Chancellor calls on firms to tackle high prices as government remains far from pledge of halving inflation to 5%
Jeremy Hunt has said he must “double down” on high prices after admitting a package of pre-election tax cuts this autumn was looking unlikely.
The government would not make moves to “pump billions of additional demand” into the economy, the chancellor added.
Continue reading...Frontbenchers fear they have become ‘zombie government’ with polls indicating PM’s priorities remain unclear to public
Progress on meeting Rishi Sunak’s “five pledges” has privately come under fire from Conservative MPs this week, six months on from his urge to be judged on delivering what he called the “people’s priorities”.
Jitters have extended all the way into Downing Street, with the prime minister’s senior aides traipsing across Whitehall to raise concerns about how the pledges are landing with the public.
Continue reading...Robert Halfon says government cannot promise to accept pay review body recommendation, as NEU members strike again
Q: My fear is that sewage in water could lead to a typhoid problem?
Ferrari asks if Labour favours water nationalisation.
Continue reading...Latest updates: group complains about Labour’s lack of commitment to green new deal as leader speaks about extending opportunity
Starmer is now being heckled by someone complaining about his lack of commitment to a green new deal.
He says he has already given a speech on this. He offers to speak to the protesters later.
Keir Starmer asked two protesters holding a banner saying “Green New Deal now” to “let me finish” as they interrupted his speech.
The Labour leader told the pair he would “speak to you after” as they accused of him of U-turning on his £28bn green prosperity plan before being led off stage by security.
I promise you this, wherever there are obstacles to opportunity, wherever there are the barriers to hope, my Labour government will tear them down.
Continue reading...Recommendations of standards committee inquiry will trigger recall petition in Pincher’s Tamworth constituency
Rishi Sunak faces the prospect of yet another byelection after a parliamentary report into groping allegations against Chris Pincher recommended that the former government whip be suspended as an MP for eight weeks.
The suspension will automatically trigger a recall petition in Pincher’s constituency of Tamworth if approved by MPs. If 10% of constituents sign it then there will be a byelection.
Continue reading...Purpose of the bill is now ‘dead’, says crossbench peer Alex Carlile after yesterday’s vote in House of Lords
Rishi Sunak has posted a message on Twitter saying that he looks forward to continuing working with Jens Stoltenberg, who has had his term as Nato’s secretary general extended.
According to the Sun’s Harry Cole, at cabinet Sunak praised Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, as the only other credible candidate for the job who was not a former prime minister. Stoltenberg is a former Norwegian PM.
Continue reading...Spokesperson says PM agrees with Ben Stokes about Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal at Lord’s
Rishi Sunak has weighed into the row over Jonny Bairstow’s controversial dismissal at Lord’s on Sunday, saying Australia did not act in the spirit of the game.
Downing Street said it was the prime minister’s belief that the Australian team had contravened the spirit of cricket by stumping Bairstow out when the England batsman appeared to believe the ball was not in play during a heated final day of the second Ashes test.
Continue reading...Health bosses will welcome tens of thousands of new recruits, but the plan has little to say on how to change the culture to keep them
It was on 8 November 2017 that Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, first promised that the government would bring forward a long-term, comprehensive plan to end the NHS’s lack of staff.
It would, he said, be the “first proper NHS workforce plan that we have had since 2000”. And the plan would emerge quickly, he added, reflecting the urgency of tackling what has become the most debilitating of the NHS’s many problems – shortages of staff, everywhere.
Continue reading...Advisory committee on business appointments says it has seen ‘no evidence’ that Gray’s decision-making was affected despite ex-PM’s claim
NHS England has just published its 150-page long-term workforce plan. It’s here.
The government is keen to present it as an NHS plan, not a government plan, and at the moment you cannot find it prominently on the No 10 or Department of Health and Social Care websites.
This is our longer-term, strategic approach to workforce planning. In a nutshell we will:
1. Train more staff
Continue reading...NHS England could have 12,500 extra doctors and nurses by 2028 under the service’s first long-term workforce plan
Thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year as part of a government push to plug the huge workforce gaps that plague almost all NHS services.
The number of places in medical schools will rise from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and could reach 15,000 by 2031 as a result of the NHS’s first long-term workforce plan.
Continue reading...Labour leader presses prime minister to admit his party will not meet promised targets over house building
PMQs is coming up soon.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
We remain seriously concerned about the potential implications of the illegal migration bill on human rights and the safety of individuals.
