UK citizens to get visa-free travel to China after Starmer talks with Xi
Keir Starmer has secured a deal on visa-free travel to China for UK citizens during his visit to Beijing, PA Media reports. PA says:
Those visiting the country for less than 30 days will no longer need a visa under the agreement, Downing Street has announced.
It will apply to those travelling to China for business and as tourists and brings the rules for UK visitors in line with those from 50 other countries including France and Germany.
The change will not come into effect immediately, but Beijing is understood to have committed to unilateral visa-free entry for UK citizens with a start date to be confirmed.
British passport-holders currently need a visa to enter mainland China.
Starmer said: “As one of the world’s economic powerhouses, businesses have been crying out for ways to grow their footprints in China.
“We’ll make it easier for them to do so, including via relaxed visa rules for short-term travel, supporting them to expand abroad, all while boosting growth and jobs at home.”
Key events
Unite criticises goverment as ‘wrongheaded’ as it waters down plan for workers to get full control of how tips allocated to staff
The Unite union has criticised the government for abandoning a proposal to ensure that, when tips are distributed to workers, staff get full control over who gets what.
The last government passed a law saying that tips should be passed on fully to workers. But employers were still able to decide which workers were included in the group getting a share of the money.
Labour promised to address this, and the rules have been changed in the Employment Rights Act. But, while Labour originally promised that workers would get full control of tip allocation, that pledge has been watered down.
As Tom Belger revealed in a story for LabourList, the government diclosed the shift in a Q&A in a policy paper explaining how the new law will work. It says:
Under the headline “Why are you not handing full control of tip allocation to workers, as you pledged?”, the document says:
Employers will be legally required to consult with their workers when developing their policy on tipping. This must represent a genuine consultation – not simply a paper exercise – something which will be ensured by the new right for workers to view a summary of the views expressed within it.
Direct worker control of the tipping distribution, without the guardrails of consultation and accompanying statutory and non-statutory guidance, could risk certain groups of workers being disadvantaged by a ‘tyranny of the majority’ or even indirect discrimination against workers with certain protected characteristics, while such an approach could also be impractical to enforce.
Commenting on the change, Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary (whose first job was as a waitress), said:
The government’s fact sheet is wrongheaded and offensive to hospitality workers, it needs to be withdrawn and redrafted.
Using language such “the tyranny of majority” of workers, totally fails to appreciate the employment conditions of hospitality workers. The dangers of discrimination and unfairness will come from imposing a tips policy without the workers’ voice.
The suggestion that vulnerable workers would be disadvantaged by a workers’ tips policy is simply insulting. Many workers in front of house positions are low paid, young, women and migrant workers.
Yesterday a reader asked if More in Common took into account that, by the next election, the voting age will have been reduced from 18 to 16 (assuming the government legislation goes through) when it produces its seat forecasts from its MRP polls. The answer came back, no.
The latest More in Common MRP poll suggests Reform UK is on course to win a majority of more than 100. It is projecting Reform on 381 seats, Labour 85, Conservatives 70, SNP 40, Lib Dems 35 and the Greens 9.
Prompted by the question, More in Common’s Jack Dibdin crunched the numbers to see what might happen to these figures if they included 16 and 17-year-olds voting. He says the results would be different in eight seats, the numbers suggest. He says:
The last round of census data suggested there were only about ~1.5 million 16-17 year olds living in the UK. Of course those people were already of age to vote by the time of the 2024 election, but assuming the number is not too far off for current 12-13 year olds and given average turnout rates (and we know younger people tend to vote at lower rates than average), the reform would only be adding around ~800-900,000 active voters to the electorate (compared to the ~28 million that voted in 2024).
Given that these voting intention of these would be voters is likely to be divided between many parties (as in the country as a whole) any given party may only obtain an advantage of a couple of hundred votes on average in each constituency.
Here is the list of the eight seats where, on the basis of these projections, votes at 16 would change the result. Overall, Labour and the Greens would gain two seats each, the Tories would lose two seats, and Reform UK and the SNP would both end up one seat down.
