Millions more pensioners to get winter fuel payments in major U-turn

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, we'll be exploring whether monogamy is still realistic. Among young people, there's definitely more open-mindedness, but with the kind of older generations, I imagine not much is changing.

0:33But first, today in a speech in Manchester, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has revealed what to expect in the upcoming spending review, which sets the budgets for all government departments over the next few years. It includes billions to fund better transport in the north, which will champion a new economic model driven by investment in all parts of the country. Joining us now is The Standards' political correspondent, Rachel Burford. Rachel, remind us what the spending review is and what the Chancellor has announced so far. A week today, Rachel Reeves will outline her spending review, which is basically the money being allocated to public services.

1:13So it's slightly different from a budget, but still very important. And you've got a lot of authorities and bodies across the UK arguing about why they should have more cash, essentially. There's been little bits of it trailed already and the Chancellor today was up in Manchester where she gave a speech where she outlined some of the investment packages ahead of that spending review next week. So the major package she was announcing today was£15.6 billion of investment in transport and infrastructure and that is predominantly for the north and areas outside of London and the southeast. The Chancellor sort of argued that Britain cannot rely on a handful of places forging ahead of the rest of the country, essentially saying, you know, London and the South East have been, you know, given money and have obviously got very good sort of transport and infrastructure here.

2:05and, you know, it's about time that the north and basically the sort of Redwall areas and those areas where Reform and Nigel Farage are making big inroads, they need a little bit of extra cash to boost their infrastructure projects up there. There'll be money to extend metros in Tyne and Weir and Greater Manchester in the West Midlands, a tram network in South Yorkshire, new mass transit systems as well in West Yorkshire. Greater Manchester will receive 2.5 billion for projects, new tram stops and extension of the tram network there to Stockport, 1.5 billion investment in South Yorkshire to renew the region's trams.

2:41East Midlands have received 2 billion to design a new mass transit system between Derby and Nottingham. So there's lots of sort of projects like that, mostly in the North and the Midlands. In the South, the West of England will get 800 million, which includes 200 million pounds to develop a mass transit links between Bristol, Bath, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. We are expecting in the next week in the spending review that Rachel Reeves will basically rip up what are called Green Book rules. And Green Book rules are essentially have been criticised. They're sort of Treasury rules that have been criticised for favouring London and the South East when it comes to infrastructure and investment in public transport.

3:24A Labour MP of the Commons Treasury Committee earlier this year said that it was hardwired London bias. Yes, Rachel Reeves is going to be expected to change them to ensure the government gives every region a fair hearing when it comes to investments, the words I think she used. And that'll mean more money for areas in the North and the Midlands. We are expecting, though, that£1 billion of public funding will be signed off for the Lower Thames Crossing, which is that road tunnel that will link Kent and Essex. And that's some of money it's hoping. It is less than National Highways, who is the government body behind the project.

3:56It's less than they asked for initially, but it's hoped that£1 billion of government money will help unlock essentially private investment for the project. This seems like a lot of investment and spending. Is Rachel Reeves trying to present a new kind of image? You know, if you were being cynical, you could say these areas that are being targeted here are areas that reform are making big inroads, which, you know, Nigel Farage has quite successfully argued have been looked over and ignored by successive governments. and they are areas that have traditionally voted Labour. You know, it's the Red Wall.

4:31There are a lot of Labour MPs there. So this, you know, you can cynically say that, but I think Rachel Reeves is arguing that, you know, if other cities in the UK were given the amount of investment that London has been given over the years, that the UK as a whole would be much better off. And that is why she wants to give these cities and towns some of the love, if you like, that London has had over the years. And what has the response been? Today's speech was basically about transport and infrastructure, but obviously there are a lot of authorities across the UK that are essentially pleading for cash and pleading for more money in the spending review.

5:10You've got local authorities across the country saying that they're on the verge of going bust and they need more money to build housing and things like that. You've got police services, notably. I mean, the Prime Minister has made it a sort of mission to bring down crime. For weeks now, we've seen the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, arguing that the Met Police does not have enough money to fight crime, essentially. That, you know, crime will get worse and they will have to overlook certain things if the force is not given more cash. And we've seen police forces around the country arguing the same sort of thing.

