UK set for new wave of strikes as civil servants and train drivers vote for action – politics live

Read More

Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and one of Boris Johnson’s biggest supporters, has expressed concern about reports that Rishi Sunak plans to shelve one of his main domestic reforms.

When Johnson became PM in 2019 he claimed to have a plan to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”. There is no evidence that he did have a plan at that point, but in September last year he finally announced a plan to cap the amount any adult would have to pay for social care at ?86,000.

Rishi Sunak, who was then chancellor, only agreed to the move if the government increased national insurance to fund it. But that national insurance increase has now been cancelled and, according to a story by Chris Smyth in the Times, Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are now planning to delay the implementation of the cap by two years.

It was due to come into force in October 2023. Now it will be delayed until 2025, Smyth says. He writes.

Boris Johnson’s social care policy will not now be introduced before 2025. Some officials believe that such a delay will be a way to kill it off.

The prime minister is understood to have suggested an “indefinite” delay last week, but accepted an initial postponement of two years after being warned that explicitly scrapping the policy would be politically damaging.

The move would save ?1 billion in the first year, rising to ?3 billion a year if the policy were ditched entirely.

Smyth also says that Sunak believes the original Johnson policy was hard to justify anyway. He reports:

At a meeting with Hunt last week, Sunak is understood to have questioned why the government was still going ahead with the cap, which he argued is simply a way of protecting richer voters’ houses.

In response, Dorries, a former nurse and a former minister, said shelving the introduction of the cap on social care costs would contradict the stance Hunt took on this when he was chair of the Commons health committee.

The charity Age UK has also expressed concern about the prospect of the cap being shelved. Its director, Caroline Abrahams, said:

If the chancellor does announce next week that he is kicking it into the long grass, probably to disappear altogether, it will mean we have endured a lost decade or more where social care is concerned. Millions of older and disabled people have had to put up with inadequate services over that period.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, says he had a “constructive meeting” with the Royal College of Nursing general secretary, Pat Cullen, before the proposed strike by her members. In a message on Twitter, he did not give details, but said they would meet again shortly.

As she left the Department of Health where the meeting took place, Cullen did not respond to questions from reporters.

Keir Starmer has told ITV’s Anushka Asthana that he wants to see nurses get a “fair” pay settlement. But he has refused to say they should get an above-inflation pay rise. The government claims the RCN’s demands would amount to a 17.6% rise.

As Asthana reports, Starmer has also expressed concern about the impact of the proposed strike by nurses on patient care.

And train drivers at 12 operators are to stage a fresh strike in the long-running dispute over pay, threatening more travel chaos across the country, PA Media reports.

Members of Aslef will strike on 26 November after the union said it was still waiting for a pay offer from the employers, despite a series of talks, PA says.

Mick Whelan, the Aslef general secretary, said:

We regret that passengers will be inconvenienced for another day. We don’t want to be taking this action. Withdrawing our labour is always a last resort for a trade union.

We have come to the table, as we always will, in good faith but while the industry continues to make no offer – due to the dodgy deal they signed with the Department for Transport – we have no choice but to take strike action again.

They want drivers to take a real-terms pay cut. With inflation now well into double figures, train drivers who kept Britain moving through the pandemic are now being expected to work just as hard this year as last year but for less. Most of these drivers have not had an increase in salary since 2019.

We want the companies – which are making huge profits – to make a proper pay offer so that our members can keep up with the cost of living.

The 12 companies facing the fresh strike are Avanti West Coast; Chiltern Railways; CrossCountry; East Midlands Railway; Great Western Railway; Greater Anglia; London North Eastern Railway; London Overground; Northern Trains; Southeastern; Transpennine Express, and West Midlands Trains.

Aslef members have taken a series of strikes in recent months, while the RMT and TSSA unions are also still embroiled in industrial disputes, PA reports.

Around 100,000 civil servants, working in multiple government agencies, have voted to strike in a dispute over pay, pensions and jobs.

As PA Media reports, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said the legal threshold for industrial action had been reached in 126 separate areas, covering workers including driving test examiners, border force officials and Jobcentre staff.

It is demanding a 10% pay rise, job security and no changes to redundancy terms.

The PCS said that unless it received “substantial proposals” from the government, it would draw up plans at a meeting on 18 November for a programme of industrial action.

Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary, said:

The government must look at the huge vote for strike action across swathes of the civil service and realise it can no longer treat its workers with contempt.

Our members have spoken and if the government fails to listen to them, we’ll have no option than to launch a prolonged programme of industrial action reaching into every corner of public life.

Civil servants have willingly and diligently played a vital role in keeping the country running during the pandemic but enough is enough.

The stress of working in the civil service, under the pressure of the cost-of-living crisis, job cuts and office closures means they’ve reached the end of their tethers.

We are calling on the government to respond positively to our members’ demands. They have to give our members a 10% pay rise, job security, pensions justice and protected redundancy terms.

Rishi Sunak spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, this morning. Sunak restated his commitment to keep providing Ukraine with military aid, and both leaders said it was right to be cautious about the Russian decision to evacuate its troops from Kherson until the city is back in Ukrainian hands.

In a summary of the call, a No 10 spokesperson said:

The leaders agreed that any Russian withdrawal from the occupied city of Kherson would demonstrate strong progress for the Ukrainian forces and reinforce the weakness of Russia’s military offensive, but it was right to continue to exercise caution until the Ukrainian flag was raised over the city.

