Ben Chu
BBC Verify policy and analysis correspondent

Around a year ago Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched his “Plan for Change” setting out targets he said would be met by the end of this Parliament in 2029.

So ahead of Starmer being questioned by senior MPs on the House of Commons Liaison Committee this afternoon, I’ve taken a look at how the government has been performing on three key goals.

House building

The government said it would deliver 1.5 million net additional homes in England over the parliament.

That would imply around 300,000 a year on average, but we’re currently running at just over 200,000 a year.

Ministers say they are going to ramp up to the 1.5 million target in the later years of the parliament – however, the delivery rate so far is down on the final years of the last Conservative government.

Health

The government has promised that 92% of patients in England will be seen within 18 weeks.

At the moment around 62% are – but there are signs of a slight pick up over the past year.

Living standards

The government pledged to grow real household disposable income per person – roughly what’s left after taxes, benefits and inflation.

There has been some movement on this measure with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting 0.5% growth in living standards on average a year.

However that would still make it the second weakest Parliament since the 1970s. The worst was under the previous Conservative government between 2019 and 2024 when living standards declined.

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY LLP
Hon. James Comer
Hon. Robert Garcia November 3, 2025 Page 2

compel Attorney General Bondi to release what you have stated is a large trove of unseen files, which the public to date is still waiting to see released.

Your October 22 letter does not provide a persuasive rationale for why deposing the Clintons is required to fulfill the mandate of your investigation, particularly when what little information they have may be efficiently obtained in writing.

You state that your investigation into the “mismanagement” of the Epstein and Maxwell investigations and prosecutions requires the depositions of three individuals: former President Clinton, former Secretary of State Clinton, and former Attorney General William Barr – who was serving in the first Trump Administration when Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in federal custody. Compounding this inexplicable choice of deponents, you also have chosen not to depose the dozens of individuals whose links to Mr. Epstein have been publicly documented.

My clients have been private citizens for the last 24 and 12 years, respectively. President Clinton’s term ended six (6) years before allegations surfaced against Mr. Epstein. Former Secretary of State Clinton’s position was in no way related to law enforcement and is completely afield of any aspect of the Epstein matter. While neither of my clients have anything to offer for the stated purposes of the Committee’s investigation, subpoenaing former Secretary Clinton is on its face both purposeless and harassing. I set forth in my October 6 letter the facts that she did not know Epstein, did not travel with him, and had no dealings with him. Indeed, when I met with your staff to learn your basis for including former Secretary Clinton, none was given beyond wanting to ask if she had ever spoken with her husband about this matter. Setting aside the plainly relevant consideration of marital privilege, this is an entirely pretextual basis for compelling former Secretary Clinton to appear personally in this matter.

It is incumbent on the Committee to address the most basic questions regarding the basis for singling out the Clintons, particularly when there is no obvious or apparent rationale for it, given the mandate of the Committee’s investigation. Your October 22 letter does not provide such a justification. And your previous statements, belied by the facts, that President Clinton is a “prime suspect” (for something) because of visits to Epstein’s island betokens bias, not fairness. You said, on August 11:

“Everybody in America wants to know what went on in Epstein Island, and we’ve all heard reports that Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor there, so he’s a prime suspect to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee.”

“1

Regrettably, such statements are not the words of an impartial and dispassionate factfinder. In fact, President Clinton has never visited Epstein’s island. He has repeatedly stated that, the Secret Service has corroborated that denial, Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent testimony to Deputy Attorney General Blanche reconfirmed this, as did the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre in her

Fields, “Comer: Bill Clinton ‘Prime Suspect’ in Epstein Investigation,” The Hill (Aug. 12, 2025).

NEW ORLEANS – James Davis had the best year in his entire farming career this year.

The third-generation Black row crop farmer estimated picking almost 1,300 pounds of cotton, an average of 50 bushels of soybeans, and an average of around 155 bushels of corn on 2,500 acres of his farmland in northeast Louisiana.

But with U.S. commodities facing steep retaliatory tariffs overseas, he says he and many other farmers can’t sell their crops for enough to cover the loans they take out to fund the growing season.

The tariffs, Davis said, are making it almost impossible to survive.

“To have that kind of yield and still not be able to pay all your bills, that tells you something is broken in the farming industry,” Davis said.

In order to plan for next year, farmers need relief now, Davis said. At a recent meeting with his banker, the bank projected 2026 revenues in order to secure crop loans, and the cash flow math wasn’t adding up — the farm’s expected income wasn’t enough to cover operating loans once input costs, equipment notes, land rent and insurance premiums were factored in.

The Trump administration announced just this week  a new $12 billion package of one-time bridge payments for American farmers like Davis, aimed at helping them recover from temporary market disruptions and high production costs.

“This relief will provide much needed certainty as they get this year’s harvest to market and look ahead to next year’s crops,” Trump said during a White House roundtable event. “It’ll help them continue their efforts to lower food prices for American families.”

Davis says that type of help can’t come soon enough. 

“Without bailouts, it is hard to make crop loans work on paper,” he said in an interview with NPR on Monday.

James Davis asks a question at a panel on farm finances at the National Black Growers Council conference in New Orleans on Dec. 10, 2025. Davis is a third-generation Black row crop farmer who said that despite having the best year he’s ever had in his farming career, he’s still struggling to pay his bills.

