Archive for: Political Monitoring

Was getting unemployed people into employment a key priority for the Conservative Government? Attempts included the New Back to Work Plan, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to tackle what he called ‘sick-note culture’, and choices for the Spring Budget in 2023, with the announcement of a £7 billion Employment package. However, despite policy initiatives, unemployment levels in the UK continue to be high.

Why is the employment ‘epidemic’ a growing problem, despite such initiatives?

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 4.4% of people were unemployed between February and April 2024, equivalent to 1.44m people. Issues many unemployed are up against – long-term sickness, mental health problems, and early retirement, or caring responsibilities, inabilitities to find and retain jobs due to labour market demands, or gaps in skills and experiences required.

The problem of unemployment is growing. In most of the public sectors, such as health, social care, education, and the police force, there is a shortage of staff. Meanwhile, the Confederation of British Industry found that 38% of businesses reported that labour shortages were holding back their ability to invest and grow.

A look back at Conservative Government actions on unemployment

The New Back to Work Plan included a promise to implement tougher benefit sanctions for those not actively looking for work, trial possible reforms for the fit note process to make it easier and quicker for people to get specialised work and health support, and the launching of the WorkWell service.

Additionally, in April 2024, former Prime Minister Sunak gave a speech at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) on eliminating ‘sick note culture’, claiming it as a ‘lifestyle choice’ for those capable of working. Sunak’s intention to strip away the power GPs had to give sick notes sparked outrage within the charity and welfare sector, with the British Psychological Society stating that ‘the Prime Minister is taking the approach of attempting to minimise the mental health challenges […] The government should be prepared to invest the proper funds into mental health services.’

Labour’s plans to tackle the unemployment issue

With a new Labour Government established, with a different vision and different priorities, what is being said in regard to the unemployment epidemic? During the Labour campaigning period, the party promised a major programme of reform to support more people into work and bring the benefits bill down. In their manifesto, Labour has made ambitious promises, including reforming employment support with a system underpinned by rights and responsibilities. Furthermore, they have also stressed the importance of bringing Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service together to provide a national jobs and careers service.

In addition, Labour has made promises to help those with illnesses and disability into work, as they are more likely to face discrimination and structural barriers. Labour has promised to devolve funding so local areas can shape a joined-up work, health, and skills offer for local people. Moreover, parallel to the Conservative Government, Labour also proposed a Back to Work Plan within their first week of being in office. They plan to create new national jobs and career services; develop new work, health, and skills plans for the economically inactive, led by Mayors and local areas; and to introduce a Youth Guarantee to create more opportunities for training, apprenticeships, or help to find work for all young people aged 18-21 years old.

This growing epidemic needs to be at the heart of the welfare agenda for the new Government, given the pressures it is putting on public sector workers. Whether the initiatives announced so far can bring down the number of unemployed people, we are yet to discover.

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In attempts to highlight its importance, Labour dedicated two pages of its manifesto to equalities in a section entitled ‘Respect and opportunity for all’. Here, they promised to ‘ensure [that] no matter whatever your background, you can thrive’. The King’s Speech proceeded to mention two bills relating to equalities; the Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill and the Draft Conversion Practices Bill.

The Draft Equality Bill aims to enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for disabled people and ethnic minorities. It will also introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for employers with over 250 employees. With the Draft Conversion Practices Bill, Labour have committed to extending the scope of the conversion therapy ban introduced by the last Government to make it trans-inclusive. The bill will work to introduce new criminal offences to target acts of conversion which are not covered by existing legislation.

The details of this have been quite vague so far – presumably because this issue remains controversial, and the party divided on transgender rights. Labour have said the ban would not extend to ‘legitimate psychological support, treatment, or non-directive counselling’, but it remains to be seen exactly how the Government plans on defining conversion therapy in the draft legislation.

Both of these bills build on promises that were laid out in the Labour manifesto, but there are areas in which the new Government has failed to deliver yet. One criticism being faced by the party is that despite having had Vicky Foxcroft as the Shadow Minister for Disabled People, Labour did not reserve this role for their new Government, instead splitting the remit into various departments. As such, Sir Stephen Timms was made Minister of State for Social Security and Disability in DWP and Stephen Kinnock is now Minister of State for Care (with responsibilities for overseeing disabilities and SEND) in DHSC. This also comes after Foxcroft publicly criticised the former government for not appointing a Minister to this role.

Fazilet Hadi, Head of Policy at Disability Rights UK, said that this approach ‘is problematic on so many levels’. Further to this, Hadi said that simply adding equality briefs to ministers who already have major operational duties signals that tackling inequality for those with protected characteristics is not central to Labour’s vision of a changed society.

