Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves speaks to the media about the October inflation statistics from the Office of National Statistics, during a visit to a Tesco supermarket in Earl’s Court, west London, November 19, 2025
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves was branded “deluded” by disability campaigners today after suggesting an extension to her benefit fraud crackdown will help balance the books in tomorrow’s Budget.
The Labour minister has pledged to extend targeted case reviews, which root out inaccuracies in universal credit claims, with the aim of bringing in an extra £1.2 billion by March 2031.
While she is expected to announce the long-awaited scrapping of the two-child benefit cap at a cost of about £3bn, she is also expected to raise taxes to bridge a multibillion-pound gap in her spending plans.
Disabled People Against Cuts co-founder Linda Burnip told the Morning Star: “I think Rachel Reeves must be even more deluded than we thought if she thinks she is going to raise more money from clamping down on benefit fraud which for PIP has never been more than 0.5 per cent and more recently has been zero.
“We are already seeing people in receipt of social care having their universal credit claims closed wrongly due to having a separate bank account to pay for their social care which is not their money to spend on other items but which is provided by social services departments to solely fund their care. DWP is a complete shambles and not fit for purpose.
“Reeves also fails to grasp the very basic economic principle that growth of the economy will only happen if people have disposable income to spend.”
Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union which represents job centre staff, added: “A government serious about economic growth should fix the broken social security system and ensure that those with the broadest shoulders contribute more through a fair tax system.
“There is far more to be gained from going after the billions of tax avoided or evaded by wealthy individuals or large businesses.”
“If in their desperation to achieve growth, the government is willing to set up the conditions for another disastrous financial crash, then we need to question whether growth should be the be-all and end-all of economic policy.
“For Greens the focus will always be on improving health and wellbeing, creating greater equality and building a greener economy. And designing economic policy as a means to those ends.”
Wednesday’s spring statement has been overshadowed by where the cuts are due to fall, with some departments asked to model cuts of up to 11%. Photograph: pxl.store/Alamy
‘You can’t cut your way to growth,’ says PCS head as Reeves confirms move to cut administrative costs by 15% by 2030
Rachel Reeves’s planned cuts of £2bn to government departments will hit frontline services from jobcentres to HMRC phone lines and efforts to cut the asylum backlog, a union has said.
On Sunday the chancellor confirmed plans to seek a 15% reduction in admin costs across Whitehall, amounting to about £2bn a year, by the end of the decade. She said this would also result in about 10,000 job losses in the civil service, although this was not a target.
As she prepares to give her spring statement on Wednesday, Reeves is under pressure to balance the books in line with her fiscal rules, meaning some departments are in line for spending cuts to avoid more tax rises or higher borrowing.
But the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) warned her that there would be consequences for public services after 15 years of underfunding by the Tories.
Fran Heathcote, the general secretary of the PCS, said: “You hear that every day from the public, that they wait too long on the phone when they try to make tax payments, jobseekers rushed through the system in just 10 minutes because there aren’t enough staff to see them, victims of crime waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts as well as the backlog in the asylum system which results in additional hotel costs.
“The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on. We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown when cuts were made to backroom staff and [the] consequences of that were chaos.”
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
The Treasury is at the centre of a move to refocus the government’s agenda on ‘growth at all costs’ | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Exclusive: Government is inviting lobbyists and their clients to play a major role in the deregulatory agenda
“Growth comes from business, not the government.”
That was the message a government minister delivered to hundreds of corporate lobbyists, including those representing banks, arms companies and pharmaceuticals, during a webinar this morning.
Lord Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, made the comments at the online event, which was the first in a series aimed at encouraging lobbyists to play a major role in the government’s ‘growth at all costs’ agenda.
In the call, which openDemocracy attended, Livermore made clear that Number 10 sees this agenda as being driven by corporations, while the government is a secondary actor that “work[s] in partnership with business”.
Also present among the 700 attendees were lobbyists representing tech firms, energy giants and consultancies, and those working for agencies including Hanbury, Headland, Lexington, Brunswick, Cavendish and Grayling.
These people and their clients are a “huge and important part” of the government’s plans, Livermore said, stressing that ministers are “really keen to draw on… the expertise that exists within your organisations and your clients”.
He added that the government’s focus is on getting rid of “stifling regulation that has for too long held business back” and “removing barriers to growth that we, in partnership with business, identify”.
The treasury minister also discussed Great British Energy’s role in “derisking investment” and providing capital for public-private partnerships, to make renewable infrastructure investment more attractive to the market.
While the government has been unapologetic about its outreach to business as a means to drive growth, Labour’s critics say an ever-closer relationship with lobbyists only heightens the impression of a government that does not have an agenda of its own.
Speaking to openDemocracy after the call, Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski said: “With inequality rife, the government should be listening to the people who keep our country running and those suffering, not hosting desperate mass Zoom calls with arms dealers and oil giants.”
Cutting red tape
Setting out the government’s priorities, Livermore put a particular focus on achieving major reform to the planning system to encourage more commercial and infrastructure projects, and getting rid of regulations that “stand in the way of businesses investing”.
Livermore talked up the recent ousting of the head of the competitions regulator and his replacement with a former Amazon executive as evidence that the government is taking seriously its deregulatory agenda.
He also mentioned the recent push for regulators to submit proposals for growth and said Labour’s National Wealth Fund will “help catalyse private investment into sectors where at the moment, perhaps there’s a too high degree of risk”.
“We can use the National Wealth Fund to help derisk some of those investments,” said the minister. Economists describe this process as the state stepping in to improve the private returns on infrastructure assets.
Livermore continued that the fund could be used to “guide investments, particularly into the kind of clean energy investments of the future that we want to see”.
The government-lobbyist calls are being led by a new partnerships team in No 10 fronted by James Carroll, who has previously worked for the party on external relations and business engagement.
Also on the call was a senior executive at Anacta UK, described by The Times as the “first Starmerite lobbying firm”, and a banking lobbyist who is also involved in the running of Labour in the City, a group which convenes Labour supporters who work in financial services.
Lobbyists were able to submit questions during the call. One criticised “some parts of the business community” which have been “vocally critical about the government’s handling of the economy so far,” describing it as “unhelpful”.
They then asked: “How can firms who don’t want to talk down the UK but would rather promote a more positive narrative about the many opportunities open to British businesses best work with the government to do so?”
This prompted Carroll to quip: “I promise I haven’t planted that question.”
Carroll then rounded out the call by reiterating the importance the government places on developing this relationship with lobbyists.
“Just to emphasise,” he said, “your clients [and] your expertise is critical to delivering these ambitious national missions the prime minister has set out and the chancellor reiterated this week.”
Polanski, the Green’s deputy leader, said the plans to derisk investment “amounts to privatising the rewards and socialising the risks”.
He added: “Regulation exists for a reason, Grenfell stands as a towering reminder of lives lost and the total failure of standards.
“This isn’t growth for the many, just more wealth for the super-rich while the rest of us are told to look up at their private jets and wait for the trickle down.”
I am only able to quote small sections of this copyrighted article by George Monbiot published in the Guardian. The whole article is here.
A plane comes into land at Heathrow airport, London. Photograph: Avpics/Alamy
Our rivers, our wildlife, the air we breathe: the government is sacrificing all to the insatiable god of GDP – and mocking our objections
I can scarcely believe I’m writing this, but it’s hard to dodge the conclusion. After 14 years of environmental vandalism, it might have seemed impossible for Labour to offer anything but improvement. But on green issues, this government is worse than the Tories.
The last prime minister to insist that growth should override every other consideration, and to fling insults at anyone who disagreed, was Liz Truss. She called those of us seeking to defend the living world an “anti-growth coalition”, “voices of decline” and “enemies of enterprise” who “don’t understand aspiration”.
Now Keir Starmer has picked up her theme and run with it. Those who challenge government policies that might promote GDP growth, however destructive and irrational, such as the planned expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Doncaster Sheffieldairports, are “time-wasting nimbys”, “zealots” and “blockers”, engaged in “self-righteous virtue-signalling”.
After all, these are the kind of people who might send “congratulations to the climate campaigners” whose legal challenge stopped plans to build a third Heathrow runway at the court of appeal. Or who insist that Heathrow expansion should be blocked because “there is no more important challenge than the climate emergency”. Oh, hang on, that was Starmer, writing in 2020. You know, the one you voted for, not the new model, channelling the worst Tory prime minister of modern times.
Now his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, insists that growth “trumps other things”, including the government’s environmental commitments. The verb is unfortunate. The government’s new rhetoric is horribly reminiscent of the convicted felon: monomania, slogans and insults take the place of nuanced and complex policy.
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I am only able to quote small sections of this copyrighted article by George Monbiot published in the Guardian. The whole article is here.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves speaks to the media about the October inflation statistics from the Office of National Statistics, during a visit to a Tesco supermarket in Earl’s Court, west London, November 19, 2025
