Values For Money

These things are absolutely sacrosanct until they are not. The withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment was absolutely sacrosanct until it wasn't. The cuts to sickness and disability benefits were absolutely sacrosanct until they weren't. And the two-child benefit cap was absolutely sacrosanct, to the point that the whip was withdrawn from Labour MPs who voted to lift it, until this afternoon, when it wasn't.

Those half a million children could have been lifted out of poverty last year, and there need never have been those attacks on the old and the ill, of whom the latter are still being targeted in other ways. Though brought about by the campaigning of which some of us approved, all three U-turns have cost the Government both credibility and goodwill.

Still, on energy prices, on rail fares, on Small Modular Reactors, and on North Sea oil and gas, a small start may have been made towards the all-of-the-above-energy policy and the all-of-the-above transport policy, along with the immensely welcome transfer to its members of the reserve fund of the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme.

Now for the other four million children in poverty. And now for the full compensation of, among others, the victims of Orgreave, Grenfell Tower, the Windrush scandal, the Post Office scandal, the carers' allowance scandal, and the contaminated blood scandal, as well as the nuclear test veterans, the WASPI women, and the wrongfully imprisoned. Issue the currency, stimulate our consumer economy, and use the fiscal and monetary means to control any inflationary effect. Who is stop you? The Office for Budget Responsibility? After this morning, it ought already to have been shut down.