Sunday, April 06, 2025
Tory defectors on ballot paper
The paper says that Reform has also selected an ex-Conservative for its candidate in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby byelection, while the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire is the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her parliamentary seat in West Yorkshire last July:
All but one of Reform’s MPs, including the party leader, Nigel Farage, were previously members of the Conservative party.
Labour has accused Farage’s party of a “mass rebrand” as Reform populates its ranks with candidates seeking to “save their own political careers” after the Conservatives suffered huge losses in the 2024 general election.
A Reform spokesperson said: “This is less than 4% of all our 1,630 candidates. Is this the same Labour party that accepted the defections of then Conservative MPs Christian Wakeford and Natalie Elphicke?”
The Labour study of candidate nominations for the local elections in May shows more than 60 Reform council candidates across Britain have served as councillors, candidates or activists for the Tories.
Reform’s parliamentary candidate for the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby, triggered by the resignation of the Labour MP Mike Amesbury after a criminal conviction, is Sarah Pochin, a former Tory councillor for Cheshire East.
In social media posts that have been deleted since Pochin became a Reform candidate, she described her “absolute pleasure” posing in 2019 with the then levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, while she was a Conservative councillor, before describing her meeting with Liz Truss’s business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, as “inspiring”.
Nineteen of the 23 councils up for election this May are run by the Conservatives. There will be mayoral elections in the West of England, and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, and inaugural mayoral contests in Hull and East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire.
A Labour spokesperson said: “A snake might shed its skin but at the end of the day it’s still a snake. Is that why so many of Nigel Farage’s council candidates are slithering away from their years serving the Tory party?
I'm not quite clear what exactly Labour think they are achieving with this sort of rhetoric. Surely, it's universally known that large numbers of Reform members and candidates have come from the political right, many from the Conservative Party.
If former Labour voters are inclined to back Farage's horde as a protest vote, then Labour portraying Reform as Tory-lite is unlikely to dissuade them.
Saturday, April 05, 2025
Blunting the Percy Pig invasion
As the Guardian reports, Heard Island and McDonald Islands have been hit with a 10% tariff on goods. These islands form an external territory of Australia and are among the remotest places on Earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast. The paper adds that are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago.
Other territories on the White House list were the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island and Norfolk Island. Norfolk Island, which has a population of 2,188 people and lies 1,600km (1,000 miles) north-east of Sydney, was hit with a tariff of 29% – 19 percentage points higher than the rest of Australia. This has left local officials scratching their heads.
The Guardian says that the United States' Observatory of Economic Complexity data believes that in 2023, Norfolk Island exported US$655,000 (A$1.04m) worth of goods to the US, with its main export being US$413,000 (A$658,000) worth of leather footwear. However, George Plant, the administrator of Norfolk Island, disputes this. He told the paper that: “There are no known exports from Norfolk Island to the United States and no tariffs or known non-tariff trade barriers on goods coming to Norfolk Island.”
The Guardian thinks that there has been a case of mistaken identity, and that in fact, the goods originated in Norfolk, UK:
The Guardian has identified two bills of lading – records of cargo shipments – for shipments each containing 3,714 black Timberland men’s ankle boots that set sail from South Riding port in the Bahamas for Miami, Florida, in December 2023. The shipments were worth a combined total of US$315,000 (A$498,000).
The bills of lading list “Norfolk Island” as the country of origin and the address of the shipper as Timberland, 200 Domain Drive, Stratham 03885-2575, Norfolk Island.
Timberland’s corporate office address is listed as 200 Domain Drive, Stratham, New Hampshire on its LinkedIn page.
A spokesperson for Timberland shoes said: “We are in a quiet period and have no comment.”
Other bills of lading that appear to have erroneously listed Norfolk Island as the country of origin include several from an aquarium and fountain company, OASE, which sent shipments from Norfolk in the UK to the US, and steel equipment sent from Novum Structures in Norfolk, UK, to the US.
Novum Structure’s address is listed on one bill of lading as 14 Hopper Way, Diss Business Park, Diss, Norfolk Island, instead of Norfolk in the UK, which is its EU headquarters, according to Novum’s website.
Meanwhile, stock markets all over the world are taking a massive hit as a result of these tariffs, with the consensus being that the United States' economy is going to suffer badly from rising prices and more unemployment as a result.
United States-based victims of the policy could well be those with a sweet tooth. The Guardian reports that Trump has effectively derailed plans by Marks and Spencer to launch its Percy Pig range in Target stores there.
