The prime minister has also been warned he will need to hike taxes for middle earners to fund defence spending
Andy Burnham has been warned that the UK cannot afford to maintain the pension triple lock amid concerns over the country’s spiralling borrowing costs.
Sir Howard Davies, the former chairman of NatWest said the UK “can’t afford it”, adding: “If a Government does not grasp that nettle at some point, then I think its credibility is going to be on the rack.”
He also said that concerns about the prime minister’s approach to public spending was causing “some market jitters”, and called on him to “make some signs” about No10’s overall approach.
Meanwhile, Mr Burnham is set to be grilled by MPs in his first Prime Minister’s Questions since succeeding Sir Keir.
On Wednesday, he will face Kemi Badenoch at the despatch box and it is expected that the Conservative leader will quiz the former mayor of Greater Manchester on the possibility of tax rises and Britain’s defence spending.
A think tank has warned Mr Burnham that he must be prepared to raise taxes for middle earners if he wishes to raise defence spending.
Nigel Farage has broken parliamentary rules on his first day back, after he filmed a video of himself on the roof of the Houses of Parliament.
The Reform UK leader – who resigned and triggered a by-election earlier this summer – was sworn back into Parliament after his Clacton victory on Tuesday.
Within hours of his return, he posted a video of himself to social media shot on the roof of the building.
Permission from parliamentary authorities must be sought before any filming takes place on the estate. But the roof is even more sensitive as a result of its implications for security and personal safety.
It is understood that Mr Farage did not seek permission to record the social media video.
Having warned on Tuesday that Andy Burnham’s “tone” would have unsettled investors, Lord Jim O’Neill told Times Radio the Budget would have to include either spending cuts or “some form of tax increases” in order to restore the Government’s “headroom”.
Lord O’Neill, an ally of Mr Burnham, suggested the bond markets would “respond favourably” to a Government that takes “credible action to deal with the excesses of the triple lock or the excesses of welfare spending”.
Cabinet Office minister Sally Jameson told Today the Government was “absolutely clear that we will be sticking to the fiscal rules and making sure that we’re controlling public spending” as well as growing the economy.
Up and down the land, as schools regather, head pupils picked last term before the long break must make their first appearance at assembly and explain to the rest why they were selected.
So, it was in the Commons where the new Chosen One got up to speak and sell himself.
Not that Andy Burnham had to do much convincing.
Behind him, those who anointed the Manc wunderkind cheered him to the creaking rafters.
In case they needed any reminding as to why they’d ditched the previous one and gone for Andy, Sir Keir Starmer chose this day of all days to complete his last U-turn and announce he was quitting as an MP.
Read the full analysis from Chris Blackhurst here:
The son of imprisoned British citizen Jimmy Lai has issued an urgent plea to Andy Burnham to help save his father from a Hong Kong jail “before its too late”.
Mr Lai, the 78-year-old founder of Apple Daily, the city’s most vocal pro-democracy newspaper, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February on disputed collusion and sedition charges, as part of a mounting national security crackdown on the former British colony by Beijing.
He has reportedly been kept in solitary confinement since his December 2020 arrest, despite mounting concerns for his deteriorating physical health.
In a personal letter to Mr Burnham, Sebastien Lai has demanded an urgent meeting with the PM and has called on him to personally press Chinese President Xi Jinping for his father’s release on humanitarian grounds.
The government’s housebuilding target is “challenging” but “we’re absolutely determined to meet it”, a housing minister has insisted.
Asked whether the government’s target of building 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament is going to happen, Sally Jameson told the BBC: “We’ve we’ve built hundreds of thousands of homes already.
“Absolutely, it’s a challenging target. But I think governments should be setting challenging targets and should be reaching to meet them because people quite rightly have got high expectations of their government and they want to see delivery and they want to see it quick.
“So yes, it’s a challenging target, but we’re absolutely determined to meet it and take the necessary steps to make sure there are the conditions for houses to be built and houses that are both affordable to people for people to buy, but also to rent privately or social and council houses as well.”
Andy Burnham invited Labour MPs to Downing Street to woo them over drinks following his turn at the despatch box on Tuesday.
But Labour backbenchers pushing for faster reforms to electoral law could provide Mr Burnham with his first Commons headache on Wednesday, after he has faced Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch in his first Prime Minister’s Questions.
Alex Sobel, the Labour MP for Leeds Central and Headingley, is leading calls among backbenchers to establish a national commission on reforming the voting system.
He has tabled an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, which will be debated in the Commons on Wednesday, calling for the Government to back the move.
Mr Burnham on Tuesday suggested he was open to the idea of electoral reform, but told the Commons that “we will need to get a consensus at the next election” to make such a change.
Former NatWest chairman Howard Sullivan has warned that the UK “can’t afford” the pension triple lock.
He called for the policy to be changed, adding: “If a Government does not grasp that nettle at some point, then I think its credibility is going to be on the rack.”
He said that it would be “helpful” if Andy Burnham gave clear indications of his government’s approach to fiscal spending ahead of the October budget.
He said: “Unfortunately, we do have a circus built around out budgets, which actually does not happen in many other countries.
“There is a whole industry of people… to create expectations and then dash those expectations, and I think we are going to face a very dicky period between now and the Budget.”
He added: “I think we’re going to see a very uncertain period for the next three or four weeks, and it would be helpful if the Government could make some signs about their overall approach to the fiscal balance, which I think could calm things down a bit.”
Andy Burnham’s ambitions for overhauling how the UK state operates are likely to be curtailed by the economic headwinds caused by the Iran war.
Government long-term borrowing costs have been sent soaring to their highest levels for 28 years, amid a global bond sell-off partly linked to signs of escalation in the Middle East conflict and the concern that inflation could follow.
While former NatWest chairman Sir Howard Davies told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that this global sell-off was not “a major crisis of confidence in the UK Government” specifically, he agreed concerns about Mr Burnham’s approach to public spending were causing some market jitters.
Sir Howard said the country faced “a very dicky period” leading up to the Budget on October 28 and called for the Government to “make some signs about their overall approach to the fiscal balance” in order to “calm things down a bit”.
Victims of the infected blood scandal have called on the prime minister to “resolve injustices” in the compensation scheme.
Between the 1970s and early 1990s, more than 30,000 people in the UK contracted HIV and hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood and blood products.
Campaigners have previously praised Andy Burnham for being a long-standing supporter of contaminated blood victims.
They are now calling on him to take action to speed up payments and resolve issues raised by victims and campaigners – including requests for “unreasonably high standards of evidence” from the compensation body.
Campaigners will hand a dossier of handwritten letters and documents to Downing Street on Wednesday ahead of his first Prime Minister’s Questions.
The Infected Blood Inquiry closed this year after examining what has been dubbed the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.
Housing minister Sally Jameson – a former prison officer – has insisted she is “absolutely confident” the government is taking the right steps to ease the overcrowding crisis in the prison estate.
“I’m absolutely confident that the steps that the justice secretary is taking to make sure that our prisons are stable again are the right ones”, she told the BBC.
“But look, this is this is not an easy journey. It wasn’t an easy inheritance. We’re absolutely determined to make sure it’s fixed.”
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