Afternoon summary
No 10 has said that Keir Starmer intends to take no notice of a legal letter he has received from Liz Truss demanding he stops making “false and defamatory” claims that she crashed the economy. (See 12.24pm.)
A Tory MP has urged the government to ban people convicted of violence against women from running for parliament, referring to a Reform UK member as the “convicted criminal already in our midst”. As PA Media reports, during a debate in the Commons on violence against women and girls, Conservative Ben Obese-Jecty described the details of Reform’s James McMurdock’s assault on his then-girlfriend. McMurdock did not publicly disclose his conviction prior to being elected and claimed he had “pushed” his partner when details were first revealed this summer. However, The Times later obtained information about his sentencing from the courts, which said he was locked up for 21 days in a young offenders’ institute for kicking the victim “around four times” in 2006 when he was a teenager. Obese-Jecty said he believes “in the rehabilitation of offenders”, but that “being sentenced for such a heinous crime means that you forfeit some of the privileges those of us who have never attacked a woman are granted. One such privilege is being a member of parliament.” He told the Commons:
The presence of a member of parliament with a conviction for violently assaulting a woman has never been acknowledged in this house, let alone addressed. Any debate in this house on the subject of violence against women and girls should address the convicted criminal already in our midst.
As this government shapes its legislative agenda, I would ask the minister to consider whether it’s time to introduce legislation that bars those who have served a custodial sentence for violence against women and girls from standing as a member of parliament.
McMurdock has said in the past he still feels “deeply ashamed” of what he did and that he paid for his actions in full.
Updated
Implementing compensation recommendation in child abuse inquiry report 'could cost around £7bn'
Yesterday Keir Starmer criticised the Tory government for not implementing the recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse when Kemi Badenoch pressed for a new inquiry at PMQs. Labour says it wants to implement the recommendations in the report published two years ago, but it has not said how it will do this in every case.
There are 20 recommendations in the report. One of them is for a tiered compensation scheme, open to anyone who “experienced child sexual abuse and exploitation where there is a clear connection to state or non-state institutions in England and Wales”.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the current government, and the last one, estimate this could cost around £7bn. The report says:
One former Tory official and a Labour figure both said they had been made aware of an initial estimate of close to £7bn for the compensation.
Another person who worked at the Home Office during [Rishi] Sunak’s government said there had been broader estimates of £5bn to £10bn for the cost. “We were pushing for it, but Rishi didn’t want to do it,” they said. “It was blocked.
The government says it wants to deliver “meaningful change” in response to the report’s recommendations, but that it is still working out potential costs.
