British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead

Reuters
Updated ·2-min read
Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference on migration at 10 Downing Street

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will set out more detailed policy targets in the coming week to achieve the government's five main goals, including in economic growth, healthcare, crime and green energy, as his party approaches five months in power.

Labour won a sweeping majority in Britain's lower house of parliament in July, taking power for the first time in 14 years, but has fallen just behind the opposition Conservative Party in some recent opinion polls.

Starmer said he would set out a "plan for change" in the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, halving levels of serious violent crime, lowering energy bills and improving state-provided healthcare.

"Mission-led government does not mean picking milestones because they are easy or will happen anyway. It means relentlessly driving real improvements in the lives of working people," Starmer said in a statement released by his office.

Government ministers and officials would be told to focus on these goals rather than individual ministries' traditional priorities, Starmer's office added.

Senior Labour minister Pat McFadden said the plan would include immigration - a key voter concern according to polls - but it would not set numerical targets.

Official data on Thursday showed net migration reached a record of more than 900,000 in the year to June 2023.

"We do want to bring it down," McFadden told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

"We are not going to have a numerical target for net migration, but we are going to make sure that we do more to train our own workforce and do more to get long-term sick people off benefits."

Labour has not had an easy start in office. Ministers say the previous government concealed the extent of problems in areas such as prisons and the immigration system, contributing to what finance minister Rachel Reeves said was a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) black hole in public finances.

Conservatives dispute this and say much of the cost overrun reflected Labour's decisions to boost pay for public-sector workers and standard in-year spending variations.

Reeves announced 40 billion pounds of tax rises in her first budget last month - up from around 8 billion pounds in Labour's pre-election plan - on top of higher borrowing to halt a fall in public investment planned by the previous government.

Businesses have complained that they will bear the brunt of the tax rises and will probably cut investment or jobs and that they will need to raise prices as a result.

($1 = 0.7851 pounds)

(Reporting by David Milliken and Paul Sandle; Editing by Alexander Smith and Bernadette Baum)

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