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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Labour dismisses no confidence vote in Welsh first minister Vaughan Gething as Tory ‘stunt’ – as it happened

Boris Johnson ​​Rishi Sunak Sir Keir Starmer Jonathan Ashworth Cabinet Office (Organization)
Vaughan Gething.
Vaughan Gething. Photograph: Senedd TV/PA

Here is Steven Morris’s analysis of Vaughan Gething’s position now as Welsh first minister.

Jane Dodds, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, has also said Vaughan Gething should now resign, WalesOnline reports.

The senedd has spoken and now Vaughan Gething must go. Any attempts of holding onto power would go against the established norms of our parliamentary democracy.

Without the mandate of the senedd, the first minister has no right to stay in office, Welsh democracy has had its say and now he must go.

This is from Will Hayward, Welsh affairs editor at Wales Online, on the no confidence vote.

I can count a dozen times in the past 5 years I’ve been in press conferences/ interviews with Vaughan Gething and he has lambasted the UK Tories for failing to “respect” Wales and Welsh democracy.

IMO, if he loses a no confidence vote within the Welsh Parliament and blithely dismisses it as a “gimmick”, it will lay bare the hollowness of his previous statements.

It will suggest that Welsh democracy is not something to be respected and nurtured, and is rather a vehicle for personal political advancement.

Gething must 'do the honourable thing' and resign, says Plaid Cymru

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, says Vaughan Gething should resign having lost the no confidence vote.

The vote in Cardiff does not mean Vaughan Gething has to resign, and it is expected that he will try to stay on.

However, as Adam Price, the former Plaid Cymru leader, pointed out in the debate, in 2000 Alun Michael resigned as first minister (or first secretary, as the title was then) when he was faced with the prospect of losing a similar no confidence vote.

Updated

Labour dismisses no confidence vote in Gething as Tory 'stunt'

Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Conservative leader, says the vote in the senedd reflects badly not just on Vaughan Gething, but on Keir Starmer too.

Senedd Members have backed the Welsh Conservatives’ motion of no confidence in Vaughan Gething.

Both Gething AND the Labour Party took cash from the donor who caused this stink.

This isn’t just about Vaughan Gething.

There are serious questions for @Keir_Starmer too.

But Jo Stevens, the shadow Welsh secretary, says the vote is just a stunt.

Today’s Senedd motion is a political stunt by the Conservatives, supported by Plaid Cymru. More Tory chaos.

Labour remains entirely focused on the issues that matter to working people across Wales and Britain, and delivering a UK Labour government.

Gething loses no confidence motion in senedd, by 29 votes to 27

The Welsh first minister Vaughan Gething has lost the no confidence vote in the senedd. There were 29 MSs voting for the Tory motion, and 27 voting against.

Updated

Former Tory minister Nadine Dorries says it was 'cowardly' of Holden to impose himself as safe seat candidate

Nadine Dorries, the former Tory culture secretary (and a Boris Johnson ally very critical of Rishi Sunak and his team), has said that it is “dishonourable” for Richard Holden, the party chair, to impose himself as the only candidate for a safe Tory seat. (See 3.26pm.) (Or a seat the Tories might have a reasonable chance of winning, which is as safe as any Conservative seat is in this election, if the polling is at all reliable.)

.@RicHolden knows in his heart that leaving it to the very last moment to impose himself on a safe seat by giving the association only 1 choice (him) is a very wrong thing to do. It’s dishonourable, cowardly and brings the candidates dept into disrepute.

He’s better than that. Frankly, I’m amazed that as chairman he’s avoiding scrutiny in this way.

Michael Crick, the broadcaster and writer who has been doing a brilliant job monitor constituency selection decisions on X, says other Tories are unhappy about Holden’s move too.

Another would-be Tory candidate says: “It’s very unfair what Richard has done as there are strong candidates including myself who were on standby still waiting for a seat yet we have been forced to take a no hoper seat while he forces himself into a strong seat unopposed..” 1/2

2/2... “...not democratic at all or standing by our conservative values of fairness.”

