Boris Johnson suggests he is opposed to using further benefit rises to help with cost of living – UK politics live

From 1h ago

Sometimes the key moments in big political interviews come in the asides. Politicians rehearse their answers to the obvious questions (or their non-answers), and that is one reason why modern interviews are often more tedious than ones conducted in the days before the term soundbite was invented (a point the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert makes powerfully here). But asides are (generally) unrehearsed, and there were two in this interview that stood out.

One was “Who’s Lorraine?” (see 9.21am).

The other, more serious, one came when Boris Johnson, was told about a pensioner, Elsie, being so poor she has to spend the day on buses using her freedom pass to avoid heating her home. The PM responded by going on about introducing the freedom pass when he was London mayor. Labour accuse him of being out of touch with the experience of people’s lives; this tone-deaf boast made their point for them.

Dave Hill, who runs the On London website, says that as well as being insensitive, on this point Johnson was also technically wrong.

Just to confirm, @GMB team, #BorisJohnson *did* introduce a concessionary free travel scheme for 60-65 year-olds when he was London Mayor but it was *not* the Freedom Pass, which has existed for decades (cont)

— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022\n","url":"https://twitter.com/DaveHill/status/1521417108852203521","id":"1521417108852203521","hasMedia":false,"role":"inline","isThirdPartyTracking":false,"source":"Twitter","elementId":"9423b449-d0b1-4dfd-a7e3-ea3d60674771"}}">

Just to confirm, @GMB team, #BorisJohnson *did* introduce a concessionary free travel scheme for 60-65 year-olds when he was London Mayor but it was *not* the Freedom Pass, which has existed for decades (cont)

— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022

Since then, the PM's transport adviser, Andrew Gilligan, has been a driving force behind the government reducing the hours for which that separate concession applies as part of forcing its own policies on Transport for London...

— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022\n","url":"https://twitter.com/DaveHill/status/1521417672633815044","id":"1521417672633815044","hasMedia":false,"role":"inline","isThirdPartyTracking":false,"source":"Twitter","elementId":"057516cf-e120-43e8-aeec-3cc76b14e12a"}}">

Since then, the PM's transport adviser, Andrew Gilligan, has been a driving force behind the government reducing the hours for which that separate concession applies as part of forcing its own policies on Transport for London...

— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022

There was a substantial takeaway in the interview too. It is normally assumed that Johnson is always keen to increase government spending, and only restrained by the more fiscally disciplined chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But in his comments on inflation, Johnson implied that the Treasury has won this argument.

Here are the main points from the interview.

• Johnson signalled that he was opposed to using benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. There was a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he said. When Susanna Reid put it to him that inflation could reach 10%, he replied: “Correct”. But he appeared to rule out bringing forward benefit increases to help. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We have a short-term hit caused by the spike in energy prices across the world. If we respond by driving up prices and costs across the board in this country, responding by the government stepping in and driving up inflation, that will hit everybody and that will mean that people’s interest rates on their mortgages go up, the cost of borrowing goes up, and we face an even worse problem ...

I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach. We have to help people like Elsie, like the families you mentioned, in the short term with huge sums of taxpayers’ cash, through local councils or through all the schemes that we’re doing. But the best answer is to have a strong economy and where we keep interest rates as low as is reasonable.

Benefits are uprated annually every year in April but, because the increase is pegged to the inflation rate the previous September, this year they have risen by well below the current rate of inflation. It is equivalent to a real-terms cut. Ministers have been urged to accelerate the next benefits rise to compensate, but Johnson seems to be firmly rejecting this option.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the PM’s comments could also be a hint that the government will for a second time abandon the triple lock, which is supposed to guarantee that pensions go up every year in line with earnings or inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher.

Sounds like Boris Johnson now rolling the pitch for breaking the triple lock on the pension AGAIN later this year and further severe real terms cuts to Universal Credit. Boris Johnson confirming what working people and pensioners know - you’re worse off under the Conservatives. https://t.co/UKlJiWwAD0

— Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) May 3, 2022\n","url":"https://twitter.com/JonAshworth/status/1521398432342102017","id":"1521398432342102017","hasMedia":false,"role":"inline","isThirdPartyTracking":false,"source":"Twitter","elementId":"f40b9b20-7c08-4ecb-bf54-7dfa9a272b38"}}">

Sounds like Boris Johnson now rolling the pitch for breaking the triple lock on the pension AGAIN later this year and further severe real terms cuts to Universal Credit.

