A round-up - curtesy of the Guardian.
Economy
One of Rachel Reeves’s first actions as chancellor was to stand in front of the Commons and accuse the previous government of leaving a £22bn hole in this year’s public accounts. Every year, government spending diverges slightly from what was budgeted, but this was an unusually large amount, driven both by the higher-than-expected costs of housing asylum seekers and public sector pay deals.
Reeves’s solution to this was to put an immediate halt to various projects, including the road tunnel under Stonehenge and the A27 Arundel bypass. Boris Johnson’s promise to build 40 new hospitals has also been placed under review, with the prime minister, Keir Starmer, accusing his predecessor of making the promise without allocating the money.
Energy
When Michael Gove was asked at Tory conference to name the most effective Labour cabinet ministers so far, one of those he listed was Ed Miliband. The energy secretary has returned to a post he last held 14 years ago with a flurry of activity.
On 8 July, the first Monday after winning the election, Miliband announced he was removing the previous government’s de facto ban on onshore wind power. A day later, Reeves, unveiled the national wealth fund, a £7.3bn scheme designed to invest in green infrastructure such as clean steel and carbon capture.
Later that month, Miliband brought forward a bill to set up Great British Energy, a nationally owned energy production company that the government has put at the heart of its net zero strategy. The bill gives the company power to produce and distribute clean energy and spend money on energy efficiency schemes.
Keir Starmer announced in his Labour conference speech that GBE would be based in Aberdeen.
Transport
The first bill to pass the Commons under the Labour government was the rail nationalisation bill. The bill automatically brings rail networks back under public control once their existing franchise contract is over, or earlier if they breach their contracts.
The transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has also passed a bill to set up a new company called Great British Railways to manage both the track and the trains service. Some have questioned, however, why the rolling stock is not also being brought under national control.
Last month, Haigh reversed another piece of privatisation in the transport sector, allowing local authorities across England to run their own bus services once more. The transport secretary has also said she wants to make it simpler and easier for local leaders to conduct the franchising process.
Education
Labour has promised that it will introduce free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England, but it is starting slowly. Reeves announced at the Labour conference that 750 English schools would be invited to be part of a pilot programme.
Housing
Labour has promised to liberalise the planning regime and began soon after taking over government, not only overturning the restrictions on onshore wind power but also reimposing population-based housing targets on local authorities.
The Conservatives had given local planners a series of loopholes to avoid meeting those targets, in a move that housebuilders said had hampered new development, pushing housing approvals to a 10-year low.
Other reforms are planned, including making it easier for public bodies to issue compulsory purchasing orders and making it easier to build on green belt land.
Meanwhile, Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has introduced a package of renters’ reforms, which passed their second reading in parliament this week, despite the objections of the Conservatives. That package picks up on some of the ambitions originally championed by Gove when he was housing secretary, including bringing an immediate end to no-fault evictions and forcing landlords to make timely repairs to properties.
Campaigners, however, are unhappy that the Labour government has so far not enacted another package of protections for leaseholders, whom they worry are slipping down the government’s agenda. The government has promised to bring in a bill to restrict leasehold and boost the rights of tenants, but has so far not even enacted the measures passed through parliament under the last government.
Employment
Starmer promised that his government would bring forward a package of workers’ rights in his first 100 days, a deadline which was just about met when Angela Rayner, his deputy, published the employment rights bill on Thursday.
Her reforms include giving workers protection from unfair dismissal and paternity leave rights from the first day of their employment, rather than having to wait two years. The bill also bans employers from forcing workers to sign zero-hours contracts and stops them firing staff only to hire them back on lower pay, unless the company is threatened with bankruptcy.
While the bill was published in the first 100 days it will take another two years for it to come into force. Officials and ministers will spend that time consulting businesses and trade unions about the exact measures involved and how to police them.
Some of the pre-election promises have not made it into the bill. There will be no statutory right for workers to switch off outside their working hours, and the government will now consult on having a single status of worker. Unions have long campaigned for a single worker status to replace the distinction between those who are employed and self-employed, in part to tackle exploitation in the gig economy.
Immigration
As promised, Labour has ended the previous government’s Rwanda scheme, which had not sent a single asylum seeker to Rwanda but was already costing the government money. Scrapping it saved more than £2bn over two years.
In its place, Starmer and his home secretary, Yvette Cooper, have introduced a border security command to focus on people-smuggling gangs. However, the prime minister is still trying to sign returns agreements with European countries, agreements that might mean Britain having to accept migrants in return.
Since the election, nearly 12,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats, slightly fewer than in the same period last year.
Justice
A week after the election, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced an early release scheme that would see some offenders who had committed less serious crimes leave prison after serving 40% of their sentence. Mahmood blamed the prisons crisis she inherited from the previous government, which had left jails in England and Wales almost entirely full.
The early release scheme was controversial, but its purpose was underlined later in the summer as riots engulfed parts of the country. Speaking to journalists from the Downing Street garden after the riots had subsided, the prime minister described the decisions he had had to make while they were unfolding.