One more on candidates’ list says: “If Richard Holden doesn’t think he has the ability to win in a fair selection against other candidates then that should tell us everything we need to know about his ability to run the GE campaign for the Tories. He’s not up to scratch.’

At the last election the Conservatives had a majority of 20,412 in Basildon and Billericay, where Holden is now the candidate. Boundary changes increase the notional majority there by about 300 votes.

According to the latest YouGov MRP poll, the Tories are still on course to beat Labour there, but only by 36% to 34%.

Here are more pictures of Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak and other leaders at the D-Day commemorations.

The debate in the senedd is now over. The vote will take place at the end of today’s business, which means at the end of a debate about HS2 starting now scheduled to last for up to an hour.

Gething said, if Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Tory leader, was really concerned about donations, he would have queried why his party was taking money from someone who made racist comments about a black MP, or from someone who served as a minister in a dictatorship.

And he said if Davies was really interested in how government was conducted, he would have raised questions about Partygate.

Addressing Plaid Cymru, he said they should recognise the “hypocrisy” of the Tories. And he said they should not line up with a party opposed to the interests of Wales.

He ended by saying he would “continue to put Wales first” as he lead and served his country.

Updated

Gething says he has asked his party to carry out a review into how donations are handled.

And he has asked the senedd’s standards committee to look at how the rules operate.

But he says it is wrong to change the rules retrospectively.

He says he is grateful for the support he has had.

Many people of colour know what it is like to be vilified, he says.

I also want to recognise that, like me, so many people of colour have been traduced and vilified merely for raising concerns about how some of these debates have been handled. Our lived experience should matter and be respected. We still have a very long way to go.

He says Labour has always offered pairs to other parties when MSs are too ill to vote.

And he says the refusal of the Tories to offer pairs today, when two Labour MSs are ill, reflects badly on them.

Updated

Gething tells MSs he has made mistakes, but has never made a decision as minister for personal or financial gain

In the senedd Vaughan Gething is speaking now.

He says he regrets the fact the Tories have brought this motion forward.

That is not because he is infallible, he says. He is human, and he has made mistakes and will continue to do so, he says.

Instead, he says, he regrets the motion because it criticises his integrity. He goes on:

I have dedicated my adult life to public service and to Wales. I have never, ever made a decision, in more than a decade as a minister, for personal or financial gain.

Updated

In the debate in the senedd Hefin David, a loyal Vaughan Gething ally, suggested race was a factor behind the drive to oust the first minister. David said:

I have the right to ask if his ethnicity has an influence on the motives of some of those outside this chamber who seek to break him on the wheel. We cannot ignore that question and we cannot dismiss the lived experience of those BME people who feel it to be the place.

He said it was possible a no confidence vote in Gething could lead to a Senedd election needing to be called.

Updated

Faiza Shaheen says she will run as independent in Chingford and Woodford Green after being blocked by Labour

Faiza Shaheen, who was blocked by Labour for standing as its candidate against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford and Woodford Green, has announced that she is running as an independent. She says she wants to show that there is a “progressive alternative” to both main parties.

Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies says Gething's 'judgment, transparency and honesty' open to question

Opening the no confidence debate in the Senedd into Vaughan Gething (see 4.03pm), Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Tories in Wales, said it was about “judgement, transparency and honesty.”

At the heart of the debate is a donation Gething took from a company whose owner has been convicted of environmental offences.

Davies said:

Most reasonable people would question what was being secured by that £200,000 donation to the leadership campaign.

It’s about judgment, transparency and honesty, it’s not general electioneering, it’s not a vote of confidence in the government or Labour party, it’s about what the first minister has undertaken and the calls he has made.

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said it was a very grave and solemn day. He said in 25 years of devolution the senedd had faced few financial scandals.

But he said Gething had shown a lack of judgement and contrition and a “bunker mentality”. He said: “We must be different from Westminster, not only in words, but deeds too.”

