A senior Labour MP has said the government needs to take “corrective action” over planned disability benefit cuts – as Sir Keir Starmer faces a growing backbench rebellion.

Tan Dhesi, chair of the influential Commons defence committee, told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge the “disappointing” local election results show the government must listen and learn, particularly over welfare reforms.

The government has proposed tightening the eligibility requirements for the personal independent payment, known as PIP.

Politics latest: Farage urged to suspend new Reform councillor

A claimant must score a minimum of four points on one PIP daily living activity, such as preparing food, washing and bathing, using the toilet or reading, to receive the daily living element of the benefit.

Mr Dhesi, the MP for Slough, said “corrective action” needs to be taken but insisted if the government changed tact, it would not be a U-turn as the disability cuts were only proposals.

“A government which is in listening mode should be looking at what the electorate is saying,” he said.

“And we need to make sure that it’s our moral duty, responsibility, to look after the most vulnerable within our community, whether that’s in Slough, whether that’s elsewhere across the country.

“So, I hope that the government will be taking on board that feedback and many of us as MPs are giving that feedback in various meetings happening here in Westminster and then we need to take corrective action.”

Minister Alex Davies-Jones told the Politics Hub a Labour government “will always seek to protect the most vulnerable” and it wants to “listen to people who have got real lived experience”.

She added she has the “utmost respect for Tan, he’s a great constituency MP and he’s doing exactly what he should be doing, is representing his constituency”.

Sir Keir is facing a rebellion from Labour MPs, with about 40 in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposting a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.

Read more:
Starmer defends winter fuel cut
The choice facing Labour in face of Reform threat

Several backbench Labour MPs also spoke out against the plans during a debate on PIP and disabled people in parliament on Wednesday.

Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, said he would “swim through vomit to vote against” the proposed changes and said: “This is not what the Labour Party was formed to do.”

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, said she feared tightening PIP eligibility would cause deaths, adding: “Lest we forget that study that attributed 330,000 excess deaths in Britain between 2012 and 2019 to the last round of austerity cuts [under the Conservative government].”

Diane Abbott, the longest-serving female MP, accused the government of putting forward “contradictory arguments”.

“On the one hand, they insist they are helping the disabled by putting them back to work,” she said.

“But on the other hand, they say this cut will save £9bn. Well, you can’t do both.”

However, fellow Labour MP David Pinto-Duschinsky, said MPs cannot “ignore this issue” of health-related benefit claimant figures rising at “twice the rate of underlying health conditions”.

Responding for the government, social security minister Sir Stephen Timms said PIP claims were set to “more than double, from two million to over 4.3 million this decade”.

“It would certainly not be in the interests of people currently claiming the benefits for the government to bury its head in the sand over that rate of increase,” he added.

A 101-year-old veteran, who has never publicly talked about her wartime experience, wants the VE Day 80th anniversary events to be a chance to reflect on the “unnecessary” conflicts we see today that she says are driven by “pure greed”.

Pauline Alexander was one of five siblings who all served in the Second World War – with three of them among the four family members she lost during the conflict.

She was encouraged to talk about what she went through by her daughter after she saw the Royal British Legion appealing for more surviving veterans to tell their stories.

80 years ago, as Sir Winston Churchill declared there was finally victory in Europe and the celebrations erupted in London, Ms Alexander was in Chelmsford with her mother and sister-in-law.

“I was at home on leave,” she said.

“We joined in the celebrations, the singing and dancing. It was very exciting. Everyone in Chelmsford had turned out, well those who were still there. But it was very… how can I put it? A feeling of what next… life had changed completely.

“We started (the war) as a family of seven, we ended as three.”

Like so many, Ms Alexander’s war was punctuated by loss.

Her father died while running the family surgical instrument business in 1943, and three of her brothers were killed.

Peter Kipling, an Army dispatch rider, died in a bike accident delivering a message to the war office in London. He was about to be sent to the front in preparation for D-Day.

Guy and Bernard Kipling, who were twins, were both navigators on RAF bombers.

They were shot down in 1941 and 1943, their bodies never came home.

All three are remembered on Peter’s gravestone in Broomfield Cemetery.

Looking at photographs of her brothers, Ms Alexander quietly said: “That’s just how I remember them all, just like that.”

When I asked her how she felt when she heard they had died serving their country, she replied: “In those days of war you just had to accept these things.

“It was bound to happen at some time or other. Bernard served on Whitley bombers, and they were known as flying coffins.”

Ms Alexander’s story about her family, and the clerical work she did in the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) from 1942-1946, including at bomber command at RAF Waddington, only came to light because of the Royal British Legion appeal.

She said she previously just thought: “It was our duty to do what we could and that was life, everyone was losing family… it was just something that happened.

“All part of life and living.”

Read more:
New photos show how wartime films were made in honour of VE Day
Why King’s VE Day message to veterans is very personal
VE Day 80th anniversary celebration in pictures

I asked her how her mother reacted when she said she wanted to sign up.

Ms Alexander replied: “She said yes. It would do me good. I was getting too spoilt at home.”

She added: “If my brothers were in, I had to be in to do my bit too.”

Her mother, Rosa Kipling, was also a remarkable woman.

She lived until 105 and was recognised for bravery in the first honours list to feature MBEs in 1918, after surviving an explosion during the First World War in a munitions factory.

It is no wonder then that her children were all so committed to do their bit.

The sense of service and the acceptance of the sacrifices that had to be made now feel more important than ever, especially in the context of ongoing global conflicts.

That was something that Ms Alexander was keen to talk about from her home in March, Cambridgeshire, where she will be watching today’s events.

Asked why she believes it is so important that we take time to remember today, she said: “Because it’s all part of history, and history is very important, because we learn from history.

“When you think of all the conflicts that are going on now and how it’s all unnecessary in a sense, just pure greed. Because what they went through (in the Second World War) was absolute hell.”

As I reflected with her that they truly are an amazing generation, Ms Alexander simply replied: “Yes, there’ll never be another one like it.”

The cost of digitising the NHS is around £21bn over the next five years, according to new research.

A report from the Health Foundation has analysed the cost needed to put in the infrastructure for digital patient records, cloud storage, cyber security and Wi-Fi, as well as the cost of the skills and capabilities to use it effectively.

Debates around digitising the NHS often centre on the hardware and infrastructure, but the Health Foundation has highlighted the ongoing costs, including software subscriptions and maintenance.

A report in January found some NHS trusts still rely on fax machines, while others “are often still too reliant on paper records”.

The Health Foundation said “significant investment” will need to be made in the next five years, including £8bn in capital spending, £3bn in one-off spending and £2bn in annual costs.

Several attempts to digitise the health service have been made – and subsequently abandoned – over the years due to spiralling costs.

A plan to create the world’s largest single civilian computer system, linking all parts of the NHS was launched in 2002 and dismantled just over a decade later – despite already costing more than £10bn.

The doomed National Programme for IT had been in disarray for several years before the plug was finally pulled.

The programme had originally been budgeted at around £6bn.

‘Reform or die’

The prime minister has previously said the NHS must “reform or die” in the wake of a damning report from Lord Darzi into the state of the health service.

The report – ordered by Health Secretary Wes Streeting days after he took on the role – concluded the health service was in “critical condition” with record waiting lists, and the health of the nation significantly deteriorating in the last 15 years.

Keir Starmer has previously promised to move from an “analogue to a digital NHS” however, a recent report from the Public Accounts Committee has warned “the switch to digital in parts of the NHS has been glacially slow”.

‘Reform or die’: Can technology save the NHS?

This is in part because money intended for technology has been redirected to plug spending deficits elsewhere.