convention of human rights (ECHR) if it stops the country from doing “what is right”, to accuse Hermer of “starting from a position of self loathing, where Britain is always wrong and everyone else is right”.
In a post on social media, she said:
The fact is laws go bad and need changing, institutions get corrupted. Our sovereignty is being eroded by out-of-date treaties and courts acting outside their jurisdiction.
Pointing this out does not make anyone a Nazi. Labour have embarrassed themselves again with this comparison and unless the prime minister demands a retraction from his attorney general, we can only assume these slurs reflect Keir Starmer’s own view.
Hermer’s spokesperson said:
The attorney general gave a speech defending international law which underpins our security, protects against threats from aggressive states like Russia and helps tackle organised immigration crime.
He rejects the characterisation of his speech by the Conservatives. He acknowledges though that his choice of words was clumsy and regrets having used this reference.
In his same speech to the Royal United Services Institute on Thursday, the attorney general said “we must not stagnate in our approach to international rules” and that officials should “look to apply and adapt existing obligations to address new situations”. “We must be ready to reform where necessary,” he added.
Robert Jenrick is perhaps best known to the public as the former government minister who unlawfully intervened in a planning decision involving a billionaire Conservative party donor.
To others, he may be the Tory MP that parliament’s spending watchdog said was centrally involved in wasting nearly £100m on a botched plan to house asylum seekers.
Now, however, Jenrick has a new claim to fame: as the man who released a video of himself delivering “vigilante justice” to people he accused of fare dodging in London.
The failed party leadership candidate posted a video online on Thursday morning in which he accused the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, of “driving a proud city into the ground”, adding: “Lawbreaking is out of control. He’s not acting. So, I did.”
Jenrick is seen approaching people near tube barriers and asking them if they think “it is all right not to pay”.
Addressing the camera during the minute-long clip, Jenrick – who in 2020 accepted that his approval of Richard Desmond’s building project had been unlawful – said it was “so annoying watching so many people break the law and get away with it”. He added that the state needed to “reassert itself and go after lawbreakers”.
Transport for London (TfL) said fare evasion had actually fallen slightly, down 0.3% from 2023-24 to 3.5%. And officials claimed it was lower than many cities around the world, citing the 13% rate in New York City. They said they hoped to cut fare evasion in the capital to 1.5% by 2030.
Nevertheless, it is a serious problem in London, costing an estimated £130m a year.
Hours after the video emerged, Jenrick accepted he had not got permission to film on TfL premises, telling LBC radio he did not want to forewarn the local government body of his plan to potentially embarrass it.
While it is understood he did not breach the letter of TfL’s rules, a spokesperson said: “We expect permission to be sought for filming of this nature.”
The Conservative party has repeatedly proved able to adapt and reinvent itself – but this time might be different, writes senior political correspondent Peter Walker, in this latest analysis:
Responding to reports that the UK government is to sign a new trade agreement with the Gulf states, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson and deputy leader Daisy Cooper said on Friday:
Good trade deals with the Gulf states and others around the world have the potential to boost our economy and improve living standards, but Labour mustn’t repeat the mistake of the last Conservative government by selling out British farmers.
If the government further undermines our high food and animal welfare standards and Britain’s food security, we will all be worse off.
Not only that, but it seems the government is selling out our free press for this deal too – permitting foreign stakes in British newspapers, with the UAE set to clinch 15% of the Telegraph.
This shows yet again that parliament must have a proper chance to scrutinise the government’s trade deals with each one being put to a debate and vote for parliament as a whole.
The treatment of autistic people who are referred to the government’s deradicalisation scheme could be in breach of equality laws, a human rights charity has claimed.
The home secretary has been warned that Prevent and Channel, the multi-agency follow-on programme, which seek to identify people at risk of extremism, are overreporting neurodivergent people.
In a pre-action letter to the Home Office, Rights & Security International (RSI) said it was “deeply concerned about a potential ongoing failure to collect and analyse data on the protected characteristics of those referred to Prevent and that this constitutes an ongoing failure to comply with their public sector equality duty”.
There are concerns that autistic people are being referred to the authorities because of a lack of healthcare provision.