The paper says that Archie Norman, the chair of M&S, has described Percy as the retailer’s “gift to America” but he told the Retail Technology Show in London that “we might have to change our minds” because Trump has imposed additional taxes on imported goods. They add that while M&S is not considering withdrawing the sweets, tariffs could push up prices and make them less popular:
The pink confectionery which sells more than 18m bags a year in the UK and is apparently enjoyed by celebrities including Adele and Olivia Rodrigo, went on sale in the US on 30 March both in Target stores across the US and on its website in what was described as Percy’s “biggest journey to date”.
The pigs may have to stay at home.
Friday, April 04, 2025
Two-child benefit cap ‘plunges extra 30,000 children into poverty under Labour
The paper says that last July ministers said they would consider ditching the “cruel” cap, in a bid to head off a backbench Labour revolt on the issue, but there has been no movement since, while official documents last week showed that separate moves to slash an extra £5 billion from the welfare bill are set to drive another 50,000 kids into poverty:
The cap now affects more than 1.6 million children, by limiting welfare payments to the first two children in most families.
New costings from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) show another 109 more children are pulled into poverty by the policy every day.
And the number of children affected will continue to increase until 2035 - when the first children born under the policy turn 18.
The charity says that scrapping the cap would be the most cost-effective way to lift kids out of poverty.
Were the policy to be dumped, 350,000 children would be lifted from poverty at a stroke, it adds. The depth of the poverty experienced by another 800,000 children would be reduced.
Chief executive of the CPAG Alison Garnham said: “Every day the policy forces families to go hungry and damages the life chances of children up and down the country. Reducing the record high levels of child poverty in the UK will require a whole government effort, but abolishing the two-child limit is the essential first step.”
That this is happening under a Labour government is a disgrace.
Thursday, April 03, 2025
Cuts in disability benefits could add millions to council costs
The Guardian reports that the government’s plans to cut at least £5bn from disability benefits could end up driving more costs on to cash-strapped councils.
The paper says that the Resolution Foundation thinktank believe that up to 1.2 million fewer people could be eligible for Pip by 2029/30 as a result of the changes, including existing claimants losing their benefits when their needs are reassessed:
Critics warn that, without the financial support of Pip, some people’s physical condition or mental health could worsen to the point that they require council-funded care services, while their unpaid carers could become ineligible for the carer’s allowance benefit, meaning they may have to pass their care responsibilities to the local authority.
Last week, the Disability Policy Centre thinktank published analysis forecasting that the government’s cuts would lead to £1.2bn of extra costs for the NHS and social care services. “For every pound that someone loses in benefits, you know that – if a council has to step in to cover the shortfall – it’s about £1.50 additional impact,” said Arun Veerappan, the Disability Policy Centre’s interim director of research.
“Let’s say you need social care support at home. In order for the council to find that funding and administrative support, that will cost more – especially when it comes to finding the right community therapist and care. There’s not the resources for that … there’s not enough resources in the system to deal with that extra demand.
“If you lose carer’s allowance, you’re going to just push more people into the formal [council-funded] care system.”
He warned that forcing more people to rely on council care provision would lead to increased strain and delays in services such as community care and the Disabled Facilities Grant.
The cuts will target people whose Pip claims are based on illnesses or disabilities that affect them in multiple ways, rather than having very severe specific effects. The “daily living” or “care” element of people’s Pip payments is often – and controversially – used by councils to fund their care provision. If they lose these, councils will have to meet more of the costs themselves.
David Fothergill, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: “A reduction in Pip could mean lower individual contributions and therefore higher council contributions. We are still working to further understand the impact of the welfare reforms on adult social care charging.”
“The government’s ill-thought-out and harmful green paper chooses to penalise some of the poorest people in our society,” said Jon Abrams of Inclusion London, a deaf and disabled people’s organisation.
“What’s already clear is that these proposals are likely to hit disabled people who rely on social care. This green paper risks making an already broken social care system even worse.
“These proposals risk deepening hardship and pushing even more disabled people, carers and families into crisis, which could result in higher long-term costs for local authorities, the NHS, housing services and other support systems.
“Many disabled people and carers may also be forced to withdraw from the care system altogether, placing additional pressure and costs on the wider health economy.”
Some councils are already facing bankruptcy because of rising social care costs. The green paper could be the final straw for many.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Barnett formula short-changing Welsh public services on national insurance increase
The BBC reports that Wales' public services face a shortfall of up to £65m as a result of the National Insurance increase because, although chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed to covering the public sector costs in England, here in Wales the UK Treasury is using the Barnett formula for its calculations, leaving Welsh public services short, For once Welsh Labour are on the case:
Using the Barnett formula means that public sector employers in England, such as councils and the NHS, would be fully covered and those in Wales would not.