Vikki Howells, the chair of the Labour group in the Senedd, said the motion today was a “cynical gimmick” by the Tories to take attention off the general election and subvert democracy.

Labour member Joyce Watson expressed anger that the debate had taken place on the anniversary of the D-Day landings, preventing Gething representing Wales in Portsmouth. She told Gething’s opponents: “You could have picked any other day. You chose this day. I will never forgive you. You want to hang your head in shame.”

Gething appeared to be in tears as Howells spoke in his support. He was comforted by the chief whip, Jane Hutt.

Updated

Starmer says Sunak 'revealed his character' when he lied about Labour's tax plan, also breaching ministerial code

Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of deliberately lying when he claimed Labour spending plans would increase taxes by £2,000, saying the prime minister’s tactics in Tuesday night’s TV debate showed he was dishonest when put under pressure.

Amid an increasingly bitter and personal war of words over the standout dispute in the debate between the prime minister and Labour leader, Starmer said be believed Sunak should be investigated for breaching the ministerial code for dishonesty.

“What you saw last night was a prime minister with his back against the wall, trying desperately to defend an awful record in office resorting to lies,” Starmer said in a round of media interviews during a D-Day-related visit to Portsmouth’s historic dockyard. He went on:

He knew very well what he was doing.

He lied about our plans. And that is a true test of character. As we go to the polls it is important for voters to know about the character of the two individuals who want to be prime minister.

The prime minister revealed his character last night – someone who resorts to lies when he’s under pressure.

Asked if he believed Sunak had breached the ministerial code, and if he would back an investigation, Starmer replied: “Yes, he breached the ministerial code because he lied.”

The election, he added, was “a choice between chaos and division, and now lies on top of it”.

MSs debate motion of no confidence in Welsh first minister Vaughan Gething

In Cardiff members of the senedd (MSs) are now debating the motion of no confidence in Vaughan Gething, the relatively new Labour first minister.

Here is the text of the motion, tabled by the Conservatives.

To propose that the senedd:

1. Recognises the genuine public concern over the first minister accepting a £200,000 donation for his Labour leadership campaign from a company owned by an individual who has two environmental criminal convictions, and regrets the poor judgement shown by the first minister in accepting this donation, and his failure to repay it.

2. Regrets the publication of Welsh government ministerial messages where the first minister states his intention to delete messages that could have later been helpful to the Covid inquiry in its deliberations around decision making at the time of the Covid pandemic, despite the first minister telling the UK Covid inquiry that he didn’t delete any messages.

3. Notes the dismissal by the first minister of the minister for social partnership from his government, regrets that the first minister is unwilling to publish his supporting evidence for the dismissal, and notes the former minister for social partnership’s strong denial of the accusations levelled against her.

4. For the above reasons, has no confidence in the first minister.

There is a live feed here.

According to Ruth Mosalski, who is running a good live blog of the proceedings at WalesOnline, at one point Gething (who has not spoken yet) was in tears.

More than 80,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel since the government struck the Rwanda deal over two years ago, PA Media reports. PA says:

The latest crossings also mean more than 125,000 migrants have made the journey in the last six-and-a-half years as the recent crisis unfolded.

The tally since Rishi Sunak became prime minister is edging closer to 50,000 and the number arriving since the election was called is nearing 1,000.

The Rwanda agreement signed by then home secretary Priti Patel on April 14 2022 – which she described as a “world-first” – paved the way for migrants to be handed a one-way ticket to the east African nation if they were deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally.

But the plan has been beset with difficulties ever since and stalled amid a string of legal challenges.

Some 80,109 migrants have been recorded arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel between April 15 2022 and June 4 2024, according to a PA analysis of government figures.

Costas Milas, a professor of management at Liverpool University, has sent me this explanation for why Rishi Sunak and the Tories will have been so keen to get the £2,000 Labour tax rise allegation into the media, even though it is widely being dismissed as implausible. He says:

Tory strategists are following ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras who famously said “Number rules the universe”. The estimated number is highly controversial but effective. This is because:

1) It is a fairly high and easy number for voters to remember;

2) Voters will most likely think that even half of this figure (in case Tories have over-estimated the tax rises) is still worryingly high;

3) It will probably be very difficult to either confirm or reject the £2,000 tax claim because different economic assumptions lead to different numerical conclusions.

