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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will commit to restoring the winter fuel payments to all pensioners and scrapping the two-child benefit cap, according to reports.Farage is expected to appeal to more left-wing voters in a speech next week, according to the Sunday Telegraph.The newspaper said the Reform leader would call prime minister Sir Keir Starmer “one of the most unpatriotic prime ministers in our history and this past week has been evidence of that”, in reference to Reform’s success in recent local elections.The political party is riding high in the opinion polls after its victories in town halls and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, according to YouGov.The latest opinion polling revealed Reform UK is the most popular party among voters at 29 per cent, followed by Labour on 22 per cent and Liberal Democrats at 17 per cent. The Conservatives are in fourth place at 16 per cent.The Clacton MP spent last week on holiday while the House of Commons was sitting. While MPs have left Westminster for recess, he is expected to return to the political arena and say: “The prime minister is out of touch with working people, he doesn’t understand what they want and how they feel about the big issues facing Britain.“It’s going to be these very same working people that will vote Reform at the next election and kick Labour out of government.”A source told the newspaper: “We’re against the two-child cap and we’d go further on winter fuel by bringing the payment back for everyone.“That’s already outflanking Labour.”This comes as Sir Keir has signalled a desire to restore the winter fuel payment to more pensioners in Prime Minister’s Questions.The payment was previously made to all pensioners, but Labour reduced it to only those receiving pension credit in one of its early acts in government.it is understood that the Goverment’s action plan to tackle child poverty – a document likely to contain proposals to scrap the two-child benefit cap – has been delayed until the autumn. The plan is likely to be aligned with the budget so it can be fully costed.New costings released recently by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) show another 109 more children are pulled into poverty by the policy every day.The number affected will continue to increase until 2035 – when the first children born under the turn 18.The charity says that scrapping the cap would be the most cost-effective way to lift kids out of poverty. More

Severe staff shortages mean the beleaguered probation service cannot safely monitor prisoners in the community under new plans to free up prison spaces, senior figures have warned. In a review ordered by justice secretary Shabana Mahmood as the prison crisis boiled over during her first days in office, her Tory predecessor, David Gauke, recommended freeing many prisoners a third of the way into their sentence and telling judges to avoid jailing people for less than a year in favour of community sentences.While the plans have been widely welcomed, concerns have been raised over how the under-pressure probation service will cope with an influx of new offenders to manage. Ms Mahmood is expected to accept most of the proposals, but former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland expressed concern that the plans could merely “transfer a prison-based problem into the community”.And probation union Napo warned that there was now a “vital window” to invest in staff and their wellbeing before the changes place “massive, massive pressure” on a service already in “chaos”.Hailing the report as “the most important review of sentencing policy in at least a generation”, Napo chief Ian Lawrence added: “But the problem the government has right now is, if prisons are full, so is the probation service.“And our capacity to process even more people released into the community is going to be put under massive, massive pressure … without something being done to maintain the confidence of staff. That means paying people so they don’t just leave, because people [have had] enough of the current workload situation.”The most recent official figures suggest a shortfall of nearly 1,500 probation officers below the recommended staffing level of 7,115. Mr Lawrence warned that this target may underestimate the true need. Ministers have vowed to recruit a further 1,300 officers by March 2026 and while the probation service grew by 610 staff in the year to March, more than 2,000 staff – nearly 10 per cent – left over the same period. Forty per cent of probation officers who quit left with at least 10 years of experience, analysis by The Independent found.Asked whether he believes the probation service has enough staff to safely enact the reforms, Mr Lawrence said: “Certainly not now.”Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered the sentencing review during her first days in office More

Martin Lewis has welcomed a partial U-turn by Sir Keir Starmer on winter fuel payments.On Wednesday, the prime minister announced he wanted to allow more pensioners to claim the winter fuel payments, worth up to £300, alongside improvements in the UK economy.It marked a turnaround for the Labour government, which, last July, said pensioners not in receipt of pension credits or other means tested benefited would not receive the cash to help with energy bill in colder months.The move came amid a mounting backlash from his own MPs concerned about the party’s performance at the recent local elections.Although no details have been released on how many more pensioners would be eligible, or if the policy would be altered in time for this winter, Mr Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, welcomed the move on social media.But speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, Mr Lewis said the government needed to focus on the estimated 700,000 eligible people who were not claiming pension credit, as they will miss out on winter fuel payments as it stands.Currently, those aged over 66 in receipt of pension credits or other means tested benefits are eligible for the winter fuel payment.Sir Keir Starmer has announced that he wants to ensure more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments More