Careful consideration should continue to be given to the impact of the bill on different groups with protected characteristics – including children, pregnant women, disabled people, torture survivors, and victims of trafficking.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sunak regularly pictured using Pilot V fountain pens during time as chancellor and prime minister
Rishi Sunak routinely uses pens with erasable ink to make hand-written notes on official documents and in government meetings, prompting concerns over Downing Street secrecy, the Guardian has learned.
The prime minister has regularly been pictured using the disposable Pilot V fountain pens during his time as chancellor and prime minister, most recently while taking notes during the Cabinet meeting two weeks ago.
Continue reading...‘Impact assessment’ of the illegal migration bill reignites bitter rows over the controversial scheme
The cost of sending a single person seeking asylum to Rwanda could be nearly £170,000, according to government analysis, which has immediately reignited bitter rows over the controversial scheme.
A long-awaited “impact assessment” of the illegal migration bill has conceded that ministers do not know the overall costs of implementing plans to detain and deport anyone who arrives in the UK by irregular means.
Continue reading...PM likely to be questioned during Nottingham visit on King’s Fund report that says NHS is ‘more a laggard than a leader’
Lord Bethell, the former health minister, has welcomed the announcement from the government today about targeted lung cancer screening. But he thinks the government should go further.
The review by Javed Khan, published last summer, recommended raising the age at which people can buy cigarettes “by one year every year until no one can buy a tobacco product in this country”. Many Tories strongly oppose measures like this on libertarian grounds, and the government has not adopted the plan.
Continue reading...Recommendations from independent pay review bodies could be rejected by PM if he deems them unaffordable
Unions have expressed outrage over reports the prime minister plans to block public sector wage increases owing to fears about pushing up UK inflation, which remains worse than in other leading economies.
Recommendations from the independent pay review bodies could be overruled by Rishi Sunak if they are considered unaffordable, the Times reported, because of concerns they could set off a “wage-price spiral”.
Continue reading...Tories are likely to bear the brunt of homeowning voters’ anger in marginal constituencies in next year’s election
As the former chancellor who warned presciently during last summer’s leadership contest that Liz Truss would crash the economy, Rishi Sunak’s calm competence was meant to be his key electoral selling point.
But after Thursday’s half-point rate rise by the Bank of England left thousands of voters facing eye-watering mortgage hikes, a shirt-sleeved Sunak was reduced to insisting he was “totally, 100% on it” when it comes to fighting inflation.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he knows people will be anxious about rate rise but ‘it is going to be OK’
Rishi Sunak has posted a thread on Twitter setting out what the government is doing to help people with the cost of living. It starts here.
He ends by saying “if we can hold our nerve” he is confident the plan will deliver.
Continue reading...Critics say Bank should pay less attention to economic models and more to what is happening on the ground
With Thursday’s 0.5 percentage point increase in interest rates to 5%, the Bank of England is hoping to land a knockout blow against inflation.
The latest hike is an admission that 12 rises over more than 18 months have not been enough to tackle the problem. Or, as the minutes said, the impact of shocks from Covid and the energy price crisis “were likely to take longer to unwind than they had done to emerge”, adding that the risks of inflation remaining high “were skewed to the upside”.
Continue reading...Theresa May says parliament must punish MPs who break rules as Penny Mordaunt says Johnson ‘undermined democratic process’
At the Labour event Keir Starmer is now speaking. He starts with a jibe at the SNP, saying the tide is turning in Scotland.
Turning to energy policy, he says Labour wants to promote security.
Can we still achieve great things? Can we unite and move forward? Can we still change, can we grow, can we get things done, can we build things? New industries, new technologies, new jobs; will they come to our shores, or will the future pass us by?
You can put it even more starkly. Around the world people want to know, are we still a great nation? If the question is about the British people, the answer is emphatically: yes.
Continue reading...The midweek inflation bulletin could be the most significant piece of government data published this year
This Wednesday will mark the longest day of the year and not long after the sun comes up the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will publish its latest cost of living bulletin. To say the data is eagerly awaited is an understatement. There is unlikely to be a more significant piece of official data released in the current parliament.
The reason is simple. Despite raising interest rates 12 times since December 2021 in an attempt to quell upward price pressures, inflation is proving harder to shift than the Bank of England imagined.
Continue reading...