Ed Balls has said that he warned Ed Miliband not to do an interview with Russell Brand during the 2015 election campaign. Miliband was Labour leader at the time, Balls shadow chancellor, and the interview – which was controversial at the time – was quoted by Kemi Badenoch this week in the light of Brand’s conviction for rape as evidence of Miliband’s flawed judgment.

Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, Balls said he had a dim view of Brand at the time of the interview.

I actually only met him once in the green room on the Andrew Marr programme [...] he behaved really weirdly and was sort of trying to come up and kind of prod me and get in my face and I was concentrating on my interview and never engaged.

Balls said Brand had also insulted him during a Channel 4 show.

Describing what happened when he found out that Miliband was going to do an election interview with him, Balls said:

At the time, the feedback from my office back to them was what are you doing with this guy? I mean, he’s weird, and he’s untrustworthy, and he’s already been removed from the BBC for his behaviour. And do we really want this?

But they decided to go ahead because they thought it would solve a political problem.

I ended up having to go on the television, in which I have to defend this because I’m the shadow chancellor. So I say, well, you know, I guess they think it will connect with the young people, and so be it.

But, although he defended the move in public, privately he thought doing the interview was “ridiculous”, he said.

Reform UK is seen as a rightwing party. But that does not mean it is automatically pro-business. In his speech this afternoon, at a rally where the party unveiled its “industrial strongholds” policy (a revamped version of enterprize zones), Robert Jenrick, the party’s Treasury spokesperson, launched a strong attack on the owners of Poundland.

He said:

Take Poundland.

A father and a son. A market stall in this city. One shop by 1990. Six hundred shops today, and twelve thousand people on the payroll.

That is the Black Country story. Start small. Work hard. Build something that lasts.

But what happened to it?

It was sold abroad. Then it was sold again, to an American corporate raider, for a pound. The whole company. For a pound. They don’t even sell the products for that anymore.

Poundland is on course to make eighteen million quid in profit this year. Yet, its owners have filed for administration, despite buyers at the door offering to keep it whole. Why? So they can sell it off for parts and fat fees.

Think about that. A business that makes money. That employs twelve thousand people. That sells what families can actually afford. And the system’s answer is: break it up.

That isn’t capitalism. These aren’t titans of industry. They’re shysters.

These people are organ harvesters masquerading as doctors.

They don’t want the patient to live. They want him on the table, still warm, so they can sell him off a piece at a time.

Capitalism is the father and the son on the stall. This is something else. A model where it pays better to strip a British business than to build one.

Young people with disabilities will lose their personal independence payments and will have to apply instead to a local fund for short-term expenses and equipment, Alan Milburn’s review will recommend. Jessica Elgot has the story.

Andy Burnham has promised Volodymyr Zelenskyy his “complete support” in the latest efforts to end the Ukraine war and said he would push for European representation in the US-brokered talks, the Press Association reports.

The PM co-chaired a group meeting on Ukraine with the country’s president at the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Ireland this afternoon.

Burnham was using the Dublin gathering to urge leaders from some 50 nations to ramp up pressure on Vladimir Putin to take peace talks seriously.

Speaking at the start of the meeting when journalists were present, Burnham said:

I’m sure I speak for everybody in saying you have our complete support, both in terms of resisting the aggression that you continue to face, but also in the negotiation process that has started.

He added that allies will try to support Ukraine “in every way possible through that process”, and “we will obviously continue to press for European representation in that process”.

Burnham and Zelenskyy sat side by side at the head of the table at the meeting attended by more than a dozen leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Ireland’s Micheál Martin and Canada’s Mark Carney, as well as the presidents of the EU Commission and Council and the chief of Nato.

Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.

Reform UK has pledged to create “industrial strongholds” that would get tax breaks and other incentives aimed at spurring reindustrialisation, with the Black Country identified by the party as the first area for one.

The West Midlands area encompassing Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Cannock Chase – all Reform UK targets in any upcoming general election – was identified by the party as its first proposed “stronghold” zone.

Each zone would be a place where employer national insurance on net new hires would be halved, along with “streamlining” of planning policy and 100% first-year tax relief on new brownfield residential buildings and extensions.

Four more areas are to be unveiled by Reform UK in the months ahead, a rally in Wolverhampton was told by Reform’s economics spokesperson, Robert Jenrick.

Gordon Brown’s controversial 2007 pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” was also repurposed by Jenrick in a speech in which he spoke of plans for new visa sponsorship rules. He said:

Under Reform, jobs in Britain go to British workers first. Advertised here, to our people, before an employer can look anywhere else. And no sitting out the clock to fly somebody in on a visa.

