THE BIG STORIES
Labour to unveil benefits cuts | Israeli attacks Gaza | Stranded astronauts Returning Home

📣 UK Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is expected to tighten the rules of Personal Independence Payments later today. This will be the Labour government’s most controversial move yet, likely to reduce or end benefits for people who need some help washing themselves, preparing food or remembering to go to the toilet.

The changes come in the face of deep opposition from senior members of Starmer’s cabinet, including Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband. But Downing Street will argue there is “a moral and economic case” for deep reform of the UK’s benefit system, which will save £6 billion. (Guardian) (BBC) (Telegraph)

• How will Kendall’s moves impact in Scotland? It’s complicated, explains Douglas Fraser at the BBC. And nearly 14% of the Scottish working population is on some form of disability benefit, versus 9% in England and Wales. (BBC)

📣 The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended overnight after weeks of fruitless negotiations for the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Palestinian health authorities claimed at least 235 people were killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, including children. Israel said the strikes would continue and raised the prospect of troops resuming fighting. (Reuters) (New York Times £)

📣 They’re finally headed home: those stranded Nasa astronauts - Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore - are finally heading home after nine months in space. They had only intended to go to space for eight days in June last year, but technical issues meant their Boeing Starliner returned home without them. They’re due to splash down around 10pm tonight. (BBC)

+++ COMING UP: Two Spring Statement paid subscriber specials +++

📣 Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver that hotly-anticipated Spring Statement next week.

The statement will have ramifications across the economy, from benefits to devolved spending here in Scotland, for years to come. The political impact could be defining for the Starmer government.

To help you quickly understand the statement's content and reaction to it, I’m planning two special subscriber-only editions: one at midday on Sunday, March 23rd, 2025, and the other at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26th, 2025.

The Sunday newsletter will round up the background, the early leaks and commentary. The Wednesday edition will bring you key points and analysis of the announcement.

Both will feature The Early Line’s unique broad perspective on analysis and reaction from across the media and political spectrum. I’ll also draw on my own political contacts to give you a view you won’t get elsewhere.

Both will be valuable if you need to brief others on the statement, or just want to cut through the noise and understand the implications yourself.

→ They will only be sent to The Early Line’s paid members. To receive yours, upgrade your membership now.

IDEAS
How do you solve a problem like Britain’s welfare bill?

🗣️Leave benefits alone, you might argue: especially when the motive for fiddling around with them is saving money, rather than a high moral purpose like the dignity of work, or better care for the long-term sick (even if some will argue it is).

But, like it or not, today Keir Starmer’s government will announce a far-reaching welfare overhaul because the country needs the £6 billion it’ll save, and the tax revenue all those people working will raise. The Early Line of March 6 had a primer on this, for readers who have joined since.

The Economist (£) sets out the problem of what it calls “Britain’s worklessness disaster”: “Nearly 3m Britons aged between 16 and 64 are not working because of poor health, up from just over 2m in 2019. That is a misery for them and a mystery to economists. No other rich country has seen a similar rise.”

There are lots of causes, the newspaper says, including a big increase in reports of poor mental health. They also include the techological: “TikTok is full of tutorials walking would-be applicants through pip interviews, listing key things to mention -struggling with cooking, forgetting to take medication - to maximise the likely award.”

And once the welfare system has deemed someone ill, “the label tends to stick”.

But Fraser Nelson - who’s written a lot on the welfare system’s problems - warns on his Substack: “Taking away payments from the genuinely disabled is the worst place to start,” he writes. But “the tools at the DWP’s disposal are crude. Any reform, no matter how well-intentioned, will hit people it should not. Someone living with a genuinely crippling condition could be pushed below the breadline.”

The problem will be familiar to any business manager charged with finding savings by their finance department. The need for savings is now - not years down the line - so there’s no time or space for more enlightened or gentle plans.

Liz Kendall, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, needs to make savings that can be “scored” by the Treasury now. The easiest way to do what she’ll announce today, and raid PIPs (money paid to help disabled people with living costs), but that’s tough territory: claimed by the most vulnerable in society, cuts will cause suffering and great uproar. As Nelson points out, “A few of these cases can be well publicised and cause uproar: you get into I, Daniel Blake territory quite quickly.”

Reducing the flow of people in to benefits is the best place to start, suggests Nelson, then increasing the flow out of benefits through re-starting reassessment, which was inexplicably stopped during the Conservative government.

The stakes are high. Also on Substack, George Eaton says this week “will be a defining one” as Starmer attempts to keep his electoral coalition together. “But No 10 insists it has a plan – both for delivery and for re-election,” he writes.

That plan will start to emerge later today.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Police are struggling to catch “e-bike neds” terrorising an estate in Clydebank, officers have admitted, in a problem that’s being repeated across the country. The Scottish Police Federation is calling for more support. (Sun)

📣 An investigation has been launched into historic claims of sexual abuse at a secondary school in the Borders, believed to be Galashiels Academy. Police have urged victims to come forward “regardless of the passage of time”. (STV)

📣 Author Darren McGarvey says private education should be abolished, claiming the social effects of fee-paying schools are “not just unfair, but actually a national security threat”. He made his comments as part of a wider interview on Holy Cross High School’s podcast, The Reading Cafe - the Herald writes it up. (The Herald)

AROUND THE UK

📣 Performing arts leaders from across the UK have joined the chorus of protest over the government’s plans to let AI companies use their work, with permission or compensation, to train their systems. (Guardian)

📣 A former boarding school housemaster and scout leader has been convicted of 97 offences between the late 1960s and mid 1990s, 30 years after he fled to Thailand. There, he’d become a well-known local figure under a stolen identity. (Sky News)

📣 An utterly astonishing story: bogus workmen in Middlesbrough are digging up pavements and apparently re-routing (live) mains electricity to supply cannabis farms “run by their Albanian overlords”. There’s video, and despite their high-vis vests it doesn’t look like they know what they’re doing. (Daily Mail)

📣 John “Paddy” Hemingway, the last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, has died. He was 105. (BBC)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will talk today about that proposed ceasefire in Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensky is unconvinced Russia wants peace. (AP)

🌎 Canada is thinking twice about a big order for fighter jets, saying it relies too heavily on the US for its national security. (Reuters)

🌎 A delivery driver has won $50m in damages after suffering horrific burns from hot tea spilled into his lap at a Starbucks drive-through. (AP)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 There are deep concerns for the future of Ferguson Marine after it missed out on an order to supply seven ferries to Cal Mac. The Herald reports the yard had assumed it would win the contract, making it an integral part of its business plan to 2029. (The Herald)

💰 Scotland’s hoteliers are seeing “soaring” costs outpace revenue growth, new research shows. (The Scotsman)

💰 Tesla stock might be tanking since Elon Musk entered politics, but the woman he picked to chair the company - Robyn Denholm - is doing just fine: the former accountant just cashed in half a billion dollars in company stock. She’s the best-paid chair of any public company in the US, having earned $682m since joining the Tesla board in 2014. (Reuters)