The bottom line is that the £2,000 figure dominates the campaign and puts the Labour party, rightly or wrongly, on the defensive. Quite a similar tactic to the discredited “We send to the EU £350m per week” slogan used by Vote Leave during the EU referendum.

In 1992 a Tory “tax bombshell claim” about the Labour party helped John Major win a surprise election victory. On that occasion the Tories were alleging that Labour would put up taxes by £1,250 a year for every family.

Updated

Local Tories protest over plan to impose party chair Richard Holden as candidate in Basildon

The leader of Basildon council’s Conservative group has said he will not campaign for national Tory chairman Richard Holden, who is set to become the area’s parliamentary candidate, PA Media reports. PA says:

Andrew Baggott, who leads the Conservative group on the council, confirmed Holden, until recently the MP for North West Durham, was the sole candidate on a list for the Basildon constituency presented to the local Conservative association by the party’s head office.

Baggott said: “They have given no choice of candidate to the association, no choice of candidate to the membership. They have shown complete disrespect and arrogance to all the party volunteers, all the party members, hardworking Conservatives in this borough. They are shameful.”

He added: “They are lacking in integrity, honour, and these are the things that the public looks for in the people they want to run this country.”

The Conservative councillor said association members were “exploring” options to fight the decision, adding: “Of course we are running out of time, because the nominations have to be in by 4pm on Friday. We have to organise people. It is deliberately being left to the last minute to prevent any action being able to be taken.”

Asked by PA if he would campaign for Holden, he said: “Absolutely not. Sorry, I will be campaigning for Stephen Metcalfe in the neighbouring authority. I will be campaigning for Mark Francois. I will not be campaigning for somebody that is being imposed upon us.”

Holden’s old seat was abolished in the boundary review.

And talking of getting Tory proposals analysed (see 2.43pm), Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator (which generally supports the Conservatives, but not slavishly) has published a blog pointing out that, if you look at how the tax burden is set to rise over the next four years, and then convert that into a tax increase per household figure using the same four-year cumulative counting method used by the Tories when costing Labour’s plans (see 11.51am, point 3), then you wil find the Tories are raising taxes by £3,000 per household.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, told the World at One that she would like to see Labour follow Gus O’Donnell’s advice (see 1.48pm) and stop civil servants being asked to cost opposition policies. She said:

This has so undermined the office of prime minister …

If we’re going to waste public money on this, why don’t they spend a bit of public money getting their own promises analysed by the Treasury?

The Labour party is not holding back on its social media advertising today.

A reader asks:

Who’s refereeing Friday’s debate? [See 12.34pm.]

It’s the Today presenter, Mishal Husain.

Updated

Corbyn denies betraying Labour as he submits nomination papers to stand against party as independent in Islington

Jeremy Corbyn has submitted his nomination papers to stand as as an independent in Islington North, in a battle that will put him against the party he once led.

Addressing Keir Starmer’s repeated insistence to voters that the Labour party had changed since he took over from Corbyn, he said:

I don’t think there is any need for him to diss the past or diss his involvement in it. When we came up to the 2019 election, the manifesto and policies and strategies were agreed unanimously by both the shadow cabinet and the NEC.

Change which the UK needed required a challenge to the “economic orthodoxy which he now appears to be embracing”, said Corbyn. He suggested that Keir Starmer – who served in his shadow cabinet – appeared to think that forgetting this past involvement “somehow makes you strong”.

The former MP rejected a suggestion that he was betraying Labour, telling reporters:

Quite the opposite. I was elected as a Labour candidate in 1983. I joined the party when I was 16. I have been in the party my whole life, so the way Islington north has been treated and the way I have been treated is not a good example.

