At noon, Prime Minister Keir Starmer will face off with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch in the Commons, for the first time since his extensive welfare reforms were unveiled.
Wednesday 19 March 2025 08:17, UK
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Sky News’ Sam Coates and Politico’s Anne McElvoy present their guide to the day ahead in British politics.
Keir Starmer’s team spend the day trying to work out how the Trump-Putin phone call really went down. Could the UK end up sending more military support to Ukraine before any pause in fighting?
The idea of an ice hockey game apparently came up on the call – Anne has an important history lesson on that.
Around Westminster, it’s PMQs but the Labour charm offensive to convince its backbenchers of its welfare reforms goes on.
The Labour government has unveiled a raft of plans for changes to the UK’s welfare system, which it says will save the UK a total of £5bn.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall detailed the government’s planned reforms to the welfare and benefits system in the House of Commons.
She made clear Labour’s motivation, pointing to the sheer cost of long-term sickness and disability benefits for working-age people, which has risen by £20bn since the pandemic and is forecast to hit £70bn over the next five years.
Below, our political reporters Faith Ridler and Alexandra Rogers look at all the changes Labour plan to make to the welfare system.
Stephen Timms, the work and pensions minister, is now joining Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast to discuss yesterday’s welfare reforms.
He was asked whether the UK’s economic situation forced these changes, which will save the government around £5bn per year.
“I think the changes needed to be made anyway,” Timms says.
He says £12bn was spent on personal independence payments a year before the pandemic – it’s now up to £22bn and will reach more than £30bn over the next five years “if something wasn’t done”.
“I think whatever the fiscal situation, we would have had to make these changes,” he says.
‘A broken system’
If that’s the case, why weren’t these welfare reforms in Labour’s election manifesto?
Timms says: “We did say in the manifesto that we wanted to bring forward a plan to fix a broken system.”
He insists the changes Labour are making “are the right changes”.
“The previous government made lots of changes which did a great deal of damage,” he says.
Our political editor Beth Rigby previously asked Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall if the welfare reforms were simply a way to plug a “black hole” in public finances.
Kendall also claimed she would be reforming the welfare system “whatever the fiscal position”.
The rising sickness and disability benefits bill is “devastating” for the public finances and has “wreaked a terrible human cost”, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
The prime minister was writing in The Times shortly after his government announced a £5bn cut to welfare.
With their raft of reforms, the government hope to bring more working age people back into jobs – and save the taxpayer billions of pounds.
Moves include tightening the eligibility for personal independence payments (PIP), a benefit aimed at helping those with disability or long-term illness with increased living costs.
‘Indefensible’
Starmer said the 2.8 million working age people out of work due to long-term sickness is a “damning indictment of the Conservative record” on welfare.
He added: “The result is devastating for the public finances. By 2030 we are projected to spend £70bn a year on working-age incapacity and disability benefits alone.
“But more importantly it has wreaked a terrible human cost. Young people shut out of the labour market at a formative age. People with complex long-term conditions, written off by a single assessment.
“People who want to return to work, yet can’t access the support they need. All this is happening at scale, and it is indefensible.”
Labour was the party that created the welfare state. Now it is intent on cutting it back.
And in Liz Kendall, the government has found a Labour work and pensions secretary clearly entirely comfortable in going harder on benefit cuts than any of her Conservative predecessors since 2015, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
When I ask her about that, she is unrepentant and unfazed by colleagues’ criticisms.
“I am going to be a Labour work and pensions secretary who fixes a broken system,” she said, “who says to people who’ve been written off and denied chances and choices that we believe in them…
“I am cross, because I’ve seen in my own constituency people written off to a life that is not the life they hoped for themselves or their children or their families.
“I want to fix it. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”
Exclusive by Tamara Cohen, political correspondent
Teenagers are routinely seeing inappropriate violent or sexual content, “doom-scrolling” and being contacted by strangers online, according to an exclusive survey for Sky News.
More than 1,000 young people aged 14 to 17 in Darlington schools told us what they see and experience online when looking at apps commonly used by teenagers.
Their answers raise troubling questions about whether government and tech companies are doing enough to protect children online amid a growing debate among parents and campaigners about how far to restrict children’s access to smartphones and social media.
Of those surveyed, 40% spent at least six hours a day online – the equivalent of a school day. One in five said they spent upwards of eight hours a day on their phones.
Some of the findings in the under-16 group were striking, including that 75% had been contacted by strangers through social media and online gaming.
Good morning!
Welcome back to the Politics Hub on Wednesday, 19 March.
Fallout will likely continue today after the government announced a raft of welfare reforms on Tuesday, set to save the government £5bn per year.
Among the changes were an update to eligibility criteria for personal independence payments, and an uplift in the basic rate of universal credit.
Sky News will hear from Labour and the Conservatives shortly to discuss the reforms, which have divided opinion across the board.
Also today, our political correspondent Tamara Cohen has revealed that teenagers are routinely seeing inappropriate violent or sexual content, “doom-scrolling” and being contacted by strangers online.
Over half (55%) of the Year 10 students, aged 14 to 15, surveyed claimed to have seen sexually explicit or violent content that was inappropriate for their age while online.
At noon, Prime Minister Keir Starmer will face off with Kemi Badenoch in the Commons, for the first time since his welfare reforms were unveiled.
We’ll bring you live updates in the Politics Hub.
We’ll be discussing all of that and more with…
Work and pensions minister Stephen Timms at 7.15am
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride at 8.15am
Follow along for the very latest political news.
Thank you for joining us for live coverage of today’s events in Westminster.
It was a blockbuster day, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch announcing new policy plans this morning, and the government then announce cuts and changes to benefits.
Use the key points above for all the main things you need to know, and scroll down for full coverage and analysis.
And if you missed tonight’s edition of Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge – fear not, you can watch it in full below.
Join us again from 6am for the very latest from Westminster.
By Becky Johnson, social affairs correspondent
On a hilltop above Ashfield, a sculpture of a miner watches over the local towns.
In a part of Nottinghamshire with a proud mining heritage, almost a third of working-age people are now economically inactive.
It’s places like this where they’re bracing for the impact of welfare reform.
A group of young people meet here in a local park, before the government unveiled its benefit crackdown designed to save £5bn. They’re among the UK’s almost a million so-called NEETS – people aged 16-24 not in employment, education or training.
Holly, 17, had to drop out of college for having too much time off and explained she has a long-term condition that makes her sick, as well as autism and ADHD.
“I’m still living with my parents but I’m also on PIP,” she says.
She’s concerned that the government is tightening eligibility for PIP – personal independence payments – as part of cuts to sickness and disability benefits.
“It shouldn’t happen because I practically live off of it,” she says. “I use it to get around – transport – because I struggle to get buses and trains and stuff so I get Ubers a lot which can be quite pricey.”
She accepts that as a PIP claimant, she can work and says she’s been looking for jobs. “I do want to work,” she insists.
“It’s just the fact that I don’t know if I could work full time with it, and because I’m off sick a lot, I just don’t know if I’d be able to hold a job.”
The prime minister has spoken to Ukraine’s president this evening following the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin this afternoon, Downing Street has said.
We have been sent a readout of the call – but it is not the lengthiest one we’ve ever head.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “They discussed progress President Trump had made towards a ceasefire in talks with Russia.
“President Zelenskyy updated on the situation on the frontline and the prime minister reiterated the UK’s unwavering support.”
Trump has said that the call was “very good and productive”, and said they “agreed to an immediate ceasefire on all energy and infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and, ultimately, an end to this very horrible war”.
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