The prime minister praised the bravery of the Ukrainian armed forces and reiterated the UK’s unwavering military, economic and political support. He expressed his horror at the ongoing Russian drone strikes on civilian areas and confirmed that the UK would continue providing further military aid, including another 1,000 surface-to-air missiles and more than 25,000 extreme cold winter kits for troops.

President Zelenskiy set out how UK military support is protecting vital energy infrastructure and helping Ukrainian troops to make advances on the battlefield against Putin’s unjustified invasion.

Last week Rishi Sunak published his list of cabinet committees, with their membership. The document is more revealing about Sunak, and how he plans to govern, than you might expect and Alex Thomas at the Institute for Government thinktank has a published a good blog today explaining what’s significant. He summed up the key points on Twitter.

Here is the link to the veterans’ survey launched by Johnny Mercer, the minister for veterans’ affairs and described in the post at 11.46am.

In his GB News interview Philip Hammond, the former Tory chancellor, also said that Matt Hancock’s decision to go on I’m a Celebrity meant he recognised his career in politics was over. Hammond said:

I will not be tuning in to watch Matt Hancock [on I’m a Celebrity]. I think I’ve seen probably quite enough of Matt Hancock to last me a lifetime. Should he be there? Well, that’s his decision, I think. Probably he’s sending a pretty clear signal that he’s decided to move on from politics.

Hammond might be wrong about this. Nadine Dorries went on I’m a Celebrity in 2012, but seven years later Boris Johnson made her a minister, and she ended up in cabinet.

And Hancock himself claims that appearing on the programme is the sort of thing all MPs should be doing, because it’s a means of enabling politicians to reach a wider audience.

Philip Hammond, the former Tory chancellor, has said the Conservatives should consider abandoning the pensions trick lock – the pledge to uprate pensions every year in line with earnings, or inflation, or 2.5%, whichever is highest.

In an interview with GB News, Hammond, who was chancellor when Theresa May was prime minister and who now sits in the House of Lords, said he expected Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor, to maintain the triple lock in next week’s autumn statement.

But Hammond said that in the long term it should be reviewed. He said:

Is it really right that we should always up the rate by the highest of wages/prices or by 2%?

I think that is quite difficult to justify, and not all pensioners are poor. So I think there is a case for looking again at the way we treat pensioners, and possibly for distinguishing the poorest pensioners from the great body of pensioners, some of whom are really quite comfortably off.

The triple lock on pensions was introduced by the coalition government in 2011. Since then both the main parties have been very wary of getting rid of it, despite claims it is too generous to some pensioners, not least because pensioners are a powerful electoral force. That is partly because they are more likely to vote in elections than younger people.

Hammond also said that he was in favour of windfall taxes and that he expected the windfall tax on energy companies to be extended in the autumn statement. He said:

I am broadly in favour of a windfall tax. As long as it’s sensibly structured, and only tackles the genuinely windfall element, not the cyclical ups and downs that you get in energy markets, because energy companies plan around those cycles …

Where genuine windfalls are earned, I think it is legitimate to tax them.

The number of UK homes being repossessed jumped in the third quarter of this year, as some households and buy-to-let landlords were unable to pay their mortgages, my colleague Graeme Wearden reports on his business live blog. He says:

Trade body UK Finance has reported that 700 homeowner mortgaged properties were taken into possession in the third quarter of 2022. That is a 15% increase on the previous quarter, although still below pre-pandemic levels.

An additional 390 buy-to-let mortgaged properties were taken into possession as well in July-September, an 11% increase.

The full details of the figures are here.

Johnny Mercer, the new minister for veterans’ affairs, has launched a national survey for veterans, asking about their experience using government services. It is intended to enable to government to better shape services to meet their needs.

Mercer, who as a minister is based in the Cabinet Office, not the Ministry of Defence, said:

Public services need to reflect the people they serve and so it’s really important we hear from veterans on their experiences in accessing support.

No one knows better what it’s like to be a veteran in Britain than ex-military themselves. So I urge all ex-service personnel to take the small amount of time to fill in the first ever veterans survey. Your voice can help shape stepped-up services for veterans.

You can fill in the survey here.

There are 1.85 million people who have served in the armed forces in England and Wales. In England they account for 3.8% of the population, and in Wales 4.5% of the population, but in some regions the proportion is higher. In the south-west of England 5.6% of people are veterans, and in the north-east 5%.

Miche?l Martin, the taoiseach, is visiting Manchester before he attends the British-Irish Council summit to promote links between Ireland and the north-west of England. He will be meeting Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, and Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool city region mayor, who earlier this year both led a trade mission to Ireland with business leaders from the north-west. The two-day visit was described as the first of its kind.

Ahead of his meeting with Martin today, Burnham said:

It is a great privilege to be able to welcome the taoiseach to Greater Manchester today, as we celebrate the enduring and historic friendship between the north-west and Ireland.

Earlier this year I led the first joint mayoral mission to Dublin, alongside my friend and colleague Steve Rotheram. I am now pleased to extend the same warm welcome to Miche?l Martin on his visit to our city-region, and to reaffirm our strong commitment to deepening trade and cooperation with our closest neighbours across the Irish Sea.