Labour announces review of state pension age
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, has announced the next statutory government review into the retirement age as she launched a new pension commission amid concerns over retirement savings.
The commission is expected to provide recommendations for how to boost retirement income in 2027.
The state pension age is 66 and is already expected to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028.
Kendall said she was “under no illusions” about how difficult it would be to map out plans for pensions for the coming decades amid cost-of-living pressures.
Giving a speech in west London, she said:
Put simply, unless we act, tomorrow’s pensioners will be poorer than today’s, because people who are saving aren’t saving enough for their retirement.
And crucially, because almost half of the working age population isn’t saving anything for their retirement at all.
Liz Kendall giving a speech at the Coin Street neighbourhood Centre in London, introducing the next phase of the Pensions Review. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PAShare
Updated at 11.15 BST
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Liz Kendall’s move to resurrect the Pensions Commission (see post at 11.13) has been broadly welcomed by the pension industry as well as trade unions.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “Far too many people won’t have enough pension for a decent retirement, and too many – especially women, BME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] and disabled workers and the self-employed – are shut out of the workplace pension system altogether.”
As we reported earlier, the government has launched a review into the state pension age – now at 66 for men and women, but is likely to rise to 67 from next May – and has commissioned two independent reports on this.
Damon Hopkins of financial adviser Broadstone, said: “We would not be surprised to see an acceleration applied to the increase of the state pension age.
“The combination of an ageing population and the huge fiscal cost of the state pension would suggest that a change is inevitable. A lower or later state pension would, of course, double down the need for reform in the private savings landscape.”
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Updated at 12.34 BST
Keir Starmer to replace post-ministerial jobs watchdog with tougher regime
Pippa Crerar
Pippa Crerar is the Guardian’s political editor
Keir Starmer is to abolish the independent post-ministerial jobs watchdog, which has long been criticised as “toothless”, and – for the first time – financial penalties will be imposed on those who break the rules after leaving government.
As part of a standards overhaul that ministers hope will help improve public faith in the system, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) will be scrapped and a tougher regime introduced.
Under the changes, which come into force from October and which the Guardian first reported last month, former ministers and senior officials found to have seriously breached the rules will be asked to repay any severance payment received.
The ethics and integrity commission was first promised by Labour in 2021, with Keir Starmer suggesting it would draw a line under an era of ‘Tory sleaze’. Photograph: Leon Neal/Reuters
There is currently no obligation for them to follow the guidance issued by Acoba to ensure there are no conflicts of interest or that lobbying does not take place, and the body has no ability to issue punishments.
Boris Johnson, the Conservative former prime minister, breached the rules on taking jobs after government on three separate occasions without facing a proper sanction, leading to calls to beef up Acoba’s powers.
Eligibility for ministerial severance payments will also be restricted, with those who leave office following a serious breach of the ministerial code or having served less than six months forgoing them entirely. A new independent ethics and integrity commission (EIC) will be set up to oversee standards.
You can read the full story here:
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Updated at 12.12 BST
Tony Diver, the Telegraph’s associate political editor, is among the journalists at Nigel Farage’s conference. He has shared Reform’s policy costing document. The party estimates that the total cost of halving crime would be £17.4bn over a five-year parliament, with an annual cost of £3.48bn.
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Updated at 12.07 BST
Farage says we are facing ‘nothing short of societal collapse’ in parts of the country
Nigel Farage has been speaking at a press conference in London about what he has framed as “lawless Britain”. Here are some of the highlights of the conference, which you can watch at the top of the blog. The Reform leader did not cite specific evidence or data to back up many of his claims:
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He claims successive home secretaries have based claims that crimes in England and Wales are falling on “completely false data”. He says if you look at police recorded crimes there are “significant” rises in crime, particularly those against the person.
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Farage says we are facing “nothing short of societal collapse” in many parts of the country, with “people scared to go out to the shops” and to “let their kids out”.
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He says criminals and law-abiding citizens respect police less than they used to.
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He says low level offences – like phone snatching and shop lifting – are rife in London and not being prosecuted.
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Most people don’t even bother calling the police to report a crime because they know officers are unlikely to take any action, Farage said.
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Farage said that “nobody in London understands how close we are to civil disobedience” in Britain.
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He said that offenders convicted of more than three serious crimes should be “on a course towards life imprisonment”.
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Reform would put more knife arches in train stations and other transport hubs to clamp down on crime, Farage suggested.
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He said that every shoplifting offence would be prosecuted and every mobile phone theft investigated if Reform got into government at the next election.
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Farage indicated that the party would force Reform UK councils to take new prisons in their areas as part of the party’s plans to tackle crime.
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Farage said the UK’s retirement age will “inevitably” have to rise as life expectancy increases.
Reform leader Nigel Farage holds news conference – watch live Share
Updated at 12.25 BST
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said “stark” new analysis showed that:
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Over three million self-employed are not saving into a pension.
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Only one in four low earners in the private sector are saving into a pension.
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Only one in four of those from a Pakistani or Bangladeshi background are saving.
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The new analysis reveals a 48% gender pensions gap in private pension wealth between women and men, with a typical woman receiving just over £100 a week and a man receiving £200 from private pension income.
You can read the full press release from the DWP here.
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Labour announces review of state pension age
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, has announced the next statutory government review into the retirement age as she launched a new pension commission amid concerns over retirement savings.
The commission is expected to provide recommendations for how to boost retirement income in 2027.
The state pension age is 66 and is already expected to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028.
Kendall said she was “under no illusions” about how difficult it would be to map out plans for pensions for the coming decades amid cost-of-living pressures.
Giving a speech in west London, she said:
Put simply, unless we act, tomorrow’s pensioners will be poorer than today’s, because people who are saving aren’t saving enough for their retirement.
And crucially, because almost half of the working age population isn’t saving anything for their retirement at all.
Liz Kendall giving a speech at the Coin Street neighbourhood Centre in London, introducing the next phase of the Pensions Review. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PAShare
Updated at 11.15 BST
Ministers to revive Blair-era Pensions Commission to tackle savings crisis
Joanna Partridge
Joanna Partridge is a Guardian business reporter
The government is resurrecting the Pensions Commission, amid fears that a retirement crisis could mean today’s workers will be poorer in retirement than the current crop of pensioners.
The move by ministers to revive the landmark commission, established by Tony Blair’s government in 2002, comes as analysis shows that the income of pensioners is set to fall in the coming decades.
There are warnings that people who plan to retire in 2050 will receive £800 a year on average, or 8% less private pension income than those retiring today. Meanwhile, four in 10, or nearly 15 million people, are not saving enough for their retirement, according to analysis by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The revived Pensions Commission will examine the long-term future of the retirement system and make recommendations for change. Labour hopes its proposals, due to be reported in 2027, will gain cross-party support and be enacted beyond the current parliament.
Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for work and pensions, said she was relaunching the commission to “tackle the barriers that stop too many saving in the first place”.
You can read the full story here:
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Updated at 11.04 BST
We have some more reaction to Reform’s crime plans (see opening post for details).
The shadow environment minister, Robbie Moore has criticised the proposals as “headline politics” lacking in detail.
He told GB News this morning:
What we are absolutely not seeing, dare I say, from Reform, is the level of detail that provides that reassurance beyond headline politics.
It’s all very well coming out with headline politics and a narrative at a Westminster level, but dare I say, without a lack of understanding, without a lack of detail of how that will be implemented at a grassroots level that is going to be benefiting, all of those constituents that are being negatively impacted from a huge amount of antisocial behaviour that we are seeing, and law and order challenges that we are seeing, not only here in London, but right across the country.
Shortly after becoming prime minister last July, Keir Starmer said the state of the prison service in England and Wales his government had inherited from Rishi Sunak was “unforgiveable”, condeming previous Conservative administrations for failing to build enough new prisons as the prison population ballooned as a result of tougher sentences and court backlogs.
Labour has promised to “take back our streets” by halving rates of serious crime and has promised to reduce court backlogs, and hire more police officers (which could actually worsen the backlogs by creating more criminal cases …). To ease the prison overcrowding crisis, prisoners in England and Wales, including some serious offenders, will be eligible for release after serving a third of their sentence – if they behave well – under new reforms.
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Government launches Orgreave inquiry, 40 years after clashes at miners’ strike
In other news, the government has announced that a statutory inquiry into the violent confrontation at Orgreave during the 1984 miners’ strike will be established later this year.
The inquiry, expected to launch in the autumn, will investigate the events surrounding clashes at the Orgreave Coking Plant in South Yorkshire on 18 June 1984, which caused 120 injuries.
In total, 95 picketers were arrested and initially charged with riot and violent disorder, but all charges were later dropped after evidence was discredited.
The inquiry will be statutory with powers to compel people to provide information where necessary, the Home Office said.
Joe Rollin, from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), founded by strike veterans and activists in 2012, who has been calling for an inquiry for over a decade, said he was “cautiously elated” by the news.