Similarly, Labour has also failed, so far, to deliver on its promise to create a Department solely dedicated to Women and Equalities. At the 2023 Labour Conference, former Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities Anneliese Dodds said: ‘If Labour wins the next election, I will become the UK’s first ever Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, with a seat at the top table, dedicated to advocating for women in all their diversity in every Cabinet conversation.’

Having held this position for nearly three years, many were baffled by the secrecy and the delay of the announcement – only to find out this role was abolished and the remit was split between Dodds and Bridget Phillipson – who both, again, have other ministerial responsibilities. According to i News, a Downing Street spokesperson denied that the role had been downgraded, and additionally the Fawcett Society, a high-profile charity for women, praised Starmer for appointing not just one, but two Ministers to the role.

With summer recess to soon draw to a close, the resumption of Parliament in the autumn will come as the true test for Starmer and his cabinet. It is to be seen how the opposition party may confront the redrafted Equality Bill, or may criticise the Government’s overall approach to tackling the issue of equalities.

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The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill was the first introduced by the new Labour Government in Parliament. This Bill is meant to deliver on Labour’s manifesto commitment to reform the railways and bring them into public ownership when existing contracts with private sector operators end, or when operators fail to deliver. Just before summer recess, MPs voted 351 to 84 to give the Bill a second reading. The Bill will have its report stage and third reading on 3 September before moving on to the House of Lords.

Bringing the railways back into public ownership is just one of the Government’s plans. In fact, Rail Partners chief executive Andy Bagnall, said ‘Train companies agree that change is needed but it is disappointing to see Government legislating to ban the use of contracted train companies, without first setting out the detail of how its wider rail reform bill will deliver improvements for passengers and freight customers’.

In their manifesto, Labour pledged to establish Great British Railways (GBR), which would create a unified and simplified governance structure. This plan was confirmed during the King’s Speech, as the Government announced its intention to introduce a Railways Bill. However, the legislation to create GBR is likely to take time, so to offset this Labour will be setting up a ‘shadow GBR’ over the coming months, which will unite key industry bodies.

In its plan for rail, Labour also pledged it would set up a new passenger watchdog, the Passenger Standards Authority, which would have the power to require service improvement plans, inspect the performance of GBR, and assess its performance. The Railways Bill will also establish GBR’s role in ticketing reform and set out a statutory duty on GBR to promote rail freight.

The King’s Speech also confirmed the Government’s position on HS2, with no plans to revive Phase 2. The Government will be continuing to repurpose the High Speed Rail (Crewe to Manchester) Bill for ‘connecting regional centres in the north’.

However, there is still the unanswered question of Euston. Despite speculation that the future of the station hangs in the balance, Chancellor Rachel Reeves did not mention it in her list of spending cuts on Monday this week. However, in her speech, she did announce that the Restoring Your Railway fund has been canceled, which the Campaign for Better Transport is urging the Government to reconsider.

Following the Chancellor’s speech, the Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh confirmed she will commission an internal review of the department’s capital spend portfolio. The review will also make recommendations about current and future schemes. This review is expected to also support the development of the long-term strategy for transport, as Labour pledged to develop in their manifesto.

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Written by Michael Kane and Helen Stott. 

With the King’s Speech, Labour may have hoped to represent an emancipatory moment after almost a generation in what seemed to be perennial opposition. However, it was instead borne out of the political, economic, and democratic challenges that riddle the UK right now.

It’s 15 years since Labour’s last State Opening of Parliament, where Gordon Brown’s Government’s final legislative programme was influenced by external factors. Specifically, one key proposal focused on strengthening the governance of financial services amid the backdrop of increasing negative sentiment towards bankers and a global financial crisis. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s first legislative programme may also be shaped, and perhaps constrained, by significant external factors.

Labour are facing what Chancellor Rachel Reeves has called the worst fiscal inheritance since 1945, with a ballooning tax burden and national debt, mixed in with struggling public services, alongside a wider feeling of political apathy. For instance, the 2024 British Social Attitudes revealed that 79% of participants were dissatisfied with the way the UK is governed. Meanwhile, University College London’s ‘Policy Lab’ report found 74% of the public now believe that Britain is rigged to serve the rich and influential.

This feeling arguably manifested in the 2024 General Election, with only 52% of adults in the UK voting, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. Interestingly, this is the lowest figure since universal suffrage for those over 21 years old was granted in 1928. This is complemented by a sentiment of democratic deficit around Labour, with their 170 seat majority being propelled by a meagre 34% of the vote. To add to this, the election highlighted the relative fragility of Labour’s electoral coalition, with the Greens doing well in more cosmopolitan urban areas, and Reform UK finishing second in a significant number of Labour’s traditional ‘red wall’ heartlands.

In this sense, Starmer’s legislative programme comes at a time of immense challenges for the country where few actually believe political institutions can address them.

