Starmer faces Labour rebellion on two-child benefit cap as Farage sparks Reform civil war over roles – live

Hannah Blythyn was not the source of a leak which triggered her sacking from the Welsh Government, the website which originally reported the story has said.

The Labour former social partnership minister was removed from the Welsh Government by Vaughan Gething in May, after messages from the Covid pandemic were leaked to the media.

The leaked messages showed Mr Gething claiming he would delete all correspondence from a WhatsApp group of Welsh ministers.

Delyn MS Ms Blythyn said this week in the Senedd that she could “look all my colleagues who sit on these benches in the eye” and say she had not leaked to the media.

The embattled First Minister told the Senedd on Wednesday the messages could only have come from her phone, adding that there had been a “breach of trust”.

But Nation.Cymru, the website which originally broke the story, has now said she was not the source of the information.

A statement from its chief executive, Mark Mansfield, said protecting journalistic sources was very important, and added: “Given the strong public interest and importance of this story and out of concern for Hannah Blythyn’s wellbeing, we have decided that the right thing to do is to state publicly that she was not the source of our story and that at no stage before or since publication of it have we had any contact with her about it.”

The UK should “certainly mark the occasion” if England win Euro 2024, Sir Keir Starmer has said amid calls for an extra bank holiday in the event of victory.

The Prime Minister appeared to suggest he would not commit to an extra day off as he said did not want to “jinx anything” by pre-empting the result of Sunday’s final between Gareth Southgate’s team and Spain.

The Liberal Democrats have led calls for an extra bank holiday after England claimed a 2-1 victory over the Netherlands on Wednesday.

Sir Keir previously supported calls for a bank holiday when England’s women’s football team made it to the World Cup final last year.

Environmentalsecretary Steve Reed has rejected calls to scrap the controversial two-child benefit cap.

The Labour minister said the party understands calls to get rid of the policy but claimed the government must keep “strict spending controls” to stabilise the economy.

Mr Reed told reporters: “Of course we understand the pressure for that, of course we understand the difficulties families face because of the wider cost of living crisis.

“It is absolutely essential that this Labour Government maintains strict spending controls because we have to stabilise the economy after 14 years of Conservative chaos.

“It is that chaos and the way they crashed the economy that has left families hurting so much. As we grow the economy, we will be able to spend the additional income on other things that we want to achieve for this country.”

Health secretary Wes Streeting has said the new independent investigation into the NHS will “leave no stone unturned”.

Mr Streeting announced the probe in a bid to identify the issues with the health service.

The Labour minister said he was “hugely optimistic that our NHS can be saved” and vowed to make it “fit for the future”. 

The Tories have accused Sir Keir Starmer of lacking a “clear plan” to tackle the increase in household water bills.

It comes as environment secretary Steve Redd said water bosses agreed to Labour’s plans for reform.

A Conservative spokesperson said: “It was the Conservative government that took this country’s first major steps to transform our infrastructure and ensure safer, cleaner waters.

“Thanks to our Storm Overflows Reduction plan, storm overflow monitoring had increased to 100 per cent when we left office, 93 per cent higher than when Labour last left office. We were honest about the costs of cleaning up our waters, and it is a fact that dividends and bonuses from water companies are not sufficient.

“On the other hand, now in government, and realising their sums simply do not add up, Labour has no clear plan to tackle the issue.”

Pressure is building on prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the two-child benefit cap, as new figures showed more than one and a half million children across the UK are affected.

An independent think tank has said that the majority of children in large families will fall below the poverty line by the end of this Parliament five years from now, unless the policy is abolished.

Figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions showed there were 1.6 million children living in households affected by the policy as of April this year, up from 1.5 million to April 2023.

New work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall called the child poverty situation “a stain on our society” and pledged to hold “critical meetings” with charities and experts about its strategy to tackle it.

Last month, before becoming Prime Minister, Sir Keir said he would scrap the two-child limit “in an ideal world” but added that “we haven’t got the resources to do it at the moment”.

But campaigners criticised the absence of a pledge to scrap the cap and said any plan to reduce child poverty “won’t get off the ground” until this happens.

Labour’s campaign group Momentum is launching an online tool to pressure MPs to scrap the two-child-benefit cap.

The tool will help voters in lobbying their Labour MPs through email and those without a Labour representative will be encouraged to email the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Sasha Das Gupta, newly-elected co-chair of Momentum, said: “Policies like scrapping the two-child benefit cap are popular and more urgent than ever. Labour cannot simply promise a ‘strategy’ on this – we need to scrap the cap and promote bold policies for all. That’s what real Labour values look like.”

It comes as Sir Keir has been under pressure from Labour members including  the leader of Scottish Labour Anas Sarwar to scrap the cap.

To tackle overcrowded jails, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to announce that criminals will now serve as little as 40 per cent of their sentence, says Sean O’Grady.

Cue public outcry… and a long overdue debate:

Environment secretary Steve Reed has said nationalising the water industry “would cost billions of pounds and take years potentially”.

Following a meeting with water companies’ bosses, Mr Reed said the proposed bill raises by Ofwat are a result of the Tories’ “failure”.

Ruling out naitionalising companies like Thames Water, he said: “I want to get to work quickly to clean up the unacceptable levels of pollution that are so outraging the public, nationalisation would slow that down and cost money we do not have.”

He added: “The best way to achieve our outcomes is to ensure there is tough regulation,” adding that water companies agreed to his “initial measures”.