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At the same time, however, the Trump Administration dismantled decades-old USDA programs designed to assist Black farmers by eliminating the “socially disadvantaged” designation, including programs like the 2501 Program, which many Black row-crop farmers rely on for access to credit, technical assistance, and conservation support that are otherwise difficult to secure at county-level USDA offices. The USDA did not respond to requests for interviews or comment.

Those supports, experts said, were designed to help smaller farmers and farmers of color remain on the land.

Welcome relief may not come in time

The Farmer Bridge Assistance Program accounts for up to $11 billion of the newly announced package, and offers proportional payments to farmers growing major commodities, including row crops like soybeans, corn and cotton.

Payments are expected to begin by February of next year, and are designed to offset losses from the 2025 crop year.

For many farmers, that isn’t soon enough. While the bridge payment may help with crop loans, there are immediate bills due for many in the coming weeks.

“This needs to show up like Santa Claus underneath the Christmas tree, to be honest with you,” said PJ Haynie, a fifth-generation Black farmer with rice operations in Virginia and Arkansas and chairman of the National Black Growers Council, which met in New Orleans this week for its annual conference.

“Our landlords want their money by the end of the year — our seed and input and chemical and equipment companies that we have to make payments by the end of the year,” he said.

Some farmers may have relationships with bankers and companies that will work with them and extend payment deadlines a few months, Haynie said — others don’t. And farmers are grateful for any support they receive, but, Haynie said, the one-time bridge payments aren’t enough.

“They still won’t make us whole because of the losses that we’ve incurred because of the markets, the tariffs, the trade,” he said. “But every dollar helps.”

Farmers already face challenges like unpredictable weather, pests and stagnant commodity prices, as well as rising input costs including machinery and fertilizer purchases. “We plant and we pray,” as Haynie put it. Tariffs have only compounded those challenges.

Black farmers face additional challenges

Black farmers like Haynie and Davis make up less than 2% of all U.S. farmers — and Black row-crop farmers, like those at this week’s conference, are an even smaller slice of that.

“Our herd is small,” Haynie said, “and if we can protect the herd, the herd will grow.”

Black farmers have asked the federal government for loan relief and other assistance for decades. A century ago, Black farmers owned at least 16 million acres of land. Today, Haynie said they hold around 2 million.

Following the Civil War, Black Americans were promised “40 acres and a mule” by the federal government, but many say that promise never came to pass.

Over the course of the past 100 years, the amount of Black-owned farmland dropped by 90%, according to Data for Progress, due to higher rates of loan and credit denials, lack of legal and industry support and “outright acts of violence and intimidation.”

Advocates say the inability for Black farmers to get a start, and later the sharp drop in farming population, is in part due to what they call USDA’s discriminatory lending practices, and often specific loan officers’ biases. The agency is the subject of an ongoing discrimination class action lawsuit by Black farmers and additional litigation due to those and other allegations.

Much of that history plays into how Black farmers approach the Trump administration.

“The Black row crop farm community needs the support of the administration,” Haynie said. “I can’t … buy an $800,000 combine to sell $4 corn. The math doesn’t math on that.”

All farmers — “Black or white” — are responding to the same depressed prices, he said. But Black farmers, he argues, already a small percentage of total U.S. growers, and often operating at a smaller scale, have less buffer to absorb sudden market shocks.

As farmers look at their projected costs next year, economists say they’re also navigating deep uncertainty in global markets.

“I think that a lot of farmers are still very much looking at the next year with some trepidation, thinking that their margins will continue to be very, very tight,” said Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C.

U.S. trade with China — historically the top buyer of American soybeans and other row crops — has not rebounded to pre–trade war levels despite a new agreement. Meanwhile, Glauber said, countries like Brazil have expanded production dramatically, seizing market share during the trade war and becoming the world’s top soybean exporter — a long-term structural shift that U.S. growers now have to compete against.

Finis Stribling III (left) and John Green II (right) take a break during the National Black Growers Council conference in New Orleans on Dec. 10, 2025. Both Stribling and Green were plagued by bad weather at the start of this year’s growing season, and both said tariffs have only made things harder.

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He added that crops grown in the Mississippi River Delta, such as cotton and soybeans, have been hit especially hard by low prices and retaliatory tariffs.

Finis Stribling III farms 800 acres of cotton, rice, corn, soybeans and wheat in Arkansas and Tennessee. At the National Black Growers Council’s conference, he told NPR 2025 was another year of what he calls “farming in deficit.”

“We had too much rain early, then drought,” he said. “And when you finally get a crop in the field, the price support isn’t strong enough to cover the cost of production.”

Sitting next to him during a lunch break at the conference, another Arkansas row crop farmer John Lee II, put it bluntly: “What I’m worried about is next year. What do we do in 2026 when we go to the bank to try and get a loan? I’m concerned about the notion of going to the bank this upcoming year and not being able to get a loan because we can’t make the loan cash flow.”

Both also said the new tariff relief will help — but not nearly to the degree many outside agriculture may think.

“From the outside looking in, non-farm community, you say $12 billion seems like a lot of money,” Stribling said. “But when you look at the cost of production and the money that’s spent in agriculture, $12 billion is really just a drop in the bucket. It’s almost like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”