That is because the public sector in Wales is proportionately larger than in England.
Drakeford told Senedd members: "We should have been compensated for the actual costs not the Barnett share of the costs in England."
He said Chancellor Rachel Reeves was "wrong to do that".
"Treasury ministers had a choice to make, I believe they made the wrong choice."
Alun Davies described the population based formula as "not fit for purpose" and accused the UK government of breaking an agreement "where one government takes a decision which has a negative financial impact on another government then they should provide the costs in full".
Drakeford could not confirm what this would mean for public sector bodies in Wales, but said they would "look to see if there is anything further we can do to help those public services".
It will not just be charities, social care providers and other bodies that will be hit by the employer national insurance increase, but Welsh councils will face a shortfall as well, and that means that other public services will face yet more cuts. So much for a fresh start under Starmer's Labour.
April is the cruellest month
As the Guardian says, millions of households are facing a raft of price increases across a range of bills – from energy and water to car tax and the TV licence – that took effect yesterday.
The paper says that with so many costs rising at once – prompting some to label this month “awful April” – the government is facing fresh calls to take action to limit the impact of some of the increases:
The cost of gas and electricity is one of the biggest outlays for most households, and the cap on energy costs, which is set every three months by the industry regulator Ofgem, is going up by 6.4% – or £111 – on Tuesday. That takes the average annual bill to £1,849 for a typical dual-fuel household on a standard variable tariff.
This increase – the third in a row – means households will be paying about £600 a year more for their gas and electricity than before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
About 9 million households that buy their energy through variable tariffs will experience an immediate impact on their bills.
The Lib Dems have published a survey they say shows the “majority of Brits think their energy bill is bad value for money” . The party’s leader, Ed Davey, added that with families facing “spiralling” costs, the government must “get a grip on energy bills, and fast”. The Lib Dems want ministers to implement an energy “social tariff” to protect vulnerable people living in fuel poverty, and also do more to help the millions of pensioners who lost their winter fuel payments last year.
Rising energy costs are putting vital youth services at risk, said Social Investment Business, a charity. It claimed that utility bills were swallowing up half the budgets of some organisations focused on children and young people.
In percentage terms, water bills are receiving some of the biggest increases: an average of 26% – or £123 – for households in England and Wales this year. That price rise takes the annual average bill from £480 to £603. However, the increase will vary significantly depending on the water company. Customers of Southern Water, which covers parts of south-east England including Hampshire and Kent, face a near-47% rise.
Council tax is another big outlay, and the average bill for a typical band D property in England will be £2,280 for 2025-26, which is up 5%, or £109, on the 2024-25 figure. However, several councils were given government permission to raise bills by more than the cap. These include Bradford in West Yorkshire, which is raising bills by 9.99%, and Newham in east London, which is increasing them by 8.99%.
In Scotland most households face a council tax rise of at least 7.5%, while the average band D increase in Wales for this year is 7.2%.
Meanwhile, petrol and diesel car owners will pay £5 more a year in road tax, taking the standard rate cost on post-2017 vehicles to £195 a year.
The annual cost of a colour TV licence will increase by £5 on Tuesday to reach £174.50. And price rises will take effect on or around 1 April for the customers of a number of broadband and mobile phone companies. For broadband customers, the comparison website Uswitch estimated that the increases were poised to add an average of £21.99 annually for those on inflation-linked contracts, and up to £42 a year for those on newer plans taken out after rules were changed in January this year.
On top of all that, personal allowances remain frozen so that more people are paying tax for the first time, while the increase in employers' national insurance is likely to fuel inflation and possible lead to some reducing their workforce.
Things are nowhere near as rosy as my MP would like us to believe.
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
Quaker arrests foreshadow police state
“No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” said Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain.
“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.
“Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy.”
In a video posted on Youth Demand’s Facebook page, a woman who claimed to have attended the meeting described it as a “publicly advertised welcome talk” about the group. She said police seized attenders’ phones and laptops.
Youth Demand describes itself as “a youth-led nonviolent civil resistance campaign demanding the UK stops arming Israel and cancels all new oil and gas granted since 2021”.
The Quakers’ statement said they “strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship” and pointed to the stricter protesting laws brought in by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, which they claimed were directly responsible for the raid.
The Met police said it had arrested six people at the meeting on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. It said it arrested five other people for the same offence on Friday – four in London and one in Exeter.
