Good morning and welcome to our UK politics live blog. Prime minister Andy Burnham is in Scotland today where he is expected to invite Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, to collaborate on devolving decision-making powers away from both Westminster and Holyrood and pushing control further down to Scottish regions and towns.
The newswires have reported an extract of his speech, which he is expected to deliver in Lanarkshire around midday:
During my first week in office, I told the first minister that I wanted to work with him to spread opportunities to communities across Scotland’s regions and cities.
Through No10 North, we are rewiring the state and I want to make sure regions in Scotland are fully part of this.
This is me making an offer to the Scottish government. With us working together, there is no limit to what we can achieve for the Scottish people.”
Burnham’s visit coincides with the SNP’s annual party conference in Aberdeen, which the party has said will launch the biggest pro-independence campaign since the 2014 referendum.
The prime minister has repeatedly ruled out another independence referendum, but he has been accused of hypocrisy by the SNP for proposing to reopen the debate on Brexit and re-examining the UK’s relationship with the EU.
“That hypocrisy is there for all to see and I think the Scottish electorate will take a pretty dim view of it,” SNP minister Stephen Flynn told the Press Association.
He added: “Mr Burnham wants power pushed out of Westminster – so do we.
“But let’s make sure that power and that decision making is taken by the Scottish people and they have the opportunity to do so in an independence referendum.”
In other news:
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Young people who rely on benefits will be given less money in exchange for more intensive health and employment support under plans for a separate youth welfare system, the Financial Times reported. Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into Britain’s youth jobs crisis, will recommend benefits for young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) be delivered through a different process, sources told the newspaper.
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Reform’s Robert Jenrick has responded to claims made by his colleague Sarah Pochin that the party is “chauvinistic”, after she was caught by an undercover ITV news reporter complaining about the party’s culture. “That’s not my experience of Reform,” Jenrick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
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John Healey is planning to increase taxes on the UK banking sector in his 28 October budget, the Guardian understands. One option on the table is reversing former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s 2023 cut to the bank profit surcharge, from 3% back to 8%. You can read more on this story here:
