Heidi Alexander: \u2018Tackling child poverty is in the DNA of the Labour Party\u2019<\/p>\n
The expectation is that Chancellor Rachel Reeves\u2019 upcoming budget will lift the two child benefit cap. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg suggested that Labour have been giving mixed messages, with the chancellor saying she was determined to get welfare spending under control. Alexander said that growing up in poverty creates a \u2018lifetime of consequences\u2019, and three quarters of children in poverty are in households where both parents work. The transport secretary said she was confident that there would be fewer children in poverty at the end of Labour\u2019s term. However, when pushed to confirm that the two child cap would be removed, Alexander said she couldn\u2019t \u2018get ahead of the budget\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik: \u2018We want the war to end, but not at any price\u2019<\/p>\n
President Trump has said that his Ukraine \u2018peace plan\u2019 is not his \u2018final offer\u2019, as officials gather in Geneva to negotiate a plan that has caused outrage in Ukraine and across Europe. Trump\u2019s document would require Ukraine to give up territory to Russia, and reduce the size of its military. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips told Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik that there was a risk Trump \u2018might not be bluffing\u2019, and asked if she and her colleagues would advise President Zelensky to reject the deal or not. Rudik said that that wouldn\u2019t be the right way \u2018to deal with President Trump\u2019, and Zelensky should say that Ukraine is \u2018ready to discuss, point by point\u2019, to get a deal that is acceptable for Ukrainians. Rudik stressed that Ukraine wants the war to end more than anyone else, as \u2018people are being killed every single night\u2019, but they need a \u2018clear understanding\u2019 of the security guarantees that the US would be offering in Trump\u2019s plan. She referenced the return of forcibly deported Ukrainian children and a prisoner of war exchange as a couple of \u2018good points\u2019 in the document.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Government announces rail fare freeze for 2026<\/p>\n
On Sky News, Heidi Alexander noted that the government\u2019s confirmed rail fare freeze was the first of its kind in 30 years. Trevor Phillips pointed out that 66% of people drive to work, and asked if a freeze on fuel duty would also be in the budget. Alexander said she couldn\u2019t \u2018speculate on what is going to be contained in the budget\u2019, and emphasised that the rail fare freeze would affect over a billion journeys next year. She also said the new nationalised Great British Railways would \u2018stop the leakage of public money to the private shareholders\u2019. Phillips asked why Alexander could tell him about rail fares but not fuel duty. Alexander said that matters of \u2018tax and duties\u2019 had to be left to the chancellor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Zack Polanski: \u2018I\u2019m talking about borrowing for\u2026 investment\u2019<\/p>\n
Laura Kuenssberg also spoke to Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who said that taxing the super rich was more about reducing wealth inequality than generating public money. Polanski argued that the government should borrow more, claiming that living standards are much higher in Japan, despite their 270% debt to GDP ratio, and said the government should be more worried about \u2018people on the ground\u2019 than the financial markets. Kuenssberg pointed out that the markets were \u2018freaked out\u2019 by the unfunded tax cuts in Liz Truss\u2019 budget, and politicians have to keep national debt in mind in the \u2018real world\u2019. Polanski said he is talking about borrowing for \u2018capital infrastructure and investment\u2026 that creates spending multipliers that come back into the economy\u2019. He suggested that the money the government borrows is money from the Bank of England that \u2018we owe to ourselves\u2019 and isn\u2019t a \u2018debt in any real sense\u2019. Kuenssberg asked if Polanski would set any limits in borrowing, and he said yes, \u2018you have to watch inflation\u2019, but we are in an \u2018ecological emergency\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mel Stride on government\u2019s Covid response: \u2018Inevitably mistakes will have been made\u2019<\/p>\n
Baroness Heather Hallett\u2019s COVID-19 inquiry has concluded that the government\u2019s failure to lock down sooner in 2020 cost 23,000 lives. On GB News, Camilla Tominey asked Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride if he thought it was fair to lay the blame with Boris Johnson. Stride said that it was impossible to get everything right when something of that magnitude happens, and we can\u2019t know \u2018what the counterfactuals would have been\u2019 if a different course had been taken. Stride also argued that the Conservatives were \u2018world leading\u2019 when it came to the vaccine rollout, and had created an economy that was \u2018strong enough to withstand the impact\u2019 of the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Zia Yusuf: what Nathan Gill did was \u2018treasonous, horrific, awful\u2019<\/p>\n
Reform UK\u2019s former leader in Wales has been jailed for 10 years for taking bribes in exchange for pro-Russia speeches. He received \u00a330,000 while serving as an MEP. Trevor Phillips pointed out that Nigel Farage has claimed the West is partly responsible for provoking Russia into its Ukraine invasion, and asked Reform\u2019s Zia Yusuf why the public should trust what the party has to say about Russia. Yusuf condemned Gill\u2019s actions and said he deserved his sentence, but called him \u2018ancient history\u2019 and said he had never heard of him before seeing him in the news. Yusuf said it was \u2018unreasonable to besmirch everybody else at Reform\u2019.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heidi Alexander: \u2018Tackling child poverty is in the DNA of the Labour Party\u2019 The expectation is that Chancellor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164,173561],"class_list":{"0":"post-304133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-sunday-round-up"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}