Key events
Tice says Reform would set up sovereign wealth fund to help with reindustrialisation of UK
Richard Tice is speaking now.
He says he is qualified for this post because he has worked in business creating millions for shareholders.
He says the proposed new business department would cover housing.
He says he would reindustrialise Britain.
And he would also set up a sovereign weath fund.
I’m going to be talking this time next week in the Midlands in great detail about this, a sovereign wealth fund that backs British companies, that buys and promotes British products and that helps ensure that we build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes in our towns, our rural areas and our cities. This is how we make real progress.
Richard Tice would run Reform UK’s new Department of Business, Trade and Energy, and be deputy PM, Farage says
Farage starts with Richard Tice, the deputy Reform leader.
He says he will be deputy PM if Reform form a government.
And he will also lead a Department of Business, Trade and Energy.
Farage says this will be “a new super economics and business department, in many ways modelled on what the Germans did after world war two”.
Farage says he is looking for three things in potential shadow cabinet appointees: youthful energy; experience in government; and expertise.
He says:
We then need people who are genuine experts in their area to take junior ministerial positions because frankly, the lack of real world experience in government is being felt by every business in the land.
Farage says at the time of the election he said he would establish a toehold in parliament, and then replace the Tories as the opposition to Labour.
He says Reform UK has now led in the last 200 opinion polls.
It has an average lead of 9 to 10 points, he says.
Farge holds press conference
Nigel Farage is speaking.
He starts by saying that 4.6m voters will get the right to to vote in the local elections because of his party.
That is a “big win” for his party, he says – and for democracy.
The veteran reporter John Sweeney has announced he is writing a book about Nigel Farage.
I am writing a book on Nigel Farage for @headlinepg.
No holds will be barred.
Nigel has said of me that I caused him “more misery than any other in my 25 years in politics”.
Hello Nigel.
Out in September.
The Reform UK press conference is about to start.
There is a live feed here.
Commons business committee may investigate Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s work as trade envoy, its chair says
The Commons business committee could investigate Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s work as a trade envoy, its chair, Liam Byrne, has said.
Byrne, a Labour MP and former cabinet minister, told the Today programme this morning that “nothing is off the table” and “MPs are not in the market for letting anything slip through the cracks”.
Referring to allegations that, as a trade envoy, Mountbatten-Windsor shared information relating to trade policy with Jeffrey Epstein, Byrne said:
The committee’s not had a chance to reflect on these allegations because recess means Parliament isn’t sitting this week. My task this week is to make sure that the committee’s got options in front of them when they meet on Tuesday for how we might or might not take this investigation forward. Obviously, we can’t and don’t want to compromise a police investigation.
We’ve got quite strict rules about sub judice and getting involved in things that may come before the courts, but this is obviously a matter of huge concern, and I’m going to make sure that my committee has got the full options available for how we take our investigations forward when they convene next Tuesday morning.
Byrne said he did not want to “pre-judge where the committee is going to go on this at this stage”.
But, when asked on the programme if it could potentially ask to speak to the former prince, he said: “At this stage, all I can say is, nothing is off the table.”
He added:
This is something we’re going to take acutely seriously, and I can guarantee you that MPs are not in the market for letting anything slip through the cracks.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who served as the UK’s special representative for trade and investment between 2001 and 2011, has always denied any wrongdoing.
150,000 working-age disabled adults to gain at least £400 per year as government raises minimum income guarantee by 7%
Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, was giving interviews this morning in the hope of promoting a government announcement that will lead to 150,000 disabled adults getting an income boost of at least £400 each year.
That is because the minimum income guarantee – the amount of money that working-age adults who receive social care are allowed to keep, before they start having to contribute to the cost of their care – is rising by 7%.
In its news release, the Department of Health and Social Care explains:
Government is increasing the amount that working age adults who receive social care must be able to keep after paying for home care (known as the Minimum Income Guarantee) by 7% from April – strengthening this safety net to ensure that people have enough for daily expenses and helping to ease financial pressures.
This is the largest above-inflation uplift in more than a decade and means working-age adults receiving care in the community will have more money left over for everyday essentials such as food, heating and bills. Those eligible for the disability premium, an additional amount for people with greater disability needs, will keep up to £510 more per year.
The government has also announced that it is spending £723m on the disabled facilities grant next year – money available to help older and disabled people adapt their homes so that they can carry on living independently.
Kinnock said:
We are determined to not only reform adult social care but do it in a way that helps some of the most vulnerable people in society with the daily pressures they face.
From April, more than 150,000 disabled adults will keep hundreds of pounds more each year – putting extra money back into their pockets to help with everyday costs.
At the same time, we are putting more money into funding life-changing home adaptations so older and disabled people can live safely and independently.
These steps are part of our wider plans to build a National Care Service rooted in quality, fairness and dignity for all that use it.
For adults over the age of 65, the minimum income guarantee is rising by 3.8% from April.
Labour and Tories both braced for bigger losses after U-turn allows 30 local council elections to go ahead
A minister has sought to defend Steve Reed, the local government secretary, against opposition calls for him to resign over the U-turn on postponing May’s local elections.
Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, said Reed was doing “an excellent job”.
Kinnock was doing an interview round on behalf of the government this morning and, asked about Reed’s position, he told Sky News:
Steve Reed is doing an excellent job as secretary of state, pushing through the Pride in Place programme, pushing through renters’ reforms, bulldozing all of the bureaucracy and regulations that stops us building things in this country.
Steve is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and he will continue to do that and to deliver for the British people.
Kinnock also told LBC government legal advice originally said a delay was justified. He went on:
That legal advice has now changed. That is not ideal. I’m not going to stand here and pretend to you that it is, but we’re a government that works with the rule of law.
In the Times, Max Kendix and Oliver Wright say that one factor that led to change of heart was the fact that, while governments had in the past delayed local elections on a case-by-case basis, Reed had argued that this round of elections was relatively pointless anyway. They report:
There was another difference to the previous year as well. Steve Reed, the local government secretary, had been actively promoting the idea of cancelling elections this year before he’d announced which areas, if any, would be covered.
In The Times, Reed said the public would support cancelling “pointless” elections to “zombie” councils — calling them “time-consuming”.
Sources suggest these kinds of statements contributed to a final assessment by lawyers. They came back to ministers in recent days with a stark warning: if you go ahead with delays, you may well have to fight Reform UK in court, and there is a good chance you will lose.
Yesterday’s decision means that Labour and the Conservative party are now braced for even bigger losses in the local elections.
In the i, Will Hazell reports:
According to a poll by JL Partners for The Telegraph, Labour is forecast to lose control of six councils due to elections which will now proceed: Blackburn with Darwen, Cannock Chase, Exeter, Preston, Thurrock and Worthing.
And a report in the Financial Times quotes Prof Sir John Curtice, the leading elections expert, as saying the biggest impact of the U-turn will be on the four county councils — Norfolk, Suffolk, East and West Sussex — three of which are currently controlled by the Conservatives. “Those are large councils where all the seats are up for grabs, and these are the type of areas that should mimic where Reform did well last year,” Curtice told the paper.
UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2% as wage growth cools
Unemployment in the UK has risen to 5.2%, the highest level in nearly five years, while wage growth continues to slow, raising the prospect of another cut to interest rates in the spring. Tom Knowles has the story.
Most people in a future Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf claims
Most people in a Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf has said.
Today the party will announce what it calls some “shadow cabinet” appointments and the most prominent is likely to be Robert Jenrick as Treasury spokesperson. Less than 18 months ago Jenrick was runner-up in the contest to be Conservative party leader.
But Yusuf told Times Radio this morning that ex-Tories would not dominate a Nigel Farage cabinet.
Yusuf said:
I can tell people listening to this that the majority of our parliamentary class will be people who are fresh to politics.
I think the majority of Nigel’s cabinet, if we win and he’s the prime minister, will also have people who are not career politicians.
Farage has repeatedly talked of his desire to give cabinet jobs to people who are not MPs and who have experience outside Westminster. His appointees could be given peerages, but Farage has also floated the idea of appointing some ministers who do not sit in parliament. This is constitutionally permissible, but has only happened in the past very rarely.
Yusuf himself is expected to be named today as the party’s home affairs spokesperson.
Yusuf was critical of Jenrick on social media before his defection to Reform UK, and it has been claimed that he has mixed feelings about having the former shadow justice secretary as a colleague.
But Yusuf told Times Radio that Jenrick was an asset to the party. He said:
I’ve gotten to know Robert quite well. And I speak to him almost every day. He’s a thoughtful, serious man. I think he does believe clearly the things that he has talked about, and he got extremely frustrated inside the Conservative party.
And he is somebody who is already adding value in terms of helping with his experiences that he had in government.
Reform UK no longer ‘one-man band’, Farage says as he prepares to announce ‘shadow cabinet’ appointments
Good morning. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding a press conference today where, according to the party, he will be “announcing members of his shadow cabinet”. In Westminster politics only the official opposition (the Conserative party, for this parliament) has a shadow cabinet, but other opposition parties sometimes use the term and, given his poll ratings, it is not hard to see why Farage thinks he has a better chance of forming the next government than Kemi Badenoch.
Farage is expected to announce four appointments. Robert Jenrick, who only defected from the Conservative party recently, is expected to be appointed Treasury spokesperson. Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is expected to be given responsibility for business and energy, and Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, is expected to be given the Home Office portfolio. There will also be a fourth appointment, but there has been no proper steer as to what this will be.
Here is Jessica Elgot’s preview story.
Speaking at a rally last night, Farage said that these appointments would show that Reform UK was no longer a “one-man band”. He said:
I think the moment to properly move away from the potential criticism that we’re a one-man band has been there now for a few weeks, and that’s why I’m doing this.
Am I concerned? No, I’m relieved actually. I’m relieved that other people are taking up these big areas, and from [reporter’s] perspective, on a given issue, you will know who to call.
The press conference starts at 11am in London.
There is not much else in the diary for today, but I will be covering other politics too, including the ongoing reaction to yesterday’s U-turn on the cancellation of local elections, which Kiran Stacey covers here in our overnight story.
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