Burnham says budget will be ‘challenging’ but no risks will be taken with economy or living standards – UK politics live | Politics

In his pooled TV clip, Andy Burnham firmly rejected suggestions that he is a traditional tax and spend socialist.

When Beth Rigby asked him to respond to Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, who said in an interview last night that Burnham needed to persuade the financial markets he is not just “a traditional tax and spend socialist government with better TikTok videos” (see 10.58am), Burnham replied:

That doesn’t tell the story. We are not that.

Already I have taken difficult decisions in this job, in relation to re-prioritising government spending, putting digital ID on hold, for instance.

So it’s not the case that we aren’t going to take difficult decisions.

We will take difficult decisions to make sure the economy remains on track.

Andy Burnham has said the budget will be “challenging”.

In his pooled TV interview, asked if the budget would be “difficult”, Burnham replied:

It’s going to be challenging because the picture around the world is challenging and particularly the situation in the Middle East. And we will look carefully at all of those things.

We won’t take risks with people’s living standards or with the economy as a whole. So we will take it all into account.

It’s why we wanted to do an earlier budget. We didn’t want to leave a long period of speculation. I think that’s been shown now to be the right decision.

It will mean taking whatever action we can to help people while also making sure we apply the highest degree of prudence to the running of the economy.

Talking about the state of the economy generally, he said he thought it was resilient.

If you look at the the detailed picture underlying today’s inflation figures, it shows resilience across the board, actually, in the British economy.

Burnham said the inflationary pressures were “driven by the situation in the Middle East”, which was a problem for countries around the world.

Andy Burnham has said that his father would have wanted him back at work.

In a pooled TV clip with Beth Rigby from Sky News, the PM spoke about the messages he had received since his father died on Monday.

He told Rigby:

It is hard, and it will be hard for a little while. But better to get back to the job.

But I also want to thank the leaders of the other parties, all of whom sent a message. It shows there is decency in British politics still, and that’s that’s what we need to see.

So it’s a thank you from us all, the whole family. But my dad would want me to be back out there … bringing some of the changes that he always pushed me to make.

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has posted this on social media ahead of Andy Burnham’s meeting with the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte later.

Today I am reminded of the words of my Labour predecessor Denis Healey:

“Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.”

In a dangerous and volatile world, our @UKLabour government is investing in defence – with the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War …

I’m happy to sing the red flag, but this Labour government won’t wave the white flag #TUC26 #Congress26

Quoting Denis Healey like this could be seen as some sort of corrective to Burnham telling MPs at PMQs last week: “We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.”

Britain’s investment in defence shows it is serious about security, and is an example of how Nato is becoming more European, the head of the alliance is expected to say as he meets with Andy Burnham later today.

As the Press Association reports, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte will meet with the prime minister face to face for the first time later today. Rutte is also giving the Ditchley Foundation’s annual lecture in Oxfordshire where he will say Britain is “serious about security”. He is expected to say:

[Britain] is leading, along with Nato allies, the push back against Russia’s dangerous and reckless campaign against us.

Collectively we will continue to strengthen our ability to deter and defend all allies, against any threat. Nato will not be intimidated by Russia’s campaign of hostile actions. Russia wants to stop us helping Ukraine – but their actions will only lead us to do more for Ukraine. Russia’s actions are a sign of weakness, and a symptom of Putin’s failure in Ukraine.

Rutte will address the changing nature of the military alliance. He will say:

To stay transatlantic, Nato is becoming more European. A Nato with Europe, and Canada, spending more, producing more, and doing more for their security. This is the idea of Nato 3.0.

Building for the future. A stronger Europe, in a stronger Nato.

John Healey, the chancellor, delivers the first budget of Andy Burnham’s government six weeks today and speculation about what it will contain is starting to intensify. Here are some of the budget-related stories around today.

Andy Burnham is facing a significant deterioration in the public finances that will leave him needing to find about £10 billion in either tax rises or spending cuts in his first budget.

