Labour deputy leader being investigated over whether she gave false information a decade ago
Angela Rayner has handled the controversy over her living arrangements “in the right way”, Yvette Cooper has insisted after a former aide contradicted Rayner’s account.
The shadow home secretary said Rayner was “very keen to be able to provide the facts to the relevant authorities”.
Continue reading...OpenDemocracy investigation names attenders, including Keir Starmer, at Edinburgh meeting to discuss party’s banking policies
Senior members of the shadow cabinet have held a private meeting with a group of financial services companies to discuss the party’s banking policies just weeks after one of the companies donated £150,000 to the party.
Six senior Labour figures – including the leader, Keir Starmer, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds – attended the meeting in Edinburgh last December, according to an investigation by the website OpenDemocracy.
Continue reading...David Blunkett and Alan Johnson join Iain Duncan Smith in dismay at DWP’s treatment of benefit recipients’ minor mistakes
The “scandalous” prosecution of unpaid carers uncovered by the Guardian must end now and an inquiry must be launched immediately, Rishi Sunak has been told.
The pressure on the prime minister grew as three former work and pension secretaries and Labour demanded to know why thousands of people who care for their loved ones have been hounded for thousands of pounds – and in some cases convicted – after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.
Continue reading...Exclusive: MP for Enfield Southgate also has whip restored as internal process does not uphold complaint about his conduct
A former shadow minister has been readmitted to the Labour party after a 10-month-long investigation into a complaint about his conduct.
Bambos Charalambous, the MP for Enfield Southgate who lost the Labour whip last June, said he was “delighted” his suspension had been lifted.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Failure to do so would betray working-class people, shadow health secretary says
Wes Streeting has defended Labour’s plans to use the private sector to help cut the NHS care backlog, arguing that a failure to do so would result in a “betrayal” of working-class people who cannot afford to pay for care.
The shadow health secretary said his approach was a “pragmatic but principled one” as he doubled down on his remarks this week about “middle-class lefties” whom he said risked putting ideological purity ahead of patient care.
Continue reading...London mayor expected to criticise Susan Hall in speech launching panels on school roofs
Sadiq Khan will accuse his Conservative rival in the race to be London’s next mayor of being “Trumpian” over the climate crisis, as he announces plans for solar panels on schools.
Khan is expected to acknowledge resistance to his expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in a speech on Friday but insist that he still intends to “go further”.
Continue reading...Estimated 7.54m treatments waiting to be carried out at end of February in slight fall for fifth month in a row but list remains high
The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen for the fifth month in a row, figures show.
An estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of February, relating to 6.29 million patients, down slightly from 7.58 million treatments and 6.29 million patients at the end of January, NHS England said.
At the end of last year, we promised to change the migration system to deliver the biggest ever cut to migration numbers. And today, we’ve enacted the final part of that plan.
Taken together, the measures we’ve introduced will radically reduce legal migration. 300,000 people who arrived in the UK last year, would no longer be eligible to do so under these new rules.
Continue reading...Joe Haines tells the Times of relationship with Janet Hewlett-Davies before Labour leader resigned from No 10
Harold Wilson confessed to an affair during his final year in Downing Street, one of his closest surviving aides has revealed for the first time.
The former Labour prime minister had a secret affair with Janet Hewlett-Davies, his former deputy press secretary who was 22 years his junior, towards the end of his time in No 10.
Continue reading...Constituent reported tweets liked and shared by Wilma Brown, who was to stand in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath
Labour has suspended a parliamentary candidate pending an investigation after she was found to have liked and shared a number of “racist” and controversial social media posts.
Wilma Brown, who was running in the target seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, once held by the former prime minister Gordon Brown, has since deleted her account on X after a string of tweets were reported to the party.
Continue reading...The shadow chancellor said £5bn raised by clamping down on tax avoidance will fund slew of promises on NHS and primary school breakfast clubs
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also repeatedly attacked Conservative plans over non-dom tax status. Having defended the status against calls for abolition for years, in March Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt announced it would adopt Labour’s policy and scrap the status. However, the way they are planning to do so has been criticised for including a significant number of loopholes.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, Reeves said:
The government’s plans that they announced in March about non-doms, they said they were taking our policy, well it turns out they’ve taken it but left a load of loopholes in it. And so if you are a non-dom you can still get out of paying inheritance tax: in the first year of their policy there’s a 50% discount, we don’t get 50% discounts on our taxes.
