Labour conference live: Pressure on Starmer as he faces union vote to reverse ‘cruel’ winter fuel payments cut

Sir Keir Starmer accepted £20,000 worth of accommodation to help his 16-year-old son study for his GCSEs, it has emerged.

The prime minister was asked by the BBC about a £20,437 donation from Labour peer Waheed Alli between May and July, confirming that the sum was for somewhere his son could study “peacefully”.

He told the broadcaster: “At the beginning of the election, which we didn’t know when it was going to be called, my boy was in the middle of his GCSEs.

“I made him a promise that he’ll be able to get to his school, do his exams without being disturbed.”

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Dozens of union delegates are gathered around the main stage at the Labour Party conference.

Following her speech, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham prepares to move forward the motion to reverse cuts on the winter fuel allowance.

Seconding the motion, the Communication Workers Union’s Alan Tate has said that he has been “inundated” with calls from worried union members.

He told the crowd: “We should be taxing them, not taking away a lifeline for vulnerable people.”

Sharon Graham has told the conference that the UK is the 6th richest economy in the world.

She added: “We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.

“These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is hanging like a noose around our necks.”

During a passionate speech, the general secretary of Unite has slammed the new Labour government for cutting winter fuel payments.

She said: “People simply do not understand and I don’t understand how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.”

She added: “This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.”

It is now the turn of work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to deliver her speech.

In an attempt to reassure pensioners amid the winter fuel payment row, the minister said the government has “done more to help the poorest pensioners in the last two months than the Tories did in 14 years” as she defended cutting the winter fuel allowance to pensioners.

She told the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool: “Focusing winter fuel payments on the poorest pensioners wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make, but when we promised we could be trusted with taxpayers’ money – we meant it.

“And when we were faced with a £22 billion black hole, which the Tories left this year, we had to act, because we know what happened when Liz Truss played fast and loose with the public finances. It was working people and pensioners on fixed incomes who paid the highest price.

“We took what I know is a difficult decision, but let me tell you, Conference: this Labour government has done more to help the poorest pensioners in the last two months than the Tories did in 14 years.

“The biggest ever drive to get pensioners on pension credit, backed by our commitment to the pensions triple lock. This will increase the state pension by an estimated £1,700 this parliament, with an extra £6 billion of funding forecast next year.

“Conference, this is the difference a Labour government makes.”

Sir Keir Starmer announced during his speech in Liverpool that he will introduce a Hillsborough Law by April, the anniversary of the disaster, putting a legal duty of candour on all public bodies.

The legislation will include the potential for criminal sanctions for any official or authority that misleads or obstructs investigations.

Campaigners, including the families of the 97 Liverpool fans who were crushed to death at Hillsborough stadium in 1989, have been calling for such legislation for more than three decades.

Speaking on the main stage at Labour’s conference, Sir Keir said it was a law that “people shouldn’t have had to fight so hard to get”.

Here’s everything that was announced in Sir Keir’s Labour conference speech:

Now turning on Labour’s plan to increase VAT on private schools, Bridget Phillipson said the move is to make education more accessible.

Ending her speech, the education secretary said: “Today the curriculum and assessment review begins a national conversation to ensure that a rich and broad education, the experience every parent wants for their children, is the experience of the many, not the privilege of the few.

“In less than 100 days we will end private schools’ tax breaks, to drive high and rising standards for the nine in 10 children who go to our state schools.”

Bridget Phillipson has told conference attendees that the “promise of opportunity” must belong to all people “not just the few”

She said: “Life should not come down to luck. It can never be enough that a system that’s supposed to serve so many works only for a lucky few.

“It will never be enough for some of us to defy the odds to succeed when the promise of opportunity must belong to all of us. We have to change the odds so that success belongs to each and every child in each and every school in every corner of our country.”

Ms Phillipson also accused the Tories of leaving the country with a broken childcare system and teachers “in their droves”.