The Times has been told that the Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, has entered its critical ten-day forecast period when it assesses the state of the economy. The findings are used to calculate the cost of debt interest that underpins the budget.

A senior government source said that the timing is “hugely challenging” for John Healey, the chancellor, because of the impact of the war in Iran. Economists believe that it makes tax rises or spending cuts inevitable.

• Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, has said Burnham needs to reassure the financial markets that he can cut spending. In an interview on LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr last night, Haldane said:

Ultimately, it’s only by taking actions that come with a political cost that you convince financial markets that you are serious. The fiscal Achilles’ heel of this government, thus far, has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending. Within financial markets, we’ve gone from the cautious optimism of the summer months to the studied scepticism of September …

Show us it’s for real. The markets now suspect that this is a traditional tax and spend socialist government with better TikTok videos.

It will only be an act of doing something on one of the big spending departments – it could be welfare, it could be triple lock pensions, it could be the NHS, it could be an across the piece productivity improvement across the public sector.

Each of those individually would buy you, one, a lot of money, and two, even more in instant credibility. That would lower borrowing costs, I would say in the UK, 25, 50 basis points. It would almost pay for itself as a growth dividend.

Haldane, who has served as an informal adviser to Burnham in the past, also said the government won’t be able to avoid hard choices in the budget.

I think the plan had been a low drama, no drama budget. I think that’s been torpedoed by events over the past couple of weeks, and that will make next month on the 28th for some hard choices from this government.

A few hard choices so far, but one is looming on the horizon now, about how any hole to the budget headroom is made good on.

Is that a question of tax rises, or is it a question of taking the knife to public spending?

• Arj Singh in the i looks at what trade unions want to see in the budget, and says one ask is for an increase in the income tax allowance. He says:

So what do the unions want?

A key demand is to raise the personal tax allowance. Tax bands have been frozen since 2022, which has dragged more and more people into paying more tax as wages rise – dubbed a “stealth tax”.

One source warned that Reform UK’s pledge to raise the tax-free personal allowance on income tax to £15,000 was likely to be resonating with workers and the type of voters Labour need to win over, even if they say Nigel Farage and co are writing “cheques that they can’t cash” with their costings.

+ Budget process has changed for this time round giving HMT less prep time

+ Treasury will only be given one economic forecast ahead of submitting measures, not two or three

+ This means that there won’t be the “seesaw” of OBR forecasts that Hunt saw.

+ But less time to prep properly because they won’t get a sense of headroom until closer to Budget

In interviews this morning, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said she felt sympathy for Ed Sheeran after all his supporting acts dropped out from his tour in solidarity with one of them, the American rapper Macklemore, who was dropped over a “free Palestine” speech.

Commenting on the story, Nandy told LBC:

I really feel for Ed Sheeran in all of this, actually, because you know he’s got support acts who he wants to profile and platform.

He’s got promoters saying that they won’t when politics is being introduced to the stadium. I think he’s been left in a really difficult and impossible position.

I hope it doesn’t harm his tour. He’s one of our most successful artists and also one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with … I have enormous sympathy for the position that he finds himself in.

Nandy said she understood why some concert-goers would want not to have to listen to a political speech. She said:

The world is quite a difficult place at the moment, and I think a lot of people do also quite like to have a space where they can go, where they can leave all of that aside.

And so I do understand that for a lot of people, they just want to leave politics aside for a bit and be able to enjoy the music.

Andy Burnham has thanked people who offered their condolences following the death of his father. He said the messages meant “a great deal” to him and his family.

In a post on social media, he said:

We are grateful to everyone who has shared a kind message about my dad, particularly the leaders of the other parties.

My family and I have been helped though this difficult time by people’s warmth and compassion. It means a great deal to us and we wanted to say thank you.

Some of the messages posted by other party leaders on Monday are here. Nigel Farage posted his own message later on Monday evening.

