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Labour delegates vote for motion saying winter fuel payments cut should be reversed
They get to the winter fuel payments vote. The chair takes the vote by a show of hands. A lot of hands go up against, the motion, and there are calls for a card vote. The chair rejects that. But she says the motion was carried.
Key events
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, has said that Keir Starmer should listen to his party conference and reverse the winter fuel payments cut. In a statement after the Labour conference vote, he said:
Keir Starmer must finally listen to voters, admit he got it wrong, and U-turn on the Labour government’s damaging cuts to the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners.
The fact that the prime minister’s own party members feel obliged to speak out, and demand he reverse these cuts, should tell him just how angry voters are at his cuts.
Ellie Reeves, a Cabinet Office minister and the Labour party chair, has just closed the speech with a speech quoting John Smith, saying all Labour asks is the chance the serve.
The British people have given us that chance. We will not let them down.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, told the conference in her speech earlier that Labour would bring in “a new era of child-centred government — building a country where children come first”.
Explaining what this meant, a Labour briefing said:
Labour’s child-centred approach will focus on breaking down barriers to opportunity beyond the school gates, as well as those in the classroom, including mental ill health and child poverty through measures such as additional mental health counselling support in schools and developing a comprehensive child poverty strategy through the Child Poverty Taskforce. Labour will publish the Children’s Wellbeing Bill in the coming months, which will put children and their wellbeing at the centre of the education and children’s social care systems, and make changes to ensure children are safe, healthy, happy and treated fairly.
Labour delegates vote for motion saying winter fuel payments cut should be reversed
They get to the winter fuel payments vote. The chair takes the vote by a show of hands. A lot of hands go up against, the motion, and there are calls for a card vote. The chair rejects that. But she says the motion was carried.
The third speaker in the debate covered one of the non-controversial motions.
The chair is now taking the votes, by a show of hands.
The second speaker was Ellie Emberson, a Unite member and a delegate from Reading West and Mid Berkshire. She said she was a student and she was speaking against the motion, even though it was proposed by her own union. And she said she hoped her nan, who reads the Daily Mail, is not watching. She said she was backing the leadership on the winter fuel payments cut because she accepted that the government had to stablise the economy. She said it was important for delegates to be patient.
We are getting a debate. The chair has said there is time for three speakers.
Maggie Cosin, a delegate from Dover and Deal, is speaking. She is defending the winter fuel payments cut.
She says she gets £200 a year from the winter fuel payment, and gives it to a food bank. She does not need it.
And she says the increase in the value of the pension is worth far more anyway.
Quoting Nye Bevan, she describes this motion as “an emotional spasm”.
And she says delegates should not vote against the leadership to give the Telegraph a story to “bash” the government with.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, addressed the conference earlier, before Sharon Graham proposed the Unite motion on winter fuel payments. This is what Kendall said about the cut.
Conference, focusing winter fuel payments on the poorest pensioners wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make.
But when we promised we could be trusted with taxpayers’ money, we meant it.
And when we’re faced with a £22 billion black hole which the Tories left this year – we had to act.
Because we know what happened when Liz Truss played fast and loose with the public finances.
It was working people and pensioners on fixed incomes who paid the highest price.
That is why we took what I know is a very difficult decision.
Alan Tate from the CWU seconded the Unite motion on the winter fuel payments cut. He said:
The CWU has been inundated with emails and calls from our retired members worried about choosing between heating and eating. Experts are warning that this could increase the risk of illness or even death for vulnerable people this winter.
Now we’ve heard from both the prime minister and the chancellor describing this cut as a tough choice the conference.
The tough choice is not about switching off pensioners’s heating this winter. The real choice is about picking up the phone for the tech giants like Amazon and the ultra wealthy and making them pay their share, their fair share of tax.
That may be about as far as the debate will go. The conference is dealing with a series of composite motions this morning, and the next speaking is supporting a motion on a different issue.
Graham says it’s wrong to cut winter fuel payment while super-rich left ‘untouched’
In her speech Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said:
Friends, people simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.
This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.
Friends, we are the sixth richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.
These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is hanging like a noose around our necks.
Friends, our public services and British industry need investment now. It’s no good having sympathy for workers at Grangemouth losing their jobs. They don’t need pity. They need Labour to step up to the plate and not allow a billionaire, who buys a football club as a hobby, to throw these workers on the scrap heap.
We cannot leave Britain at the whim of footloose corporations.
Hoping for them to invest is a prayer not a plan.
Yes, Britain is broken. Yes, the Tories have left a mess and yes, they are to blame.
But Labour is now in government, and we can’t keep making everyday people pay. Friends, I keep hearing, ‘a wealth tax is too difficult, would take too long’.
I say absolute rubbish. We seem to be able to get workers paying their taxes in a matter of weeks!
The system is rigged and the country knows it.
Unite leader Sharon Graham opens Labour debate on reversing winter fuel payments cut
At the Labour conference the debate on the winter fuel payment motion is starting.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, is speaking.
She is moving a composite motion that says Labour should:
1. Reverse the introduction of means-testing for the Winter Fuel Allowance
2. Ending fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest
3. Commit to public services and infrastructure, ensuring any public expenditure gaps, at a minimum, are restored through taxing wealth and that there are no further cuts to welfare provision for working people and pensioners.
4. Introducing a wealth tax on the top 1%, an excess profits tax, equalise capital gains tax with income tax and apply national insurance to investment income
5. Delivering the investment necessary for a workers’ transition to Net Zero
Streeting calls for national debate on whether smoking should be banned in pub gardens
In his interview with Sky News Wes Streeting, the health secretary, also suggested he would like to see a national debate on whether smoking should be banned in outdoor spaces, like pub gardens.
In the summer it emerged that a ban of this kind is being considered by the government.
Streeting said:
We are looking at a range of other measures to also help people who are currently smoking to quit and also to deal with the scourge of second-hand smoke and passive smoking, which is also harmful. We’ll be setting out our proposals on that shortly.
Asked if he will ban smoking outside pubs, he said:
Look, that’s one of the measures that I’m considering, and I’m up for a national debate on this issue.
We have got to do two things – reform the health service, but also reform public health, because we might be living longer, but we’re becoming sicker sooner and there is a heavy price being paid for that in our economy, our public finances and in our own health.
