Axing most winter fuel payments would break Tory manifesto promise, says Labour, after reports PM considering option Labour has said Rishi Sunak will be breaking a manifesto promise if reports that he is planning to remove the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners are accurate. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said that a better policy would to increase the scope of the windfall tax on energy companies which have seen profits soar since the invasion of Ukraine. According to Sky News, Sunak is considering removing the winter fuel allowance – worth between £250 and £600 this winter – from most pensioners. Under this proposal only the poorest, on pension credit, would still receive it, Sky reports. According to PA Media, No 10 sources are distancing themselves from suggestions that such a proposal is being considered. But Sky’s Beth Rigby says Sunak has accepted that he has to commit to keeping the pension triple lock in the next Conservative manifesto, despite claims that ultimately the cost of the policy will become unsustainable, because doing otherwise would be politically impossible. Sunak is said to think that getting rid of the winter fuel allowance instead would compensate for the cost, and enable the government to spend a bit more on younger people. Rigby reports: “Rishi understands the politics of the triple lock, although he thinks it’s far from fair from an intergenerational point of view, so he’s trying to redress that a little bit,” said one government insider. Another person familiar with discussions told Sky News that if the government decides to “keep the triple lock but take away the winter fuel allowance from rich pensioners. I think people will understand that and think it’s fair”. Winter fuel payments are expect to cost the Treasury £2bn a year. The Sky report does not say when winter fuel payments might be cut back, but the government is focusing on policies that might be implemented after a general election. Asked for her reaction to the story, Reeves said the Conservatives promised in their last manifesto to keep the triple lock and the winter fuel payment. She said: These were commitments that the Conservatives gave to older people at the last election in their manifesto, and they should not be breaking those commitments. One thing that I would be doing if I was chancellor today would be to have a proper windfall tax on the huge profits that the big energy giants are making and use that money to help people with their bills, older people and families too. That is a choice that the Conservatives could make. That is a choice that they’ve failed to make. Afternoon summary Rishi Sunak’s “plan for motorists”, which would limit councils’ powers to impose 20mph speed limits and bus lanes, would simply restrict people’s travel choices and harm net zero ambitions, six walking and cycling organisations have said. Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, has defended the government’s tax plans after a report said British households were facing the biggest rise on record. Labour has said Rishi Sunak will be breaking a manifesto promise if reports that he is planning to remove the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners are accurate. (See 4.48pm.) The UK is spending 40% a person more than any other European country on housing asylum seekers with the costs taking up nearly a third of the official aid budget, which forced a 16.4% cut in the amount of aid spent overseas in 2022, research has revealed. Labour has demanded that the Conservative party explain who knew about a tax investigation into one of its most important donors, Anthony Bamford, and when they were informed. HS2 will be "total white elephant" if Sunak cancels phase 2 to Manchester and final leg to Euston, says Boris Johnson Boris Johnson, the former PM, has said that HS2 would be a “total white elephant” if Rishi Sunak cancels the Birmingham to Manchester and the Old Oak Common to Euston legs, as he is reportedly considering. In his Daily Mail column Johnson says: Cancel HS2? Cut off the northern legs? We must be out of our minds. Let us get one thing clear: it is now physically impossible just to cancel the entire project, and hope that we could all quietly forget about it. HS2 is already a huge streak of construction running from London to Birmingham, with thousands of people in hard hats, and endless beeping diggers and excavators. They have dug colossal tunnels, and built bridges, and rerouted roads. You can see HS2 from space. You can’t stop now — and you can’t stop at Birmingham. If the rumours are right — and I pray they are not — the government is again debating the notion of delaying the legs to Manchester and the East Midlands, so that we are left with a massive new railway, with trains capable of running at 225 mph, from Birmingham to . . . wait for it, Old Oak Common. Have you been to Old Oak Common? I have, and it is nowhere near the city centre. You would have to get off and schlep into town, adding about half an hour to your journey. If this really is the plan, then we are going to throw away the chance to regenerate the Euston site — an economic boost worth £50 billion for a cost of £8 billion. If this is really the plan, then we are going to end up with the crowning absurdity of spending £100 billion, or more, on a line from Birmingham to the outskirts of London that will actually be slower than the existing service. It would be a total white elephant, the vanity project to end all vanity projects; but that is not the worst thing about this proposal. According to a report by Matt Dathan for the Times, “ministers are among more than a dozen gay Conservative MPs who have complained to the chief whip about Suella Braverman’s ‘poisonous’ anti-immigration speech, which they say has taken the party backwards.” In further comments on Twitter, Dathan reports: There is growing discontent over the Tory leadership’s attitude to LGBT issues more broadly. One MP points out that there hasn’t been an openly-gay cabinet minister in each of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak’s cabinets, a period stretching more than four years. Concerns have been raised about the failure to implement a promised ban on conversion therapy + increasingly hardline rhetoric from some cabinet ministers against trans people MP says many are starting to question the “instincts of some of the people at the top of the party” The Liberal Democrats are also saying Rishi Sunak would be wrong to stop most pensioners getting the winter fuel payment. In response to the Sky News report (see 4.48pm), Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem spokesperson for work and pensions, said: Scrapping the winter fuel allowance would be a slap in the face for pensioners facing soaring energy bills this winter. Rishi Sunak must be living on another planet if he thinks this is the answer to the country’s problems. Pensioners have worked hard and paid their taxes all their lives, they shouldn’t be made to pay the price for the Conservative party crashing the economy. Liberal Democrats would double the winter fuel allowance to offer extra help to pensioners, paid for by a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants. Axing most winter fuel payments would break Tory manifesto promise, says Labour, after reports PM considering option Labour has said Rishi Sunak will be breaking a manifesto promise if reports that he is planning to remove the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners are accurate. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said that a better policy would to increase the scope of the windfall tax on energy companies which have seen profits soar since the invasion of Ukraine. According to Sky News, Sunak is considering removing the winter fuel allowance – worth between £250 and £600 this winter – from most pensioners. Under this proposal only the poorest, on pension credit, would still receive it, Sky reports. According to PA Media, No 10 sources are distancing themselves from suggestions that such a proposal is being considered. But Sky’s Beth Rigby says Sunak has accepted that he has to commit to keeping the pension triple lock in the next Conservative manifesto, despite claims that ultimately the cost of the policy will become unsustainable, because doing otherwise would be politically impossible. Sunak is said to think that getting rid of the winter fuel allowance instead would compensate for the cost, and enable the government to spend a bit more on younger people. Rigby reports: “Rishi understands the politics of the triple lock, although he thinks it’s far from fair from an intergenerational point of view, so he’s trying to redress that a little bit,” said one government insider. Another person familiar with discussions told Sky News that if the government decides to “keep the triple lock but take away the winter fuel allowance from rich pensioners. I think people will understand that and think it’s fair”. Winter fuel payments are expect to cost the Treasury £2bn a year. The Sky report does not say when winter fuel payments might be cut back, but the government is focusing on policies that might be implemented after a general election. Asked for her reaction to the story, Reeves said the Conservatives promised in their last manifesto to keep the triple lock and the winter fuel payment. She said: These were commitments that the Conservatives gave to older people at the last election in their manifesto, and they should not be breaking those commitments. One thing that I would be doing if I was chancellor today would be to have a proper windfall tax on the huge profits that the big energy giants are making and use that money to help people with their bills, older people and families too. That is a choice that the Conservatives could make. That is a choice that they’ve failed to make. Labour aims to win back voters across Scotland with byelection success As scores of Labour activists queued up for Keir Starmer’s final rallying speech before next week’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection, another queue was forming at the church next door. Inside the church hall in Burnbank, two volunteers, Alex Gilmour and Anne Paul, were preparing trays of cheese and ham-filled rolls and cups of tea for about 80 local people who rely on its daily free breakfasts, its food bank and its council-funded money advice service. This byelection, to replace the disgraced former Scottish National party MP Margaret Ferrier, has been a head-to-head contest between Labour and the SNP, with the cost of living crisis, in-work poverty and Scotland’s overstretched health service the key issues on the doorstep. For Gilmour, a former mental health worker, the parish church’s services are where those crises bite hardest. Some of the cafe’s customers are “self-medicating” with alcohol, others are mentally unwell and some are homeless and living in “scatter flats” – short-term accommodation aimed at preventing rough sleeping. “There’s a lot of people struggling with the cost of living now,” Gilmour said, as volunteers piled up heavily stuffed carrier bags of food on the church hall stage on Friday morning. “They want a politician that’s going to be honest, that’s going to be somebody standing up for them, somebody with integrity, and no just in it for themselves.” That antipathy to politics has been echoed on the doorsteps, say Labour activists. The Conservatives’ repeated crises, such as Partygate and Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget last year, mirrored in Scotland by the SNP’s internal feuding and the police inquiry into party finances, has left many voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West deeply disillusioned. Britons are more likely to support than oppose lowering the speed limit in urban areas from 30mph to 20mph, according to YouGov polling from last year. Rishi Sunak is planning to make it harder for councils in England to do this. Keir Starmer has refused to rule out holding independence talks with the SNP if the party wins the most seats in Scotland at the next general election – as he accused Humza Yousaf of trying to hide his government’s “failure in record” by focusing on the constitution, PA Media reports. PA says: Campaigning in Scotland today, the Labour leader was pressed on what he would do if the Scottish first minister attempts to open independence talks after the election expected next year. A new policy from Yousaf and SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn makes clear that they would view winning the most Scottish seats in the next general election as giving the Scottish government a mandate to open such discussions. The policy, to be discussed at the SNP conference in October, has been put forward in the wake of successive prime ministers refusing to grant a mandate for a second independence referendum. With polls suggesting Starmer could be in 10 Downing Street after the next Westminster election, he was asked if he would take part in talks with Yousaf. Starmer responded by accusing the SNP of using “divisive politics” as a “mask for the failure in record”. He said: “The fact is they haven’t got a record, which is why they are simply going on the attack. When a party goes on the attack like that, there is only one reason and that is because they know they haven’t got a record to stand on. “Yet again we descend into this SNP-led discussion which is not about the cost-of-living crisis, it is not about the health service, it is not about the way they have lost control of education and the economy here in Scotland, but is about a divisive issue about the constitution. I think their priorities are completely wrong.” The SNP has responded to Keir Starmer’s criticism of the party while campaigning in Rutherglen and Hamilton West today. (See 1.50pm.) The SNP MSP Clare Haughey said: Keir Starmer finally came to the byelection but seemed to have very little to say. The compelling message in this byelection is that voting SNP is the way to protect Scottish interests and drive change, forcing Westminster to act on the cost of living crisis. The SNP’s record in government is helping people right now, including gamechanging policies such as Scottish child payment, which doesn’t exist anywhere else in the UK. The SNP will stand up for Scotland and support households through the cost of living crisis and work to achieve a fairer, greener, independent Scotland. Conservative peer says party does not deserve to win next election Lord Harris of Peckham, a former Conservative donor, has said the party does not deserve to win the next election, weeks after he donated £5,000 to Labour. Aletha Adu has the story. Why is the Tory conference happening before Labour"s this year? A reader asks: It would be nice to learn that some arcane constitutional principle was in play, and that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, had intervened to declare that the Conservatives were no longer entitled to the final slot (often the best one, in most presentational contexts) on grounds of fairness (or perhaps as a sanction for uselessness). Sadly, the answer is a lot more boring. The main UK parties have staged their conferences with the Liberals first, Labour next and the Conservatives last since the 1950s. It has run like this regardless of who was in government. But several years ago Labour wanted to make a block booking for the ACC conference centre in Liverpool over multiple years. That was fine, but the week they wanted for 2023 was already booked, and so Labour asked the other parties if they would be happy to switch. And they agreed. Sorry. It’s not much of a tale. But it does show the parties can agree on some things. Keir Starmer has compared the SNP government in Scotland to the Conservative one at Westminster, saying they have both failed. Speaking while campaigning in Rutherglen and Hamilton West this morning, Starmer said: If either of those parties, either here in Scotland or in the United Kingdom, had a record they could stand on they would stand on it. They would be coming here saying ‘this is what we have delivered, this is why you should vote for us, these are the things we have done’. But they can’t because they have delivered nothing, and the more we look at the record of the SNP here in Scotland the more we see a record of failure. That is why people desperately want that change here in Scotland, and it is the same story with the Conservatives. Why is GB News allowed to let Suella Braverman be interviewed by Lee Anderson? Tonight GB News will be broadcasting an interview with Suella Braverman, the home secretary, conducted by Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chair and a GB News presenter. That prompted a reader to send me this question. How can it be right for a Tory MP to interview a Tory MP on mainstream television? Melanie Dawes,the Ofcom chief executive, has provided an answer. Essentially, she says if it is current affairs, not news, that’s OK. Jim Waterson has more here. Sammy Wilson says new NI border checks from Sunday will mean DUP cannot resume power sharing Sammy Wilson, the DUP chief whip at Westminster, has said that the introduction of new customs arrangements in Northern Ireland this weekend will mean his party cannot resume power sharing. Speaking to the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster, he said that under the new arrangements “it will be confirmed that Northern Ireland has got a border in the Irish Sea”. That was unacceptable to the DUP, he said. As part of Brexit the UK and the EU agreed a Northern Ireland protocol, under which Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market and there are some checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. This means there is no need for checks at the Ireland/Northern Ireland border, which all sides agreed would have been disastrous. Earlier this year Rishi Sunak negotiated a revision to the protocol, the Windsor framework, to reduce the inconvenience for traders in Northern Ireland. One of the main elements of the framework, a green lane/red lane system for the movement of goods – will become operational at Northern Ireland ports on Sunday. Sunak hoped that the framework would persuade the DUP to lift its boycott of power sharing at Stormont, which started as a protest against the protocol. But today Wilson said implementing the framework would make it impossible for his party to sit at Stormont. He explained: From Sunday there will be impediments to trade coming into Northern Ireland. There will be different laws applying in Northern Ireland without any democratic control, because EU law will apply to Northern Ireland, so when [Sunak] says that the union is safe, that he has safeguarded the union, he has taken away any sense of a border in the Irish Sea, that is not true. If we were inside Stormont, the law now requires us, and judgments have been made in the courts, that we implement it. There should have been a £40m six-acre border checkpoint built in the Port of Larne by now. The DUP minister was able to stop that because he refused to give permission for it. If he were back in Stormont tomorrow he would by law be required to facilitate that, to introduce all the measures to do it, the procurement, appointing the builders. That is the reason why we will not and cannot as unionists be in Stormont where we are required to implement an agreement we believe is detrimental to the union and to the people of Northern Ireland. With the DUP boycotting power sharing, the Northern Ireland executive has not been able to function and executive decisions about Northern Ireland are either being postponed, or taken by civil servants, or the UK government. Other parties, and the Irish government, are becoming increasingly frustrated, with Sinn Féin saying yesterday patience with the DUP had “run out”.