“I shouldn’t be sitting in the Cobra room with a list of prison places across the country on a day-by-day basis, trying to work out how we deal with disorder,” he said. “But that’s the position I was put in.”
Health
If Starmer is to show progress in one public service by the time he goes into the next election, it will have to be the NHS. His health secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned Ara Darzi, a former Labour minister, to outline the scale of the challenge. Lord Darzi’s report, which was published last month, found that long delays for hospital, GP and mental health services were leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Darzi suggested a range of changes, including focusing more on prevention and making companies pay “health levies” for things such as alcohol and tobacco.
Ronib I’ve also just read that this is common practice in the run up to a budget. Conservative MPs did it. Apparently MPs & cabinet members send memos / letters to the PM putting in ‘a pitch’ for their pet project / department etc.
Well, if it’s always happened, why haven’t we heard about it before, I hear you ask.
Mm, now let me think about that … we only hear what the media wants us to hear!
What do you actually mean by "unable to read"? The vast majority of children leave school able to read, but to various levels. I expect all of them have the required reading level to operate a till or do plastering.
Whilst true growstuff I’m sure I read recently that half of the people in prisons are illiterate.
Just read that Angela Rayner plus others have sent a memo to Starmer about spending cuts in the budget. Obviously haven’t seen it yet…. Not all happy in the new regime.
So many of the things that need to be done urgently are a mopping up exercise following inaction by the previous governments. Apart from the energy initiatives, every one posted this morning has seen people stuck and disadvantaged due to ineffective systems.
I’m so pleased that carers are getting a better deal. Stopping sanctions is a start, but they need much better allowances. It’s not an easy role, and prevents people from being able to earn money in their regular job, plus it saves the state the cost of the care.
Backlog in courts
Magistrates are to be given greater sentencing powers. This will help clear the huge backlog that has grown over the past years.
Unpaid carers
The welfare secretary, Liz Kendall, announced plans on Tuesday to overhaul aspects of the carer’s allowance benefit in an attempt to put an end to growing public outrage over injustices that have been compared to the Post Office scandal.
A series of Guardian articles in recent months have revealed how tens of thousands of unpaid carers who did paid work part-time were being harshly punished by benefits officials for often minor and inadvertent breaches of strict carer’s allowance earnings rules.
Although the terms of reference for the independent review of carer’s allowance overpayments have not yet been published, Kendall has promised it will be “open and transparent” and to “learn all the lessons” about carer’s allowance failings.
There are about 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK who look after ill, disabled or frail loved ones. More than 1 million are in poverty. About 1 million carers claim carer’s allowance, a weekly benefit worth £81.90 a week. Claimants are allowed to earn £151 a week from paid work, equivalent to about 13 hours’ work at the national minimum wage.
The review is likely to look at the notorious “cliff edge” penalties whereby a carer who earns even £1 over the weekly £151 earnings limit must repay the entire benefit. A carer who earned £1 more than the threshold for 52 weeks, therefore, would pay back not £52 but £4,258.80.
It is also likely to consider whether the earnings limit should be increased, ensuring fewer claimants run up overpayments and enabling more carers to keep a foothold in work. Ministers and campaigners are concerned by the number of carers who give up work and then fall out of the job market, a phenomenon in part blamed on restrictive carer’s allowance earnings rules.
Asylum
Nearly 63,000 people who were waiting for their cases to be processed at the time of the general election are expected to be granted asylum by the Labour government, an analysis has found.
The Refugee Council said the government’s decision to scrap the plan to deport people to Rwanda and accelerate claims meant the asylum backlog was forecast to be 118,063 at the start of 2025 – 59,000 cases lower than if the government had continued with the policy.
Figures show that there were 118,882 people in the backlog by the end of June 2024. Based on the grant rates in the year to that date the charity expects 62,801 people to be granted asylum.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the charity, said Labour had “inherited an asylum system that was utterly broken” and while “decisive early action has been taken to stop the system from falling over”, there needed to be a “comprehensive reform to create a fair, orderly and humane asylum system”.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government took quick action to restore order to the asylum system that we inherited by restarting asylum processing to clear the backlog.
“This is happening as we continue to remove more people with no right to be here – with over 3,000 people returned since we formed government – while also driving down the costs of asylum accommodation to save money for the taxpayer.”
It has also emerged that the government has chartered a deportation flight to Nigeria and Ghana which is due to take off on Thursday – the first of its kind for more than two years.
GBE.
Britain’s new national energy company will eventually become a major power generator, running its own windfarms, tidal power and carbon capture schemes and potentially borrowing its own money, according to its new chair.
Jürgen Maier, the chair of Great British Energy (GBE), told the Guardian in an interview that his vision for the company far outstrips its current scope and would put it on a par with multinational firms such as Denmark’s Ørsted or Sweden’s Vattenfall.
