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A cabinet minister has denied that Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to issue new targets for his government next week is a “reset”, and defended the UK prime minister’s decision not to include a cap on inward migration.
Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, insisted that Starmer’s “plan for change”, under which he will set out fresh pledges on Thursday, had been in the works since July when Labour won the general election.
The prime minister will unveil concrete milestones that his government is aiming to meet by the next time the electorate heads to the polls, expected in 2029, along with an online public dashboard that will enable voters to track his progress.
Asked whether the announcement amounted to a reset following a rocky first five months in power, McFadden told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “No. We’ve been working on this since the early days of government.”
The comments come after a challenging start for the Labour government amid falling public support and growing corporate anger over Budget tax rises.
The targets will be linked to Starmer’s five missions for government: growing the economy, improving the NHS, tackling crime, boosting green energy and breaking down barriers to opportunity.
Labour colleagues had anticipated there would be “events that buffet you around from week to week” which would have to be dealt with, but the government must “look at the long-term too”, McFadden said.
While Labour has vowed to bring down net inward migration, McFadden confirmed that Starmer would not include a cap among his pledges next week, telling Sky News that “numerical targets on migration have not had a happy history in recent years”.
He cited former Conservative prime minister David Cameron’s scotched vow to reduce annual net migration to “tens of thousands” of people.
Last week’s official statistics showed that net arrivals to the UK in the 12 months to June 2023 hit a record 900,000 people.
However, McFadden insisted that Starmer’s plan would “talk about migration — both legal and illegal” in broader terms.
Victoria Atkins, Tory shadow environment secretary, lambasted Labour for failing to set out “firm plans” about migration numbers. She acknowledged that the Conservatives had “wanted to see immigration come down and it didn’t” during their 14 years in power, but said new leader Kemi Badenoch had been honest about the party’s shortcomings.
Akins also said that measures implemented by the last Tory administration — including a crackdown on overseas students bringing dependants to the UK — were starting to bear fruit, after recent statistics showed net inward migration was falling.
Starmer’s decision to set out fresh targets is not without precedent or political jeopardy. Former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak’s attempt to save his foundering administration at the start of 2023 with five new pledges only helped sink it.
Sunak failed to get anywhere near achieving his vow to “stop the boats”, which was derided as overly ambitious, while he received little credit when inflation halved, as he had pledged, because critics argued it was not the result of the government’s efforts.
At the end of a difficult week, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster defended Starmer for appointing Louise Haigh to his front bench and denied that he was a hypocrite, after Starmer said in opposition that a person “cannot be a lawmaker and a law breaker”.
Haigh, who quit as transport secretary on Friday, indicated in her resignation letter that Starmer knew when he promoted her to his shadow cabinet that she had pleaded guilty to a fraud offence before she became an MP.
