Labour Promises Big Workers' Rights, Slightly Forgets School Budget Crisis

KEY POINTS

•Peter Kyle denies that reversing unfair dismissal policy breaks Labour’s manifesto promises.
•Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson stated that school budgets will not pay for rising SEND costs.
•The SEND spending gap is expected to be £6bn by 2028, moving responsibility from local to central government.
•The Employment Rights Bill upgrades workers' rights, including new sick pay from April next year.

Peter Kyle assures us his U-turn on unfair dismissal policy is NOT a manifesto betrayal, which is like promising to drive straight and swerving off at every turn. Meanwhile, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson swears school budgets won’t be picked clean to cover a looming £6bn SEND spending black hole by 2028, because apparently the government plans to pass that hot potato to other departments as if budgeting was a hot potato relay. The Employment Rights Bill, touted as a generational workers' upgrade launching in April 2026, promises sick pay for millions—though critics grumble this might be the budgetary equivalent of buying everyone a Band-Aid while the school roof leaks. Unions and Labour MPs, naturally, aren’t thrilled, probably because they expected a little more honesty than 'we’ll manage it somehow.'