5:41That's kind of come to a head today with Mark Rowley hoping to go over the Chancellor's head and go directly to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. He's written to him and said, unless we get the cash that we need in the spending review, we will not be able to fight crime in the way that you want us to. They've got, you know, new targets to bring down certain crimes, an increasing amount of crime to deal with as well. You know, you see gang crime and street theft and robberies and things like that going up. And they've also, you know, got to deal with a lot of online crime as well now. So their sort of remit has expanded quite a lot while their resources have gone down.

6:17The Chancellor said we will be increasing spending on police in the spending review next week. We'll have to wait and see what exactly forces get. What she did confirm was that more pensioners will get access to the winter fuel payment this winter. This has been a huge point of contention when the Labour government announced that the winter fuel payment for pensioners would be means tested. And, you know, it's been a big sort of election writing point. We've seen it, you know, the local elections and various by-elections where, you know, the government were accused of making pensioners choose between heating and eating effectively.

6:50The government have basically said, you know, not all pensioners will be getting the winter fuel allowance. They are hoping that more will get it. Rachel Reeves said that we've now put our public finances on a firmer footing and the economy is in better shape. We've also listened to the concerns that people had about the level of means testing of the winter fuel payment. And so we will be making changes to that. they will be in place so the pensioners are paid this coming winter. Finally, what does this all mean for London then? Local authorities across London have, I've spoken to some this week, who have said they're very concerned about the level of funding they will be getting after this.

7:26I mean, they have argued many years now that their funding settlements are not fair, that the cost of housing in the capital is much higher than the rest of the country. And therefore, when they have a responsibility for doing things like housing homeless families, that is really putting a huge drain on their finances. And houses are not being built and cannot be built at the speed at which they need them and which we need them in the city. so there's going to be a lot I think of unhappy council leaders next week who are going to be looking at how much money they're getting the government argues that London has had a lot more money than other places in the country over the last few years and that is why it is a place that's you know substantially better off than some other areas in the country you know they are trying to kind of boost other regions, essentially.

8:22But there is a fear that that will be done at the expense of London. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, the new terminology defining modern romance. And just so you know, from tomorrow, Thursday, June 5th, and every Thursday for the next five weeks, we'll be releasing episodes from Injustice, Killer Privilege, a powerful new podcast series from the London Standard and Message Heard, hosted by Katie Strick. The six-part investigation explores the devastating story of Katia Faber's fight for justice after the brutal killing of her teenage son, Alex. On the 31st of December 2014, two police officers turned up at Katia Faber's door.

9:11They were about to deliver the news every parent fears most. Katya's 23-year-old son, Alex, a young socialite who'd just started his first job in commercial property and was known to party with the likes of Cara Delevingne, had been killed. It's like being hit by a truck. You just can't breathe. The cause of death was homicide. That's all the police would tell Katya. But in the weeks and months that followed, chilling and incomprehensible details started to emerge. Alex had been savagely murdered by his own friend, Bennett, a 6 '5 gallery owner and child of an art dealer from Zurich. I was shocked.

9:48I read it as everyone here did because of all the details. You know, the gruesome stuff, the candle, the blood, the fighting. It was the talk of the town. But it wasn't just the brutality of Alex's killing that captured the public's attention. It was the world it took place in. a world of luxurious lakeside villas on the Gold Coast of Zurich, a world of unimaginable privilege. The thing I had to laugh was when one of Bennett's friends told me it was like the aristocracy in the old days. Like many journalists around the world, I was intrigued by the details of Alex's killing. This was the murder of a London socialite by a child of the super-rich.

10:30But there was more to this story than Alex's shocking death. The more I spoke with his mother Katia, the more I dug into the events around the killing, the murkier the story became, the strange under-reporting of names and details, Bennett's history of violence, and his cat and mouse game with the authorities right up to this day. I would have thought that actually coming to terms with what happened and paying your dues would be the place to start. It is a story that has taken me from the snowy streets of Kuznark in Switzerland, to the beaches of northern Sydney, to the foothills of southern Spain where Katia lives.