Economic growth and interventionism

Prior to the election, many would have been forgiven for tuning out of Labour’s economic message for how repetitive it was – the central tenet being that the UK must return to economic growth. It formed the first mission of Labour’s five: to make the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7. Only four days into Government, and Reeves reminded us that striving for economic growth would dictate HM’s Treasury activity. This focus on economic growth stems from two places – Labour’s repudiation of the UK’s economic stagnation under the previous government, and the practical necessity of funding their plans for public services, housing, and the impending net zero and digital transition. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones admitted to Channel 4 that the only way to ‘find more money to spend on public services is by growing the economy’.

The pre-eminence of growth is also evident in King Charles’ remarks, which were composed by the Government. In an age of 24-hour news, most people’s exposure to the King’s Speech comes through brief coverage of the King’s remarks, rather than the Bills themselves. Therefore, it’s significant that King Charles opened his speech by detailing the Government’s mission to secure economic growth before detailing the means that Labour will employ to achieve this: 1) planning reform; 2) GB Energy; and 3) Skills England.

All three of these tenets arguably represent a shift to a more interventionist approach from Labour. Their proposals on planning reform would represent a sudden departure from the Conservatives’ inaction through the implementation of new compulsory purchase compensation rules and mandatory housing targets. Whether this proves to be morally contradictory with Labour’s desire to devolve decision making to local communities (the English Devolution Bill) remains to be seen.

Likewise, the legislation to create GB Energy clarified that it will not just serve as an investment vehicle but will ‘own, manage, and operate clean power projects’ – a radical shift, perhaps, from the implication by Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden that it may only serve as a funnel for private investment. Skills England is the proposal that ties these measures together. The new national skills body would develop a ‘national and local picture’ of skills shortages through working with the ‘Migration Advisory Committee, unions and the Industrial Strategy Council’. Such a proposal is a direct attempt to remedy skills gaps and labour shortages – as illustrated by the New Economics Foundation. These gaps, along with low productivity, impeded the prior Government’s pursuit of growth and limited its ability to address the housing crisis or the impending net zero transition.

These three proposals under the overarching vision of economic growth may indeed illustrate a more interventionist approach than initially suspected – however, only once the Government’s tax and spending plans are elucidated in the forthcoming Budget can this be confirmed.

Interventionism continued through the New Deal for Working People

Years winning the 2024 General Election, Labour had been clear that their plans for economic growth would go hand-in-hand with those to strengthen workers’ rights. The Government used the King’s Speech to introduce the Employment Rights Bill, which the party says will deliver on the policies set out in its New Deal for Working People. This includes requiring that employers accommodate flexible working ‘as far as reasonable’; banning zero hour contracts; ending ‘fire and rehire’ practices; removing ‘unnecessary restrictions’ on trade unions; and strengthening other employment rights, such as parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal. Alongside the Bill, Labour said that they will introduce a ‘genuine living wage’ and get rid of age bands for pay.

The last Government had somewhat adversarial relationships with the trade unions, and as Labour come into power we will see this relationship shift drastically. However, that doesn’t mean it will all be plain sailing. It is true that Labour has a structural link with the trade union movement going back to the party’s creation, and unions like Unite remain some of Labour’s biggest donors. However, Starmer and Reeves have repeatedly stressed that they want Labour to be the ‘natural party of business’, and under Starmer’s leadership the proportion of party funding received from companies and individuals has dwarfed the contribution of unions. Sharon Graham, who won the election to become General Secretary of Unite in 2021, has taken quite a pragmatic stance towards Starmer’s Labour party – she has not threatened dis-affiliation, but has been very clear that her unions’ continued financial support comes with strings attached. Prior to the General Election, she refused to give the union’s endorsement to Labour’s manifesto, and there has been protracted conflict between the Labour leadership and the unions over what some see as a watering down of the original commitments on workers’ rights.

The contents of the Bill announced during the King’s Speech last week will likely please the unions, but the legislation will have to go through debate in Parliament, and business will be lobbying to make sure the new regulations don’t impact their bottom line too much. Business leaders have already voiced their concern about some of the proposals. Earlier this year the President of the Confederation for British Industry said the UK needed to avoid a ‘European model’ of excessive regulation, warning of the ‘unintended consequences’ of Labour’s plans. The difficulties Labour will have in implementing this legislation are symptomatic of the fragile coalition they need to hold together should they survive another term in government.

What’s missing and what’s next?

While the King’s Speech proved to be a comprehensive legislative programme with over 35 Bills, it is equally important to pay attention to what was omitted. King Charles’ speech made reference to the Government’s intention to regulate AI and reform the apprenticeship levy, but there weren’t any Bills introduced on these topics. This indicates that they may be on the Government’s future legislative agenda, but are not an immediate priority.

