Ministers raise inheritance tax threshold for farms after backlash

Ministers will increase the threshold for taxing inherited farmland from £1m to £2.5m after months of pressure from campaigners and MPs representing rural areas.In a statement slipped out just before Christmas, the environment department announced the U-turn, which will apply from April when the tax kicks in.Plans to tax inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1m at a rate of 20% were announced in Rachel Reeves’s first budget last year.The change reversed tax relief that has existed in its modern form since the 1980s

Deputy leader Lucy Powell says Labour must ‘stick to manifesto’ over EU customs union, in implicit rebuke to Streeting – as it happened

In an interview published at the weekend, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, suggested that he would like Britain to join a customs union with the EU. This is not government policy, and it is a proposal that Keir Starmer has ruled out. But Streeting would like to be PM himself one day and the interview was interpreted as his (latest) attempt to ensure that he is well positioned in case there is a leadership contest before the next election.No 10 largely played down the significance of Streeting’s comments yesterday.But Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, has delivered an implicit reprimand to the health secretary

Reform council’s plan to shut eight care homes ‘a betrayal of local people’

A Reform UK-led council plan to shut eight of its residential care homes has been condemned as “a betrayal of local people”.Days before Christmas, Derbyshire county council announced that the homes would have to close after a proposed sale fell through.The closures have prompted a backlash and have echoes of the furore in Lancashire where the Reform-led council is planning to close five care homes and five day centres and move residents into the private sector.Mick Coppin, a regional organiser of the GMB union, said the Derbyshire plans put vital services and more than 200 jobs at risk.“These closures are nothing short of a betrayal of local people and staff,” Coppin said

Reform plan to cap aid at £1bn would damage UK’s international influence, critics warn

Plans by Reform UK to slash the aid budget by 90% would not cover existing contributions to global bodies such as the UN and World Bank, shredding Britain’s international influence and risking its standing within those organisations, charities and other parties have warned.Under cuts announced by Nigel Farage in November, overseas aid would be capped at £1bn a year, or about 0.03% of GDP. Keir Starmer’s government is already set to reduce aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0

Keir Starmer told closer EU trade ties ‘strategic necessity’ for UK firms

Keir Starmer’s government has been told a closer EU trade deal is a “strategic necessity” for companies in Britain as growing numbers of exporters find it tougher to do business under the UK’s post-Brexit agreement.Calling on Labour to accelerate its reset with Brussels, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said the UK’s existing trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) was failing to help them grow their sales in the EU.More than half (54%) of exporters in a survey of almost 1,000 businesses – the majority of which were small and medium-sized firms – said the trade deal negotiated by Boris Johnson’s government and enacted in 2021 was not helping them.Highlighting an ongoing economic hit from Brexit, the BCC said this was a 13 percentage point increase from the proportion of firms that were unhappy in a similar survey a year earlier.Adding to pressure on Labour to take action to support the economy after a challenging year for businesses, it said that just four out of the 946 firms surveyed thought the support from the government on dealing with trade policy changes was comprehensive

Labour calls to rejoin EU customs union will become harder for Starmer to resist

When Keir Starmer stood on the Labour conference stage in 2018 and defied Jeremy Corbyn to call for a second Brexit referendum with remain as an option, it put him in pole position to become the next Labour leader.Starmer must now feel a sense of deja vu watching Wes Streeting, the most out-and-out pretender for the leadership, follow a similar playbook. In an interview over the weekend, the health secretary strayed from the official government line to call for “a deeper trading relationship” with the EU.Speaking to the Observer, Streeting implied that joining a customs union with Europe would give Labour a distinctive message with which to take on Nigel Farage at the next general election.To many Westminster observers, the obvious point is that, like Starmer’s intervention in 2018, Streeting’s remarks align him with the Labour members and voters who overwhelmingly support stronger ties with Europe