Back to China, and the UK has agreed a tariff reduction deal for Scotch whisky, Gina Davidson, LBC’s Scottish political editor, reports.
BREAKING: UK govt has signed a new tariff deal for whisky with China – Scotland’s 10th largest market for the amber nectar by value. It will see tariffs halve – from 10% to 5% Believed to be worth £250m over 5 years for exporters
MoJ no longer expecting prisons to run out of places due to Sentencing Act reforms, MPs told
Ministers are no longer forecasting a chronic shortage of prison places – but the “margin for error is slim”, MPs have been told.
Jake Richards, a justice minister, said the figures in the lastest annual statement on prison capacity showed that government decisions to reduce prison overcrowding were having an impact.
He told MPs:
The figures today do show that without the action this government took, opposed every step of the way by the Conservatives and Reform, our law and order system today would be in crisis – criminals allowed to roam the streets, victims failed.
For the first time in a very long time, we are no longer forecasting a chronic deficit of prison places.
When the impact of this government’s landmark sentencing reforms is taken into account, supply is now expected to keep pace with demand in our central projected scenario.
This is real progress but let me be absolutely clear, this is not the time for complacency. The system remains under considerable pressure. The margin for error is slim and the work to stabilise it is far from finished.
This chart shows what the forecast is for the number of prison places available up to 2032 (the orange line), the number of people likely to be in prison needing those places (the thick blue line) and the number of prisoners there would have been without the Sentencing Act reforms (the dotted blue line).
Reform UK urged to suspend council byelection candidate accused of antisemitic and xenophobic comments
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Nigel Farage is facing calls to suspend a Reform UK candidate in an upcoming council byelection who has been accused of making xenophobic and anti semitic comments.
Mike Manning, who is running to join Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, has been accused of making the comments on X as recently as November.
“Jews, Muslims.. There is something about circumcision that goes to their heads,” an verified X account in his name tweeted last year.
Other offensive tweets by the same account included a reference to Jizya, a poll tax levied on non-Muslims in exchange for protection.
“We already pay the Jizya tax, it’s called universal credits. They are all on it,” the account tweeted.
The controversy comes after the Reform UK leader of Staffordshire county council, Ian Cooper, was removed from the party last month after being accused of making racist comments on social media.
The Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, has written to the Reform leader to call for Manning’s suspension, accusing the candidate of directing “sickening insults at Jewish and Muslim communities.”
Asked if Manning, a former soldier who later worked in IT, had been suspended, a Reform spokesperson said that a disciplinary investigation has been opened.
Manning is standing in a 19 February byelection for the Zetland ward of Redcar and Cleveland borough council, where no party has overall control but where Labour is the largest.
No 10 says PM still committed to welfare reform – but does not deny report saying king’s speech won’t contain any benefits bill
Downing Street has said that Keir Starmer remains committed to welfare reform – despite the Times reporting that a welfare reform bill won’t feature in the king’s speech in May.
Asked about the report at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:
Final decisions on the contents of the king’s speech haven’t been taken yet, but we are getting on with fixing the broken welfare system we inherited in order to get Britain working.
That includes reforms to Motability and universal credit, and launching the youth guarantee.
We’ve also commissioned Alan Milburn to look at how we can tackle the number of young people out of work to address the root causes that hold people back, and launched the Timms review co-produced with disabled people and their representative organisations to make sure Pip [the personal independence payment] is fit and fair for the future, and we’ll set out any further legislative plans in due course.
Given that the Timms review into Pip is not due to report until the autumn, ministers were not expected to be producing legislation relating to that this spring. But, as Max Kendix points out in his Times story, there are other welfare reform plans due to be implemented, including a proposed new “unemployment insurance”, a beefed-up, contributory, time-limited unemployment benefit.
In his story, Kendix says:
Government sources stressed that discussion about legislation was still continuing, and that even if welfare reform was not included in the king’s speech a bill could still be introduced at a later date in the session.
