Starmer announces England’s bus fare cap will be extended but rise to £3 in 2025
Keir Starmer has announced that Labour will raise the £2 bus fare cap in England to £3 next week.
Asked about rumours around changes to the cap in Wednesday’s budget, the prime minister said:
On the £2 bus fare, the first thing to say is the Tories had only funded that til the end of 2024 and therefore that is the end of the funding in relation to the £2 capped fair.
I do know how much this matters, particularly in rural communities where there’s heavy reliance on busses, and that’s why I’m able to say to you this morning that in the budget, we will announce there will be a £3 cap on bus fares to the end of 2025, because I know how important it is. So that will be there in the budget on Wednesday.
Key events
The Green party of England and Wales’s co-leader Carla Denyer has responded to Keir Starmer’s speech in Birmingham by reposting some comments she made yesterday calling for more taxation on the super-rich, saying:
14 years of Tory underinvestment have left public services on their knees, our economy broken. We can’t afford five more yers of this. It feels like Labour are stuck in second gear on the motorway. They could deliver on the change they promised if they’re prepared to tax the super-rich.
14 years of Tory underinvestment have left public services on their knees, our economy broken. We can’t afford 5 more yrs of this
It feels like Labour are stuck in 2nd gear on the motorway. They could deliver on the change they promised if they’re prepared to tax the super-rich https://t.co/6JgBM6b0HB
— Carla Denyer (@carla_denyer) October 28, 2024
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has also been on the airwaves today talking about Wednesday’s budget. He described Labour’s plans as a “targeted assault on wealth creation,” saying “We’re all gonna get absolutely hammered and assaulted on Wednesday.”
Starmer promises ‘no short cuts’ to rebuilding country after inheriting neglect of previous government
Keir Starmer has promised “better days ahead” and said the era of Tory neglect and “making working people pay the price” for their policies was over.
In a speech in Birmingham designed to trail Rachel Reeves’ budget on Wednesday, the first from the new administration, Starmer:
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announced that the bus fares cap in England would be extended for a year, but at a higher rate of £3
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said the Chancellor will announce £240m in funding for services to get people back into work
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said the country needed to face up to the “fiction” that you can lower taxes and increase public spending at the same time
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said he could not give a “cast iron guarantee that never again in any budget will there be any adjustment to tax” because “we just don’t know what’s around the corner”
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said his concern was making sure “there is no more tax in their payslip” for working people
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sidestepped a question about whether a fuel duty rise would count as a tax on working people who use their cars to get to and from work
Starmer warned that working people around the world had lost faith that politics could deliver for them, but said that did not mean politicians should give up on them, warning that “populism preys on the fears that people have.”
He also accused Rishi Sunak and the previous Conservative government of calling an early election to avoid facing the fiscal situation that his Labour party have inherited.
Warning “there are no short cuts”, Starmer said:
The time is long overdue for politicians in this country to level with you honestly about the trade-offs this country faces
Working people know that hard choices are necessary. They lived through the Liz Truss episode. They lived through the cost-of-living crisis.
So they know that the things they want from us – protecting their living standards, building our nation, fixing our public services – they know that this can only be achieved alongside economic stability.
Keir Starmer somewhat sidestepped a question on whether a rise in fuel duty would count as a rise in taxes on working people, and whether the government planned such a rise.
During a question and answer session with the media in Birmingham, Jack Ellison from the Sun had asked “Every day millions of people across the country will get in their cars and go to work. So would any hike to fuel duty on Wednesday be a direct hit on the working people that you claim the champion?”
In response the prime minister said:
Well, I know this is a particular concern to your readers, and I’m not going to preempt what happens on Wednesday, but obviously this is an issue that comes up at every budget, and you’ll see how we deal with it at this budget.
But I do understand how important it is. I understand what you’re putting to me, and I know how important it is to you, your readers and others.
Keir Starmer has drawn a round of applause from the audience in Birmingham after a rather brusque response to a question from a journalist from the Daily Mail.
Asked whether Starmer thought his government was at odds with the priorities of the public after Kumail Jaffer cited “new polling this morning suggests that the majority of voters would prefer Wednesday’s priority to be lower taxes ahead of investment in public services,” Starmer initially simply said “No.”