In an interview on the Today programme, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said that the government was “listening” to the concerns of Piddington villagers who voted for independence in protest against a former military base nearby being used to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers. (See 9.20am.)

Asked if the government would change policy as a result, Nandy replied:

We’re not going to change our plans, but we are listening. We do hear the clear frustration of the community and Piddington. We are acting to bring down the asylum backlog that we inherited with speeding up asylum claims.

Asked how she would have voted if she lived in Piddington, Nandy said:

I don’t live in the village and I don’t want to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do.

But what I would say to you is if you’d held that referendum in a village in my constituency called Standish that had two asylum hotels opened under the last government without any warning or consultation, I know that they would have voted in the same way.

Asked if women in the village were right to think their security was at risk,

I think a military base is a better option for housing asylum seekers than in HMOs or hotels, particularly because when we saw that explode under the last government there wasn’t support provided and there was no work done to allay security fears …

It is incumbent on us to make sure that we assuage people’s fears, and that we help to provide the support that they need.

But we do have to house people somewhere while we get a grip on the asylum chaos. And this is the better option than asking the poorest communities in the country to continue to shoulder the burden.

Mayors and other local politicians could be given powers to oversee water companies under plans being considered by the UK government to bring utilities under greater public control, Lauren Almeida reports.

The plans were first revealed in a Telegraph splash by Tony Diver. He says they will be part of the 10-year plan being announced by Andy Burnham later this year.

An Oxfordshire village which could house more than 1,000 asylum seekers has voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state in a symbolic “referendum”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The people of Piddington have voted to secede from the UK after the government announced plans to house 1,256 male asylum seekers at a nearby former military base.

Some 285 villagers backed “independence”, with a turnout of nearly 92%.

Only 26 residents voted against the motion, with one spoiled ballot recorded.

The result was announced by a returning officer to an audience of dozens of journalists and residents gathered outside the village hall this morning.

UK inflation has returned above 3% as soaring fuel and transport prices triggered by the Iran war heap renewed pressure on British households, Richard Partington reports.

Good morning. We will be hearing from Andy Burnham today because he is back at work having taken time off following the death of his father. And already we have heard from Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, who has been doing a media round.

She has condemned Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, describing it as an “absolute disgrace”.

Nandy was talking about what social media companies are doing to stop people using their platforms to post intimidatory messages online, in particular posting private information like an address that might put someone at risk (doxxing). Yesterday Nandy hosted a meeting with social media companies about this, partly prompted by the abuse RNLI volunteers have been getting online by anti-migrant vigilantes who hate the lifeboat service for the role it plays protecting people on small boats at risk of drowning.

Speaking on Times Radio this morning, Nandy said:

I had the social media companies in to see me yesterday to talk to them about their responsibilities in this regard. All of the different social media companies have completely different terms of service, different standards that they apply to online hatred directed at individuals.

Some of them will automatically remove that content. Some of them, frankly, won’t.

X didn’t even bother to turn up yesterday, which I think is an absolute disgrace.

Nandy said she was determined to stop doxxing.

I have made a commitment to the RNLI and to, not just charities but public sector workers, police officers, and others who are being routinely harassed and abused online in the course of work, that we will tighten up the law. We will make sure that where, for example, people’s addresses are being published online, that we just do not allow that to happen, that those things will have to be either blocked or taken down immediately.

We cannot have a situation where not just charity volunteers, but shop workers and social workers and police officers are being routinely harassed online in the course of their work.

I will post more from her interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Andy Burnham is visiting a factory in the south-east of England.

Late morning: Burnham meets Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, in Oxfordshire.

11.30am: Simon Case, the former cabinet secretary, gives evidence to the Lords constitutional committee on constitutional safeguards.

12.30pm: Alex Burghart, the Tory deputy leader, and Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, speak at Policy Exchange’s Britain and the EU: After the Reset event.

Also, during the day Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is doing a round of interviews with regional media ahead of his party’s conference, which starts at the weekend.

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