Crowds of supporters had earlier burst into chants of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” – a familiar one from the peak of his popularity as the Labour leader. Corbyn’s opponents include a Labour candidate in the form of Praful Nargund, a local councillor.

Corbyn said he had not been tempted to join with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain – which is seeking to mount a challenge to Labour on the left and on the issue of Gaza – saying there were differences of social policy. “He probably thinks I’m too woke,” he added.

Asked if it was time for voters looking for a left alternative to the government to look beyond Labour, he said:

It’s a bit of both. It’s always been a bit of both. I’ve always been in the Labour party, I’ve now been removed from the Labour party. But I’ve got thousands of friends in the Labour party and many are strongly supporting my campaign.

Costing opposition policies one of 'grubbiest' jobs civil servants ever asked to do, says former cabinet secretary

Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, has said that costing opposition policies was one of “the grubbiest processes” he ever had to undertake as a civil servant.

In an interview on Radio 4’s World at One, he said a future government should ban civil servants from being asked to do this work.

He also said Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, was “wrong” when she claimed this morning that the Treasury had signed off on the figures quoted by Rishi Sunak in the debate last night about the cost of Labour’s plans. (See 12.29pm.)

O’Donnell, who has permanent secretary at the Treasury before becoming cabinet secretary, told the programme:

These costings … are one of the grubbiest processes I’ve ever been involved in, and I hope to goodness that a future government will stop doing this because they’re done by both parties, right? Conservative and Labour have done them, I’ve done them – many of these during my career. I hated every second working on these.

You have to produce costings. Ministers tell you to produce these costings on some assumptions they give you, which are dodgy assumptions designed to make the policy look as bad as possible.

You’re required to do this … The civil service is not acting independently here – they’re acting as a civil service that is required by the existing rules to basically provide costings on an assumption provided to them by the government. It’s totally not independent – it’s just what the government told them to do, and they do it.

IFS says debate was 'depressing' because Sunak and Starmer not being open about need for cuts or tax rises after election

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, has said that last night’s Sunak/Starmer debate was “depressing” because there was “no openness about tax and spend”.

Depressing debate last night. No openness about tax and spend. Big direct tax rises are nailed in over next 3 years whoever wins, as allowances and thresholds are frozen. Avoiding big spending cuts while keeping to promises on debt will require more tax rises.

Updated

Scotland's deputy FM Kate Forbes claims SNP has never been wholly opposed to new oil and gas licences being issued

The SNP is not against new oil and gas licences being issued for the North Sea, Scotland’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes has said.

Under Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, the SNP government in Edinburgh was opposed to new licences being issued. But it is now having a rethink, and at the STV debate on Monday John Swinney, the new first minister, refused to say whether or not he was in favour of continuing the presumption against new licences being issued.

Speaking to journalists during a campaign visit to Linlithgow, Forbes said:

We’ve been clear that we’re not against new licences per se, but they have to meet a climate compatibility test.

We’re very serious about meeting our climate change targets and obligations. We believe it is one of the most pressing issues of our day.

But we also believe that it needs to be a just transition, which means you can’t leave workers behind and we also need the talent, skills, infrastructure and resources in the industry to reinvest.

Forbest also claimed her party had “never said no” to further licensing, adding:

My position is that it has to be a just transition.

We have to remember that that requires justice to be at the heart, not forgetting the workers like Labour will, with potentially 100,000 jobs at risk.

Ian Murray, Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary, said:

This is laughable from the deputy first minister and goes to show that the SNP is tying itself in knots to explain the mess it is in over the future of oil and gas.

For months the SNP has said one thing to the North East and another to the rest of Scotland – now their hypocrisy and opportunism has caught up with them.

For Kate Forbes to say that the SNP never argued against future oil and gas licences is just false – Humza Yousaf called new oil and gas ‘tantamount to climate change denial’ just months ago.