11:03Because this is her story too. The story of one mother's fight for justice in the midst of unbearable grief. Brace yourself, I would have said. Brace yourself. This is going to be the fight of a lifetime. And now, a decade later, Katya is ready to tell the world about it. All of it. I'm Katie Strick, the host of Injustice, Killer Privilege, from Message Heard and the London Standard. Join me as we unravel this traumatic story about the psychology of wealth and how power and privilege can intersect with the justice system, with often terrifying consequences.

11:56Welcome back. Now, how's your love life? It might not be such a simple question for many Londoners due to changing social norms around how we date and engage in intimate relationships. Traditional monogamy holds less appeal than it used to. The number of unmarried adults aged 25 to 35 has more than doubled in the last 30 years, rising from 2.7 million in 1991 to 5.8 million in 2023. And you're likely to hear phrases such as polyamory, thruple, non-monogamy, voluntary celibacy, friends with benefits and more being spoken about. Joining us now is The Standards culture writer Claudia Cockerell. Claudia, you've written about how more people are interested in less conventional forms of dating or marriage.

12:53Why do you think this is? I think the reason for that is because more people are aware of the kind of different options there are. We are increasingly using lexicon that maybe 10, 20 years ago, people wouldn't have been aware of. There's all these kind of newfangled terms like ethical non-monogamy, which, you know, maybe 15 years ago, someone would have called that cheating on your partner. But ethical non-monogamy is about having a kind of transparent and open relationship. So I think that kind of taxonomizing of different types of relationship are making people see that there's all these different options.

13:30Conventional monogamous marriage isn't the only path. There's been research done which shows this. So there was a recent survey by Raiden solicitors which found that over a quarter of Londoners think monogamy is no longer, quote, realistic in modern relationships. and I think again that partly due to kind of changing societal norms you know there are dating apps like Field which is kind of a kink led dating app for people with unconventional desires but has actually become really mainstream you know it's incredibly popular in in London there's thousands of users and you can choose from all all sorts of different relationship types you know friends with benefits three-way polyamory and it's that kind of entering into the mainstream of these formerly unconventional relationships, which are becoming increasingly popular.

14:17Can you tell me a bit more about this idea of relationship anarchy? Yeah, so relationship anarchy is a relatively new term, at least to me. Again, Field, the dating app, have just released their quarterly report, which says that relationship anarchy is on the rise. And it's basically based on the kind of anarchist ideals that it's an anti-hierarchical approach to relationships and to dating which sees equal weight given to all the relationships in your life whether that's platonic romantic sexual or familial but unlike kind of polyamory or being in an open relationship relationship anarchy it's about this kind of egalitarianism when it comes to to the connections in our life do you think people are actually relating differently to one another or do we just like the idea of something novel with relationship anarchy, I'm a bit skeptical because I think in life there are naturally people that we're closer to and people that we want to give more time to and more weight to.

15:20You know, a lot of people don't get on with their families or find real comfort in having a kind of romantic relationship, which they really put their all into. I think these buzzwords like ethical non-monogamy have become quite popular recently and also maybe associated with people who are quite laid back. So I think a lot of people like to think that they would be happy in a kind of open relationship or in an ethically non-monogamous relationship. But I imagine in reality, most people are still in these traditional monogamous relationships. And for those who are still interested in a more traditional romantic setup, it sounds like a marriage sabbatical is one way of shaking things up.

16:02Yeah, so a marriage sabbatical is basically taking a kind of prearranged break from your marriage. This is when the two partners spend a bit of time apart from each other. And this can be for different reasons. It might be to kind of focus on personal growth or even to explore sexually with other people. The two people usually establish the rules of engagement at the beginning. One person who's taken a marriage sabbatical very successfully was Celia Walden, who writes for The Telegraph and is married to Piers Morgan. So maybe unsurprisingly, She said it was wonderful. She loved it. She said everyone should try it.

16:37Not everyone is married to Piers Morgan. It might not apply to everyone, but it's like going on a break when you're in a relationship, which a lot of people do, and maybe people think that marriage is so kind of set in stone that that would be an odd thing to do. But again, it's about this normalising of things which might previously have been seen as unconventional or even a little taboo.

17:01and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk and if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here on friday at 4pm we'll see you then