Cheaper to hire from Bilston. Dearer to hire from abroad. British jobs for British workers. It’s about time you came first.

In a briefing explaining how the policy would work, Reform UK said:

Each Industrial Stronghold will be a defined geographical area, within which businesses will benefit from significant incentives for growth. These will include:

-Employer national insurance contributions reduced by 50% for the first £50,000 of earnings for net additional employees for five years.

-100% first-year tax relief on new brownfield residential buildings, extensions and substantial improvements.

-10-year exemptions on the extra business rates that result from new investment, from improvements, and from establishing a business in a high street retail unit that has been vacant for more than two years.

-Streamlining planning policy by creating a presumption in favour of development according to an updated local plan, with a strictly limited set of circumstances in which planning applications can be refused.

Nigel Farage appeared on Russell Brand’s US podcast nine months after the comedian was investigated by police over allegations of sexual assault, Rowena Mason reports.

Jessica Murray is a Guardian social affairs correspondent.

Alison McGovern, the social care minister, has announced a shake-up of home care that will mean people see the same carer more regularly and workers spend less time travelling between visits.

Speaking at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in Liverpool, McGovern said councils in England will be encouraged to commission care around smaller neighbourhoods, with just one or two main providers in each area.

She said:

I want to see more local authorities commissioning home care on a neighbourhood basis over time. This will be a very different way of doing things, and we are asking everybody to break habits that have been long in the making.

There have long been problems with care workers being forced to travel long distances between visits, with some not being paid for travel time or fuel, and having to cut visits short.

McGovern said this was one of several small changes she was committed to making while waiting for the Casey Commission to report back on sector-wide reform and the road map to a National Care Service.

Whilst Baroness Casey looks at what more needs to change for the years to come, this is change that we can make now.

Yesterday, Louise Casey told the conference that successive governments had been “asleep at the wheel” on social care, leaving the system to grow as a chaotic patchwork of local services with no clear vision.

Taking questions from the audience, Casey indicated that she approved of a mandatory register of care workers that would give staff better protections and give providers a better overview of qualifications and training.

McGovern did not say exactly when she expected the National Care Service to be operational, but said it would be based on “shared expectations” and Casey would set out long-term plans next summer.

It is not hard for opposition parties to find something to criticise when NHS England publishes its monthly hospital performance figures; because there is so much data, some of it is bound to reflect badly on the government.

By the same token, there is always something ministers can welcome. While the Lib Dems have highlighted the corridor care figures today (see 11.26am), NHS England is focusing on waiting times. Its press release says:

The NHS delivered its best 18-week elective performance for more than five years in September, as staff manage record demand on services.

New NHS figures published today show almost 66% of patients on the waiting list have been waiting less than 18 weeks – the highest proportion since September 2021.

The progress comes alongside a record number of diagnostic scans and tests being delivered for September, following investment in NHS diagnostic capacity. The improvement in elective performance came despite a record number of people being referred onto the waiting list.

Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, said:

This autumn has been the busiest ever for our NHS – with record numbers of people attending A&E and record numbers of elective appointments and treatments.

Despite the relentless pressure, the NHS has delivered a record 30.6m diagnostic tests, checks and scans over the last 12 months, and more people are being treated within 18 weeks than the same time last year.

I want to pay tribute to all the NHS staff whose commitment and hard work have made that possible.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury committee, was one of the Labour MPs who led the successful campaign to get Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to abandon plans to cut Pip (personal independence payments) last year. But, as she revealed in an interview on the World at One, she is not minded to do the same with the Alan Milburn plans. She said she wanted to give him a “fair wind” because he was explaining how his proposed cuts might eventually benefit young people.

She said:

What happened last year was a cut was being proposed and none of us could explain to people what would happen to them. Milburn has done some very good work on this so I’m giving him a fair wind.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Kemi Badenoch said that Alan Milburn had briefed the shadow cabinet on his plans and that she thought there would be “many good things” in his report. “Our issue is not with Alan Milburn,” she said.

Two days on, the line has changed. The Conservatives have issued a press release about what they describe as the “Milburn review leaks” (even though an interview in the Times is not a leak) and it includes this statement from Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary. She said:

We await the detail of Alan Milburn’s review, but he’s right to say it’s time to stop handing out cash for mild conditions. That’s in our welfare savings plan already. Conservatives will support measures to reduce benefits for people who should be in work, including existing claimants. The question is whether Andy Burnham has the backbone to get these reforms through his welfare-obsessed MPs.

