dailynewsnblog
Key events
Schools are ‘pipeline’ to joblessness for many people, says ex-Labour adviser
Schools have become a “pipeline” to worklessness for a large cohort of young people in the UK, according to an influential former Labour adviser who has called for urgent action to help a “lost generation”. Alexandra Topping and Richard Partington have the story.
Treasury minister Lucy Rigby says rich already being taxed properly, as Wes Streeting calls for ‘wealth tax that works’
Good morning. It’s a big day for Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. In a Commons statement, she is announcing a series of measures to help people with the cost of living. She wants people to enjoy a “Great British summer”, she says. Reeves’s plan for what makes for a good summer is not quite the same as Samantha Niblett’s; the chancellor is talking about free bus travel for children, as Heather Stewart, Peter Walker and Sarah Butler report in their preview.
Reeves is speaking after 11.30am.
In the meantime, another Labour MP with ambitions to run the economy has been speaking out. Wes Streeting has given an interview to the BBC’s Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast and he had a lot more to say about his policy agenda than he did in his resignation speech in the Commons yesterday. As the BBC reports, Streeting proposed a “wealth tax that works” – by which he means not what most people think of as a wealth tax (the Green party version – a tax on assets above a certain amount), but instead aligning capital gains tax rates with income tax rates. Streeting said this proposal – which is broadly the same as one of the main proposals in the Labour Growth Group’s report last week – could raise up to £12bn a year.
Lucy Rigby, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving interviews this morning. Asked about Streeting’s proposal, she said she had not heard his interview, but she suggested Reeves was already taxing wealth. She told the Today programme:
We already tax wealth in this country. The chancellor introduced a host of measures in her first budget, and then further measures in the last budget as well, that try and make sure that tax is as progressive and fair as possible.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Nusrat Ghani, a Commons deputy speaker, selects from a ballot the 20 MPs who will get a slot to bring forward a private member’s bill.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes figures for long-term migration into the UK. Separately, the Home Office publishes its quarterly asylum figures.
9.30am: Peter Kyle, the businesss secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
10.30am: Steve Reed, the communities secretary, gives a speech on “neighbourhood standards”. He is expected to suggest profits made by private providers of social care could be capped.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 11.30am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, makes a statement to MPs about measures to help people with the cost of living.
There are also 14 written statements coming today, of which at least two look particularly interesting. The government will publish information about the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, in compliance with a Commons humble address. And Bridget Phillipson, the equalities minister, is publishing the long-awaited guidance on single sex spaces updated in the light of last year’s supreme court judgment on the meaning of the Equality Act.
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