Ending the VAT tax break for private schools was also mentioned, and this will likely be in the forthcoming budget. Meanwhile, legal migration and the two child benefit limit were not explicitly mentioned. This is interesting, considering how pervasive these issues have been and how they encapsulate some of the electoral challenges Labour face; from the left with the Greens and new intake of Independents, and from the right with Reform UK.

However, since the King’s Speech, there has been some mention of these issues, with Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson admitting on the morning of the 22 July that the Government would consider ending the two child benefit cap – a stance that Starmer later endorsed. On the same day, Starmer’s speech on plans to establish Skills England posited the reforms through the lens of migration, as he condemned the UK’s overreliance on foreign labour.

While the King’s Speech elucidates how Labour will begin to address the political, economic, and democratic challenges that riddle the UK right now, it is not a comprehensive guide to Labour’s plans. Further clarity will likely come in Labour’s forthcoming Budget and their plans to address the important issues yet to be tackled.

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Labour leader Keir Starmer is expected to become the UK’s next Prime Minister – here we look at questions he and the Labour party should be looking to find answers to.

Could the lack of experience in the Shadow Cabinet be an issue?

The Shadow Cabinet currently has 29 MPs in it – only eight of whom were MPs when Labour was last in power; seven have served in Government; and three have held roles as a Secretary of State (or equivalent). Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband, and Hilary Benn combined have roughly nine and a half years of experience in senior roles in Government. It seems fair to assume that the current Shadow Cabinet will make up the majority of the Cabinet should Labour win the General Election. If we compare the current Labour Shadow Cabinet to David Cameron’s first, there were 16 Conservatives in that Cabinet – even with 13 fewer members, they still have around a year and half more experience of being in Government.

Labour have been out of power for 14 years, so it is not expected that they would have an abundance of ministerial experience to choose from. This is seen as one of the reasons that Sue Gray was hired, granting Labour some nous to get things done and make progress on their priorities quickly. However, should Labour be successful, the ministerial ranks will still be lacking in experience. With public services under pressure and public finances restricted by Labour’s fiscal rules, ministers will need to get creative. Perhaps this means Labour can develop their own version of what Michael Gove brought to his various ministerial positions.

What is the plan with social care?

The Labour party made no funded commitments in its manifesto but they do pledge to create a ‘National Care Service’ with local delivered services and support for people to ‘live independently for as long as possible’. There are commitments to partnership working, high quality care, and ensuring providers behave responsibly. There is also mention of a ‘Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care’. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, these do not have any specific funding set aside for them, either meaning taxes, borrowing goes up, or other services get cut.

The Chief Executive of The King’s Fund Sarah Woolnough puts it rather aptly; saying Labour have put forward what is ‘a plan to come up with a plan’. With the current social care system widely viewed as not working, the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting even said he would have wanted the manifesto to go further on social care. Streeting said that if the economy grows then more money could go towards health spending, but that does nothing for immediate problems.

At present, the Labour Party are able to say they need to see all the information and are inheriting a difficult situation. However, soon all of this could be theirs to own and they will be expected to come up with a plan.

Is the two child benefit cap here to stay?

Scrapping the two child benefit cap would lift nearly 500,000 children out of poverty and would come at a cost of under £4bn a year. It is believed that the consequences on children and families go far beyond the money saved. Starmer has previously said he would not be against scrapping the policy, but he has refused to commit to a timeline for doing so. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that an additional 670,000 children will be impacted by the cap by the end of the next Parliament, so some action is surely called for.

Members of the Shadow Cabinet have previously spoken out in criticism at the policy. Starmer said it was a ‘tough decision’ but Labour had to avoid repeating the mistakes of Liz Truss’s Government. However, taking action to reduce child poverty is likely to be received differently than Truss’s tax cut-laden mini-budget.

Is there room for diversity of thought in the Labour party?

One of the biggest challenges the Labour leadership has faced during this campaign is dealing with the fallout of how they have acted around selections. The Labour leadership have taken a hardline approach in terms of selecting (and deselecting) candidates.

Jeremy Corbyn is running as an Independent candidate in Islington North; Diane Abbott would likely have been running as an Independent if it was not for external pressure. Rosie Duffield has also spoken about a lack of support from the Labour leadership and how it had tempted her to defect.

Perhaps Labour do not want to rock the boat until a victory is sealed, and that will then be the time for diversity of thought. However, recent jibes towards Corbyn and his leadership of the party appear slightly odd considering Starmer was a key figure in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. It is often said that the Labour party is a broad church, but Starmer could be seen to be set on narrowing the ideological view of its Parliamentary membership. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown took no action against a rebellious MP in Corbyn who voted against them 428 times – some expect Starmer to have a similarly large majority, and it will be interesting to see whether he changes his approach.

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