However, Milburn’s proposals also appear to involve spending billions more on subsidised work placements to compensate for the jobs Labour have killed with their taxes and red tape. This is Labour’s welfare doom loop in action: destroy jobs, then spend more taxpayers’ money on benefits.

The UK is sanctioning all 10 of Russia’s major oil producers, Andy Burnham will announce as he attends a gathering of European leaders in Ireland.

According to the Press Association, Burnham will use the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Dublin to urge leaders from some 50 nations to ramp up pressure on Vladimir Putin to take peace talks seriously.

Burnham said Britain has slapped a package of new sanctions on Moscow, including on shadow fleet vessels illicitly transporting Russian oil, Russian oil company Slavneft, and Rosneft’s flagship Arctic oil and gas project LLC Vostok Oil.

He said:

Peace talks on Ukraine have progressed but now is not the time for complacency – we must continue to ramp up pressure on Russia to agree a full and immediate ceasefire.

That is why the UK has announced a sweep of stinging new sanctions to turn the screws on Russia’s oil revenues and drive forward an end to the Kremlin’s needless war.

We all now need to harness the momentum on negotiations and find a way forward for our security at home, and the security of our continent.

Burnham arrived in Dublin on Thursday afternoon after flying in from Turkey, where he attended the UN Cop31 climate conference, PA said.

Kiran Stacey is the Guardian’s policy editor.

Sadiq Khan has become the most high-profile Labour figure to weigh into the increasingly fractious debate over what the government should do with its electric vehicle targets.

Ministers are meeting today in Downing Street to decide whether to cut legally binding requirements for carmakers to ensure 80% of the vehicles they sell in 2030 are electric.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is pushing for the target to be reduced to 50%, but Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, wants to keep it as close to 80% as possible.

But as ministers wrangle among each other, City Hall officials have made clear that the London mayor is on Fahnbulleh’s side.

Khan’s position was laid out in a letter from his deputy mayor for transport Seb Dance to Oliver Lord, the UK director of Clean Cities, which has been seen by the Guardian.

Dance wrote:

We and Transport for London share your view that the ZEV [zero-emission vehicle] mandate must not change. We outlined in our submission to the government’s consultation that London supports a strong and credible ZEV mandate.

We do not support any weakening of the current trajectories to 2030 or beyond, which risks damaging the case for investment in the ZEV and charging infrastructure industries, slowing down the pace of change, and the associated reduction in harmful emissions.

Department for Transport officials insist that no decision has yet been made but with the government likely to announce a cut to the 2030 target in the next two
weeks, this is likely to leave Khan opposed to official government policy.

A reader asks:

Regarding Neets, does the figure of a million just refer to those claiming benefits or does it also include those not claiming benefits? If it doesn’t include those not claiming benefits, what is the true Neet figure?

Is the government only concerned about Neets who claim benefits?

Alan Milburn is definitely interested in both categories of Neet. The Treasury is probably more worried about just the Neets who claim benefits, but they should be worried about the other Neets too because if they don’t get into the labour market, they will end up claiming benefits one day.

The interim Milburn report said there were 957,000 Neets aged 16 to 24 at the end of 2025 and this figure includes people who claim out-of-work benefits and people who don’t.

The report describes the ones who don’t as “hidden Neets” and it says 44% of young Neets are in this category. It uses figures from this Resolution Foundation report exploring the problem.

The RF report includes this chart.

And this is what the RF says about the figures.

What figure 4 also shows is that there are consistently hundreds of thousands of young Neets who are not claiming out-of-work benefits. In 2024, we estimate that 410,000 – 44% of all Neets – were not in receipt of an out-of-work benefit. This is a slightly lower proportion than in 2019, and we estimate that the number of Neets who are claiming out-of-work benefits has risen more quickly since 2019 than the number who are Neet and not claiming (with increases of 24% and 13% respectively).

The fact that welfare spending is lower than it could be if all Neets claimed an out-of-work benefit may seem like good news to some policy makers, but it also highlights a policy dilemma – how can we reach and support Neets who have little incentive or opportunity to engage with the state?

And this chart, from an analytical annex published alongside the interim Milburn report, gives a bit more information about who the hidden Neets are.

Here are more quotes from what Alan Milburn told the Times about the proposals in his youth unemployment report, which is being published next week.

• Milburn said he concluded fundamental change was needed. He said:

The whole system needs to be changed, because the system is geared to keeping people inactive when, for young people in particular, it’s all about how can you make them active, get them earning, learning, so that they can rely on a wage rather than on a benefit. So, this is not about cutting one benefit, it’s about rebuilding the system from scratch.

