Jonathan Reynolds says ‘the nature of what we’ve inherited required immediate decisions’, as MPs set to vote on means-testing paymentsGood morning. Today will be a difficult day for the Labour party, which is asking its MPs to vote this afternoon to means-test the winter fuel payment, but it is important to keep a sense of proportion, and a good indicator of that is the way lobby journalists are having to redefine the word “rebel”. In the Tory Brexit days, and before, a rebel was an MP voting against their government. But today very, very few Labour MPs are expected to do that (the unusually harsh sanctions imposed on the seven Labour backbenchers who voted against the king’s speech have not gone unnoticed), and reporters on rebel count today will largely being trying to work out how many Labour MPs are deliberately abstaining.Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been doing a media round this morning defending the government’s decision. Speaking on Sky News this morning, he claimed the government had “no choice”. He told the programme:We have no choice … The nature of what we’ve inherited and the challenges that that presented required some immediate decisions.This Labour government was elected on a clear mandate of change. That change can only happen by fixing the foundations of our economy. That is why economic stability was the first step in our manifesto, because I know, like every family and business knows, prosperity can only happen on the bedrock of strong public finances.Delivering that change means difficult decisions, including cancelling road projects that were not properly funded, reviewing the new hospital programme to deliver a realistic plan, and targeting winter fuel payments to the most in need. These were not choices I wanted to make nor expected to make, but they were the right choice to deliver our promise of economic stability. And with that stability we can deliver a Britain that is better off. That is what drives my politics and the decisions I take in government every single day. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/sep/10/labour-winter-fuel-payments-means-testing-vote-keir-starmer-tuc-conservatives-uk-politics-latest-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2024-09-10 07:58:25
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