Former PM set to give speech defending her time in charge and explaining spending decisions
Liz Truss will claim that Rishi Sunak’s government has spent £35bn more than she would have as prime minister, in a speech on Monday.
The short-lived prime minister will use a speech at the Institute for Government to defend and explain her time in charge, nearly a year on from the ill-fated mini-budget that helped end her premiership.
Continue reading...Prime minister can find comfort in ranking above Liz Truss, however
Rishi Sunak is seen as less competent on economic affairs than most recent Conservative prime ministers, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
The prime minister has made reducing inflation one of his key priorities, as well as reducing debt and avoiding a recession. Much of his pitch has been on his economic management skills as a former chancellor.
Continue reading...Ties with Europe are a top priority, says shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, as he calls for Britain to play a lead role in world affairs
The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has proposed regular meetings between UK and European Union ministers, as part of a major reset of British foreign policy under a Labour government.
Lammy, who was attending a gathering of centre-left leaders in Montreal, Canada, with the Labour leader Keir Starmer, told the Observer it was high time the UK took up its place again, after Brexit, as a lead player in world affairs. “A UK that is isolated and missing is felt across the world. It is definitely the case that the international community want Britain back,” he said.
Continue reading...Survey reveals Labour more likely than Lib Dems to overturn Conservatives’ 25,000 majority in Nadine Dorries’s former seat
• Read more: byelection duel could gift Mid Beds to Tories
Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck in the battle for the previously safe Tory seat of Mid Bedfordshire, according to a poll that suggests a split “progressive” vote could allow Rishi Sunak’s party to retain the constituency.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats are making a full-tilt effort to win the seat from the Conservatives after the resignation of Nadine Dorries, a close ally of Boris Johnson, who eventually quit after being denied a place on the former prime minister’s resignation honours list.
Continue reading...Three years after unprecedented inquest ruling, absence of other cases has left a gap for pollution sceptics to exploit
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah reserves a withering eye roll for people who question the impact that air pollution has on the health of children living in London. It helps her to shrug off the increasingly politicised debate over what needs to be done to improve the capital’s air quality.
Adoo-Kissi-Debrah fought a calm and determined campaign for seven years to make sure air pollution was included on her daughter Ella’s death certificate, and in December 2020 a second inquest ruled that air pollution contributed to Ella’s death from asthma in 2013.
Continue reading...Diplomatic and media blitz for Labour leader will include appearances on Sunday morning political shows
Keir Starmer has arrived in Canada to set out his doctrine for tackling international threats at a gathering of world leaders, the latest step in the Labour leader’s move to flesh out policy in politically turbulent areas such as immigration.
Amid continued efforts by Starmer and his team to push back against the “nonsense” that closer cooperation with the EU would involve the UK having to accept 100,000 asylum-seekers a year, the Labour leader was in Montreal for the Global Progress Action Summit of centre-left politicians.
Continue reading...PM says breed, responsible for series of attacks, will be banned once it has been properly defined
Here is the full text of what Rishi Sunak said in his video statement about banning American XL bully dogs. (See 11.50am.)
The American XL bully dog is a danger to our communities, particularly our children.
I share the nation’s horror at the recent videos we’ve all seen. Yesterday we saw another suspected XL bully dog attack, which has tragically led to a fatality.
It’s clear the American XL Bully dog is a danger to our communities.
I’ve ordered urgent work to define and ban this breed so we can end these violent attacks and keep people safe.
Continue reading...Labour leader accused of pandering to anti-migrant sentiments by those on the left while Tories seize on proposal for deal with EU
Keir Starmer was under attack from left and right on Thursday after he set out plans to stop small boat Channel crossings in Labour’s first big intervention on the issue.
Fleshing out his party’s proposals, the Labour leader promised to ditch the use of barges, hotels and military sites to house asylum seekers. He also promised to recruit 1,000 caseworkers to end the asylum backlog.
Continue reading...Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leak suggests Sunak and Hunt have discussed cost implications of Manchester phase
The HS2 high-speed rail line is at risk of further cuts to its route north of Birmingham as the government considers whether it can afford high-cost projects in advance of the autumn budget.
The project has been mired in fresh uncertainty after the prime minister’s spokesperson refused to guarantee on Thursday it would run to Manchester, after publication of a photographed document suggesting further cuts were under discussion.
Continue reading...Households could save £400 a year on energy bills via means-tested insulation scheme
Households could save up to £400 a year on energy bills under a new means-tested scheme to insulate more than 300,000 of Great Britain’s draughtiest homes.
The government is spending £1bn on grants for homes that have low energy efficiency ratings and are in lower council tax bands.
