Burnham vows crackdown on ‘rip-off’ business practices to ease cost of living - as Tories claim he's 'run out of ideas'

Andy Burnham has promised a series of measures to tackle the cost of living, including a ban on fake discounts and making it easier for people to escape unwanted subscriptions, Aletha Adu reports.

Burnham has written about his plans in an article for the Guardian.

These two announcements are extensions of measures already in the pipeline under Keir Starmer.

The opposition parties are not impressed. For the Tories, shadow chancellor Mel Stride said:

Andy Burnham has already run out of ideas.

The cost of living didn’t become a problem last week, so you have to ask why it has taken Labour so long to enact legislation passed by the previous government.

Stride was referring to the fact that the new rules making it easier to cancel subscriptions involve implementing measures originally in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 passed when the Tories were in office.

And, for the Lib Dems, Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader and shadow Treasury spokesperson, said:

We Liberal Democrats have long called for stronger consumer protections and we want to see the government go further.

If the new PM is serious about this, he should introduce strengthened protections against rogue traders, make energy bills fairer by giving everyone a discount on their essential usage, and clamp down on the big supermarkets’ unfair shrinkflation tactics.

Labour says Farage has 'no serious answers' to prisons crisis, as Reform UK proposes jailing foreign offenders in El Salvador

Good morning. Andy Burnham has said Middlemarch is his favourite novel, but he may not remember George Eliot’s line about the genial businessman Mr Vincy who “blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister”. Burnham only took over in No 10 three weeks ago today. But already he is learning that Eliot had a point about the constraints of office.

As PM, Burnham became responsible for the prisoner early release scheme due to come into force in September, which is hugely controversial because it will lead to killers, rapists and sex offenders being released early. Burnham immediately said he was “pausing” the scheme pending a rethink, and early last week he announced he was changing the rules to make the scheme more restrictive. Explaining the move in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Burnham said that he “wanted to go even further” but that the plan he was announcing “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do.” He added: “I know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months.”

But if he thought that would quell public and media anger about the plan, he was wrong. The new rules won’t affect two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who will still get early release under the scheme, and Burnham is now reportedly considering a further crackdown to ensure they are included (which, if it goes ahead, would undermine the ‘nothing more he could do’ claim in the Telegraph last week). Even if Burnham manages to exempt the Harper killers, it won’t be long before media organisations start focusing on other emotive stories about criminals being released early. The Daily Express has an example this morning.

And this morning the Daily Mail has opened up another line of attack on the policy, highlighting Tory claims that the early release scheme will lead to “around 500 added sex offences, nearly 1,800 violent crimes and just under 36,000 thefts before the end of this parliament in 2029”. The Ministry of Justice has dismissed the report as “highly speculative” and based on “an inaccurate method of calculating the impact of sentencing reforms”. It says: “Without [the early release scheme], we risk prisons reaching capacity and collapsing. If that happened, police could not make arrests, courts could not remand offenders and there would be unchecked criminality on our streets.”

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is now leaping in with his own alleged solution. Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders “to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo”. In a post on social media, Farage is highlighting a Sun story saying “following initial conversations with the El Salvador government about renting prison spots, party chairman Lee Anderson will lead a team of officials for a visit later this year”. Farage is also proposing building “Nightingale prisons” to create extra spaces. He will be giving more details at a press conference later with Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson.

In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Dan Bloom and Megan McElroy highlight some of the obvious problems with this.

Yusuf [says] Reform will deport “all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons.” Of the 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales, nearly a third are on remand, i.e. they haven’t been convicted of a crime yet. A Reform official confirmed foreign nationals will only come in scope of the party’s scheme if and when they’re convicted. Then there are questions about what’d happen after inmates in Kosovo finish their sentence (Reform would put a lifetime ban on returning to the U.K.). Or matters like El Salvador’s human rights record — though Playbook can imagine how Farage will respond to that one.

Commenting on the Reform proposals, a Labour spokesperson said:

Keeping the public safe is and always will be Labour’s first priority. The government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we’re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.

Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse. This would result in a free for all for dangerous and violent offenders, including murderers and rapists. Nigel Farage and Reform simply can’t be trusted to keep Britain safe.

Burnham is back from holiday this week, and is due to start a summer tour of Britain soon. But we have not been told to expect him out today.

So there are only two items on the agenda.

11am: Farage and Yusuf hold their press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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