Updated

Rishi Sunak read out the words of an address heard by Allied troops before they embarked on the D-Day landings as he took part in a commemorative event to mark the 80th anniversary of the military operation, PA Media reports. PA says:

The prime minister read out Field Marshal Montgomery’s message to the troops, originally delivered on June 5, 1944 to all those taking part in the landings.

In his contribution to the event in Portsmouth, the PM read out the address, which began: “The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe. The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land and air forces of the Allies together constituting one great allied team, under the supreme command of General Eisenhower.

“To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings. We have a great and a righteous cause.”

Health secretary Victoria Atkins says NHS staff should be banned from wearing Palestinian flag badges at work

Victoria Atkins, the health secretary for England, has said NHS staff should be banned from wearing Palestine flag badges at work

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Atkins suggested that doctors or nurses wearing badges or stickers showing the Palestinian flag could lead to some Jewish patients feeling unsafe. She said she was “determined to ensure that Jewish people feel as safe in our healthcare system as they should in the rest of society”.

She went on:

I’ve already been in conversations with NHS England about how we can ensure that uniforms are free political and flags, and this goes across the board. Our hospitals, surgeries and other healthcare settings should not be places where individuals express their political views, but environments that enable people simply to get health care quickly and safely.

Working with NHS England, I know they share these concerns, as do NHS trust executives — and indeed, the overwhelming majority of people who work in the NHS.

Full Fact, the fact checking organisation, has described the Tory claim that Labour would put up taxes by £2,000 per household as “unreliable”.

The Conservative claim that Labour will raise taxes by £2,000 dominated last night’s #ITVDebate between @RishiSunak and @Keir_Starmer. But this figure is unreliable and based on multiple assumptions.

Increase public sector pay or risk strikes, TUC warns Labour

A Labour government will risk public sector strikes if it fails to increase workers’ pay, the TUC president Matt Wrack has warned. Kiran Stacey has the story.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to participate in Friday's 7-party election debate, BBC says

The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will participate in the seven-party BBC election debate on Friday, the corporation has announced.

Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, will represent the Conservative party, and Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, will speak for the official opposition. The Liberal Democrats will be represented by Daisy Cooper, their deputy leader.

They will be joined by Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Carla Denyer, the Green party co-leader, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid Cymru.

Union leader accuses ministers of undermining civil servants' impartiality with claims about cost of Labour policies

Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, was doing interviews on behalf of the government this morning. She repeated the claim the £2,000 per household in extra taxes figure had come from the Treasury – even though its permanent secretary has said that is not correct. (See 9.26am.) She told Times Radio:

This is something which has been signed off by the permanent secretary of the Treasury. And let me tell you, as someone who used to work in the Treasury, they do not sign up to these dodgy figures.

And it’s really important that the £2,000 of taxes on working families, I thought Keir Starmer was very exposed on that. He could not rule it out. And that’s because that is based on policies that the Labour party .. want to put in place in the next parliament.

Coutinho also said the costings were provided by “independent Treasury civil servants”.

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, later said it was wrong to describe them as independent. They were impartial, which is different, he said.

He also suggested ministers were undermining civil service impartiality. He explained:

The HM Treasury permanent secretary being dragged into this political row for his department simply doing its job is a threat to the impartiality of the civil service which ministers rely on, and have a duty to protect under the ministerial code.

Civil servants aren’t independent, they serve the government of the day regardless of which party.

The figures quoted are based on special advisers’ and ministers’ assumptions, which civil servants are then asked to calculate.

This is not a new phenomenon – civil servants have done so for successive governments and it does not represent an independent civil service assessment.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, told Sky News this morning that Labour did not expect Rishi Sunak to lie about its tax plans in the debate last night. Asked why Keir Starmer did not mention the Treasury letter saying it was wrong to describe the £2,000 extra in tax per household figure as an official costing for the price of Labour’s plans, even though it was sent to the opposition two days ago, Sarwar replied:

We thought the prime minister would have more integrity than what he showed last night. We didn’t think he was the same ilk as the Liz Truss, the Boris Johnson style politics. But clearly Rishi Sunak wants to go down that same rabbit hole.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey fined for speeding on M1

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has been fined for speeding after being caught doing 73mph in a 60mph zone on the M1, PA Media reports. PA says:

Details of the case, dealt with under an administrative system called the single justice procedure, were revealed by the Evening Standard newspaper.

