Rachel Reeves bounces back after tears but challenges remain
But the challenge for Reeves remains the same as it was just before PMQs began.There is a straightforward difference of opinion between the chancellor (plus the prime minister and perhaps the bond markets), and a large group of Labour MPs. The gutting of the government's welfare policy - in a series of panicky U-turns - displayed this in vivid detail.The rebel MPs who forced the U-turns believe strongly that a Labour government should not be, as many put it, "balancing the books on the backs of the poor". But it's broader than just that. "If the chancellor comes to us in the autumn with a cuts Budget," one member of the government said, "Labour MPs will say no."Yet the chancellor, in turn, is firm in her belief that the markets will not wear further borrowing for day-to-day spending, and that therefore the choice is either spending restraint or tax rises. On tax, she is hemmed in by the promises she and the prime minister made during the general election campaign.Those fundamental tensions between what Reeves, Starmer and - it seems - the markets want on the one hand, and what the Parliamentary Labour Party wants on the other will have to be resolved before long.
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The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Indefinite jail terms ‘not right and not fair', Lords say in call to end IPP injustice
Peers have demanded answers over the government's refusal to resentence prisoners trapped under 'no hope' indefinite jail terms, insisting: 'It is not right and it is not fair.' In an impassioned debate in the House of Lords, peers urged prisons minister James Timpson to take decisive action to end the injustice of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms. Successive governments have refused justice committee recommendations to resentence more than 2,500 prisoners still trapped under the abolished jail term. The open-ended sentences were scrapped in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving those already jailed incarcerated indefinitely. Victims of the scandal, whose tragic cases have been highlighted by The Independent, include Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for stealing a mobile phone; Thomas White, 42, who set himself alight in his cell and has served 13 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, 41, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery. In a speech as his private members bill to resentence IPP prisoners reached committee stage on Friday, Labour peer Lord Tony Woodley, admitted it will not succeed without government support. Addressing IPP prisoners and their families, he told them not to give up hope, but added: 'Sadly, my Bill by itself will not bring you justice. But it can help build pressure on the government to do the right thing, and it can help build public awareness of this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice. 'So please don't have false hope in my Bill. Hope – but not false hope – is my aim here.' Raising a series of 'probing' amendments designed to 'expose the lack of logic' behind the government's refusal to resentence IPP prisoners, he said it is 'as big a scandal as the Post Office and the infected blood scandal'. 'Almost 100 prisoners have taken their own lives – hundreds more have been driven to insanity, with this no-hope, never-ending sentence,' he said. 'The only difference with IPP is that not enough people know about it.' He reminded the government that almost 700 IPP prisoners have served at least ten years longer than their original minimum tariff. He added: 'How can the government deny resentencing to these people – still inside, over 10 years past their minimum sentence? 'My Lords, let me remind you we are talking about people who have been locked up for over a decade longer than someone else convicted of the exact same crime, but before 2005 or after 2012. 'My Lords, a lot of nonsense is spoken about 'two-tier' justice, but this is one situation where that label seems to apply. It is not right and it is not fair.' His proposals were backed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr Alice Edwards, who said the jail terms have caused 'unlawful psychological torture' to prisoners. In a statement before the debate, she said: 'It is time to end the perpetual damage caused by the IPP scheme. 'These sentences have caused unlawful psychological torture and ill-treatment to too many prisoners under the care of successive British governments. 'A resentencing court is a promising way forward, in which there could be an initial prioritisation exercise of cases, necessary exclusions and, for those whose mental state requires psychiatric or other intensive treatment, their transfer to a secure mental health facility outside the prison service until such time as they are deemed fit, with regular reviews.' However, prisons minister James Timpson said none of the amendments eased his fears over resentencing, insisting the government's priority is public protection. He said the IPP Action Plan, designed to support each prisoner's progress to release by the parole board, is 'where we will sort this out'. However he vowed to 'pull hard on every operational lever' to address the crisis and said he was carefully considering separate proposals put forward last month by an expert panel convened by the Howard League for Penal Reform. The panel, led by former lord chief justice Lord John Thomas, called for all IPP prisoners to be given a release date within a two-year window at their next parole hearing and for fewer offenders to be recalled.
