The Spectator

Portrait of the week: State pension to rise, prisoners released early and a new owner for The Spectator

issue 14 September 2024

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The government won by 348 to 228 a Commons vote on limiting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners to those who qualified by poverty: 52 Labour MPs didn’t vote, one voted with the opposition; five MPs suspended from the Labour party also voted with the opposition. Three million people who began receiving the ‘new’ state pension after 2016 will be given £460 a year more from April 2025, in line with wage growth of 4 per cent. A bill was published to exclude the 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Mel Stride was knocked out of the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party; Robert Jenrick, with 33 votes from MPs, Kemi Badenoch, with 28, and James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat with 21 will address the party conference in Birmingham at the end of September. The Spectator was bought for £100 million by Sir Paul Marshall.

Thomas Birley, 27, was sentenced to nine years in jail for his part in attempts on 4 August to set fire to the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, where asylum seekers were housed.

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