One minister said: “Clearly any welfare reform is going to be very difficult with the back benches, and the closer you get to a general election the less you want to do the difficult stuff. We’ve got to remember that largely the public wants to see welfare reform, and we do need to show delivery on that. This is not showing that reform is a priority.”
Farage attack on high street Turkish barber shops is dog-whistle racism, minister says
Nigel Farage’s attack on Turkish barber shops amounts to dog-whistle racism without a credible plan to fix struggling high streets across the country, Miatta Fahnbulleh, the devolution, faith and communities minister, has said. Richard Partington has the story.
UK citizens to get visa-free travel to China after Starmer talks with Xi
Keir Starmer has secured a deal on visa-free travel to China for UK citizens during his visit to Beijing, PA Media reports. PA says:
Those visiting the country for less than 30 days will no longer need a visa under the agreement, Downing Street has announced.
It will apply to those travelling to China for business and as tourists and brings the rules for UK visitors in line with those from 50 other countries including France and Germany.
The change will not come into effect immediately, but Beijing is understood to have committed to unilateral visa-free entry for UK citizens with a start date to be confirmed.
British passport-holders currently need a visa to enter mainland China.
Starmer said: “As one of the world’s economic powerhouses, businesses have been crying out for ways to grow their footprints in China.
“We’ll make it easier for them to do so, including via relaxed visa rules for short-term travel, supporting them to expand abroad, all while boosting growth and jobs at home.”
What McFadden told MPs to explain why Waspi women not getting compensation
This is what Pat McFadden told MPs about why he had decided to stick to the decision not to pay compensation to the Waspi women.
We agree with the ombudsman that women did not suffer any direct financial loss from the delay [in letters being sent out about the state pension age rising]. However, the question is about the impact of the delay in sending these letters.
The evidence taken as a whole, including from 2007, suggests the majority of 1950s born women would not have read and recalled the contents of an unsolicited pensions letter, even if it had been sent earlier.
Furthermore, the evidence also suggests that those less knowledgable about pensions, the very women who most needed to engage with a letter, and where it might have made a difference, were the least likely to read it.
So an earlier letter would have been unlikely to make a difference to what the majority of women knew about their own state pension age.
Indeed, the 2007 report concluded automatic pension forecast letters only had a negligible impact on pension knowledge and planning, and the department stopped sending them.
The evidence shows that the vast majority of 1950s born women already knew the state pension age was increasing thanks to a wide range of public information, including through leaflets, education campaigns, information in GP surgeries on TV, radio, cinema and online.
To specifically compensate only those women who suffered injustice would require a scheme that could reliably verify the individual circumstances of millions of women. That includes whether someone genuinely didn’t know their state pension age was changing, and whether they would have read and remembered a letter from many years ago and acted differently. It would not be practical to set up a compensation scheme to assess conclusive the answers to these questions.
As for a flat rate scheme, that would cost up to £10.3bn and would simply not be right or fair given it would be paid to the vast majority who were aware of the changes.
I’ve heard calls for compensation aimed at lower income pensioners, and we have focused in the last 12 months on raising pension credit uptake.
But in the context of this decision, a scheme focused on any single income group still doesn’t specify who may or may not have suffered injustice.
Responding to Garnier, McFadden says there is no change to government policy on the triple lock. He says he was just quoting OBR figures in his statement.
Tories say, if Labour believed Waspi women suffered injustice, it would have found money to compensate them
Mark Garnier, a shadow Treasury minister, is responding on behalf of the Tories.
He says, like many MPs, he has been contacted by many women about this.
He says when Labour were in opposition they did promise compensation.
And if they really believed that the women had suffered an injustice, they could have found the money, he says. He claims the government has found £35bn for the Chagos Islands deal.
He says McFadden implied that the Tories were at fault. But the maladministration happened when Labour were in office, he said.
He says, in his statement, McFadden said that the triple lock would mean pension incomes rising by up to £2,100 by the end of this parliament. He says that implies there is a cap on the triple lock, and he asks if that is correct.
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