• He said that he decided existing claimants should be covered by the changes, not just new changes.

It’s a big rewriting of the welfare system. And obviously one of the conundrums was, ‘Should this apply to only new claimants?’

I came to the conclusion that wouldn’t be right, not least because you’ve got hundreds of thousands of young people stuck in a benefit system that is trapping them in poverty, giving them no prospect of prosperity or a job.

That conclusion makes it difficult politically because it means people are getting a current entitlement and that entitlement is going to change. But it needs to.

It is relatively normal for welfare changes to cover existing claimants as well as new ones. But governments seeking to cut benefits do often restrict those changes to new claimants because people are much more likely to complain about losing something they already get than about losing something they might notionally get in the future.

• Milburn admitted this meant the plans would not be “pain-free”.

I’m not saying that any of this will be easy or that it will be pain-free because it won’t. You know, candidly, it could mean that some people will get less financial support at the beginning of their benefit claim than under the current system.

• He said he wanted the system to prioritise improving people’s life chances in the long term over easing their financial hardship in the short term.

Actually for young people there’s a different debate that we’ve got to resolve, which is whether the priority is their longer-term life chances or just their immediate shorter-term finances.

I think what the current system does, it prioritises the latter over the former. I believe that’s the wrong choice and it needs to be the other way around.

The approach I’ve taken on this is to try to define what would give young people the best chance of building a good life, not just over a year or two, but over the course of their lifetimes.

• He said, alongside the cuts to benefits he is proposing (see 11.56am), he wanted to improve employment support for young people.

We need to make sure people have the opportunities to get an apprenticeship, a job, a work placement, a pre-apprenticeship, a college place.

The menu of opportunities has got to increase. They’ll have a personal adviser, they’ll be coached all the way through. The adviser will stick with them until they have found a job or an apprenticeship or college place.

• He also confirmed he wants to let young people do some work before they start losing benefits.

They will get immediate access to support if that’s what they need, if that’s the thing that is holding them back from being in education or training.

• He admitted that offering better employment support and mental health support would mean his plans would initially cost money. According to the Times, he did not did not deny claims the whole package could cost £6bn. But, in the long run, there would be savings, he said.

Obviously this costs money. And frankly it’s a better use of money, both from the point of view of the young person and the taxpayer, to spend that money getting them into work rather than spending that money keeping them on benefits.

This is the sort of fatuous thing about this debate. You’ve got to invest upfront in order to get savings out of the back end. Cost-free is fatuous. So we’ve got to be candid about that. It will need significant investment.

When it was put to him that it could take a decade for the savings to materialise, he replied:

To get a return on investment will take time … the only way of cutting the benefits bill sustainably is by getting young people into work, paying their taxes and being less reliant on benefits. Unless you are prepared to put the investment upfront it will never be possible.

• He said he was “confident” that Andy Burnham was full-square behind the changes that are needed.”

The Alan Milburn report on youth unemployment, or Neets (young people not in education, employment or training), is expected to lead to the biggest overhaul of the welfare system for at least a decade (when Iain Duncan Smith merged six different benefits into universal credit). Arguably, it could be even bigger.

It is certainly the most heavily-trailed benefits reform plan in recent history. Milburn, a former Labour cabinet minister, began pitch-rolling with the publication of an interim report in May. Unusually for a Westminster document, it was a compelling read, and was widely praised at the time. Since then, barely a week has gone by without Milburn dropping further hints about what the final report will say. Milburn says he has government backing for what he is recommending and he wants this to be a blueprint for legislation, not a set of recommendations ultimately ignored by ministers.

We still won’t get the final report until next week, but in his interview in the Times today he has given the fullest account yet of what he will propose.

This is how Steven Swinford sums up the plans in his write-up of the interview.

Under [Milburn’s] proposals, young people aged 18 to 24 would be barred from claiming the two main sickness and disability benefits: the health element of universal credit and personal independence payments (Pip).

They would instead be given a new youth allowance, which would be paid at the standard rate of universal credit, while billions would be invested in one-to-one employment support to get them into work.

Many of those who currently receive Pip would be moved on to a new benefit called the “additional cost allowance”. It would be paid to those with “significant, well-established and ongoing” costs relating to their disability.

Covering assistance, mobility, specialist transport or daily living support, the allowance would go to a smaller cohort than the 453,000 young people currently claiming Pip. It would not be means-tested and people would receive the money “regardless” of whether they were in work or not.