The police said those arrested were part of Youth Demand and claimed those attending the meeting were planning direct action in the capital next month.
“Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and road blocks,” police said.
“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.”
In George Orwell's terms, these people have been arrested for thought crimes. There is no evidence of criminal conspiracy, nor any violence, nor any abuse of free speech to damage public order. Free speech is now being criminalised. Isn't it about time the government repealed the Tory legislation that allowed this abuse of our democratic values.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Cancer survival rates highlight Welsh Labour's failure on health
They say that official data from the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit of Public Health Wales confirms that 63.1 per cent of patients aged 15-99, diagnosed from 2017-2021, survived their cancer five years from diagnosis, but, this rate has remained stable without improving since the 2014-18 diagnosis period:
Before then, five-year cancer survival had been steadily improving for several decades.
Survival from cancer one year after diagnosis dropped significantly to 71.9 per cent in 2020, then rebounded to 75.2 per cent in 2021, marking a recovery towards pre-pandemic levels.
There are survival differences between different types of cancer. For example, since the pandemic, one-year lung cancer survival did not recover as well as for other major cancers.
But the most damning statistics reveal stark inequalities in survival rates:
For people diagnosed 2017-2021, 70.1 per cent from the least deprived areas survived cancer five years, compared to just 51.8 per cent in the most deprived areas. This gap has hardly changed since 2002-2006.
Trends in survival inequalities in Wales can vary, depending on the type of cancer.
For bowel (colorectal) cancer, five-year survival was 66.0 per cent for people living in the least deprived areas, compared to 49.1 per cent in the most deprived areas.
This inequality gap is wider than for the previous diagnosis period.
Ten-year lung cancer survival greatly improved in the least deprived areas (from 8.3 per cent to 14.7 per cent), but improved only slightly in the most deprived areas (from 6.8 per cent to 8.5 per cent), widening inequalities.
Professor Dyfed Wyn Huws, director of the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, said: “The inequalities in Wales’ cancer survival – that are widening in some cases – are troubling.
“Also of concern is that despite many decades of steady improvement in overall cancer survival, several years before the pandemic it stopped significantly improving.
Labour have been in charge of health in Wales for nearly twenty eight years and the health service has deteriorated over that period. Labour will argue that the last UK government underfunded the service, but for a large part of that period they ran both governments, and this argument doesnt explain why outcomes are better in England.
If tackling health inequalities is not a priority for Labour then what is the point of them?
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Child poverty hits record high in UK
The paper says that figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have revealed that the number of children living in poverty across the UK has reached a new record high with some 4.45m children estimated to be in households in relative low income, after housing costs, in the year to March 2024.
They add that this is up from the previous record of 4.33m in the 12 months to March 2023 and is the highest figure since comparable records for the UK began in 2002-2003:
A household is considered to be in relative poverty if it is below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs.
Anti-poverty campaigner Alison Garnham said the data was a “stark warning” that government action is needed, adding that record high numbers of children in poverty “isn’t the change people voted for”.
The Child Poverty Action Group chief executive said: “Today’s grim statistics are a stark warning that government’s own commitment to reduce child poverty will crash and burn unless it takes urgent action.
“The Government’s child poverty strategy must invest in children’s life chances, starting by scrapping the two-child limit. Record levels of kids living in poverty isn’t the change people voted for.”
It comes after Rachel Reeves axed welfare spending in her spring budget as the government admitted nearly 50,000 more children would be forced into poverty by 2029 and 2030.
The assessment of sweeping reforms to the benefits system was published alongside Ms Reeves’ spring statement on Wednesday.
It warned some 250,000 people – including 50,000 children – could fall into relative poverty as a result of the changes.
What is incredible about these figures is that they are coming under a Labour government that has refused to implement changes that would help alleviate child policy and who have implemented cuts in welfare that will make the situation worse.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Reform UK being sued for data breach
The website says that the Good Law Project is bringing a case on behalf of the claimants after it created a tool in the lead up to the general election that allowed voters to ask political parties what information they had on them through a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) and to demand the party stop using that information:
Around 1,800 people used the tool to contact Nigel Farage’s party and, of those surveyed, 96% said that Reform had failed to respond to their data requests, thereby breaching its legal obligations. Reform was the worst performer of all the major political parties, according to GLP.
Between June-July 2024, voters submitted requests to Reform UK for their personal info and for the party to cease processing their data.
Reform UK was required to respond to these requests within one month, but failed to meet this deadline, according to the legal submission to the High Court.
Only after receiving a formal letter before action in October 2024 did Reform UK respond, claiming they had “no record” of the individuals in their systems, except for the original requests.
But GLP believes Reform UK’s identical responses to all the individuals were inadequate and likely false – since Reform UK’s own privacy policy states they “maintain a profile for each registered voter” by “merging” the Electoral Register with other data from third-party sources.
The claimant suspects Reform UK may be processing so-called special category data (including political opinions) about the individuals without proper legal basis.
The voters – ‘data subjects’ in the eyes of the law – have allegedly suffered “concern, worry, uncertainty and distress” due to Reform UK’s handling of their data and ignoring their requests.
GLP wants the court to order Reform UK to comply with the data requests, pay compensation for non-material damage, and cover legal costs.
Good Law Project through its lawyers, Pallas Partners LLP (Pallas), wrote formally to Reform UK to challenge its refusal to meet its obligations under the law. Reform failed to respond to the legal letter, but sent out “identical emails”, claiming to hold no data on any of them. It never responded to the demand to stop targeting those voters who requested it, the lawyers state.
Reform has reportedly ignored further legal letters from Pallas which sought more information about its process for handling DSARs and challenged Reform’s contention that it held no data on any of the individuals.
Now 51 people have opted to take further action collectively and challenge Reform in the High Court, under a novel legal mechanism embedded in the UK’s GDPR data protection law.
If Farage's party is going to engage with the electoral process then it needs to play by the rules and keep to the law of the land.
Friday, March 28, 2025
Will under-siege Reeves have to increase taxes after all?
The Guardian reports that the Institute for Fiscal Studies are arguing that there's good chance she will have to raise taxes in autumn.
They say that the IFS has also released its considered verdict on the spring statement this morning:
Here are some of the key points from the opening presentation by Paul Johnson, the IFS’s director.
Johnson said that there is a good chance that Rachel Reeves will have to raise taxes in the autumn. And he claimed speculation about what taxes might rise could be economically damaging. He explained:
There is a good chance that economic and fiscal forecasts will deteriorate significantly between now and an autumn budget. If so, she will need to come back for more; which will likely mean raising taxes even further. That risks months of speculation over what those tax rises might be – a raid on pensions, a wealth tax on the richest, another hike to capital gains tax? I mention those not to commend them, far from it, but to exemplify the kinds of taxes regarding which mere speculation about increases can cause economic harm. With no sense of a tax strategy, we have no idea which way the chancellor might turn.
Reeves did not accept this when this point was put to her in interviews this morning. (See 8.07am.)
He said that Reeves’ obsession with ensuring she had exactly the same fiscal headroom as she did in the autumn budget was getting in the way of rational policy making.
We had £9.9bn of headroom in October. We have £9.9bn of headroom today. Astonishingly the numbers are within a mere £2m of one another. It is hard to believe this is a fluke. The Treasury has clearly worked overtime to ensure that precisely the same fiscal headroom remains today as was projected in October. This is not sensible.
He said that, while the sickness and disability benefit cuts announced last week were “defensible” (because costs were rising so much), the decision to announce an extra £500m in cuts yesterday, just to make sure the fiscal headroom figure did not change, was a mistake.
Whilst unquestionably tough for those on the receiving end, those original cuts were defensible as a response to problems manifested by huge increases in numbers of claimants, and in spending. One could make a defence of them unrelated to the details of any particular fiscal rule. Coming back a week later with just a slightly bigger cut because that’s what’s needed to return the fiscal headroom to precisely where it was a few months ago risks undermining that case and discrediting attempts at genuine reform to the benefit system. If it was right last week to announce a halving of the health component of universal credit, it is hard to see why this week it is right to do more than that by halving it and then freezing it in cash terms.
He said having little fiscal headroom, and then applying the fiscal rules rigidly, was “not conducive to a sensible policymaking process”.
It is the combination of “iron-clad” pass/fail numerical fiscal rules and next to no headroom against them that is causing so many problems, leaving fiscal policy completely exposed to economic developments outside the government’s control. That is not conducive to a sensible policymaking process. This is not the OBR’s fault. It is the product of the chancellor’s choices.
He said future government spending was “even more front-loaded than before”.
Spending growth is now set to be 2.5% in 2025-26, 1.8% in 2026-27 and 1.0% in each of the subsequent three years. One should always be sceptical of plans to be prudent, but only in the future. Front-loaded or not, the problem for the chancellor is that keeping to these growth rates overall will inevitably mean cuts for some departments in the years to come.
It doesnt look like plain sailing for the Labour Chancellor at all, with more yet more pain ahead of us.