Davey wrote a letter of explanation in which he said he had tried to pay a speeding ticket issued by Bedfordshire police after he was caught speeding on the M1 near Caddington.

In a “genuine oversight”, he inadvertently failed to provide his driving licence details so the matter was brought before magistrates to consider in March.

Single justice procedure cases are dealt with via paperwork only, with no in-person court case.

Davey wrote: “I apologise. The only mitigation for failing to provide my licence details was just being super-busy and failing to read the form fully, having already accepted liability and made arrangements for the payment.

“Again, I apologise for that. I would like to add that I am the primary driver in a family of four, with two people who have serious mobility issues.

“My son has a lifelong undiagnosed disability which means he cannot walk – we use a Motability vehicle for him.

“My wife has MS, and walks very slowly with a stick, though she can drive as necessary. Thank you for any mitigation you feel able to show in my case.”

He was handed a £72 fine at Luton magistrates’ court, with a £28 victim surcharge, and had three points added to his licence, court staff confirmed.

Three main reasons why Sunak's claim Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 per family is misleading

The Tories first raised the claim that Labour would have to raise taxes by £2,000 per family in a briefing document published by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, on Friday 17 May, because the election was announced. The claim is based on an analysis arguing that there is a £38.5bn gap between what Labour’s policies would cost and what its planned tax rises would raise, and that the party would have to fill this by extra tax rises not as yet announced.

The Hunt allegation got some positive coverage in rightwing papers, but until Rishi Sunak started repeating it ad nauseam in the debate last night, it was not really getting frontpage or broadcast headline news treatment.

It is now – but that does not make it any more true. Many journalists have been very sceptical about the claim, and there are three main reasons for that.

1) The Tory figure is based on numerous assumptions about how Labour’s policy plans would be implemented, and Labour says many of these are false, or deliberately chosen to make policies look reckless. The costings come from civil servants, who are neutral, but they are guided by assumptions that come from special advisers, who are Tories. Labour gave extensive examples of these dubious assumptions in a rebuttal document it sent to journalists on the day the Tory dossier was published. It is long, and not available online, and so I can’t quote it in full. But here are five of the questionable assumptions it highlights.

-The Tories say Labour would have to spend £4.5bn over four years on breakfast clubs for schools, but Labour says that in 2017 the Tories themselves said this policy would cost just £60m, and that the Tories are ignoring the fact that number of pupils in primary schools is falling.

-The Tories say Labour would spent £458m on 48 new GP hubs over four years, but Labour says that is not its policy. It would use existing facilities for its new neighbourhood health centres, it says.

-The Tories say Labour would spend £1.9bn over four years hiring 8,500 extra mental health professionals, but Labour says the Tories are assuming these people would get average mental health salaries, not starting level salaries in most cases.

-The Tories says Labour would spend £60m over four years on Ofsted regional improvement teams, but Labour says the Tories are assuming these would cover all schools below outstanding, which is not its policy.

-The Tories says Labour would spend £3.6bn over four years on bus service reform, but Labour says when it allows councils to take over bus services, it will expect them to fund any extra costs from their own resources. It also says the civil servants themselves said “the uncertainty and risk of error is high” in this costing.

Labour also says, in relation to many of its policy proposals, the Tory costings ignore savings those policies might produce.

2) The Tory figure includes assumptions that have not been signed off by civil servants. See 10.08am for details.

3) The Tory figures cover a spending black hole, and the potential tax increases that might be needed to pay for this, over four years. But when Sunak was quoting the £2,000 figure repeatedly last night, he implied that this was a calculation relating to how much extra tax people might have to pay a year. This was misleading. If he had said people might have to pay an extra £500 a year under Labour, that would still have sounded unwelcome, but less alarming.