Boris Johnson confirming what working people and pensioners know - you’re worse off under the Conservatives. https://t.co/UKlJiWwAD0

— Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) May 3, 2022

• Johnson failed to offer the prospect of any immediate, extra help for people struggling to pay their bills now. He said in general terms that there was “more that we can do”, but did not give details. His most awkward moment in the interview came when asked what advice he had for Elsie, a 77-year-old widow who’s monthly energy bills have gone up from £15 to £85. Johnson summed up the measures already taken by the government to help. Asked what Elsie should cut back on, Johnson said he did not want her to cut back on anything. But he did not float the prospect of further help with bills this year, and he said that what was important was to invest in energy now so that supply is secure for the medium and long term. Rather crassly, when told the Elsie spent her day using her freedom pass to travel on buses, to reduce the amount she has to spend on energy at home, Johnson said that as London mayor he introduced the 24-hour freedom pass. Reid asked if he thought that Elsie should be “grateful”.

• Johnson said he was opposed to a windfall tax on energy companies (Labour’s policy) because it would discourage investment. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy price prices lower for everybody.

• He admitted that he did not know the amount by which carer’s allowance is rising this year.

• He insisted that global factors were to blame for the rise in prices. “The cost of chickens is crazy,” he said, in a reference to food prices.

• He said that he had “no idea” whether her would face further fines over Partygate. Asked why he had not resigned, as other people have for breaking lockdown rules, he replied:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do and discharge the mandate that I was given, and I’m proud of what we have been doing.

01:21

• He insisted that he was “honest”. Referring to claims he misled MPs about Partygate, he said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you are talking about the statements I’ve made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently ... I was wrong and I’ve apologised for that.

• He admitted the UK could be giving visas to Ukrainian refugees more quickly. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We have done a huge amount to help Ukrainian women and children in the area but we’re now seeing large numbers come to the UK.

So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘thank you’ - 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians.

Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader and a former energy secretary, has dismissed Boris Johnson’s argument that a windfall tax on oil and gas firms would deter investment. He told PA Media:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We know as we move towards net zero that they won’t be making profits on oil and gas, so it’s in their own interest [to invest].

What I think is right, though, is they are making unexpected profits - their investment plans a year ago didn’t expect them to make these huge profits, it’s total windfall profits and something that never happened in my time as energy and climate change secretary.

It is absolutely right and fair and proper that these companies who are taking the oil and gas out of British waters, who are licensed by the British government to do that, they should pay a windfall tax and we reckon a fair tax would raise at least £10bn over the next year.

The Lib Dems say that could pay for a cut in VAT from 20% to 17.5%, saving households around £600 a year, and help provide targeted support for vulnerable people to cope with soaring bills.

Here is some more comment on Boris Johnson’s Good Morning Britain interview.

From Talk TV’s Kate McCann.

From ITV’s Anushka Asthana

As my colleague Tobi Thomas reports, in his morning interviews Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of “mud-slinging” over allegations he broke lockdown rules after a photograph emerged of him drinking a beer with staff in a constituency office last year.

In his Today interview Starmer refused to say whether Durham police had recently been in touch with him about the incident. According to the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar, they haven’t.

Here are some other lines from his morning interviews.

• Starmer said Labour favoured putting up defence spending in the light of the Russian invastion of Ukraine. Asked if defence spending should go up, he replied:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Yes, I do think the government’s going to have to come back to parliament and look again at defence spending, and I know many Conservative MPs think that as well.

I’d also say the government at the moment is proposing to cut a further 10,000 or so from our armed services and I think they’re wrong to do that and I would call on them not to do it.

But obviously I think there is now a clamour for the government to come back to parliament and to look again at defence spending and the defence strategy, frankly.

• He said the BP profits announced today showed that Labour’s proposed windfall tax on energy companies was the “right approach”.

• He said Labour has “real wind in our sails” ahead of the local elections on Thursday. Asked what success would look like for Labour, Starmer replied:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We want to hold seats where we’ve already got them, and we want to make gains where we can.

I’m conscious that we’ve got to earn every vote, I’m taking nothing for granted. What I can tell you is we’ve got thousands of fantastic activists across the country making the positive case for Labour. There’s a real wind in our sails at the moment.