People who go out and work today – teachers, plumbers, doctors, they don’t get a 50% discount – why should some of the wealthiest people in the country get that discount? We would abolish that and we would put that money into frontline public services, where it belongs.”
You can ramp it up pretty quickly. At the start you might need to bring in extra resource but then you need to train people up within the government to do this work.
This isn’t rocket science, previous governments have managed to close that tax gap, as it’s called.
We’ve got to invest in and improve the customer service at HMRC because, you know, we had this urgent question in parliament just before the recess, which was about HMRC closing its phone line for six months a year. Because the service was so bad, they just decided to close the phone line. And we say, look, you have to invest in digital solutions and modernise HMRC.
Continue reading...Kevin Hollinrake has said in his view ‘people should be prosecuted’
I mentioned in the introduction that Reform UK are giving a press briefing that they have billed as being about “Labour’s betrayal of the working class”. That will be starting in a few minutes and I will bring you any key lines that emerge …
John Harris writes for us today, cautioning against schadenfreude at the Tories’ apparently inevitable defeat in the next election. He writes:
Continue reading...Parents and NHS would be able to monitor vaccinations and checkups through digital version of ‘red book’
Labour plans to digitise the NHS “red book” that parents use for their children’s medical records as part of a series of changes to the NHS app.
Parents and the NHS would be able to see if children are behind on jabs or checkups through a new digital record, with automatic notifications to prompt them to book appointments under the party’s plans.
Continue reading...Shadow foreign secretary says ‘far too many people have died’ but refuses to back call for immediate ban on arms sales
The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said he has “serious concerns about a breach in international humanitarian law” over Israel’s actions in Gaza as “far too many people have died”.
At least 33,037 Palestinians have been killed and 75,668 others have been injured in the Israeli military offensive, according to the Palestinian health ministry, six months on from the 7 October Hamas attack in southern Israel, during which about 1,140 people were killed and 240 others were taken as hostages.
Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
London mayor’s comments come as other senior Labour figures call for government to take action after killing of aid workers
Sadiq Khan has become the most senior Labour politician to call for an immediate end of UK arms sales to Israel, with a number of other prominent party figures also saying the government should take action after the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza.
The London mayor said Rishi Sunak must halt arms sales, saying: “It’s got to stop.”
Continue reading...Former Foreign Office minister had suggested some in government were prepared to overlook human rights violations
Members of the National Education Union have voted to delay moving to a formal strike ballot until they know the detail of the government’s pay offer for 2024/5.
Delegates attending the NEU’s annual conference agreed the offer - when it comes - should be put to members in a snap poll and if rejected with a convincing turnout, move to a formal ballot for industrial action.
After achieving an overwhelming majority vote in our recent indicative ballot, NEU conference committed to intensify its campaign to win a fully-funded, above-inflation pay rise and greater resources for schools and colleges.
Education is on its knees, struggling to cope with a crisis never seen before in our sector. And the responsibility for this lies squarely at the door of secretary of state for education Gillian Keegan and 14 years of mismanagement and underinvestment by a government that does not care.
The Greens claim their policies could lead to at least 150,000 extra council homes a year being built. In his speech, Ramsay said these would come from a mix of new-build, refurbishments and exisiting homes. This is one of several policies intended to increase the supply of affordable housing. In its press notice the party says:
The policies the Green party would introduce to help councils increase the supply of affordable housing include:
-Providing funding to councils to meet their needs for affordable social housing and lift the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for housebuilding – ensuring at least an extra 150,000 council homes a year are made available through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes
Denyer said the Greens were aiming for a record number of seats in the local elections. She said:
We are aiming for a record number of seats in the city and to lead the next administration. We know there is a huge appetite for the bold progressive approach of the Greens here, like in so many other towns, cities and villages across the country.