Police officers pushing against striking miners outside the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotheram. Photograph: PAShareHelena Horton
Helena Horton, an environment reporter for the Guardian, explains how the government has reacted to the much-anticipated final report from the Independent Water Commission. Here is a snippet from her story:
The government is expected to adopt the recommendation for England and Wales made in the review it commissioned from Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, which was released on Monday.
Critics have said Ofwat has presided over a culture of underinvestment in infrastructure and financial mismanagement by water companies since its creation in 1989, when the industry was privatised.
Thames Water, the most troubling case for the government and the UK’s largest water company, is loaded with £20bn in debt and struggling to stave off financial collapse into a special administration, a form of temporary nationalisation.
Cunliffe’s review suggested a new regulator, with powers to “direct”, or take control of, failing water firms.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Cunliffe said Ofwat had “failed” because “for many years it didn’t have the powers”. He added: “To be blunt about it, it was directed by government to take a light touch to regulation.”
Cunliffe said the complexities of the water industry required “a broader, less monolithic and a less desk-based approach to economic regulation and to the oversight of companies’ performance against their licences”.
Emma Hardy, the minister for water and flooding, said the government would spend the summer examining how many of the report’s 88 recommendations to adopt.
A major review into the water sector in England and Wales says the regulator Ofwat should be scrapped.
Sir John Cunliffe, author of the report, tells @JustinOnWeb Ofwat was ‘encouraged by government to take a light-touch approach to regulations’.
#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) July 21, 2025Share
Updated at 09.56 BST
Major review into England and Wales’ water sector says regulator should be scrapped
Ofwat, the water regulator for England and Wales, should be overhauled and replaced by an “integrated” watchdog for the industry, according to an independent review of oversight of the sector led by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe.
The report, commissioned amid mounting public anger about pollution, rising bills and executive pay, says Ofwat should be replaced by a single body in England and another one in Wales.
The report also advises removing the regulatory roles of the Environment Agency and Natural England, which monitor the sector’s impact on nature, such as companies illegally dumping sewage into waterways.
Instead, a “joined-up” and “powerful” single integrated water regulator should be established, according to the recommendations.
The report also proposes stronger regulation on abstraction, sludge, drinking water standards and water supply.
You can read more on what was contained within the major review in our business live blog.
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Farage’s plans to reform criminal justice system criticised ahead of speech
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics.
Nigel Farage is to lay out plans that he claims would end all early release schemes for sex offenders and serious violent offenders if he were to become prime minister.
In a speech in London later today, the Reform UK leader will also reportedly promise to build 30,000 new prison places to tackle the overcrowding crisis, appoint 30,000 more police officers within five years and deport 10,400 foreign offenders currently in British jails.
He has not said how these policies will be funded and will likely face questions on how he would negotiate return agreements for foreign offenders.
Some of his promises – like sending some of the most serious criminals to overseas jails, including in El Salvador – will also likely face serious legal obstacles if they were ever realised.
Nigel Farage is set to make a speech about the criminal justice system in a speech later today. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
Farage, whose Reform party is leading many polls, was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as having said:
Reform UK will be the toughest party on law and order this country has ever seen. We will cut crime in half. We will take back control of our streets, we will take back control of our courts and prisons.
We are expecting more details on Reform’s plans at around 11am. Reform’s attempt to woo voters with a tough on crime message stands in contrast to the proposals recently suggested by Sir Brian Leveson, a former senior judge who was asked by the Lord Chancellor to come up with ways to reduce the backlog of cases in the criminal courts.
Recommendations in the report included increased use of out-of-court resolutions, greater use of rehabilitation programmes and health intervention programmes and increasing the maximum reduction for entering a guilty plea at the first opportunity from 33% to 40%.
Diana Johnson, the policing minister, said that Reform is not serious about implementing real changes to the criminal justice system as the party “voted to try to block measures to crack down on knife crime, antisocial behaviour, shop theft and child sexual abuse”.
“They should focus more on practical solutions to support our police, combat crime, deliver justice for victims of crime, rather than chasing headlines, spouting slogans and trying to divide communities,” she added.
Here is the agenda for the day.
09.45am: Sir Jon Cunliffe, Independent Water Commission chair, to give speech.
11am: Nigel Farage to make a speech in London on the criminal justice system.
13:00pm: Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign press conference in Sheffield.
14.30pm: Keir Starmer to appear at the Liaison Committee.
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Updated at 11.07 BST