Starmer urged to introduce wealth tax instead of cutting disability benefits – UK politics live

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

SNP urges Starmer to scrap proposed disability cuts and revise fiscal rules

The SNP is urging the government to abandon its proposed disability benefits cuts and its fiscal rules. In a statement this morning Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, said:

Keir Starmer must admit he got it wrong, scrap the Labour party’s cuts to disabled people and ditch its broken Tory spending rules, which are the central problem and will make everyone poorer.

The cuts to disabled people are shameful - and they are just the start. We will all be worse off if the Labour government takes the axe to public services and goes ahead with its reckless plan for a new era of austerity cuts.

Former minister Michael Matheson to stand down as MSP in 2026, joining list of leading SNP figures quitting Holyrood

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

It emerged his children had live streamed a football match while they were in Morocco; Matheson also failed to follow the rules on using and updating the iPad. He was suspended from Holyrood for a record 27 days and docked 54 days pay, despite a plea for leniency from John Swinney, the first minister and a close friend.

In a statement, Matheson said:

When I joined the SNP at 17 years of age the re-establishment of a Scottish parliament was still a distant prospect.

I could never have imagined that I would have had the privilege to represent Falkirk in our national parliament for over two decades.

Matheson, 54, is one of the last few MSPs elected to the Scottish parliament at devolution in 1999. He initially won on the Central Scotland regional list before becoming the constituency MSP for Falkirk West in 2007.

He is one of a growing cohort of senior SNP figures quitting at the next Holyrood election, due in May 2026. Two former first ministers are standing down: Nicola Sturgeon, who announced her decision to quit last week, and Humza Yousaf, her successor.

Several cabinet secretaries are also standing down: Fiona Hyslop, the transport secretary and another veteran from 1999; Mairi Gougeon, the widely-respected rural affairs secretary, who joined parliament in 2016, and Shona Robison, the current finance secretary also first elected in 1999. Several junior ministers, Richard Lochhead, Christina McKelvie and Joe Fitzpatrick, are also leaving.

Regulators agree up to 60 pro-growth measures with Treasury, including slimmed-down bat protection guidance

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has announced the abolition of another quango, Philip Inman reports. She made the announcement ahead of her meeting with regulators, which is taking place now, where she is discussing their plans to promote growth. This is the third quango scrapped by the government within the past week, but only one of the announcements, about NHS England, made headline news. Last week the government said the Payment Systems Regulator was going, and today the Regulator for Community Interest Companies is getting the chop.

Here is Philip’s story.

Under pressure from the Treasury, regulators have come up with up to 60 propoals intended to boost growth. In its news release, the Treasury lists some of them.

Following weeks of intense negotiations, watchdogs have signed up to 60 growth boosting measures – including:

-Fast-tracking new medicines to market through a new pilot to provide parallel authorisations from key healthcare regulators, so that patients can access the medicine they need quicker;

-Attracting more investment from international financial services firms by setting up a bespoke ‘concierge service’ to help them get to grips with UK regulations, making it easier to do business in the UK;

-Paving the way for package deliveries by drone, as the Civil Aviation Authority permits at least two more large drone-flying trials in the coming months - which have already helped cut travel times for blood samples from 30 minutes down to 2 minutes between hospitals - and streamlines the regulatory process for manufacturing drones;

-Allowing families to manage their spending safely as the Financial Conduct Authority reviews contactless payment limits, including the £100 cap on individual payments, while speeding up queues at checkout.

-Support for homeownership as the Financial Conduct Authority simplifies mortgage lending rules, including making it easier to re-mortgage with a new lender and reduce mortgage terms.

-Helping start-ups secure funding to grow through the Financial Conduct Authority issuing more notices where they are likely to approve applications from budding entrepreneurs.

And there is bad news for bats. Planning guidance intended to protect them is being slimmed down, the Treasury says.

It should not be the case that to convert a garage or outbuilding you need to wade through hundreds of pages of guidance on bats. Environmental guidance, including on protecting bats, will be looked at afresh. Natural England has agreed to review and update their advice to local planning authorities on bats to ensure there is clear, proportionate and accessible advice available.

Rachel Reeves meeting with regulators in Downing Street this morning. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Peter Walker has more from Diane Abbott’s interview on the Today programme this morning.

Starmer urged to introduce wealth tax instead of cutting disability benefits

Good morning. “You want me to cut £1bn. Shall I take £100 each off 10 million people, or £1,000 each off 1 million people?” The former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke is credited with coming up with this explanation of what big number spending cuts actually mean, but every chancellor has probably thought the same.

Tomorrow the government is expected to announced disability cuts said to be worth at least £5bn. You can work out the maths. That is more than three times as much as the £1.5bn saved by cutting the winter fuel payment, the single policy decision that as done more than anything else to make the government unpopular. So it is not hard to work out why Keir Starmer is facing Labour turmoil over this decision.

(To be fair, the winter fuel payment was an immediate cut. The figures briefed about how much money the government wants to save by cutting disability benefits seem to refer to savings by the end of the decade. But we don’t know the details at this point. Last week the New Economics Foundation, a leftwing thinktank, claimed that cuts could be worth as much as £9bn by 2029-30.)

Hard facts might be in short supply this morning, but comment isn’t. With 24 hours to go before one of the biggest announcements of the Keir Starmer premiership, lots of people are staking out positions. Here are some of the key developments.

• Diane Abbott, the Labour leftwinger and mother of the Commons, has said urged the government to impose a wealth tax as an alternative to cutting disabilty benefits. In an interview on the Today programme, asked what she would do instead, Abbott replied:

I would introduce the wealth tax. If you brought in a wealth tax of just 2% on people with assets over £10m, that would raise £24bn a year. That’s what I would do.

This is broadly similar to what the Green party was proposing at the last election.

• Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has joined those expressing concerns about the plans. In an article for the Times, he says:

I would share concerns about changing support and eligibility to benefits while leaving the current top-down system broadly in place. It would trap too many people in poverty. And to be clear: there is no case in any scenario for cutting the support available to disabled people who are unable to work.

He says Greater Manchester’s Live Well initiative is a model for how people who are ill can be supported back into work.

• Abbott has said that opposition to the government’s plans for disability benefit cuts is not just coming from the left. In her interview on the Today programme, she said she agreed with what Burnham is saying, and she said she also agreed with Ed Balls, who said last week that cutting benefits for those most in need was not something Labour should be doing. Abbott, Burnham and Balls were three of the candidates in the 2010 Labour leadership contest. A fourth, Ed Miliband, is also reported unhappy about the cuts, although as a cabinet minister he has not spoken out publicly.

• Emma Reynolds, a Treasury minister, has said the government is “for the time being not going to come forward with a wealth tax”. She said this in an interview on the Today programme, when asked if the government would be following Abbott’s advice. Reynolds said the government had already raised taxes affecting wealthy people.

• Reynolds urged Labour MPs and others to wait for the details of the plans before coming to a verdict on them. In comments implying the final proposals might not be as draconian as some of the pre-briefing has implied, she said:

Some colleagues are jumping to conclusions about our plans before they’ve heard them. So I just urge them to be patient.

When it was put to here that she was saying some of their concerns might be addressed when they read the actual proposals, Reynolds said there had been “a lot of speculation about what we might or might not do”.

• She said there would always be a safety net for those most in need. She said:

We’ll set out further details, but the severely disabled and the most vulnerable will always get support, and there will always be a safety net.

• The Resolution Foundation thinktank has said that the government’s proposed disability cuts are likely to fall disproportionately on the poor. In a statement it says:

The government is reportedly focusing on cutting incapacity and disability benefits to stem rising spending and support more people into work. But while the system needs reform, Ministers appear to be focused on cutting personal independence payments (Pip) – a benefit that isn’t related to work.

The foundation warns that cutting Pip by £5bn in 2029-30, for example by raising the threshold to qualify for support, could see around 620,000 people losing £675 per month, on average. The Foundation adds that 70 per cent of these cuts would be concentrated on families in the poorest half of the income distribution.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is meeting the heads of regulatory agencies in Downing Street to discuss their plans to boost growth. Later Reeves is recording broadcast interviews.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: Nigel Farage and other Reform UK MPs hold a press conference to make what they call “a special announcement”.

2.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement about Ukraine.

After 4.30pm: MPs start debating the remaining stages of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill.

5.35pm: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech at the CPS’s Margaret Thatcher Conference on Remaking Conservatism. Other speakers earlier in the day include George Osborne, the former chancellor, who is doing a Q&A at 3.35pm.

Early evening: Keir Starmer meets Mark Carney, the new Canadian PM, in Downing Street.

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.

Explore more on these topics