Afternoon summary
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Nigel Farage has been warned that he could end up with a more severe punishment over his alleged breach of Commons rules after he claimed that a fresh complaint about donations he received that he did not declare was part of an “establishment hit job”. (See 9.36am.)
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Five parties write to Burnham urging him to introduce PR before next general election
Five of the smaller party have written a joint letter to Andy Burnham urging him to introduce proportional representation before the next general election.
The letter says that PR is needed because almost three quarters of votes cast at the 2024 did not directly affect the result (because they were for candidates who did not win). And it says that there is “no time to lose”, and that Burnham should “swiftly” set up a national commission on electoral reform so that it can report back in time for changes to be made during this parliament.
The letter has been signed by Ellie Chowns, parliamentary leader of the Green party, Lisa Smart, Cabinet Office spokesperson for the Liberal Demcrats, Dave Doogan, Westminster leader of the SNP, Liz Saville Roberts, Westminster leader of Plaid Cymru, and Sorcha Eastwood from the Alliance party.
In an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit last week, asked what he would do on PR during this parliament, Burnham replied:
I am a strong supporter of electoral reform, partly because I believe it will enable the change to a more collaborative politics, and one that is less about point-scoring and more about problem-solving.
I will seek to persuade my own party of the need for a manifesto commitment to it in the next manifesto.
Minister criticised by MPs for not giving firm commitment to amend law to allow grooming gang leader to be deported
Alex Norris, a Home Office minister, was criticised in the Commons after declining to commit the government to amending the Immigration Act 1971 to allow the deportation of the Rochdale grooming gang leader, Shabir Ahmed.
Ahmed was jailed in 2012 and released on licence last week. He did have dual British-Pakistan citizenship but was stripped of his British citizenship after his conviction and around the time he was jailed his victims were led to believe that, following his release, he would be deported.
However, that has not been possible because the Immigration Act includes an exemption for people who, like Ahmed, arrived in the country before 1973.
A separate problem is that, even if Ahmed could legally be deported under UK law, the Pakistani government would have to be willing to accept him – and at the moment that consent does not seem to be forthcoming.
In response to an urgent question tabled by Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister, Norris said it was wrong to claim – as many MPs have done – that Ahmed was being protected by a “loophole” in the 1971 act.
Norris said the legislation protected the rights of Commonwealth and Irish citizens already in the UK when the act came into force in January 1973.
This is not a loophole. The provisions of section 7 were put in place to protect existing rights for an identified cadre of Commonwealth citizens, most notably the Windrush generation.
Norris said this did not mean the government had given up on pushing for deportation.
When a foreign national breaks the laws of this land, our first priority will always be to get them out of the UK …
The fact that this has not so far been possible with an individual responsible for such heinous crimes as Shabir Ahmed is unacceptable.
I can assure the house that we have not given up and we will not.
While the original intentions of the legislation in question mean we ought to proceed with care, the nature of the offending in this case demands that we explore all options, and that is what we’re doing.
Lam said that for Ahmed to escape deportation as a result of a decades-old law was “not just absurd, but sickening”. Will Forster, the Lib Dem immigration spokesperson, said that the law was not intended to be used like this, and the situation was “completely unacceptable”.
Several MPs, including Labour’s Jim McMahon and Robbie Moore from the Conservatives, asked Norris to commit to the government voting to amend the 1971 law to allow Ahmed to be deported. But Norris just kept repeating his line about all options being on the table, without promising the government would vote for an amendment on this.
He urged MPs to give ministers “a little bit of time to consider [the options] and to come forward with plans”.
But this infuriated the Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp who told him:
The minister has come here and said that all options are on the table. But he’s also said he needs to tread carefully.
Can I just tell him that, according to the people of Spelthorne who’ve been talking to me about this all weekend, they don’t want him to tread carefully.
They want him to pull on his hobnail boots and frogmarch Shabir Ahmed to the airport today.
Starmer faces likely row at Nato summit after US rebuke on defence spending
Keir Starmer is likely to face a diplomatic row at his final major international summit this week after Washington’s ambassador to Nato called for alliance members who are “lagging behind” on defence spending to step up. Peter Walker has the story.
The former Labour minister George Howarth has died at the age of 77, MPs have been told. As the Press Association reports, the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, described his death last week as “another sad loss” to the House of Commons.
Howarth served as a member of parliament for almost four decades, after he was first elected to represent the Merseyside constituency of Knowsley North in 1986, PA says. He left the Commons at the last general election in 2024, when he was MP for Knowsley.
As Andy Burnham works on his plans for government (but not very much in public – alas), Arguably, the Substack for progressive debate, has published a list of 20 ideas he should adopt, proposed by 20 policy experts. It is a good round-up, and at least some of the ideas are likely to reach Burnham’s in-tray.
Here is an extract from the contribution from Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank. She says:
[Burnham] should start by helping the one million young people currently not in employment, education or training (NEET). The politics of ending the triple lock can be made easier if this is used to significantly boost the government’s support package for NEETs. The extra funding could help to quadruple the number of places available via the youth jobs grant to 80,000 and widen the jobs guarantee to those on health-related benefits and universal credit for 12 months rather than 18.
He can also tackle an immediate housing crisis – low-income families’ struggle to pay rising private rents. Pegging housing support to local rents would help a million families and can be funded by increasing the taper rate on universal credit.
Finally, he can reduce the cost of a key essential – energy bills – by removing £2.3bn of levies from households’ energy bills. This can be covered by closing loopholes in the capital gains tax regime – a straight transfer from the very wealthy to the everyday economy.
Burnham has committed to keeping the triple lock for the rest of this parliament, as Labour promised in its manifesto. But he has not said what he would like Labour to say about the triple lock in its next manifesto.
On her LBC show this morning, Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, said the controversy about Nigel Farage’s unregistered gifts (see 10.58am) was going to keep running as a news story. She said:
[These are] eye-watering amounts of money. The obvious question to that is, [what are] his donors getting in return? And why has he tried to cover them up and to avoid legitimate questions?
I don’t think that Nigel can shrug this scandal off and hope that it goes away. I think this one’s got lots of legs and it’s gonna carry on running.
Trump's Fifa intervention to overturn Balogun's red card ban 'goes against spirit of game', says Rayner
Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, was a guest host on LBC’s morning show earlier today. Speaking about Donald Trump intervening to get Fifa to overturn the ban on the US striker Folarin Balogun playing in tonight’s US-Belgium game (see 1.54pm), Rayner said that was “not fair’’. And that was not “the way we should do it”, she said.
She went on:
The red card was given. To reverse it because someone powerful says, “You need to reverse it” - I think that goes against fairness and it goes against the spirit of the game.
Updated
At 3.30pm in the Commons there will be an urgent question on calls for the law to be changed to allow the deportation of Shabir Ahmed, the leader of the Rochdale grooming gang who has just been released from jail.
After that, starting from around 4.15pm, there will be three ministerial statements: from Samantha Dixon, a communities minister, on the government’s response to the Rycroft review on foreign interference in UK politics; from Sarah Jones, the policing minister, on policing; and from Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, on civil service pensions.
Two councils still have no party in charge in aftermath of May local elections
Two councils in England are still without a leader or ruling party two months on from May’s local elections, in further evidence of Britain’s fragmented politics, the Press Assocation reports. PA says:
The elections on 7 May left 64 local authorities – almost half the number that held contests this year – without a single party holding a majority of seats, leaving them in what is known as “no overall control”.
Deals between local parties have seen administrations formed in almost all of those councils, with many being run by one or more groups on a minority basis.
But in Oldham in Greater Manchester, and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, repeated attempts to elect a new leader have failed.
Labour had run Oldham since 2011 but May’s elections left them as the largest party on the council with 18 seats, well short of the 31 needed to form a majority. Attempts to elect a leader failed on 20 May, 15 June and most recently on 1 July .
At Kirklees, the elections left Reform the largest party with 29 seats, ahead of Independents on 14, the Greens on 12, the Tories on nine and the Lib Dems on five. No party has the 35 seats needed for a majority and attempts to elect a leader failed on 20 May and 28 May.
Both Oldham and Kirklees are due to meet again on 15 July for another vote.
No 10 implicitly criticises Trump for intervening to get Fifa to lift World Cup match ban for star US striker
Downing Street has implicitly criticised Donald Trump for intervening to get Fifa to lift a ban that would have stopped a star US striker, who received a red card, playing in tonight’s World Cup match against Belgium.
As Matt Hughes, Paul MacInnes and Alexander Abnos report, Trump called Fifa three times before it took the highly unusual decision to overturn the one-match ban imposed on Folarin Balogun, boosting the US’s prospects in tonight’s game.
Asked about Trump’s intervention at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said World Cup disciplinary decisions should remain a matter for Fifa.
Asked whether Trump’s actions were acceptable, the spokesperson replied:
Those decisions are a matter for the football world governing body and should stay that way, and we are clear in that position.
Asked if Keir Starmer felt Fifa’s integrity had been undermined, the spokesperson said: “That is a matter for Fifa to respond to.”
The spokesman also told reporters that Starmer was a “touch sleep-deprived” after staying up with his son at their Downing Street flat to watch England’s 3-2 victory over Mexico in the early hours of Monday morning.
He said:
The prime minister watched the match last night and stayed up to do so. He watched it upstairs in the Downing Street flat with his son and he’s a touch sleep-deprived this morning, but incredibly proud of the team, and incredibly proud to be English after that performance.
He’s seen England play over many years but this morning’s victory in the heat of the Azteca Stadium, and at altitude and against a host nation, was up there for him as being one of England’s best-ever performances.
He’s very much looking forward to the quarter-final on Saturday.
In the coming days, the St George’s Cross will hang high and proudly over No 10, and Downing Street will look glorious in St George’s Day bunting in the July sun.
'Most' women in jail in England and Wales shouldn't be there, says prisons minister Lord Timpson
“Most” women who are in prison in England and Wales should not be there, Lord Timpson, the prisons minister, has said.
In an interview for the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast, Timpson said that many women sentenced to jail were also victims in some respects and that the system should potentially find an alternative way of dealing with them.
He also said there was too much turnover in government, pointing out that if he lasted three years, he would be the longest-serving prisons minister for a quarter of a century.
Timpson was a surprise appointment when Keir Starmer formed his government two years ago. Given a peerage so that he could join the government, Timpson had no record in Labour politics (his brother had been a Tory MP), but he had been CEO of the family shoe repair company, the Timpson Group, which is widely admired for its record employing ex-offenders.
Confirming his reputation as a penal justice liberal, Timpson told Michael Forsyth, the lord speaker, in their interview:
If you take women in prison, so we’ve got roughly 4,000 women in prison in England and Wales. I believe most of them should not be there.
There are so many addicted women in prison. Most of them are victims; probably all of them are victims.
But the reason why there are so many people in prison is because the system has not worked for far too long.
Timpson said prisons were not good at dealing with addiction and mental health issues.
People are in the criminal justice system because of addiction. We haven’t dealt with addiction. We haven’t dealt with the mental health. We haven’t done this cycle of just re-offending, re-offending.
That was why the Probation Service had such an important role to play in rehabilitation, he said.
Timpson said it was “absolutely bonkers” that between 2010 and 2022 prison ministers were being replaced at the rate of one a year. “If I’m doing this job at the end of May next year, I’ll be the longest-serving prisons minister in 25 years,” he said. He also said he hoped he would also be seen as the most radical.
UK imposes sanctions on Russian scientists involved in producing novichok for 2018 Salisbury attack
The UK is imposing sanctions on seven Russian scientists and officials, and two organisations, involved in producing the novichok nerve agent used in the 2018 Salisbury assassination, the Foreign Office has announced.
The Russians are also being targeted because of their role in producing the toxin epibatidine that was used to poison the Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny.
Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, said:
Russia’s repeated use of chemical weapons is a sickening violation of international law and a direct threat to global security.
From the use of novichok nerve agents in Salisbury to epibatidine in Siberia, poisoning Dawn Sturgess and Alexei Navalny, Russia continues to use barbaric tools to inflict death and suffering on innocent civilians, including in Ukraine.
We will continue to call out Russia’s violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention, hold those responsible to account, and work with allies to deter further use of these dangerous weapons.
On the subject of Andy Burnham, the Financial Times is running a story today saying the access talks his team is holding with senior civil servants, intended to help Whitehall departments get ready to implement the new PM’s policy agenda, are being hindered by the fact that Burnham has not decided who will do the top cabinet jobs.
In the story, Lucy Fisher, George Parker and Anna Gross say:
Talks have not yet formally started with the Treasury and Burnham’s refusal to nominate a chancellor has complicated transition planning.
One Labour figure complained Burnham’s operation was “skeletal”, adding: “Access talks require a shadow cabinet. Burnham needs to nominate key people in advance or he cannot have meaningful talks” ….
Several other Labour officials warned that Burnham declining to confirm his cabinet picks now would make it more difficult for the eventual appointees to hit the ground running, because those new to their roles would not have had the benefit of being “read in” on all the issues facing their departments in advance via “access talks”.
Alan Milburn says he's confident Burnham committed to genuine welfare reform
Alan Milburn has said he is confident that Andy Burnham, as the probable next prime minister, is committed to genuine welfare reform.
He said he thought Burnham accepted changing the benefits system was “absolutely necessary” – but he stressed that he and Burnham both thought the focus should be on getting more young people into work, not just on cutting costs.
Milburn, who served in cabinet under Tony Blair, recently published the first report from his review for the government of youth unemployment. He is publishing recommendations in the autumn, but he has already made it clear that he believes a fundamental rethink is needed to ensure that welfare becomes a route back into employment, not a route to long-term joblessness, particularly for young people with mental health issues.
Speaking at an event organised by the Centre for Social Justice thinktank this morning, asked if he was confident that Burnham had the appetite to reform the system in the way that was needed, Milburn replied:
Yes. And look – I’m not going to go into what we discussed privately, but everything I’ve seen from Andy publicly suggests that he knows that welfare reform is absolutely necessary … [because] it’s fundamentally about the life chances of a whole generation of young people.
And if we think the best option and best opportunity that we can gift as a country to a generation of young people is a life on benefits – are we serious?
Milburn said the problem with Labour’s attempt to reform welfare last year was that it became framed as a cost-cutting measure. Instead, it should be getting people off welfare and into work, he said.
He also said the party as a whole accepted this approach.
My sense is that the appetite, both within the parliamentary Labour party and the new administration, will be absolutely up for doing this.
In an interview with LBC last week, Burnham said he would not be supporting “crude cuts to benefit levels”.
Instead, he said he would be looking at two measures to get overall benefits spending down.
One of those is how we support young people. I will not defend an education system that is overly focused on the university route and does not lay out paths to technical qualifications for our young people. Too many young people get to year 10 at school, and they can’t see where school is taking them, because the system isn’t focusing on those young people.
And then, at 16, I believe we need the guarantee of a work placement for 16 to 18-year-olds, apprenticeships for every 16 to 18-year-old who wants one, and what I’ve done in Great Manchester is something that might be looked at more broadly, free bus travel for 16 to 18-year-olds, so that they can access those opportunities.
Burnham also said he wanted more in-work mental health support for young people, which he suggested would cut benefit spending. And he said building more council homes would cut the housing benefits bill.
Rape case review scheme to be expanded across England and Wales
Victims of rape and sexual assault across England and Wales who face having their cases dropped will have the right to ask for a review before a final decision is made, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The early victims’ right to review (VRR) is being expanded across the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after successful pilot schemes, giving a “second chance at justice” where a case might otherwise be dropped.
The rollout means victims of sexual offences will be able to challenge proposals to halt a prosecution before an irreversible decision to offer no evidence is made.
In a news release, solicitor general Ellie Reeves said: “Rape and sexual assault cause devastating, long-lasting harm, and every brave victim who comes forward deserves to know their case will be treated with dignity. Violence against women and girls is my top priority, and the early victims’ right to review rollout is a landmark moment. For the first time, victims of rape and serious sexual offences across all of England and Wales will have the opportunity to have their case reviewed, where eligible, giving them a second chance at justice and real control at the most critical point in their case.”
The scheme was first trialled a year ago in the West Midlands and then expanded into three more CPS areas – the North West, Yorkshire and Humberside, and Cymru-Wales.
Gabriel Pogrund, the Sunday Times Insight editor, has got a follow-up in today’s Times to his story yesterday about Nigel Farage not declaring gifts and benefits provided by George Cottrell, a crypto entrepreneur who has previously been convicted of fraud. In a story with George Greenwood, Pogrund says Cottrell “handed out a business card printed with the Reform UK logo and Nigel Farage’s official email address, despite having no formal role in the party.”
A Reform UK spokesperson told the Times:
George Cottrell is an unpaid volunteer with no formal role at Reform UK, like many thousands of party members. The business card was designed to help donors or other members of the public easily get in touch with Nigel Farage’s office. It was not intended to suggest any formal position or authority. Mr Cottrell has never held an official role within the party.
How Farage now subject to four complaints to parliament's standards watchdog over alleged breaches of Commons rules
Nigel Farage now faces up to four investigations by Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards – although it is possible that some of them could be merged and considered as part of the same complaint.
After the Guardian revealed that Farage received £5m from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before the 2024 general election, the commissioner launched an inquiry into claims that this was a breach of rule 5 of the code of conduct for MPs, which is about the requirement to register interests. There is a reference to this on the commissioner’s website.
Yesterday Josh Babarinde, the Lib Dem MP and president of the party, published an open letter to the commissioner saying the new allegations in the Sunday Times should also be investigated on the grounds they were about gifts that should have been registered.
It is for Greenberg to decide whether or not to investigate this complaint. He could do this as part of the Harborne investigation, or separately. Given that the issues involved overlap, it would be logical to look at both issues together. But that would slow up the process, potentially by many months. The Harborne case just involves a single donation, and the facts of the matter are not in dispute. The Sunday Times story refers to multiple things that could be described as unregistered gifts, and some of the facts do seem to be contested.
After the Times reported last week that Farage and his partner own at least five homes, some of which are not mentioned in the register of members’ interests, the Labour MP Joe Powell said that he had also raised this with Greenberg.
A fourth complaint is potentially more serious. The Labour MP Phil Brickell revealed last week that he has asked Greenberg to investigate claims that Farage has broken the rules on paid lobbying. Farage has always denied this (just as he denies breaking the rules about registering interests) and Brickell’s complaint does not seem to be based on information not already in the public domain. But he submitted his complaint after Keir Starmer suggested at PMQs on Wednesday that Farage had been engaged in paid lobbying, and that might make the complaint harder for Greenberg to ignore.
Starmer told MPs:
[Farage] received £5m from a crypto billionaire and then privately lobbied the Bank of England on digital currencies. Did the Reform leader carry out paid lobbying?
Updated
F-35 jets intercepted Russian plane following UK carrier strike group, MoD says
UK fighter jets intercepted a Russian maritime patrol aircraft after it “repeatedly approached” the carrier strike group in the Norwegian Sea, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.
An MoD spokesperson said:
While operating in the Norwegian Sea on Operation Firecrest, the UK’s Carrier Strike Group was repeatedly approached by a Russian ‘Bear-F’ maritime patrol aircraft.
The Bear-F passed at low altitude and unnecessarily close to HMS Prince of Wales and dropped a large number of sonobuoys in close proximity to the carrier.
This activity was unsafe and unprofessional. The Russian aircraft was intercepted and escorted by two UK F-35 jets from HMS Prince of Wales until it left the area.
Farage's treatment by Commons standards system 'opposite of establishment hit job', says Harriet Harman
In her Today programme interview this morning Harriet Harman, the Labour peer and a former chair of the Commons standards committee, said that Nigel Farage was completely wrong to claim that he was the victim of an “establishment hit job”. (See 9.36am.)
Farage may have been referring specifically to the Sunday Times story. But he also seemed to be implying that the fact that he was being investigated by parliament was evidence that Reform UK was being victimised by the establishment. This is exactly what his ally Donald Trump has done in the US in response to the many judicial sanctions, threats or investigations that he has faced.
Harman told the Today programme that the standards rules, and their enforcement mechanisms in parliament, were not there to protect the establishment; they were there to protect the interests of the public, she said.
She said that the parliamentary commissioner for standards was not a political figure, that the standards committee was chaired by an opposition MP, and that half its members were not even MPs. She went on:
This is the opposite of an establishment hit job. This is so that the public can know that the establishment, in terms of people with lots of money, are not buying their members of parliament.
And over the decades that I was a member of parliament, each time there was a review of the code of conduct, the standards were raised because of the need to keep public trust and confidence.
People need to know when they vote that what their member of parliament does will be on behalf of the voters and the country, not because they’re being paid large amounts of money to make speeches and push for votes in the House of Commons, or even lobby the governor of the Bank of England.
Keir Starmer has been posting on social media about the England-Mexico game.
One of the greatest England matches I’ve ever seen. We are through to the quarter finals!
Updated
AI poses ‘Hiroshima’-style threat to humanity without global rules, says Cooper
Artificial intelligence poses a “Hiroshima”-style risk to humanity if governments do not agree to curb how it is developed, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has warned. Kiran Stacey has the story.
Kiran’s story is in part based on an essay that Cooper has written for Chatham House published here.
Farage warned his ‘establishment hit job' jibe about unregistered gift allegations could lead to harsher punishment
Good morning. Two weeks today (unless there is some news development in the totally unexpected category) Keir Starmer will formally resign as PM, and the king will appoint Andy Burnham to replace him. Starmer has been forced out in part because of the rise of Nigel Farage; Labour MPs might have forgiven bad local election results, but not when they implied a new insurgency party was on course to win in 2029, with a far-right agenda that might tear up liberal democratic norms cherished by Labour MPs (and many others).
By some cruel twist of fate, Starmer is now on his way out just as the electoral threat from Farage is, while not disappearing, certainly falling back a bit.
At the weekend Rowena Mason, Ben Quinn and Peter Walker published a good long read looking at all the reasons why some people in Reform UK are starting to think that the Farage era is nearing its end.
And then Sunday Times published its own investigation with more, potentially damaging allegations about Farage.
Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary standards commissioner, is already investigating claims that Farage broke Commons rules when he did not disclose a £5m donation from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. Greenberg is now being urged to investigate the latest allegations as well.
Last night, in a statement to the Daily Express, Farage claimed he was the victim of “establishment hit job”. He also said:
I have done no wrongdoing, followed the rules and I am now considering legal action against The Sunday Times.
It’s now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt Reform – we want to smash their cosy consensus.
(In the past, when Farage has threatened to sue newspapers over negative stories, those threats have normally turned out to be empty.)
On the Today programme this morning Harriet Harman, the Labour peer and a former chair of the Commons standards committee, said that it was a mistake for Farage to respond to the allegations in the way he did. She said that while the parliamentary commissioner (who investigates allegations about MPs breaking Commons rules) and the standards committee (which decides what punishment should apply if the rules have been broken) were willing to be lenient where MPs make an honest mistake, attacking the system could be seen as an aggravating factor that could lead to a higher punishment.
She said:
By Nigel Farage saying this is an establishment hit job – what he should be saying is ‘These rules are important, they keep our parliament clean, I’m going to at all times comply with them, I have complied with them. I’ll cooperate with the investigation, and I’m confident I’ll be found not to have broken the rules.’
But he’s not doing that. He’s attacking and trying to delegitimise the system.
And if it comes to a finding by the commissioner that he has been in breach of the rules, the way he’s conducted himself whilst he’s been under investigation will be taken as an aggravating fact when it comes to the penalty.
There is no precedent for an MP wrongly failing to declare a donation worth as much as £5m and, if the commissioner does find against Farage, it is possible that the committee could decide to suspend him from parliament for more than 10 days – which would allow the voters in Clacton to trigger a recall byelection.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, hosts a phone-in with LBC (where she is one of several politicians standing in this week for James O’Brien, who is away.)
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
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