South Wales Argus
11 minutes ago
- South Wales Argus
DWP benefit cuts hit people with Parkinson's and MS
Claimants in this category will be entitled to a higher rate of the benefit, and will not be routinely reassessed to receive money. Labour backbencher Graeme Downie has proposed a welfare reform Bill amendment, so universal credit claimants with Parkinson's or MS (multiple sclerosis) who cannot work do not face repeated medical assessments to receive a payout. If MPs back his amendment, patients with 'evolving' needs who cannot work could also qualify for a higher rate of benefits. The Government's Bill has already cleared its first Commons hurdle at second reading, after work and pensions minister Sir Stephen Timms vowed not to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment (Pip), with any changes coming in only after a review of the benefit. To meet his promise, ministers have had to table amendments to their own draft new law, to remove one of its seven clauses, which MPs will debate next Wednesday. Universal credit claimants with Parkinson's 'are already possibly struggling financially', Mr Downie said, ahead of the debate. He added: 'The cost of living with a condition like Parkinson's can be very high. You may well require or need additional support.' Today the UK government published its Bill that will cut eligibility criteria for, and access to, Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Here is our response 👇 🧵1/3 — Parkinson's UK (@ParkinsonsUK) June 18, 2025 The Dunfermline and Dollar MP said patients who struggle with their motor control might buy pre-chopped vegetables or chicken. 'Those things are expensive, so if you're already on universal credit and you're struggling, being able to do that significantly impacts your health, it significantly impacts your ability to live properly,' he continued. To qualify, claimants must have limited capability for work or work-related activity (LCWRA) and symptoms which 'constantly' apply. 🚨 Reminder: cuts to disability benefits affect everyone. You might not need disability benefits today. Or tomorrow. But you can become disabled at any time and find yourself in need of a financial safety net. — Scope (@scope) July 3, 2025 Mr Downie's amendment would expand these criteria to claimants with 'a fluctuating condition'. It would cover 'conditions like Parkinson's but also multiple sclerosis, ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), long Covid and a whole range of other conditions where, you know, in the morning things could be really good and in the afternoon things could be really bad, and even hour by hour things could change', he said. 'I felt it was necessary to table an amendment to really probe what the Government's position is on this, and ensuring that people with Parkinson's and conditions like that are not excluded from even applying and being considered.' Mr Downie's proposal has backing from 23 cross-party MPs so far. Recommended reading: Juliet Tizzard, external relations director at Parkinson's UK, said: 'Criteria in the Bill say that a new claimant for the universal credit health payment will have to be 'constantly' unable to perform certain activities to qualify. 'This doesn't work for people with Parkinson's, whose symptoms change throughout the day. 'People with Parkinson's and other fluctuating conditions like multiple sclerosis will be effectively excluded from getting all the financial support they need. 'The Government has responded to our call and withdrawn the damaging restrictions to Pip. 'Now, they must do the same with the universal credit health element. The health of many people with Parkinson's is in their hands.'
