Sadiq Khan joins Labour figures urging PM not to water down electric vehicle targets – UK politics live

The mayor of London is the most high-profile figure to weigh into the debate over electric vehicle targets On the Today programme this morning, the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy , a prominent leftwinger, indicated she might vote against legislation to implement the Alan Milburn proposals. She said she was concerned by the idea that the cuts would apply to people already getting sickness and disability benefits, and she said it appeared to be a breach of a promise given last year that people already getting Pip (the personal independence payment) would not lose it. She said: I just don’t think that you get a disabled young person into work by taking away the money that helps them to get into work. The cuts seem to land on young disabled people, and many of them are in college already or already in work. So I don’t see how you fix the first by punishing the second.

Milburn said he concluded fundamental change was needed. He said: The whole system needs to be changed, because the system is geared to keeping people inactive when, for young people in particular, it’s all about how can you make them active, get them earning, learning, so that they can rely on a wage rather than on a benefit. So, this is not about cutting one benefit, it’s about rebuilding the system from scratch. He said that he decided existing claimants should be covered by the changes, not just new changes. It’s a big rewriting of the welfare system. And obviously one of the conundrums was, ‘Should this apply to only new claimants? ’ I came to the conclusion that wouldn’t be right, not least because you’ve got hundreds of thousands of young people stuck in a benefit system that is trapping them in poverty, giving them no prospect of prosperity or a job. Milburn admitted this meant the plans would not be…