Reform and Tories pitch competing welfare cuts as Burnham faces North Sea call

Reform UK has pledged to ban foreign nationals from claiming benefits in what the party calls a welfare shake-up. The Sun and Daily Mail report the party wants to cut the welfare bill, with disability payments among the targets. The BBC confirms the ban would include EU citizens.

The Conservatives are running their own welfare-cutting pitch. The Daily Mail reports the Tories want to save billions through their own proposals. The Mirror has called Reform's plan "cowardly", warning it would spark a new clash over post-Brexit arrangements.

Both parties are making these pledges while Andy Burnham leads a government that has yet to set out its own position on welfare reform. The Prime Minister is also facing what the Daily Mail describes as a "life or death" decision on North Sea oil licensing - another question where the opposition parties have already staked their ground and the government hasn't.

The pattern is the older one: oppositions propose, governments dispose. What neither opposition pitch addresses is the machinery - how a benefits ban on foreign nationals would work within existing reciprocal arrangements, or what happens to contributory benefits paid into by workers from abroad. The detail will matter more than the pledge.

Watch for the government's own welfare figures in the autumn statement, and whether Burnham moves on North Sea licensing before or after the opposition forces a vote.