The government has been urged to make the biggest reforms to the justice system in decades, in a major new review of how criminals should be sentenced and jailed.The long-awaited sentencing review by former Tory justice secretary David Gauke – commissioned by Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in her first weeks in office as the prisons crisis reached boiling point – was published on Thursday.The review recommends vast changes to the way crimes are punished, including scrapping most jail sentences of less than a year in favour of community sentences and curfews, and extending the current use of chemical castration for some sexual offenders using drugs to reduce their libido and compulsive sexual thoughts.It also calls for “Texas-style” sentences with both a maximum and minimum term, in which prisoners could be released a third of the way into their sentence in reward for good behaviour, with a greater reliance on electronic tagging and curfews.Warning that “the scale of the crisis we are in cannot be understated”, with overcrowding leading to perilous conditions for prison staff and contributing to high levels of reoffending”, Mr Gauke warned that ministers “must take decisive action” and “cannot build their way out of” the current crisis.David Gauke, who chairs the review, is a former justice secretary (Kirsty O’Connor/PA) More

The Trussell Trust has revealed a stark increase in the number of emergency food parcels distributed across the UK, with a 51 per cent rise recorded over the past five years.The charity delivered nearly 2.9 million emergency food parcels in the year to March 2025, a significant jump from the 1.9 million distributed in the year to March 2020. This surge has prompted urgent calls for government intervention and a reassessment of welfare reform policies.Trussell has criticised the government’s welfare reforms, labelling them a “harmful” policy choice contributing to the escalating reliance on food banks. The charity also cautioned the Labour party against a potential legacy of increased food bank dependency and child poverty.The data reveals a concerning trend for families, with a 46% increase in emergency food parcels provided to families with children since 2020, and a 32% rise in parcels for children under five.While the latest figures, totalling 2,885,086 parcels, represent a decrease from the previous year’s record high of 3,126,479, the overall five-year trend remains alarmingStocks of food at a foodbank (Jonathan Brady/PA) More

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has announced trade talks with Israel have been paused as he called for an end to the aid blockade in Gaza. In a statement in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Lammy said Israel suffered a “heinous attack” on 7 October 2023 and the UK Government has backed Israel’s right to defend itself, but called the escalation in Gaza “morally unjustifiable”.The measures, including financial restrictions and travel bans, cover prominent settler leader Daniella Weiss and two other individuals, as well as two illegal outposts and two organisations that the Foreign Office said supported, incited and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. David Lammy has said that Israel’s plan is Gaza is “morally unjustifiable” More

Britain could reduce the number of people making perilous journeys across the Channel by allowing migrants to apply for asylum from management centres in France, a think tank has proposed. New centres set up outside Calais could allow people to apply for UK asylum or to be reunited with family in Britain. The number of asylum seekers granted sanctuary to the UK would be on a rolling monthly cap, a new report from the Future Governance Forum (FGF) think tank has said, and in return France would take back the equivalent number of migrants who have arrived on UK shores in small boats. The proposals mirror policies enacted by the Biden administration in the US, which allowed people on the Southern border to access pre-arrival processing. Offices were set up in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador to allow migrants to apply to resettle in the US through legal pathways, including by pursuing refugee status. The programme aimed to decrease the number of people making the dangerous crossings at the US-Mexico border. The UK is already in discussions with France on a scheme to return migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats. In return, UK government officials have reportedly floated the idea of accepting migrants seeking reunion with family members already in Britain. The French interior ministry said in April that the pilot scheme would be based on a “one-for-one principle”. This would mean that “for each legal admission under family reunification, there would be a corresponding readmission of undocumented migrants who managed to cross [the Channel]”. An inflatable dinghy carrying around 65 migrants crosses the English Channel on March 06, 2024 in the English Channel. More

Watch live as Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs on Wednesday (14 May), as he continues to face criticism for his “island of stranger speech”.The prime minister faced backlash from members of his own party after his speech unveiling the government’s new immigration measures was compared to inflammatory rhetoric used by Enoch Powell in his “rivers of blood” speech.Downing Street was forced to deny the comparison and said Sir Keir “completely rejects” the suggestions he echoed Powell, and stands by his words.“We completely reject that comparison,” the prime minister’s spokesperson told reporters.“The Prime Minister rejects those comparisons and absolutely stands behind the argument he was making that migrants make a massive contribution to our country, but migration needs to be controlled.”He will face questions in the Commons at noon, the majority from the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who criticised Sir Keir and said Labour doesn’t believe in secure borders. More