Afternoon summary
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, has signalled that the government is opposed to further concessions to the House of Lords on the illegal migration bill. (See 4.58pm.) He was speaking at the start of a debate after which MPs will vote to overturn a series of amendments passed by the Lords which Jenrick claimed would drive “a coach and horses” through the legislation. The bill will return to the Lords this evening, where peers will have the chance to vote yet again to water down the bill.
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When the debate on the illegal migration bill finishes in the Commons, there could be up to eight divisions – taking up to two hours. After that the bill will return to the House of Lords, where the voting could go on very late. “The house may sit late,” the Lords schedule says.
In the Lords this afternoon the Labour peer Lord Harris of Haringey said the government whips were inflicting a “punishment beating” on peers by timetabling the votes like this. He said:
Is it not the case that the way that this is being structured is you like almost a sort of punishment beating for the House of Lords for daring to question a particular piece of legislation?
Would it not be better for us to agree that we finish at the normal time tonight then we can consider it at a sensible hour tomorrow [Tuesday]?
If the Commons need to consider it again they can either do it if they wish very late at night tomorrow or perhaps can wait until the following day [Wednesday].
In response Lady Williams, the government chief whip, said there was “nothing unusual about this ping-pong process”.
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In the Commons Robert Jenrick is now winding up his speech. He says it is time for the will of the elected chamber to prevail.
Jenrick says government opposed to further concessions to Lords on illegal migration bill
In his speech opening this afternoon’s debate Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, confirmed that the government is opposing further concessions to the Lords. He said:
The issue now before the house is whether the clearly expressed views of this house, the elected chamber, not just in the vote last week, but throughout the earlier passage of the bill, should prevail.
We believe that inaction is not an option, that we must stop boats, and that this bill is a key part of our plan to do just that.
The message in the means must be absolutely clear and unambiguous. If you come to the UK illegally you won’t be able to stay here. Instead you’ll be detained and return to your home country or removed to a safe third country.
There is simply no point in passing legislation that does not deliver a credible deterrence and provides the means to back it up with effective and swift enforcement powers.
We can’t accept amendments that provide for exceptions, qualifications and loopholes which would simply perpetuate the current cycle of delays and endless late and repeated legal challenges to removal.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, asks Robert Jenrick about one of the concessions announced last week relating to how the illegal migration bill deals with people who claim to be victims of modern slavery.
One of the aims of the bill is to stop people avoiding deportation by saying they have been a victim of illegal slavery. The government claims this protection is being abused.
Last week the government said guidance would be issued saying that, if a person has been a victim since they arrived in the UK and if they agree to cooperate with a UK investigation, they would have the protection currently available to victims of modern slavery.
Duncan Smith suggested that it would be better to include this change on the face of the bill, instead of just promising guidance.
In response, Jenrick suggested that legislation would contain the risk of loopholes. He implied statutory guidance would be more flexible.
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Sir Edward Leigh (Con) intervenes. He asks Robert Jenrick if he has seen the comments by Ken Clarke, who is “not a vicious, rightwing creature”, who says he sees no alternative to the bill. And he says Michael Heseltine, another figure seen as being on the Tory left, has spoken about the need to reduce migration.
Jenrick says he has seen Clarke’s comments, and agrees with them.
MPs debate Lords amendments to illegal migration bill
In the Commons Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is now opening the debate on the Lords amendments to the illegal migration bill.
He says MPs voted 18 times on Tuesday last week to reverse amendments passed by the Lords. That was a record number of votes in a day, he says.
He says the Lords amendments were driving “a coach and horses” through the bill.
The government made some “reasonable changes”, he says, and the number of issues dividing the Lords and the Commons has now been “whittled down to nine”.
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Barges could still be used for asylum seekers under Labour, says Cooper
Barges and disused military bases could continue to be used to house asylum seekers under a Labour government until a claims backlog has cleared, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has indicated.
Cooper made the point during a Q&A after she delivered a speech saying Labour would criminalise the deliberate use of AI chatbots to radicalise and train would-be terrorists.
Ben Quinn has the story here.
Later this afternoon MPs will debate the latest amendments to the illegal migration bill passed by the House of Lords, in a further round of “ping pong” as the two houses seek to resolve their differences over the bill.
At the afternoon lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said he did not think the government would be offering any further concessions to the Lords on the legislation.
Carpenters, bricklayers and roofers added to shortage occupation list for work visas
Carpenters, bricklayers and roofers are among migrant workers who will be allowed to apply for work visas and get a discount on fees in an effort to fill UK job shortages, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Home Office said it was “temporarily easing visa restrictions” for a string of construction roles by adding them to the shortage occupation list.
This means foreign workers trained in certain professions qualify for a work visa and are allowed to pay a reduced application fee.
The government hopes the move will help boost the economy, “stimulate development” and “attract new talent”, the department said.
The announcement comes in the wake of calls from some Tory MPs who urged Rishi Sunak to cut immigration and cut back on temporary visa schemes.
Bricklayers, masons, roofers, roof tilers, slaters, carpenters, joiners, plasterers and other “construction and building trades not elsewhere classified” have all been added.
Those working in a shortage occupation can be paid 80% of the job’s usual going rate.
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Back in the Commons, Sir Peter Bottomley (Con) asked Gillian Keegan to consider, when judging what counted as a low-value degree, that religious leaders earn very little, but can contribute greatly to society.
Keegan, the education secretary, said she accepted his point. But she said there were some students still earning less than £18,000 a year, five years after graduating, and that this was not acceptable.
And Valerie Vaz (Lab) asked Keegan what she meant by a low-value degree.
Keegan said the Office fo Students already uses B3 measures to judge courses. It considers how many students continue with a degree, how many complete courses and how many go into a high-skilled job.
She said 18 providers were a cause for concern on this basis. And she suggested business and management courses, and computer science courses, needed special attention. She said there was a vast difference in the outcome for people studying these subjects at different universities.
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Planning for emerging infectious disease outbreak 'woefully inadequate' before Covid, inquiry told
Planning for an emerging infectious disease outbreak in the NHS was “woefully inadequate”, the doctors’ union has told the UK Covid inquiry, saying: “We felt so unprepared.”
In the final week of the inquiry’s investigation into the UK’s preparedness for the pandemic, the chair of the British Medical Association, Prof Philip Banfield, said it had warned years before the virus hit that a decision to split public health directors from the NHS would “threaten the ability to mount an effective pandemic response”. But when the virus hit, he said: “I’ve never seen doctors so worried.”
The UK had prepared for pandemic flu, but the 2019 version of the national risk register also contained a planning assumption for an emerging infectious disease outbreak of 2,000 cases and 200 fatalities. There were only eight beds in four units around the country ready to treat people in those cases, according to evidence to the inquiry from NHS England.
Under questioning from a lawyer for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, Banfield agreed this was “woefully inadequate”.
The Trades Union Congress revealed that workers were not consulted during pandemic planning and the Health Foundation said not enough money was invested in the NHS to keep pace with demand, with spending £40bn below that of Frances, and social care and public health funding slashed by 12% and 15% per capita respectively.
Kate Bell, the deputy general secretary, said the TUC had in 2016 made “an unprecedented series of warnings, raising the alarm about pressures on the NHS”. She went on:
There was very clear evidence that the NHS was under pressure in terms of its capacity … but also in terms of staffing levels, and it was having a significant impact on the ability to cope with additional shocks.
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Gillian Keegan's statement to MPs on limiting access to "low-value" degree courses in England
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is making a Commons statement on the plan to limit the number of students studying what the government calls “rip-off” courses in England.
Until now the government has not given a clear definition of how it judges if a course is not leading to students getting good jobs. (See 1.15pm.)
But Keegan may have given a hint when she told MPs there are 66 higher education providers where fewer than 60% of graduates go on to high-skilled employment, or further study, within 15 months. “This is not acceptable,” she said.
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Driscoll confirms he is standing as independent candidate for north-east mayor, after raising £30,000 in just over two hours
Jamie Driscoll has now raised more than £30,000 to fund his campaign to run as an independent candidate for mayor of the north-east next year. That is more than the target he set for fundraising by the end of August (see 1.55pm), and it means he is definitely running. He has confirmed that by tweeting a link to an Elton John song – I’m Still Standing.
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
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Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has said that Keir Starmer and his allies are to blame for the “mess” generated for the party by Jamie Driscoll’s resignation. A Momentum spokesperson said:
Keir Starmer’s anti-democratic purge has just cost Labour a popular and effective mayor. By needlessly blocking Jamie Driscoll from running for Labour in the north-east mayoralty he himself helped secure, Starmer’s acolytes have divided the Labour party, denied members and unions a fair say and alienated a sitting mayor who has been delivering for North Tyne on council housing and green jobs. This is a mess entirely of Keir Starmer’s making.
To be fair to Starmer and his allies, they don’t seem to regard this as a mess at all. From their point of view, anything that shows voters the party has changed from the Jeremy Corbyn era they seem to regard as a good thing. (See 2.42pm.) Driscoll was never exactly a fully-fledged Corbynite, but he is markedly more leftwing than Starmer, and in the Labour party these days that seems to be enough to kill selection chances.
Labour should be able to win the north-east mayoral election next year quite easily because it covers what is mostly Labour territory.
A Driscoll candidature will make that harder, and in the past independent candidates have done well in mayoral contests, where individual appeal can trump party loyalty. Ken Livingstone famously won his first mayoral contest in London as an independent, trouncing Labour. But Livingstone was an exceptional figure, who had been a household name in London for 20 years by the time he ran for mayor. Driscoll does not have that status, and he will be up against a Labour machine that still dominates local politics in the north-east.
Labour dismisses Jamie Driscoll's resignation, saying candidates should be held 'to highest standard'
The Labour party has put out a statement suggesting that Jamie Driscoll was blocked from standing in the contest to be the party’s candidate for north-east mayor because he was not good enough. In a statement on Driscoll’s decision to quit the party, a spokesperson said:
The Labour party is delighted that local party members have selected Kim McGuinness as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on delivering for working people, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard.
The Tories have let our region down, and as Labour mayor, Kim will be the strong voice the north-east deserves.
Labour has said Driscoll was blocked because he shared a platform with Ken Loach, the film director who has strongly defended Jeremy Corbyn against the claims that Corbyn tolerated antisemitism in the party. Driscoll has said he was talking to Loach at an arts event, about Loach’s films set in the north-east, and that if that is unacceptable for a Labour figure, the party is in a “dark place”.
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Jamie Driscoll has already raised almost half of the £25,000 he says he needs by the end of August if he is going to run as an independent in the contest to be north-east mayor, my colleague Owen Jones points out. Driscoll says a full campaign will cost £150,000, but he says if he can get £25,000 by the end of next month, he will definitely stand. (See 1.53pm.)
His fundraising target is £25,000.
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 17, 2023
In the space of an hour, he’s already raised £12,000.
Absolutely astonishing https://t.co/rKWu2dTEoN
Anas Sarwar says Scottish Labour will push Starmer to axe two-child benefit cap 'as fast as fiscal rules' allow
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has said that Scottish Labour is opposed to the two-child benefit cap (see 9.35am) and will push Keir Starmer to get rid of it if he wins the next general election. Sarwar told the Daily Record:
Scottish Labour policy has not changed. We continue to oppose the two-child limit. We continue to believe that it exacerbates poverty, and we continue to believe that it needs to change.
What we recognise is an incoming Labour government will inherit economic carnage and that means we will not be able to do everything we want, and we won’t be able to do everything as fast as we want.
But we will continue to press any incoming UK Labour government to move as fast as they can within our fiscal rules to remove this heinous policy.
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North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll quits Labour, announcing bid to run against his former party as independent
Jamie Driscoll, the North of Tyne mayor, has resigned from the Labour party. He was recently banned from standing in the contest to be the party’s candidate for mayor of the north-east (a new post, including the area covered by the North of Tyne mayoralty, with a wider chunk of the north-east also included), and at the time the decision was seen as one of the most extreme of many recent cases of candidates not wholly aligned with Keir Starmer and his politics being purged from Labour contests on dubious grounds.
In a series of tweets, Driscoll says that if he can raise £25,000 for a campaign by the end of August, he will stand as an independent against Labour’s candidate for north-east mayor. He says:
I’ve decided to resign from @UKLabour and serve as an Independent Mayor.
People are tired of being controlled by Westminster and Party HQs. They want someone to stand up for them. Let the people decide. £25k by end of Aug & I’ll stand as North East Mayorhttps://gofund.me/98547c6b
I’ve decided to resign from @UKLabour and serve as an Independent Mayor.
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
People are tired of being controlled by Westminster and Party HQs. They want someone to stand up for them. Let the people decide. £25k by end of Aug & I’ll stand as North East Mayor👉https://t.co/WuDEGd3xxJ pic.twitter.com/kscPeMmlX5
The only ‘whip’ should be the people. The North East needs an experienced, independent voice. Even if you don’t live here, this affects you. Our politics is a mess. Millions feel no one speaks for them. Politicians should answer to you, not to party bosses in London HQs.
The only ‘whip' should be the people. The North East needs an experienced, independent voice. Even if you don’t live here, this affects you. Our politics is a mess. Millions feel no one speaks for them. Politicians should answer to you, not to party bosses in London HQs.
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
Since my barring by @UKLabour, I’ve received overwhelming support. The cry for me to run as an independent has come from business leaders, community workers, trade unionists and politicians cross party. People have stopped me in the street asking me to run!
Since my barring by @UKLabour, I’ve received overwhelming support. The cry for me to run as an independent has come from business leaders, community workers, trade unionists and politicians cross party. People have stopped me in the street asking me to run!
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
But I won’t have big party machinery behind me, or a national press office. I’ll need £150k to run a full campaign. If I can raise £25k by the end of August, I’ll run. The decision is yours. There’s more info here
But I won’t have big party machinery behind me, or a national press office. I’ll need £150k to run a full campaign. If I can raise £25k by the end of August, I’ll run. The decision is yours. There’s more info here 👇https://t.co/WuDEGd3xxJ
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
This is not a time for faint hearts. It’s a time for bravery. If you back me, I’ll run. If I run, we can win. #ShyBairnsGetNowt. If you want to find out more about me and my vision for the future, you can find out more on my website
This is not a time for faint hearts. It’s a time for bravery. If you back me, I’ll run. If I run, we can win. #ShyBairnsGetNowt.
— Mayor Jamie Driscoll (@MayorJD) July 17, 2023
If you want to find out more about me and my vision for the future, you can find out more on my website https://t.co/1Q1KjAyN1q
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A reader asks:
Who runs the Office for Students?
Good question. The chief executive is Susan Lapworth, but the appointment to the OfS that attracted most attention was James Wharton, who was appointed chair in 2021. Wharton was Conservative MP for Stockton South between 2010 and 2017. He was a junior minister for two years, but one of his main achievements as an MP was taking a private member’s bill through the Commons in 2013 proposing a referendum on EU membership. That, and the fact that he helped to manage Boris Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign in 2019 (despite the fact he was no longer an MP), probably help to explain why Johnson made him a peer in 2020.
When Wharton was made chair of the OfS, despite having no background in higher education, Labour denounced this as cronyism.
UPDATE: A reader points out that Toby Young, the free schools champion and rightwing controversialist, was also on the board of the OfS briefly. But he resigned after his appointment triggered protests.
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No 10 refuses to give examples of what it sees as 'rip off' university courses
And here is a full summary of that was said at the Downing Street lobby briefing about the government’s plan to limit the number of people studying what are deemed low-value courses in England.
No 10 refused to give examples of what it sees as “rip off” courses. Asked to give examples, the PM’s spokesperson said that under the plans it would be for the Office for Students to decide what courses were not value for money. He said the OfS would focus on particular courses, not entire subjects. He said:
This is not about specific subjects. We are subject-agnostic when it comes to this.
As to how the OfS would decide what courses did not offer value for money, the spokesperson did not give precise details, but he highlighted two criteria that would apply: drop-out rates (“regardless of the subject, you wouldn’t want to see students being signed up to a course where half of the students drop out”, the spokesperson said); and whether the course leads to students getting good jobs.
The spokesperson said the “vast majority” of university courses would not be affected by the policy because they were “good quality”.
The spokesperson would not say whether Rishi Sunak thought too many students were going to university. Asked if he thought too many people were going to university, the spokesperson said Sunak thought “working to an arbitrary number is not the right approach”.
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At 3.30pm Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, will make a Commons statement on the plan to restrict student access to what are deemed low-value degrees. There are no urgent questions.
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No 10 says some courses could be closed entirely under plan to limit number of students doing 'rip-off' degrees
No 10 has said some “rip-off” university courses could be closed down under the plans announced by the government today.
The government says it wants to impose a limit on the number of students in England who can study courses deemed as poor value for money, either because of their drop-out rates or because they don’t help students get good jobs.
But at the No 10 lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson said the cap could be as low as zero. He said:
In extremis, recruitment limits could be used to prevent any recruitment to a course.
The OfS [Office for Students] has powers to suspend a provider’s registration or even remove it from their register if they wish, but it’s up to them to decide the scope and nature of any recruitment.
I will post more from the briefing shortly.
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Sunak pays tribute to Ben Wallace after defence secretary says he wants to quit as MP at next election
In his interview for broadcasters this morning Rishi Sunak also paid tribute to Ben Wallace, following the defence secretary’s announcement that he expects to leave cabinet at the next reshuffle and to stand down as an MP at the next election.
Asked if he was sorry to see Wallace go, Sunak replied:
Of course I am … Ben’s been a great defence secretary. I’ve enjoyed working with him and he’s got a track record he can be very proud of.
Sunak also insisted that Wallace’s decision to leave parliament was understandable. He said:
[Wallace has] been in politics and public service for a very long time, and, as he said, he wants to be able to spend more time with his family, and as a dad myself I completely understand and sympathise with that.
Wallace, who is 53, joins a long list of Conservative MPs, some of whom are quite young, who are standing down at the next election, and this trend is partly explained by the despair they feel about their party’s election prospects. But Wallace has been defence secretary for four years under three prime ministers, making him the longest-serving Conservative in the post since Winston Churchill, and so he has more reason than some of the others for thinking it is time to move on.
Sunak claims crackdown on 'rip off courses' will make higher education better value for taxpayers
In his clip for broadcasters this morning Rishi Sunak was mostly asked about the policy the government is billing as a “crackdown on rip off university degrees” in England. Here are the main points.
Sunak said the policy partly intended to reinforce the message that “you don’t have to go to university to succeed in life”. He explained:
For many people university is the right answer and it does brilliantly, but actually there are a range of people who are being let down by the current system.
They’re being taken advantage of with low-quality courses that don’t lead to a job that it makes it worth it, leaves them financially worse-off. That’s what we’re clamping down on today – but, at the same time, making sure that young people have a range of fantastic alternative opportunities, whether that be apprentices or higher technical qualifications, for example.
Sunak is only the latest in a long line of senior politicians, from all main parties, who for years have been saying that success in life should not depend on having a good university degree. But generally their children end up going to university anyway, which may be one reason why the message is not cutting through.
Sunak brushed aside concerns that the policy would cut revenue for some universities. When this point was put to him, he said what mattered was the “overall financial sustainability” of the university system. He said the policy would make higher education better value for taxpayers. He explained:
I think it’s important that the system is also fair for taxpayers, because ultimately as taxpayers that fund the system – and we’ve got a situation at the moment where around half of people who go to university don’t end up paying back the cost of that degree – that costs the taxpayer money.
So, we need to make sure the system is not just fair for students and they’re getting the right outcome, but it’s also fair for taxpayers.
Part of these reforms clamping down on low-quality courses will improve the overall financial sustainability of the system. And that’s right, right for students, right for the taxpayer.
He stressed that it would be for the Office for Students, not the government, to decide what might count as ‘rip off courses”. He said:
What the regulator will do is look at a range of different outcomes for courses. So, what kind of jobs are students going on to, do they complete the course, how much do they earn in later life?
On the basis of all of that, they’ll be able to figure out ‘well, hang on, that course actually isn’t delivering value for money. It’s letting people down and we should not put students on it because we’re letting them down’.
With that information, students can make more informed choices and, at the same time, we’re making it easier for them to find things like apprenticeships.
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Aslef announces further overtime ban by train drivers
A fresh overtime ban has been announced by train drivers, threatening disruption to services at the height of the summer holidays, PA Media reports. PA says:
Members of Aslef at 15 train operating companies will refuse to work overtime from Monday 31 July to Saturday 5 August in the long-running dispute over pay.
Drivers launched a week-long overtime ban on Monday which the union warned will “seriously” affect services.
Aslef said train companies did not employ enough drivers, which was why they are dependent on rest day working, which the union pointed out was voluntary.
The action will affect Avanti West Coast; Chiltern Railways; Cross Country; East Midlands Railway; Greater Anglia; Great Western Railway; GTR Great Northern Thameslink; Island Line; LNER; Northern Trains; Southeastern; Southern/Gatwick Express; South Western Railway main line; TransPennine Express; and West Midlands Trains.
It will be the fourth week-long ban on overtime since May.
Commenting on the decision, Mick Whelan, Aslef’s general secretary, said:
We don’t want to take this action. We don’t want people to be inconvenienced, but the blame lies with the train companies, and the government which stands behind them, which refuse to sit down and talk to us, and have not made a fair and sensible pay offer to train drivers who have not had one for four years – since 2019 – while prices have soared in that time by more than 12%.
The proposal they made on April 26 of 4% with a further rise dependent, in a naked land grab, on drivers giving up terms and conditions for which we have fought, and negotiated, for years was not designed to be accepted.
We have not heard a word from the employers since then – not a meeting, not a phone call, not a text message, nor an email – for the last 12 weeks, and we haven’t sat down with the government since January 6.
Sunak downplays NAO report saying Boris Johnson's 40 'new' hospitals pledge, as originally intended, will not be met
Rishi Sunak has recorded an interview for broadcasters this morning. Among other topics, he was asked about the report from the National Audit Office today saying that the government is not likely to deliver the 40 “new” hospitals promised by Boris Johnson at the time of the last election.
Sunak downplayed the NAO findings, saying the report showed that 40 projects were set to be delivered by the end of the decade. He said:
I think we will deliver 40 hospitals by 2030 as we committed to do …
I think if you look at the report, they do say we actually will deliver 40 hospitals by 2030. But that’s just one of the many things that we’re doing for the health service.
The NAO report explains that the 40 hospital projects now on the government’s list for completion by 2030 are not the same as the original 40 announced. Only 32 of those are still on the list covered by this deadline, and only 11 count as “whole new hospitals”, it says.
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Minister rejects claim crackdown on 'rip off degree courses' amounts to attack on arts and humanities
Rishi Sunak has written an article for the Daily Telegraph this morning defending the government’s plan to limit the number of places for students in England on what it calls “rip off degree courses”. In it he argues:
Too many of our young people are sold a false dream of going to university only to find they’re enrolled on low-quality courses that don’t offer the skills they need to get a decent job at the end of it.
Contrast that with apprenticeships or other vocational routes. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, one in five graduates in this country, about 70,000 every year, would be better off financially if they had not gone to university. And despite having studied for several years, one in three graduates are in a job that doesn’t require them to be degree-educated.
Put simply: our young people are being ripped off. They’re being saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt from bad degrees that just leave them poorer, and dissuaded from pursuing more vocational options because they are led to believe that university is the only route to success. It’s not fair on them – and it’s not fair on you as taxpayers, forced to pick up a big chunk of the bill despite getting nothing back for our economy.
Sunak is referring to this IFS report, published three years ago, saying “one in five students – or about 70,000 every year - would actually have been better off financially had they not gone to university”.
But, in interviews this morning, Robert Halfon, the education minister, was unable to name any of the degree courses that will be affected by the new cap. Under the plan, the Office for Students will implement the policy, which will start to apply from the 2024-25 academic year.
But Halfon did reject claims that this approach amounted to an attack on arts and humanities courses. When this was put to him, he told Times Radio:
That’s absolutely not the case. Because we’re not saying that particular arts courses are going to have limits. It may be that in some universities there are arts courses that are leading to good jobs.
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Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, was also asked about Keir Starmer’s comments on the two-child benefit cap on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. She firmly rejected the claim that Starmer’s decision to say he would keep the cap meant Labour were the same as the Tories. She said:
I strongly do think there is a massive difference between Labour and the Tories, who have been in power for 13 years and left us with a country that just feels broken, where everything’s gone backwards, everyone is worse off. Labour is setting out an alternative course.
She cited Labour’s plan to introduce breakfast clubs in every primary school in England as one example of what the party would do to address child poverty.
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An accommodation barge to house 500 asylum seekers has left its berth in Falmouth, Cornwall, and is expected to head to its destination in Portland, Dorset, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Bibby Stockholm had been due in Portland a month ago, despite resistance from the local council and Tory MP Richard Drax.
But work on the barge had been delayed and it was only this morning that tugs began towing the vessel out of Falmouth harbour.
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Grant Shapps to meet supermarket bosses over ‘sky high’ petrol prices
Supermarket bosses will meet Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, today after he pledged to hold “rip-off retailers” to account for charging motorists “sky high” prices for fuel. Kalyeena Makortoff has the story here.
In his Inside Politics briefing for the Financial Times, Stephen Bush says that, regardless of what Keir Starmer told Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, a Labour government would end up getting rid of the two-child benefits cap. Bush argues:
The Conservatives’ policy — which caps the amount a household can receive in benefits if they have no, or low, earnings — upsets the party’s social liberals, its Christian socialists, its feminists and its pro-welfare tendency … Essentially every part of the Labour party hates this policy, which is one reason why almost every major figure in the party is on the record calling the policy “immoral”, “heinous” or “social engineering” or some variation thereof.
The only question will be whether a change to the current cap is enforced on the leadership — perhaps by some equivalent of the bill currently working its way through parliament — or if the policy never gets that far.
You can see at the moment that Keir Starmer is trying to win, essentially, a doctor’s mandate: that was the subtext of his piece for the Observer this weekend. The short version is “the UK is sick, the disease is low growth, give me a mandate to cure the illness”. And you can see, too, how Labour might find its way around this commitment, whether through spinning its changes to universal credit or pointing out the problems that UK benefits create for growth.
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Case for abolishing two-child benefit cap ‘overwhelming’, says report, as Labour defends saying it will keep it
Good morning. MPs have got four more days sitting in the Commons before the summer recess starts, but it is not really the moment for Rishi Sunak to start winding down. There are byelections in three Conservative-held seats on Thursday – Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Nigel Adams’ Selby and Ainsty, and David Warburton’s Somerton and Frome – and Tories fear they will lose them all, even though in the latter two the majorities in 2019 were around 20,000. If this does happen, Sunak will be the first PM to lose three byelections in one day since Harold Wilson in 1968 (12 years before Sunak was even born).
We got a preview of one possible Tory line to take in the event of a triple drubbing from the Conservative MP Steve Brine on the Westminster Hour last night. Asked about the possibility of defeat in Uxbridge, he said: “It’s another bit of what I call ‘long Boris’, isn’t it?” Long Boris might also part-explain a defeat in Selby, where the byelection is only happening because Adams, a Johnson loyalist, resigned in a huff when his nomination for a peerage was blocked. But if Sunak does lose in all three seats, most commentators, and Tories, will conclude that this is symptomatic of a wider malaise, and not purely the fault of Johnson.
With the recess looming, Keir Starmer has his own problems. As Pippa Crerar and Patrick Butler report, the Labour leader is facing criticism because yesterday he said he would keep the two-child benefit cap in place.
A new report out today by academics, who have studied the impact of the policy in detail, says the case for scrapping the two-child cap, and the overall benefit cap, is “overwhelming”. It says both policies are causing “extreme hardship” and failing to incentivise claimant families to find more work or limit the number of children they have – supposedly the whole point in the first place.
On the two-child cap in particular, the report, which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and produced by researchers from the Larger Families project, says:
Many of the families we interviewed did not know that the two-child limit existed until after their child was born and, in some cases, conception was not a choice, but was the result of failed contraception or an abusive relationship. In other cases, the family was not receiving benefits when the affected child was born, and parents only found out about the restriction when their circumstances later changed as a result of relationship breakdown or job loss. Additionally, while there is an exemption in place for children born as a result of non-consensual conception or within the context of domestic abuse, the majority of the participants eligible for this were not receiving it.
As this analysis by Matthew Weaver explains, getting rid of the two-child benefit cap would cost about £1.3bn. This morning Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, defended Starmer’s decision to say Labour would keep it in place, saying the party could only promise things it could afford. She told Sky News:
We’ve got to be clear about what we can fund and that’s why Keir Starmer’s set out the position. Because we’ve got to make sure that any policy that we propose, anything that we might want to change, anything we might not like that the Tories have done, we’ve still got to say how we’d fund it.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit to a school.
10am: Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, gives a speech on national security.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: An education minister is expected to make a statement to MPs on the plans to cap the number of students who can enrol for “low value” courses in England.
After 4.30pm: MPs will debate and vote on the latest Lords amendments to the illegal migration bill.
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