Government sources have indicated the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, aims to make £40bn in tax rises and spending cuts in the upcoming budget. Maier made a last-minute plea to keep his company’s spending off the public balance sheet, which would allow it to borrow more in the long term.
Maier told the Guardian: “Great Britain deserves a national champion, like an Ørsted.
“What we want to do [now] is to invest and play in some of the less mature markets and then ultimately we would become a longer-term operator in some of those areas, such as floating offshore wind, etc. But that’s going to take a much longer period of time.”
Officials say the company could eventually become an operator in offshore wind, tidal power, carbon capture and hydrogen power.
GBE has been promised £8.3bn to spend on energy schemes over the next five years, concentrating on offshore wind, hydrogen power, carbon capture and nuclear power. The company will begin by taking minority stakes in new projects, but will not immediately own or operate any itself.
Maier and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will travel on Thursday to Aberdeen, GBE’s planned headquarters, where they will announce a deal to develop windfarms on land owned by the crown estate in Scotland. The deal mirrors a similar one struck in England, which officials say will allow GBE to develop enough offshore wind turbines to power 20m homes.
TakeThat7
Not much yet You can't travel in the North west on a Sunday on a train hardly any running The drivers got a huge pay rise so now the gov has to persuade them to do overtime Children are still wasting time in schools learning about Henry the 8th when they could learn how to use tills do plastering just skills so they leave school knowing they can confidently apply for a job it's not just about weight there are a lot still coming out of schools unable to read
Are you suggesting that all jobs require people to use tills or do plastering?
What do you actually mean by "unable to read"? The vast majority of children leave school able to read, but to various levels. I expect all of them have the required reading level to operate a till or do plastering.
ronib
Scientific American suggests 230 years supply of uranium ….
I believe that’s at current usage levels ronib? If alternative sources of power aren’t found once oil runs out it will be much sooner if uranium is the only option.
It’s already been said that we no longer have sufficient fuel here, but while we’re buying our fuel from abroad, we are contributing to their polluting.
What was that the prime minister was saying on the news about populism yesterday he needs a reality check an d conversations with long term unemployed and others not as privileged as he obviously is
Not much yet You can't travel in the North west on a Sunday on a train hardly any running The drivers got a huge pay rise so now the gov has to persuade them to do overtime Children are still wasting time in schools learning about Henry the 8th when they could learn how to use tills do plastering just skills so they leave school knowing they can confidently apply for a job it's not just about weight there are a lot still coming out of schools unable to read
Scientific American suggests 230 years supply of uranium ….
There is only enough uranium left in the world to last 90 years, so nuclear isn’t a long term solution either. We must find solutions that (in addition to Fleurpepper’s point) are innovative, and that costs. Short termism has been a major failing of governments, and we can’t keep doing it.
Yes we do (need nuclear power).
We do have to remember tho that countries such as the US, China and India all big polluters as well as many many other countries do sod all about green energy and that we’re a tiny island in the world! It’s good to explore all that we could do but don’t imagine that what we do helps anything much.Nor should it be done at the expense of working people who can’t afford heat pumps, electric cars and so on.
We need nuclear power for the long term future.
Fleurpepper do you have any examples we could try?
The grenest energy is the one we don't use!
We could make massive savings with some clever changes. That is the greenest way forwards.
I don’t pretend to be an expert ronib, and I don’t know if you are or not. Nor do I have blind faith in any government. What I do know is that every government from now on has to make huge investment in finding and developing potential energy sources, as we’ve already left it too late.
Casdon I don’t think all the green energy initiatives are going to help. I don’t think blind faith in government is a good way ahead.
There’s nothing I would like more than properly working green energy. Probably a few years of trial and error coming up.
Even if billions were spent to find every last drop of accessible oil and gas though, it’s not the answer, is it ronib? We’ve got to face the facts that these resources are going to run out very soon, and source alternatives. The later we leave it, the more risk to our way of life. Condemning the government for allocating money to specific green energy projects is fine in my eyes if you know enough to think there are preferable alternatives. However, condemning them for allocating funding to finding and delivering schemes that should help is not, because it’s the future for our children.
Casdon I have googled (yet again) and found information that there’s 30 years supply of oil and gas as yet unexplored in Uk waters. Of course the government has taken away licenses to undertake exploration. And so the merry dance continues….
ronib
MaizieD what we need to do as a country is to make ourselves energy independent and self sufficient. So although I would love to see the green energy revolution work, I don’t think it will in the near future. A long term goal which needs British oil and gas still rather than buying from abroad with all its volatile prices.
It’s not an option ronib. We will always be dependent on supplies from overseas for as long as we need oil and gas, we don’t have enough ourselves.
www.worldometers.info/oil/uk-oil/#:~:text=Oil%20Reserves%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom&text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20proven,levels%20and%20excluding%20unproven%20reserves).
www.worldometers.info/gas/uk-natural-gas/#:~:text=Gas%20Reserves%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom&text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20proven,levels%20and%20excluding%20unproven%20reserves).
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