No 10 plays down UK joining EU single market after Burnham suggests referendum would be needed – UK politics live
The prime minister previously said that he wanted a debate on how Britain can establish a closer relationship Speaking at his rough sleeping summit in Downing Street this morning, Andy Burnham expanded on the claim he made on Good Morning Britain about tackling rough sleeping being cheaper than ignoring the problem. (See 11.13am.) He said: We’ve also got to be conscious when we speak to the rest o
double quotation markUnlike the Tories, we care about public services. Under Reform, every one of those gets more.
Instead, we’ll take it from the things that do nothing for the people who actually pay for them.
Start with the biggest benefits. Last year, £12bn went on benefit for foreign nationals, £414 for every household in this room. That ends immediately. British benefits for British citizens and for everyone else.
If you’ve been out for work for a year and you can work, you’ll have to work for your benefits.
We’ll protect the severely disabled, of course we will. But we will stop signing off other people. And the two-child cap comes back. It’s a matter of basic fairness.
Next net zero. The subsidies gone. The heat pump grants, the electric car grants, the carbon capture schemes, Great British Energy – gone. If Ed Miliband wants to buy a heat pump, you know what? He can buy it himself.
Then foreign aid capped at £1bn. Enough for disasters, but not enough for a sex chat bot in Kenya. Not enough for £88 million that Labour found for Gaza the week of a byelection.
And then Whitehall. The civil service is bigger now than when Tony Blair left office – 68,000 back office jobs, diversity teams, comms teams, HR teams all go gone.
And finally we stop lending young people £40,000 for degrees that leave them poorer than if they’d never gone in the first place. That is not education. That’s a scam.