Continue reading...Labour leader working on ‘quid pro quo’ deal of migrant quotas from bloc in return for sending back those who arrive illegally
Keir Starmer has revealed that he would seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers who come to Britain, as he vowed to “smash the gangs” behind small boat crossings.
Labour believes that any agreement with Brussels would have to be “quid pro quo”, meaning accepting quotas of migrants from the bloc in return for sending back people who arrive illegally. The system would reportedly work via applications in UK embassies on the continent, and prioritise people with family already in the UK.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Delay to work on five buildings in 2020 led to warnings of ‘catastrophic’ safety risk
Rishi Sunak blocked plans to rebuild five hospitals riddled with crumbling concrete three years ago, prompting warnings of a “catastrophic” risk to patient safety, the Guardian has learned.
Just two of the seven hospital rebuilding projects requested by the Department for Health were signed off by the Treasury at the 2020 spending review when Sunak was chancellor and Steve Barclay, now the health secretary, was his chief secretary.
Continue reading...Labour leader accuses government of failing to heed warnings which has led to series of crises this week
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question at PMQs.
Yesterday it emerged that ministers are mulling over a plan to tweak the triple lock for pensions so that what might be a bumper 8.5% increase in its value next year ends up being marginally less generous, at 7.8%.
Continue reading...Dan Rosenfield decides to sit as independent after being nominated by former PM in resignation honours list
Boris Johnson’s former chief of staff Dan Rosenfield has decided not to sit on the Conservative benches following his elevation to the Lords in a move that has outraged some Tories, with one saying it made the former prime minister “look like a chump”.
Rosenfield, a former Treasury official, was one of several ex-aides nominated in June for peerages in Johnson’s resignation honours list.
Continue reading...Activists call for reassurances to be given to those who gave information to parliamentarians
Finn Lau’s meeting with a Westminster researcher who was later arrested on suspicion of spying for China lasted just 20 minutes. Nearly a year later he is mulling the potential consequences.
Lau, an exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist with a £100,000 bounty on his head, has a lingering suspicion that some of his ideas for putting more pressure on China appear not to have made it beyond their meeting.
Continue reading...Frontex deal would be Sunak’s third with EU as prime minister but would not address small boats crisis
Rishi Sunak is on the verge of securing an agreement for cooperation between the UK and the EU’s border protection agency, Frontex in a further sign of thawing post-Brexit relations.
The deal is expected to mirror other agreements Frontex has with “third country” states, including one with Albania, which agreed to renew its 2019 accord.
Continue reading...Lord Frost, Brexit negotiator for former PM, tells House of Lords that government never wanted ‘unsatisfactory’ protocol to work
Rayner says Labour will update trade union laws to make them fit for the 21st century.
The laws affecting union reps and officials do not take into account technological advancements, she says.
First, we will update regulations to outlaw the use of predictive technologies for blacklisting and safeguard against singling out workers for mistreatment or the sack without any evidence of human interaction.
Second, we will act to end the loophole that allows employers to pass the dirty work down to third party contractors, so that any third party found to be carrying out blacklisting can legally be held to account.
The Tories pushed through the 2016 Trade Union Act, preventing fair bargaining and holding back living standards.
And this year they gave us the minimum service levels bill [the Strikes Act] …
Continue reading...Prime minister says he told Li Qiang, the Chinese prime minister, at G20 that Chinese interference with the work of parliament will ‘never be tolerated’
Simon Clarke, who was the levelling up secretary during the Liz Truss premiership, has defended the government’s decision not to explicitly label China as a threat. In posts on X, or Twitter as many of us still call it, he said:
There are legitimate reasons why it is difficult for ministers to say China is a threat – that’s the nature of international relations. What matters more than words is that our policy choices change to reflect the undoubted danger of China’s actions.
Here I think the Government’s record stands up pretty well. You have the soft power of our new Pacific trade bloc membership in the CPTPP (which notably does not include China) and you have the hard power of the new AUKUS alliance - itself a response to Chinese aggression.
Continue reading...Presence of Raac in Palace of Westminster poses no ‘immediate risk’, parliamentary spokesperson says
The collapse-risk concrete at the centre of a crisis in school buildings has been found in parliament.
The presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) poses no “immediate risk”, a parliamentary spokesperson said.
Continue reading...Former leadership contender says life of politician puts ‘almost unsustainable’ strain on mental health
The former Conservative minister Rory Stewart has said some fellow MPs came very close to killing themselves when he was in the Commons, and the life of a politician placed an “almost unsustainable” strain on people.
Stewart, who was international development secretary and stood to be Tory leader before leaving the Commons in 2019, said other former colleagues experienced “total breakdowns in public”.
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