He then elaborated:
I think for too long we pretended that you could lower your tax and spend more on your public services. It is about time we faced up to that fiction.
A couple of questions during this session from Sky News and the Times have attempted to get the prime minister to commit to no further tax rises during the course of the five year parliament. Keir Starmer has refused to allow himself to become a hostage to fortune here, saying:
We are fixing the foundations in this budget. So that is the purpose of this budget, to take the difficult decisions.
Now nobody wants tax rises, least of all me, so we will do the hard work in this budget to allow us then to rebuild the country.
I can’t give you a cast iron guarantee that never again in any budget will there be any adjustment to tax, because we just don’t know what’s around the corner. We’ve lived through, in the last five or six years, Ukraine, Covid, et cetera.
But I can tell you that as we stand here now going into this budget, it’s our intention to take the tough decisions here and now up front, in the hope that we can then build and rebuild the country on that stable foundation.
Starmer announces England’s bus fare cap will be extended but rise to £3 in 2025
Keir Starmer has announced that Labour will raise the £2 bus fare cap in England to £3 next week.
Asked about rumours around changes to the cap in Wednesday’s budget, the prime minister said:
On the £2 bus fare, the first thing to say is the Tories had only funded that til the end of 2024 and therefore that is the end of the funding in relation to the £2 capped fair.
I do know how much this matters, particularly in rural communities where there’s heavy reliance on busses, and that’s why I’m able to say to you this morning that in the budget, we will announce there will be a £3 cap on bus fares to the end of 2025, because I know how important it is. So that will be there in the budget on Wednesday.
Sam Coates from Sky News asked the prime minister if he was “absolutely sure” that the government were “front-loading” tax rises, and could he rule out further tax rises in future budgets.
Keir Starmer said “I fundamentally believe that we need to run towards the tough decisions. I fundamentally believe we have to fix the foundations so we can build a better future, and that’s tough. That’s difficult.”
The first two questions have been from the BBC and ITV and have focussed on the semantics of whether Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto was “honest” about taxes on working people.
The prime minister said in reply to one of the questions:
Let me be clear. As far as working people, I’m concerned with what’s in their payslip, and making sure that there is no more tax in their payslip. And that matters to people, because we made that promise to them.
But honesty is really important, because we’re facing really difficult decisions, and I’m not prepared to continue with the fiction that we’ve had previously over the last 14 years. Where there are problems, we’ll identify them and we will fix them.
As a reminder, this is the paragraph from the Labour manifesto which has sparked these accusations:
The Conservatives have raised the tax burden to a 70-year high. We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of income Tax, or VAT.
Keir Starmer has said that this week’s Labour budget will “light the way” ahead for the new government.
He said “We have five years and a big mandate so working people will not accept any excuses,” adding that the government “will publish clear ambitions for this parliament” that they can be measured about.
He continued:
These are my priorities for change, and I won’t change course. The budget will light the way, and we will use the power of government for stability, investment and reform with partnerships across the whole of society, galvanised by clear objectives, to deliver on the priorities of the British people. Foundations fixed, public services renewed, a country rebuilt.
Starmer is now taking questions from the media.
Keir Starmer says that working people across the world have lost faith that politics can deliver for them.
Describing it as a paradox, the prime minister said:
All around the world, traditional values, democratic values, values that have underpinned the way countries like ours have operated for years, the pragmatism that is part of our identity, is under attack.
Why? Because people – working people most of all – have lost faith it can still deliver for their family,
And yet, at the same time, what people want from politics hasn’t changed.
People want a stable economy. They want their country to be safe, their borders secure, economic security, national security, border security.
Beyond that, they want exactly what those [Labour] national missions promise, a growing economy, safer streets, clean British energy in their home, opportunities for their children and an NHS that is there when they need it.
I know populism preys on the fears that people have that these things no longer belong to them.
But I’ve never felt that the right response is to ignore those concerns, rather than showing that they can still be delivered.
In Birmingham Keir Starmer has delivered his previously trialled line, that his government will ignore the “populist chorus of easy answers” in this week’s budget.
The prime minister said:
Politics is a choice, and it’s time to choose a clear path. It’s time to embrace the harsh light of fiscal reality so we can come together behind a credible long term plan.