The letter states that a 2021 internal Home Office analysis obtained under the Freedom of Information Act found that more than a quarter of those receiving deradicalisation support from the Channel programme had either been diagnosed or had a suspected diagnosis of autism. The Channel programme is for the most serious cases where there is a “genuine risk” of radicalisation.
Having obtained previously undisclosed equality impact assessments carried out in 2023, RSI is concerned that the government is not adequately addressing the risk of “overreporting” autistic people.
Sarah St Vincent, the executive director of RSI, said the documents suggest the government is taking a “casual and even careless approach” to understanding the impact of Prevent on autistic people.
“The government needs to seriously rethink its approach to the Prevent programme, and in the meantime, authorities need to properly monitor the programme’s equality impact,” she said.
A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) in January estimated it would cost about £13.8bn to address the repairs and remedial work backlog for hospitals and other NHS properties in England, and an additional £13.8bn to address the maintenance backlog across the school estate.
The Department for Education has confirmed a £2.1bn investment for the school estate for 2025/26, almost £300m more than the previous year.
According to the PA news agency, Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, described the funding boost for school buildings as a “welcome start”. But he added:
It is clear that much more government investment and a long-term plan is needed to restore the school estate to at least a satisfactory condition.
Julia Harnden, funding specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said:
The wider problem is that there is a massive £13.8bn maintenance backlog across the school estate and we are still nowhere near the level of investment needed to address this.
The fact that schools and sixth form colleges have to bid for funding for urgent repairs and maintenance is in itself a sign of the inadequacy of overall investment and is effectively an annual exercise in papering over the cracks.
Children and patients deserve to be safe and comfortable in schools and hospitals across England, ministers have said as the government set out funding allocations for building repairs.
About £1.2bn – part of funding packages announced in last year’s autumn budget – will be spent on repairing crumbling schools and hospitals across the country, the government confirmed, reports the PA news agency.
Pupils at 656 schools and sixth forms will benefit from a share of this year’s £470m condition improvement fund (CIF), used for projects like fixing crumbling roofs and removing asbestos.
More than 400 hospitals, mental health units and ambulance sites will be handed £750m to tackle problems such as leaky pipes, poor ventilation and electrical issues.
Projects to deliver improvements to schools and hospital buildings will be delivered during the 2025/26 financial year, with the first upgrades to begin this summer, the government has said.
More than 100 schools, nurseries and colleges across England were forced to shut down days before the autumn term in 2023 amid concerns that classrooms and other buildings containing reinforced autoclaved concrete (Raac) were unsafe.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said:
The defining image of the school estate under the previous government was children sitting under steel props to stop crumbling concrete falling on their heads. It simply isn’t good enough.
Parents expect their children to learn in a safe, warm environment. It’s what children deserve and it is what we are delivering.
This investment is about more than just buildings – it’s about showing children that their education matters, their futures matter, and this government is determined to give them the best possible start in life.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said:
A decade and a half of underinvestment left hospitals crumbling, with burst pipes flooding emergency departments, faulty electrical systems shutting down operating theatres, and mothers giving birth in outdated facilities that lack basic dignity.
We are on a mission to rebuild our NHS through investment and modernisation.
Patients and staff deserve to be in buildings that are safe, comfortable and fit for purpose. Through our plan for change, we will make our NHS fit for the future.
If Nigel Farage has a secret weapon, it is his seeming refusal to take things seriously.
His habit of repairing to the pub at any opportunity – though in private, he’s said to barely drink now – and the cheerfully unabashed amateurishness of his operation have long made other politicians look stuffy by comparison. But the chaos is also, as it was for Boris Johnson, a means of defence.
Since he makes zero pretence of professionalism, it’s somehow less expected of him, enabling him to slip past the standards applied to others. Rival parties often avoid attacking him, for fear of reminding voters he exists. Even now Reform UK has opened a substantial poll lead over Labour, treating this ramshackle outfit as a potential party of government still feels faintly ridiculous. Prime minister Farage? Are you serious? But he is. And it’s time the country was too.
Read more of Gaby Hinsliff’s opinion piece here:
