PM acknowledges in BBC Panorama interview to air tonight that it is a challenge for people to buy their first home
Davey sums up the Lib Dems’ plans on health and social care
And he says he wants to mention one other policy he is particularly proud of – the proposal to give proper bereavement support to parents whose partners have died.
Continue reading...Proposals also include a £20-a-week boost to payments and an increased limit on earnings from part-time work
The Liberal Democrats will commit to a £1.5bn overhaul of carer’s allowance, including a £20-a-week boost for more than 1 million people who devote their lives to looking after frail, ill and disabled loved ones, in their general election manifesto.
An ongoing Guardian investigation has revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers have been forced by the government to pay back huge sums – and in some cases have faced criminal prosecution – for minor and accidental breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules.
Continue reading...After some tetchy interviews the PM flew to all four nations, while Starmer and Davey focused on voters’ desire for change
Far from the bedraggled figure who announced an election outside No 10, Rishi Sunak positively bounced into a biscuit factory for his first stump speech of the election campaign.
He had given a tetchy performance on the broadcast round on Thursday morning, bristling at those challenging his economic record and failure to carry out his Rwanda plan.
Continue reading...Concern grows over legality of government’s approach as new figures show more than 150,000 carers facing huge penalties
New figures show more than 150,000 unpaid carers are now facing huge fines for minor rule breaches, as MPs, charities and campaigners demanded an immediate amnesty.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, joined calls to write off the vast debts incurred by tens of thousands of people who care for sick, disabled and elderly relatives after experts raised concerns about the legality of the government’s approach.
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...Lib Dem leader fears war will spread to West Bank if those pushing for more settlements are not penalised
The UK should impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers who have pushed for more settlements on Palestinian land, Ed Davey has argued, saying this is vital to stop the fighting in Gaza spreading to the West Bank.
The Liberal Democrat leader, who returned on Wednesday morning from a visit to Israel where he had spoken to charities, politicians and relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, said there was a risk of the prospect of a two-state solution collapsing.
Continue reading...Lib Dem leader, who was business minister from 2010 to 2012, says he is sorry he ‘did not see through Post Office’s lies’
Ed Davey has apologised for the first time for his role as a minister in the Horizon scandal, with the Liberal Democrat leader saying he was “sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies”.
Writing in the Guardian, Davey, whose business minister role from 2010 to 2012 involved oversight of the Post Office, said officials had initially advised him to not meet Alan Bates, who led the campaign into the unjust targeting of post office operators.
Continue reading...Letter shows the Lib Dem leader initially refused to meet a campaigner when he was a minister responsible for the service
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has seen his personal popularity take a significant hit in the wake of the Post Office scandal, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
Davey was one of a series of ministers responsible for the Post Office during the crisis, holding the role between 2010 and 2012. He has received criticism after a letter emerged in which he refused to meet Alan Bates, the former postmaster and campaigner fighting for justice, telling him: “I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose.”
Continue reading...Business minister Kevin Hollinrake to give statement on Horizon scandal and what the government plans to do
James Chapman, a former political editor of the Daily Mail who worked as special adviser for David Davis when he was Brexit secretary for about a year until he left convinced that Brexit was a terrible mistake, says he does not think the “back to square one” line really works as an attack line against Labour.
The trouble with Sunak’s latest slogan is that I suspect a large number of voters think Britain is so broken under the Tories that “going back to square one” sounds like a wholly positive idea
Continue reading...Lib Dem leader says he regrets not doing more while postal affairs minister to help victims wrongly accused of stealing
The Liberal Democrat leader has accused Post Office bosses of misleading him over the Horizon IT scandal in which hundreds of branch owner-operators were wrongly prosecuted.
Sir Ed Davey, who was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012 when the software issues started coming to light, said he regretted not doing more to help victims who were wrongly accused of stealing but claimed that executives had blocked him from meeting campaigners.
Continue reading...Home secretary argued that ‘uncontrolled’ migration poses ‘existential challenge for institutions of the west’
The Sun is carrying a story today saying Rishi Sunak’s “decision to stall the net zero ban on selling new petrol cars has seen him catch up eight points in the polls”. It is based on the results of this Deltapoll poll.
For a more considered view, it is worth reading this article in the i by Prof Sir John Curtice, Britain’s leading psephologist. He says the impact of the net zero speech on the polls has been much more modest. Here is his conclusion.
Whatever the popularity of the measures, if, as has been alleged, Mr Sunak’s motivation was to try to reduce Labour’s lead, it looks as though he has so far reaped little reward. Four polls of voting intention conducted after last Wednesday’s announcement have so far been published. Between them they put Labour’s lead on 17 points – just a point below the polling average shortly before last week’s drama.
Moving the polls is, it seems, just as difficult as dealing with climate change.
Continue reading...Comments from Paul Johnson of Institute of Fiscal Studies come as Downing Street hints at delay to work on second phase of rail link
Around 20,000 university workers are out on strike this week at more than 50 universities across the UK, despite a dramatic last-minute scaling back of industrial action.
Strikes had been set to go ahead at 142 UK universities this week as part of a long-running dispute over pay and working conditions, but it emerged last week that two thirds of branches of the University and College Union (UCU) had declined to take part.
Davey said the Lib Dem commitment – dating back to 1992 – to raise income tax by 1p to improve public services is unsustainable in the current economic climate. Originally the money raised was earmarked for education, but at the last election the party said it would use it to fund the NHS.
