Summary of the day …
Lisa Nandy has claimed “we’re not a government that governs by social media” despite it appearing that home secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday announced an urgent national review of the scale of grooming and rape gangs after pressure on internet platforms driven by US-based tech billionaire Elon Musk. The culture secretary robustly defended prime minister Keir Starmer’s comments about politicians amplifying the far-right over grooming and rape gangs
There was better news on the economy for the chancellor Rachel Reeves, as the International Monetary Fund upgraded its forecast for UK growth, and on the bonds market UK borrowing costs have fallen, and are now almost back at their levels early last week before bond yields surged
Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch posted to social media in an attempt to refute claims that she said the Tories would look at changes to the pensions triple-lock. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson, said “bungling Badenoch” had come up with a policy of slashing the state pension
Co-chair of the Conservative party, Nigel Huddleston defended Badenoch’s leadership, saying she was not a “known quantity yet”
The government has announced a £60m funding package for the creative industries, including investment in British film and TV, grass roots music and start-up video game companies
Nandy has said government ministers are considering a “whole range of alternatives” to the BBC licence fee, criticising it as “regressive” but also saying it raises “insufficient money to support the BBC”
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for today. Thank you for all your comments.
Incidentally PA Media have issued a fact check on what Kemi Badenoch said on the pensions triple lock, and have declared that the Labour claim in social media posts that “Kemi Badenoch has put pensioners on notice: the Tories would cut the state pension” is untrue.
It isn’t exactly a clear-cut victory for Badenoch on this however, as the fact check goes on to say:
What Ms Badenoch was talking about is somewhat unclear. At most she said that she would consider means testing the so-called triple lock, which decides how rapidly the state pension rises each year.
Here is the fuller quote that PA used for the fact check. After Badenoch was asked “So you’re actually going to look at the triple lock?” she replied:
No, we’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here. I’m someone who always said, for example, that millionaires should not be getting the winter fuel payment.
But what Rachel Reeves has done is the extreme version of that where people who are actually on the breadline have had their winter fuel payment taken away. We don’t have a system that knows who should get what. That’s the sort of thing we need to be looking at. Now the triple lock is a policy which we supported throughout our 14 years in government.
PA’s fact check argues that even if Badenoch was saying she plans to means test or scrap the triple lock, it would still not be a “cut” to the state pension, it would just remain at the same level and the value erode over time with inflation.
