MNI BRIEF: Markets Underprice UK Welfare Reform- Ex-PM Advisor

Markets are "misreading" the appetite of the Parliamentary Labour Party to enact welfare reform in the UK, Nick Williams, a former economic policy advisor to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said on Tuesday.

"It may seem like a cute communications line that the Labour Party believes in work," Williams said at the Resolution Foundation think tank, "but it is the truth."

"What we need is genuine proper reform," but he said that attempts to lower benefits spending over the past few decades have risked blunt cuts rather than genuine reform. Williams was an economic policy adviser to Starmer between 2023 and 2025, having previously worked in HM Treasury.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said "there is nothing progressive about refusing to reform a system that leaves one in eight people out of work" in a speech earlier on Tuesday morning. (See MNI INTERVIEW: BOE Dec Cut Chances Overestimated - Saunders)