Speaking from Bournemouth to broadcast studios, Davey suggested the burden should instead fall on companies making “huge profits” while people struggle with the cost of living.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps says Rishi Sunak ‘prepared to take difficult long-term decision’ when asked about future of HS2 rail project
In Manchester, the first buses to be brought back into public control in England since deregulation in the 1980s have begun their first services.
Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Labour party “would love to see HS2 being built in full” but that it was “not going to make decisions about national interest projects that involve tens of billions of pounds without all of the information being available”.
Continue reading...Celebrities lend their voices to ‘kick the Tories out’ as the party gathers in Bournemouth for the first time in three years
The Liberal Democrats have kicked off their annual conference with a call for people to vote tactically in the general election to remove Conservative MPs, until proportional representation makes this unnecessary.
Gathering in Bournemouth for their first autumn get-together since 2019, a conference rally heard video addresses from Carol Vorderman and Steve Coogan. Neither are party members but they said people should vote in a way to ensure Tory candidates lost.
Continue reading...With a local dispute swaying voters, the result in Boris Johnson’s old seat did not accurately reflect the national mood
• Read more: Starmer under pressure after Uxbridge as Tories tackle mission impossible
One out of three ain’t bad? A surprise win in Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge gave Conservatives something to cheer on Friday morning as Rishi Sunak narrowly avoided being the first prime minister since Harold Wilson to suffer three byelection defeats on the same day. But with a local dispute swaying Uxbridge voters, the contests in Selby and Somerton may provide a clearer indication of the national mood. The picture they paint is bleak: two heavy defeats for the government to different opponents at opposite ends of England.
In the week when Labour leader Keir Starmer took to the stage for the first time with his predecessor Tony Blair, Labour achieved a byelection breakthrough in North Yorkshire worthy of Blair’s mid-1990s prime. Selby and Ainsty’s 20,000-vote Conservative majority is the largest ever overturned by Labour in a byelection, and the swing to Labour was the second largest recorded. Labour comfortably outperformed its current polling with a swing which would decimate the Conservative benches if replicated in a general election. This was the performance of an opposition on its way back into government.
Continue reading...Angela Rayner tables question about criteria for launching investigation into potential breach of ministerial code
And here are some of the lines from what Rishi Sunak has been saying at the London defence conference.
Sunak said the challenge posed by China should not lead to a “blanket descent into protectionism”. He said that China’s rise represented an “epoch-defining challenge”. He explained:
It is a country that has both the means and the intent to reshape the global order.
Its behaviour is increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad and in light of that we do need to take the steps to protect ourselves.
There are a limited number of very sensitive sectors of our economy, or types of technology, where we want to take a particularly robust approach: semiconductors, for example, dual-use technologies, quantum, etc.
But this is not an excuse for a blanket descent into protectionism.
He said that G7 countries should not be engaged in subsidy competition. Asked whether the UK needed an industrial strategy, he replied:
That means different things to different people. If that means we should just be focusing on who can subsidise industries the most, then my answer is no.
We discussed that at the G7 and actually you will see in the G7 communique very specific language acknowledging that subsidy races that essentially just shift industrial capacity between allies in some kind of zero-sum competition are not appropriate.
Continue reading...Conservatives continue to suffer heavy defeats as Labour, Lib Dems and Greens make gains
Prof Rob Ford, an elections specialist, has written an article for the Guardian trying to assess what would be a good result and a bad result for the political parties in the local election. You can read it here:
Results from more than 60 councils are expected overnight with the remainder expected to trickle in throughout the day on Friday.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here
PMQs is starting in five minutes.
The Cabinet Office has just published the revised list of ministers’ interests. This is the document that is supposed get updated every six months, but which has not been updated for around a year – partly because it’s the job of the No 10 independent adviser on ministes’ interests (aka, the ethics adviser), and for months the post was empty because two of Boris Johnson’s resigned, and then he gave up trying to find a replacement.
The prime minister’s wife is a venture capital investor. She owns a venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Limited, and a number of direct shareholdings.
As the prime minister set out in his letter to the chair of the liaison committee on 4 April 2023, this includes the minority shareholding that his wife has in relation to the company, Koru Kids. The guide to the categories of interest (section 7, pages 4-6) sets out the independent adviser’s approach to the inclusion of interests declared in relation to spouses, partners and close family members within the list. The prime minister’s letter of 4 April is available at https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/38992/documents/191876/default/
Continue reading...Controversial MP appointed as Greg Hands’ deputy; Michelle Donelan becomes minister for science, innovation and technology
This is from TalkTV’s Kate McCann.
“Next hour or so …” We’ll see. Reshuffles often take longer than expected, because all it takes is one minister to say no, or ask for time to think, and then the whole process gets clogged up. There is already some evidence that this one is not going to be quite as quick as originally expected. (See 8.30am.)
Continue reading...Prime minister’s new year message makes no mention of the chaos that has plagued the Tory party in 2022
Rishi Sunak has blamed Covid and the Ukraine war for what he acknowledged had been a “tough” 12 months, and warned in a prime ministerial new year message that the country’s problems will not disappear in 2023.
Often taking an openly party political stance, Sunak praised his government’s record and made no mention of the chaos within the Conservative party that contributed to 2022’s difficulties.
Continue reading...