The most severely disabled individuals — those with “profound” and “lifelong” conditions who can never be expected to work — would be given a new benefit. It would be paid at a higher rate than current disability benefits and would have no waiting period.

The Green party has said it is opposed to the proposal from Alan Milburn for many young people to lose sickness or disability benefits. (See 10.35am.)

Commenting on the proposals, revealed by Milburn in an interview in the Times, Siân Berry, the Green MP and the party’s work and pensions spokesperson, said:

So the solution to young people without education or jobs is to continue demonising young and disabled people instead of addressing the structural inequalities stacked against them?

What is the point of a deep review like this if the conclusion is that the government goes on blaming young people for needing help?

The prime minister must remember that social security is a human right whatever your age.

More than 3,500 patients a day received care in hospital corridors or makeshift treatment areas in England last month, as other figures show the NHS is already facing growing pressures before winter has arrived, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The waiting list for hospital treatment has also risen to its highest level in nearly a year.

Officials said this autumn has been the “busiest ever” for the health service, with record numbers of people attending A&E.

The latest performance data from NHS England shows an average of 3,558 patients received corridor care each day in October, with 2,718 in A&E departments and 840 in other hospital areas.

This is up from a revised average of 3,310 patients a day in September and the highest since figures for corridor care started being collected in May.

Prof Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, called the figures “a mark of shame”.

She said: “Nursing staff will be filled with dread thinking of just how bad things will get as temperatures drop.

“The data shows once again that corridor care is occurring not just in emergency departments but across hospitals. This is an incredibly dangerous situation with much colder temperatures on the horizon.”

Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman Helen Morgan claimed the “true scale of the crisis is likely far worse”.

She added: “We are hearing troubling reports of trusts reclassifying spaces to keep the numbers down.

“Hospitals are under pressure to hit targets rather than put patients first. Patients on chairs in waiting rooms or in converted cupboards deserve to be counted.”

In emergency departments, some 74.0% of patients were seen within four hours in October, down slightly from 74.4% in September.

Elsewhere, an estimated 7.38m treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of September, relating to 6.24m patients.

This is up slightly from 7.37m treatments at the end of August and is the highest since the list stood at 7.40m treatments in October 2025.

The figure for patients is broadly unchanged month on month, but is also at a level that was previously seen in October 2025.

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Taz Ali.

Andy Burnham won’t arrive in Dublin for his meeting with other leaders from the European Political Community (the EU plus non-EU states in Europe) until this afternoon, but it is the first time he has met many of them, and they are anticipating his arrival.

Kaja Kallas has said she would “very much like to see Britain back in Europe”, but warned there is “a lot of … trauma from Britain leaving” that could affect any reset talks.

She added:

So the negotiations will not be that easy, but I think we can take the little steps. And I’m confident that if we are together, we are much stronger when it comes to economy, but when it also comes to security.

Over in Dublin, where the European Political Community summit is taking place, European parliament president Roberta Metsola told journalists she would do “anything in my power” to turn the political intent behind the announced UK-EU reset plan into “very tangible steps”.

“We have a very solid UK-EU parliamentary assembly and partnership, and that is the partnership that we will be using in order to make sure that any agreement and all measures that are taken next week during the [EU-UK] summit will be implemented through majorities in parliament,” she said.

“That is what I hope for, and I am extremely optimistic in that regard,” she added, describing herself as “a big fan of the United Kingdom”.

For more updates from across Europe, follow our live blog here:

“Britain is back and ready to play its full part,” Andy Burnham has said at the opening of today’s Cop31 summit.

The UK prime minister celebrated domestic clean energy projects including windfarms and electrified steel factories, stressed the need to make the transition affordable, and announced the UK’s first special representative for climate security, Madeleine Alessandri.

“The climate crisis is not a distant threat, it is upon us now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere,” he said. Pointing to the effects of two global wars on energy prices, he added that the “common thread running through all of this is fossil fuels.”

Burnham repeated the UK’s commitment to meeting its 2050 net zero emissions target and said he would work with all of partners to reach theirs.

“In that spirit, I am proud to support this Cop’s focus on electrification,” he said. “If we depend on energy we do not control, we depend on prices we cannot control. The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security.

He called on industry to “play their part” in helping people on all incomes make the green transition. He highlighted progress in bringing the price of clean technologies down for consumers.

“If you drive a new electric car today in the UK, it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.”

But he also warned that some of the fundamentals had worsened.

“The consensus we once enjoyed on science is gone,” said Burnham. “And the reality is the world will breach the 1.5C target.”

For more updates from the fourth day of the climate summit in Turkey, head over to our Cop31 live blog here: