Chancellor Rachel Reeves is this week expected to announce a £20 billion black hole in the country’s finances. Many believe Labour are setting the ground for inevitable tax hikes and spending cuts in the autumn, blaming unexpected levels of Tory mismanagement for their decisions. On Sky News this morning, Environment Secretary Steve Reed said Labour would be ‘open and transparent’ about what they’ve learned since coming into government.
Trevor Phillips suggested it wasn’t credible that Labour had only just realised the extent of the UK’s economic woes, and showed a statement from Reeves made last month in which she said on the subject: ‘You don’t need to win an election to find that out’.
Reed said that they had learned of problems outside the scope of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), mentioning the prisons crisis, and that the Rwanda scheme had cost far more than the government admitted. Reed claimed that Rishi Sunak ‘deliberately covered it up’.
John Glen: ‘The Prime Minister can’t even define who working people are’
Former Conservative minister John Glen was asked by Trevor Phillips how his party could have been promising more tax cuts during the election campaign. Glen claimed that by reforming welfare and reducing the number of civil servants those cuts could have been achieved. He suggested that Labour were already breaking promises about raising taxes after telling voters they wouldn’t before they were elected.
Reed: Water bosses who ‘persistently’ dump sewage will face criminal charges
On the BBC, Environment Secretary Steve Reed told Victoria Derbyshire that water bosses ‘have got away with paying themselves tens of millions in bonuses for overseeing catastrophic failure’. Reed said he wanted to bring ‘accountability back into the system’, and that all the company executives had agreed to a new raft of measures that would start to turn a corner in the industry.
Derbyshire pointed out that his promise of criminal charges for ‘persistent’ illegal dumping did allow for some sewage contamination. She also asked whether the government should temporarily nationalise Thames Water. Reed said Thames Water was still ‘financially viable’, and that strengthening regulation across the sector would encourage more private investment.
Husam Zomlot: ‘Once a deal is done, (Netanyahu) is done’
Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire, Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, said the Palestinians were ready to form an interim government to begin the process of rebuilding Gaza. Derbyshire asked if that meant he was willing to work with Hamas. Zomlot said that in the past Netanyahu allowed funding for Hamas to increase fragmentation and ‘block the emergence of a Palestinian state’. He said that Palestinian ‘unity…is paramount for the cause of peace’.
When asked about the hostages that Hamas still hold, Zomlot said that a deal had been offered, and the decision is now ‘in Israel’s court’. He claimed that Netanyahu was not agreeing to the deal because he would lose power after agreeing to it, and also because Israel’s goal was the ‘extermination of the Palestinian people’, not just Hamas.
Andy Burnham accuses Reform’s Lee Anderson of ‘prejudging’ investigation
A video showing a suspect being kicked in the head by a Greater Manchester Police officer while prone on the floor caused outrage this week. However, new footage showing multiple police officers being assaulted immediately before the incident has complicated matters. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham told Trevor Phillips there were ongoing criminal investigations into both the initial assaults and the ensuing police conduct, and that the authorities needed to be ‘given space to do their job’.
Asked about Reform MP Lee Anderson’s comments, who said of those who attacked the officers: ‘These animals need locking up’, Burnham said MPs ‘should be applying more judgment to these matters’.