HUGO DUNCAN: Labour's dealt the economy a hammer blow. Joblessness is soaring. Now you are about to pick up the tab...
The cost of Labour is becoming clearer by the day.
Sir Keir Starmer may believe Labour has 'fixed the foundations of the economy'.
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Daily Mail
44 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fears of tent cities as rough sleeping is decriminalised in end to 200-year-old law
Tent cities could pop up across the UK as rough sleeping is decriminalised, critics of the policy say. Ministers have announced plans to repeal the Vagrancy Act by next spring, meaning it will no longer be an offence to sleep on pavements. But there are fears scrapping the 200-year-old law despite rising numbers of the homeless will mean more people camping on the streets. Announcing the changes, Angela Rayner said she was 'drawing a line under nearly two centuries of injustice towards some of the most vulnerable in society'. The Housing Secretary pledged to increase funding for homelessness services with an extra £233million this financial year to provide alternatives to rough sleeping. She said: 'No one should ever be criminalised simply for sleeping rough and by scrapping this cruel and outdated law, we are making sure that can never happen again.' Introduced in 1824 to tackle a homelessness crisis after the Industrial Revolution, the law was designed to punish 'idle and disorderly persons, and rogues and vagabonds'. Most parts of the act have been repealed but some remain in force in England and Wales to enable police to move on rough sleepers rather than prosecute them. Homeless charities called the move a 'landmark moment' they had long called for. However, there were concerns that the move could lead to more people sleeping on streets and the creation of 'tent cities'. The charity Shelter estimates there are 326,000 people, including 161,500 children, in England who are homeless, a 14 per cent increase on the previous year. This has caused camps to pop up in several cities, including on Park Lane in central London. Figures published in April showed the total number sleeping rough in the capital – those who spend at least one night on the streets – was 4,427 for the three months to March 2025, which was a near 8 per cent increase from 4,118 for the same quarter last year. The numbers classed as living on the streets had risen by 38 per cent year-on-year to 706 from 511. The Government said 'targeted measures will ensure police have the powers they need to keep communities safe – filling the gap left over by removing previous powers'. These will be new offences of facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with the intention of committing a crime and will be brought in through amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Ministers said this will ensure organised begging – often by criminal gangs – remains an offence, meaning it is unlawful for anyone to organise others to beg. Ms Rayner's department said spending on homeless services would hit nearly £1billion this financial year. Kevin Hollinrake, Tory communities spokesman, said: 'Labour's approach will result in a pavement free-for-all in our towns and cities. They just don't understand or care how this affects law-abiding local residents and the impact it has on their pride of place.' Chris Philp, the Tory home affairs spokesman, told the Telegraph: 'This move risks turning British cities into a version of San Francisco, which has become overrun by encampments of homeless people.
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
How can ‘sanction' mean two opposing things?
Sir Keir Starmer said 'he could 'not imagine' the circumstances in which he would sanction a new referendum' on Scottish independence, the Times reported the other day. The Mirror said Amazon 'has agreed to sanction businesses that boost their star ratings with bogus reviews'. So we find sanction being used with completely opposite meanings: 'give permission' and 'enact a penalty to enforce obedience to a law'. The latter sense was extended after the first world war to cover economic or military action against a state as a coercive measure. That is the use we daily find applied to action, or the lack of it, against Russia. The diverging meanings both go back to the Latin noun sanctio, deriving from the verb sancire 'to render sacred', hence 'inviolable'. Such a sanctio came to mean a decree, as in that obscure beast of history, the pragmatic sanction, which looks neither pragmatic or like a sanction. The phrase had a good run for its money, though, labelling a decree attributed to St Louis of France against the Papacy in 1268 and a decree by Charles III of Spain in 1759, granting the crown of the Two Sicilies to his son. I would describe as an anxiety dream the thought of having to write about either. Here, pragmatic meant 'to do with affairs of state', a development of the ancient Greek word that, via Latin, also gives us practical. In English pragmatic acquired the meaning 'practical' only in the mid 19th century, allowing the Americans C.S. Peirce and William James to harness pragmatism to describe a kind of philosophy. As for sanction, it is now also deployed to label the removal or reduction of social benefits. In February this year, 5.5 per cent of claimants were being sanctioned. There is, too, the architect of Dublin's Heuston station (often misprinted as Euston station): Sancton Wood (often misprinted as Sanction Wood).
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Chancellor unveils £6bn NHS funding after health-centred spending review
Some £6 billion will be spent on speeding up testing and treatment in the NHS, Rachel Reeves has announced, after she placed the health service at the heart of Government spending plans. The Chancellor unveiled the investment, which includes new scanners, ambulances and urgent treatment centres aimed at providing an extra four million appointments in England over the next five years, after Wednesday's spending review. The funding is aimed at reducing waiting lists and reaching Labour's 'milestone' of ensuring the health service carries out 92% of routine operations within 18 weeks. In the review, Ms Reeves set out day-to-day spending across Government for the next three years, as well as plans for capital investment over the next four years. The NHS and defence were seen as the winners from the settlement, as both will see higher than average rises in public spending. This comes at cost of squeezing the budgets of other Whitehall departments and experts have warned tax rises may be needed later this year. The Chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer both sought to portray the review as a 'new phase' for the Government, following the criticism Labour has faced during its first year in power, including over cuts to winter fuel allowance. Ms Reeves claimed the NHS had been 'put on its knees' as a result of under-investment by the previous government, adding: 'We are investing in Britain's renewal, and we will turn that around.' The new £6 billion investment will come from the capital settlement for the NHS and will also help to speed up diagnoses with scans and treatment available in places such as shopping centres and high streets. The scale of day-to-day spending for the NHS is akin to an extra £29 billion a year. In a broadcast interview on Wednesday evening, Ms Reeves said the Government was 'confident' it could meet its pledge to reduce waiting lists after the boost to NHS spending. But while health and defence have benefited from the review, the Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Transport and Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are all in line for real-terms cuts in day-to-day spending. The Foreign Office is also in line for real-terms cuts, mainly as a result of a reduction in the overseas aid budget, which was slashed as part of the commitment to boost defence spending to 2.6% of gross domestic product – including the intelligence agencies – from 2027. Ms Reeves acknowledged 'not everyone has been able to get exactly what they want' following Cabinet squabbling over departmental budgets. She said 'every penny' of the spending increases had been funded through the tax and borrowing changes she had announced in her first budget. The Chancellor also insisted she would not need to mount another tax raid to pay for her plans, but experts warned the money for the NHS might still not be enough and the Government is under international pressure to boost defence funding further. Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, described the hospital waiting times target as 'enormously ambitious', adding: 'And on defence, it's entirely possible that an increase in the Nato spending target will mean that maintaining defence spending at 2.6% of GDP no longer cuts the mustard.' At a summit later this month Nato members will consider calls to increase spending to 3.5% on defence, with a future 1.5% on defence-related measures. Steven Millard, interim director of the NIESR economic research institute, said the Chancellor's non-negotiable fiscal rules, coupled with the 'small amount of headroom' in her spending plans, meant 'it is now almost inevitable that if she is to keep to her fiscal rules, she will have to raise taxes in the autumn budget'. Elsewhere, policing leaders warned forces may need to make deep cuts after their settlement was announced. The spending review provides more than £2 billion for forces, but ministers have acknowledged some of that 'spending power' will come from council tax hikes.