We go into these local elections with around 760 councillors on nearly 170 councils in both urban and rural settings and Greens being a governing party in 10% of all councils in England and Wales already.
She claimed the Greens had “more ambition” than any other party. She said:
When times are hard we need more ambition, not less. We need to rise to the scale of the challenges we face and be clear that not doing that is a political choice. Leaving millions of children in poverty is a political choice. Letting our NHS fall into chaos is a political choice. And failing to commit to the green investment we need is a political choice.
At the Green party, we’re making a different political choice. We choose to listen to what people need. We choose to see the cost of living crisis for what it really is, a widening inequality crisis. And we choose to offer solutions to fix it.
Denyer and Ramsay confirmed that the Greens are focusing on four seats in particular at the general election. They are Brighton Pavilion, where Siân Berry is the candidate, hoping to succeed Caroline Lucas; Bristol Central, where Denyer is the candidate; Waveney Valley, where Ramsay is the candidate; and North Herefordshire, where Ellie Chowns is the candidate. According to the YouGov MRP poll published yesterday, only Berry is on course to win. But Ramsay claimed he had a good chance because last year the Greens won control of Mid Suffolk district council (which roughly overlaps with the Waveney Valley constituency). He went on:
The counsellors there have spent the last year delivering on their promises to secure investment in the local area, make the council’s operations greener and improve local services. And their efforts are being recognised because the Green-majority council has recently won the council of the year award.
Continue reading...National Education Union leader says morale among teachers is at ‘an all time low’ in radio interview
There is widespread agreement in the UK and the US that Israel has “gone too far” in its war against Hamas, Darren Jones, a Labour Treasury spokesperson, said this morning.
In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Jones said:
I think what we’ve seen from President Biden, from Keir Starmer, and now from Lord Cameron, our own foreign secretary, is that countries that supported Israel’s right to defend itself and to recover its hostages from Hamas terrorists in Gaza, which clearly is their right to have done in the first place, have all said that you’ve gone too far, that we need to bring this war to an end, we need to get around the negotiating table, we need to aid to get to people who desperately need it in Gaza.
This latest situation, not only has it resulted in the death of aid workers, which is unacceptable, but it’s now making it much harder for aid to be made available to people who are in the most desperate situations.
The fact of the matter is if the UK, for example, stopped supplying arms, the war would not end. What we need to do is get the parties to a position where the fighting can stop.
As always, on questions of international law, it’s for judges and courts to make that decision, not for politicians.
Continue reading...Lib Dems also call for action to suspend arms exports to Israel after seven aid workers killed in Gaza
Ministers are under pressure from Tory MPs and peers to stop arming Israel after seven humanitarian workers were killed by an airstrike in Gaza.
Four Conservatives told the Guardian on Wednesday that the UK should stop exporting arms to Israel after its strike, which killed three British aid workers.
Continue reading...Exclusive: London mayor to launch plan on Wednesday alongside Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, is to launch a plan to create 150,000 “high-quality, well-paid jobs” by 2028.
The plan will be unveiled by Khan on Wednesday alongside the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who will declare that a Labour administration will “reset” the relationship between national government and London.
Continue reading...Liberal Democrats say PM is ‘laughing in the face of people crying out for change’
At the weekend the Observer splashed on a story by Toby Helm saying government lawyers have told ministers that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law in Gaza.
In an interview today, asked about the legality of what Israel is doing, Rishi Sunak said the government believes Israel has “the intention and the ability” to comply with international law. He said:
Our view is longstanding that Israel has both the intention and the ability to comply with international humanitarian law, I’ve made that very clear to prime minister Netanyahu whenever I’ve spoken to him.
There have been too many civilian deaths in Gaza, of course we want to see an immediate humanitarian pause so that we can get the hostages out and more aid into the region.
Continue reading...Gillian Keegan asks Bridget Phillipson to clarify after party refuses to commit to sticking to plan if it wins power
Labour is under pressure to clarify whether it would keep the government’s free hours childcare system, after the party refused to commit to the plan beyond the next election.
A shadow cabinet minister said on Monday that Labour “will not reduce” the number of free childcare hours parents were entitled to in England if it entered government.
Continue reading...