Sometimes the key moments in big political interviews come in the asides. Politicians rehearse their answers to the obvious questions (or their non-answers), and that is one reason why modern interviews are often more tedious than ones conducted in the days before the term soundbite was invented (a point the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert makes powerfully here). But asides are (generally) unrehearsed, and there were two in this interview that stood out.

One was “Who’s Lorraine?” (see 9.21am).

The other, more serious, one came when Boris Johnson, was told about a pensioner, Elsie, being so poor she has to spend the day on buses using her freedom pass to avoid heating her home. The PM responded by going on about introducing the freedom pass when he was London mayor. Labour accuse him of being out of touch with the experience of people’s lives; this tone-deaf boast made their point for them.

Dave Hill, who runs the On London website, says that as well as being insensitive, on this point Johnson was also technically wrong.

There was a substantial takeaway in the interview too. It is normally assumed that Johnson is always keen to increase government spending, and only restrained by the more fiscally disciplined chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But in his comments on inflation, Johnson implied that the Treasury has won this argument.

Here are the main points from the interview.

• Johnson signalled that he was opposed to using benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. There was a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he said. When Susanna Reid put it to him that inflation could reach 10%, he replied: “Correct”. But he appeared to rule out bringing forward benefit increases to help. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We have a short-term hit caused by the spike in energy prices across the world. If we respond by driving up prices and costs across the board in this country, responding by the government stepping in and driving up inflation, that will hit everybody and that will mean that people’s interest rates on their mortgages go up, the cost of borrowing goes up, and we face an even worse problem ...

I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach. We have to help people like Elsie, like the families you mentioned, in the short term with huge sums of taxpayers’ cash, through local councils or through all the schemes that we’re doing. But the best answer is to have a strong economy and where we keep interest rates as low as is reasonable.

Benefits are uprated annually every year in April but, because the increase is pegged to the inflation rate the previous September, this year they have risen by well below the current rate of inflation. It is equivalent to a real-terms cut. Ministers have been urged to accelerate the next benefits rise to compensate, but Johnson seems to be firmly rejecting this option.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the PM’s comments could also be a hint that the government will for a second time abandon the triple lock, which is supposed to guarantee that pensions go up every year in line with earnings or inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher.

• Johnson failed to offer the prospect of any immediate, extra help for people struggling to pay their bills now. He said in general terms that there was “more that we can do”, but did not give details. His most awkward moment in the interview came when asked what advice he had for Elsie, a 77-year-old widow who’s monthly energy bills have gone up from £15 to £85. Johnson summed up the measures already taken by the government to help. Asked what Elsie should cut back on, Johnson said he did not want her to cut back on anything. But he did not float the prospect of further help with bills this year, and he said that what was important was to invest in energy now so that supply is secure for the medium and long term. Rather crassly, when told the Elsie spent her day using her freedom pass to travel on buses, to reduce the amount she has to spend on energy at home, Johnson said that as London mayor he introduced the 24-hour freedom pass. Reid asked if he thought that Elsie should be “grateful”.

• Johnson said he was opposed to a windfall tax on energy companies (Labour’s policy) because it would discourage investment. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy price prices lower for everybody.

• He admitted that he did not know the amount by which carer’s allowance is rising this year.

• He insisted that global factors were to blame for the rise in prices. “The cost of chickens is crazy,” he said, in a reference to food prices.

• He said that he had “no idea” whether her would face further fines over Partygate. Asked why he had not resigned, as other people have for breaking lockdown rules, he replied:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do and discharge the mandate that I was given, and I’m proud of what we have been doing.

01:21

• He insisted that he was “honest”. Referring to claims he misled MPs about Partygate, he said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you are talking about the statements I’ve made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently ... I was wrong and I’ve apologised for that.

• He admitted the UK could be giving visas to Ukrainian refugees more quickly. He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We have done a huge amount to help Ukrainian women and children in the area but we’re now seeing large numbers come to the UK.

So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘thank you’ - 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians.

Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.

Boris Johnson’s very final comment in his Good Morning Britain interview provided one of its most memorable takeaways. He implied he did not know who Lorraine Kelly was. (See 9am.)

It is not the worse thing a prime minister can say, but commentators, and opposition politicians, think it was a mistake.

This is from the i’s Paul Waugh.

This is from the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar.