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The Independent has been told that MPs – including ministers – considering rebelling against the government’s welfare reforms on Tuesday next week have been threatened with losing the whip and even, according to two sources, deselection.

The issue came to a head in a fiery meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party addressed by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall on Monday evening with several MPs privately claiming it could end up with Sir Keir being forced out as leader.

The rebellion became official shortly after with an amendment to the welfare reform bill next week calling for a pause in the reforms, which some believe could be signed by as many as 100 MPs.

The government plans to make £5bn a year in savings on welfare mostly by reducing personal independence payments (PIPs) for those with disabilities by limiting access to them for all apart from the most disabled.

Previously, at least 80 Labour MPs, including 12 ministers, are understood to be considering rebelling against the legislation needed to cut the welfare bill by £5bn a year. But the new amendment, which is understood to be fronted by the Treasury select committee chair Meg Hillier and other committee chairs, may garner even more support.
[…]
[I]t is understood that MPs requesting permission to miss the vote are being denied because the government wants a show of loyalty on the second reading vote on 1 July.

In the PLP meeting on Monday evening, just a week before the vote, Ms Kendall will try to persuade fellow Labour MPs that the government has no choice but to balance the books.

But former Jeremy Corbyn ally Richard Burgon MP has announced that he will be presenting a petition demanding wealth taxes instead of benefits cuts next week just 24 hours before the crucial vote.
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The issue became a subject of tensions in the run-up to last month’s spending review when a leaked memo from Ms Rayner also proposed eight new wealth taxes on the richest individuals and big corporations as an alternative to cuts.

The row played out during work and pensions questions in the Commons with one MP suggesting the benefits cuts will lead to "appalling poverty".

Labour MP Andy McDonald asked for further evidence on how many people will lose out on Personal Independence Payments as a result of the welfare reform bill.

Truth is, to get right to the point, the fact that Matrix was accompanied by a for-profit entity, funded by venture capital was the biggest mistake that Matrix as a project has ever made.

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Shabana Mahmood will write to constituents saying she has “significant concerns” that a change in the law could give women an incentive to have unsafe abortions at home.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is said to be weighing up whether to abstain or vote against amendments being tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill.

Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, the Conservative and Reform UK leaders, are expected to oppose the move.

Two amendments have been tabled by Labour MPs and the Speaker will decide which to select for a vote, likely on Wednesday. Under Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment, already backed by 168 MPs, women would no longer be breaking the law if they terminated a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without approval from two doctors.
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The Times understands that Mahmood opposes both amendments, although she will be unable to vote against them as she is on ministerial business abroad next week. An ally said Mahmood had “significant concerns” around the growth in the number of women using online services to order abortion pills without a physical consultation.

“She believes that, from a women’s health and safety perspective, there’s such little oversight,” the ally said. “If you do take those pills later on, it can have a really terrible impact on you.”

Senior government figures expect Antoniazzi’s amendment to pass with a large majority. In a survey of more than 100 MPs, about 70 per cent agreed that women should not be liable for prison sentences if they have abortions outside the rules.

Two years on and we're still here, go us!

The BBC’s Director General Tim Davie and other senior bosses at the corporation have drawn up plans to win over voters of Reform UK, due to a belief that their news and drama output is creating “low trust issues” with supporters of Nigel Farage’s party.

Minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, seen by Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama” in order to win the trust of Reform voters.

The committee also identified “the importance of local BBC teams” to their plan to win over supporters of Farage.

Members of the committee, which includes former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, discussed the presentation and agreed to give an “update on progress” towards their aim at a later date.

The UK's Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently published interim update to their code of practice that seeks to segregate trans people from wider society and is trying to press this through with an illegally short six week consultation period.

As part of this consultation, the EHRC have to take responses from the public about how these changes will affect them or people in their lives. The people at the Good Law Project have put together a form to make this easy, so if you live in the UK (trans or not) then I kindly ask you to go through and fill it in:

https://action.goodlawproject.org/ehrc

The Labour faction influencing Downing Street’s pitch to Reform UK voters has urged ministers to “root out DEI”.

An article from the Blue Labour campaign group, titled What is to be Done, calls for the government to legislate against diversity, equity and inclusion, echoing the rightwing backlash from Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
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Urging the party to renew its “covenant with the British people”, Blue Labour’s article said: “We are proud of our multiracial democracy and we utterly reject divisive identity politics, which undermines the bonds of solidarity between those of different sexes, races and nationalities.

“We should legislate to root out DEI in hiring practices, sentencing decisions and wherever else we find it in our public bodies.”
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Blue Labour calls for lower migration in the same article in which it takes aim at DEI, saying: “Immigration is not a distraction or a culture war issue; it is the most fundamental of political questions, a cause of social fragmentation, and the basis of our broken political economy.

“We should drastically reduce immigration, reducing low-skill immigration by significantly raising salary thresholds; closing the corrupt student visa mill system; and ending the exploitation of the asylum system, if necessary prioritising domestic democratic politics over the rule of international lawyers.”

In May, it emerged that net migration almost halved in 2024.

A Reform UK election candidate standing in the postponed North Northants Council (NNC) election for Higham Ferrers could trigger an immediate by-election if he wins the seat after he moved to China.

Alan Beswick had been on the ballot paper as one of the two Reform UK candidates for the May 1 elections but, due to the death of Liberal Democrat John Ratcliffe just before polling day, the election in the two-seat Higham Ferrers ward was postponed until June 12.

Names of four nominated Reform candidates were submitted to NNC’s election team. A party spokesman says Mr Beswick’s circumstances changed but they were unable to remove his nomination.

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