It’s time we ran towards the tough decisions, because ignoring them set us on this path of decline.
It’s time we ignored the populist chorus of easy answers, because we saw what happened if you reject the constraints of the economic stability, and we’re never going back to that.
That is our choice. Stability to prevent chaos. Borrowing that will drive long term growth. Tax rises to prevent austerity and rebuild public services. We choose to protect working people. We choose to get the NHS back on its feet. We choose to fix the foundations, reject decline and rebuild our country with investment.
Starmer then issued a challenge to the opposition, citing the disastrous short-lived premiership of Liz Truss, saying:
I can’t get into the individual measures before Wednesday but I will say this. If people want to criticise the path we choose, that’s their prerogative, but let them spell out a different direction.
If they think the state has grown too big, let them tell working people which public services they would cut.
If they think tax rises are unfair, let them tell working people which taxes they would raise instead.
If they don’t see our long term investment in infrastructure as necessary, let them explain to working people how they would grow the economy for them.
And if they think the taxes are too high, but they don’t want to cut public spending, let them tell working people why the lessons of Liz Truss no longer apply.
Because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the time is long overdue for politicians in this country to level with you honestly about the trade offs this country faces. To stop insulting your intelligence with the chicanery of easy answers.
Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak and the previous Conservative government of calling an early election to avoid facing the fiscal situation that his Labour party have inherited.
Speaking in Birmingham, the prime minister said:
Just look at the state of our prisons. Where’s the Tory apology for that? Watching the prison population rise while they were too weak either to reform sentencing or build new prison places.
Too scared to conduct a proper spending review, as we’ve done, because of the damage they knew it would uncover.
They knew. That’s why they ran away from that exercise and called an early election instead.
They knew our public services were broken. They knew there was a black hole in the public finances. £22bn of unfunded spending this year. Wasting reserves three times over on Rwanda, asylum hotels, propping up a failing train companies, and that’s before we even get the long term challenges ignored for 14 years.
Starmer: era of Tories making ‘working people pay the price’ is over
Keir Starmer has said the era of the Conservatives “destroying economic foundations” and making “working people pay the price” is over.
Speaking in Birmingham two days ahead of the first budget from the new government, Starmer said:
It will be a budget which will show to the British people that we won’t be distracted from our task. That we will stick to our long term plan. Run towards the tough decisions, rip off the short term sticky plasters. So we can lead our country, finally, but decisively out of this, pay more, get less, doomed, low growth Tory trap that for 14 years, decimated public services, destroyed our economic foundations and made working people pay the price.
And mark my words, that era is now over.
We are turning the page on Tory decline, closing the book on their austerity and chaos. Those days are done. They are behind us, and change is here.
Speaking in Brimingham, the prime minister has said he will defend Labour’s “tough decisions” on the economy being made in the budget this week.
He likened the public finances and the state of public services to a homeowner finding damp in their house.
Keir Starmer said:
Everyone who finds damp in their house knows they have to make the decision, paint over it or strip it out, pull off the plaster and deal with it once and for all.
So I will defend our tough decisions all day long.
It’s the right thing for our country, and it’s the only way to get the investment that we need.
That is how we will fix the NHS, rebuild Britain and protect the payslips of working people delivering on our mandate of change.
In a section of his speech that seems very much informed by the lengthy media debate over the weekend on the semantics of what constitutes a “working person”, prime minister Keir Starmer has said:
Every decision that we have made, every decision that we will make in the future, will be made with working people in our mind’s eye.
People who’ve been working harder and harder for years just to stand still. People doing the right thing, maybe still finding a little bit of money to put away. Paying their way, even in the cost of living crisis. But who feel that this country no longer gives them or their children a fair chance.
He continued about the identity of “working people”, saying:
I know some people want to have a debate about this, and I know there will always be an exception that proves the rule. Welcome to the wonders of a diverse country.
But I also know that the working people of this country know exactly who they are.
That they are the golden thread that runs through our agenda. Every single one of our national missions is about delivering for them, and we’re getting on with the job.
Kier Starmer has started his speech by reminding people that Birmingham, where he is speaking, had an announcement of a £500m investment in battery storage, and said “that’s a snapshot of the Britain we’re building.”