'Worried sick' and ceasefire hopes 'on a knife edge'

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall's Common's announcement on welfare reforms dominated Wednesday morning's papers.

Writing in the Times, Sir Keir Starmer has defended the £5bn package of welfare cuts announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, saying the current system "actively incentivises" people not to work.

He says his urgent overhaul of the social security system is based on three principles: if you can work, you should; if you want to work, the government should help you; and if you will never be able to work, the state should help you get by.

The government gets little support from the Daily Mirror. Under the headline "Worried sick" the paper says Kendall left those on benefits in limbo by not saying who would be affected.

It says that after 14 brutal Tory years, poor, sick and disabled people had their hopes raised at the last election, but they were dealt a fresh blow yesterday by what the paper describes as "Hard Labour".

"Things may be bad, but they could be a lot, lot worse," writes Patrick Butler in the Guardian, who notes that the Conservatives asked why welfare spending would fall by "a mere five billion".

But the Daily Mail believes Labour "bottled it", tinkering timidly at the edges, saying in its editorial that "there is nothing kind about abandoning people to life on benefits the country can ill-afford, robbing them of purpose and opportunity".

And the Financial Times predicts that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is planning a further multi-billion pound public spending squeeze in next week's Spring Statement.

The Daily Telegraph leads on what it bills as Russian President Vladimir Putin's rejection of Donald Trump's ceasefire proposals for Ukraine. It notes that while Putin agreed to halt his attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure for 30 days, he's demanded that Ukraine should be banned from rearming during that time - and called for a complete cessation of Western support for Kyiv.

Writing in the I paper, Patrick Cockburn argues that Moscow needs to keep the American president on side, because it is much to its advantage to deal bilaterally with the US and reduce as far as possible the input of Ukraine and the European states in Nato.

The Sun says during hours of talks Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin did agree on one thing: a game of ice hockey between their countries. "What the Puck?" is its headline.

A study has found a big rise in the number of "negative feminine nouns" in chart songs over the past twenty years. According to the Daily Telegraph, the rise appears to be driven by women themselves securing more chart-topping songs, as they reappropriate derogatory terms or feel pressure to conform to what sells records.

The Times reports that members of the Cambridge University boat race team have accused Oxford of using "desperate" and "slimy" tactics to disqualify a star rower from competing next month. It says an arbitration panel has backed Oxford's view that the PGCE teaching qualification is a "certificate" rather than a degree.

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