The Guardian
13 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Gerard Taylor obituary
Britain has never been entirely clear about how to understand what it is that designers do. Are they offering a service, or is design a form of cultural self-expression? Gerard Taylor, who has died aged 70, always believed that it can be both. The Scot learned this early on in his career, when in 1981 the great Italian designer Ettore Sottsass invited him to join his Memphis collective, not long after Taylor had graduated from the Royal College of Art in London. A kind of anti-Bloomsbury group based in Milan, Memphis turned the conventional idea of good taste upside down with a series of deliberately transgressive collections of furniture, glassware and domestic electronics, using cheap materials such as plastic laminate and a vibrant colour palette. The self-initiated work that Taylor did for Memphis, as well as under his own name in those days, such as his sculptural ceramics or, later, with Daniel Weil, the Quasimodo chair, which looked like the physical realisation of a cafe chair in a Cubist painting, are in museum collections now, or sought after at auction. But Taylor also enjoyed working for clients, designing beautifully crafted shops for the Esprit brand that had little in common with the conventions of mass-market fashion at the time. He would later be responsible for the architecture of half a dozen of Habitat's most interesting stores when it was run by Vittorio Radice. When Radice moved to Selfridges, Taylor worked there too, and later for the Irish fashion designer Orla Kiely. Taylor's sketchbooks, overflowing with pencil drawings and analytical watercolours, reflect the commitment that he put into all his work whether they were personal projects or not. 'I believe that a designer should never work for their client, they have to work for themselves,' he told one interviewer. 'They have to serve their client, they have to be rigorous and professional, [but] your vision has to go way beyond what the client is asking for. You always have to be pushing yourself to do what you think is interesting.' Taylor's longest-lasting client was Orangebox, an innovative manufacturer of office furniture that began as a start up in the Glamorgan village of Hengoed. In the 20 years that Taylor was the creative director, helping to shape its products, Orangebox grew into a worldwide business, employing 400 people, and successful enough to be acquired by the American giant Steelcase. 'We weren't selling chairs, we were selling stories,' Taylor said. At the time of his death Taylor was working on an exhibition at the Modern Institute gallery in Glasgow, planned for next year. According to Taylor's brother-in-law, the artist and author Edmund de Waal, it will include both early furniture designs and more recent sculptural work that explores the relationship between colour and space. Born in Bellshill, a former mining town in Glasgow's Lanarkshire hinterland, Gerard was one of six children of Mary and Michael Taylor, a buyer for the industrial manufacturer Honeywell who in latter years bought a sub-post office. After St Saviour's secondary school in Glasgow, Gerard considered studying art at Glasgow School of Art, but instead chose product design, where, following graduation, one of his tutors encouraged him to apply to the RCA for a master's. He spent his summers working on set designs at the BBC, including for the Two Ronnies, and used some of his earnings to go to New York to see the painter Agnes Martin installing a museum show of her work. When he graduated in 1981, design in London had momentarily become neither service nor art, but big business. Based on the profits that they made rebranding state-owned industries such as British Airways and British Telecom as they were prepared for privatisation, design consultancies were being floated on the stock market. It was not a version of design that appealed to Taylor. He was determined to work for Sottsass, Memphis's founder, and the designer of beautiful machines for Olivetti, the Apple of its day. Taylor, who described himself as a 'ballsy Scotsman', had heard Sottsass speak in London while at college, and met him again in his final year. After showing him his portfolio of sophisticated drawings, and projects that ranged from a stage set for Timon of Athens to a hi-fi system, Sottsass invited Taylor to Milan to work in Sottsass Associati, the new design studio he was setting up. Taylor became a partner for five years (1982-87), then set up a studio in London with Weil, a fellow RCA graduate. Their partnership was dissolved in 1992 and Taylor subsequently practised on his own. Having begun his career early enough to take part in Memphis, Taylor worked long enough to see the practice of design utterly transformed by the digital explosion. Four decades ago it was still possible for a designer to shape technology, as well as convey how it worked. 'Usually [the product] comes in bland boxes that are a hopelessly inadequate reflection of the marvels which they contain,' Taylor then wrote. Smartphones have since taken over so many everyday functions that entire categories of object are redundant. Those that are left are not easily influenced by an independent designer. Taylor focused instead on furniture design, on which it was still possible to have an impact, in particular at Orangebox, which he joined in 2002. 'Human dynamics are the same. That is the beauty of furniture – a chair from 1920 is essentially the same as a chair of today,' he said. 'The chair is consistent and the table is consistent but what is not consistent is the dynamic of the context around them, what happens at the table, all the paranoias and ideas of the people sitting at the table, that's what changed unbelievably dramatically in ways we never thought of.' When it comes to technology, Taylor believed that if designers can't shape it, they should try to humanise it: 'The role of design has to be the creation of more engaging, softer, kinder and more humane work environments as a counterpoint to the continuously accelerating demands of technology and its increasing control of our workplace. We have to use design to help balance the tsunami of ever-shortening tech cycles of change and obsolescence.' Taylor was married twice. His first marriage, to Sue Minter, an interior designer, ended in divorce. In 2023 he married Clare Chandler, a psychologist and coach, and she survives him. Gerard Taylor, designer, born 3 March 1955; died 20 June 2025