The Tory headline figure for the black hole in Labour’s plans is £38.5bn. Labour says there is a black hole in Tory plans (mostly generated by its aspiration to abolish employees’ national insurance) and it says this is worth £71bn (of which £46bn is the national insurance plan). But this is an annual figure. As a four-year figure, it would be £284bn. And, using the Tory method of converting a black hole into a tax increase, that would mean families paying around £14,700 more in taxes (over four years). Labour has not been using this figure – presumably because it knows people would not find it credible.

Labour says Sunak should apologise for lying 12 times about its tax plans in ITV debate

Labour is doubling down on its claim (see 9.05am) that Rishi Sunak lied about its tax plans in the debate last night.

Darren Jones, the shadow deputy chief secretary to the Treasury, who obtained the Treasury letter confirming that the figure quoted by Sunak was not authorised by civil servants as he claimed (see 9.26am), said Sunak should apologise. He posted this on X.

In response to my letter, civil servants confirmed they had told Tory ministers they were not allowed to say their dodgy attacks on Labour were independently done by civil servants.

Last night Rishi Sunak did it anyway.

He lied to the British people.

He must apologise.

And Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told broadcasters that Sunak lied repeatedly. She said:

Rishi Sunak lied 12 times in the debate last night about Labour’s tax plans. The truth is it’s the Conservatives who have taken the tax burden to the highest it’s been in 70 years. That is the Conservatives’ record and their legacy.

Starmer beat Sunak in ITV debate, Savanta poll suggests, after YouGov snap poll said PM narrowly won

Last night YouGov released the results of a snap poll of viewers, very soon after the debate finished, suggesting people narrowly thought Rishi Sunak was the winner.

This morning Savanta, another polling firm, released the results of its poll, which it says was conducted entirely after the debate had finished. It suggests Keir Starmer won, with 44% of people saying he did best, and 39% saying Sunak.

NEW: Starmer beats Sunak in televised debate overnight poll

Who won the debate:

Starmer (44%)
Sunak (39%)
Don’t Know (17%)

1,153 UK adults, 4-5 June

NEW: Starmer beats Sunak on every major issue and personality-based question in overnight poll

Who had best answers to:

NHS & public services (Starmer 63%, Sunak 25%)
Economy and cost of living (Starmer 52%, Sunak 36%)
Immigration (Starmer 45%, Sunak 37%)

NEW: Starmer beats Sunak on every major issue and personality-based question in overnight poll

Who came across as most honest (Starmer 54%, Sunak 29%)

Who gave most thoughtful answers (Starmer 53%, Sunak 35%)

Who remained the calmest (Starmer 51%, Sunak 36%)

Updated

Welsh FM Vaughan Gething at risk of no confidence defeat after Labour confirms 2 of its MSs may be too ill to vote

The Welsh first minister, Vaughan Gething, is facing a political crisis less than three months into office after it emerged he could lose a no-confidence vote on Wednesday.

Welsh Labour has revealed that two of its MSs [members of the senedd] are ill and if they do not vote to back Gething, he will almost certainly be defeated.

Though the vote is non-binding, it will be a huge blow both to his authority and to the UK Labour leadership.

Gething’s tenure has been overshadowed by £200,000 in donations for his leadership campaign he took from a company whose owner, David Neal, was convicted of dumping waste on the Gwent Levels in south Wales.

Last month the pressure increased with the emergence of iMessages with fellow Labour members from the time of the pandemic, when Gething was the Welsh health minister, in which he said he was going to delete a thread, which led to suspicions of decisions being covered up.

It got worse when Gething sacked his minister for social partnership, Hannah Blythyn, suggesting she had leaked the messages, which she denied. Within hours, Plaid Cymru had ended its cooperation agreement with the Welsh government, making it trickier for the government to operate as it does not have an overall Senedd majority.

The no-confidence debate has been instigated by the Tories but both Plaid and the Lib Dems have said they will back it.

At first minister’s questions yesterday, Gething insisted he would win the vote and repeated his assertions that he had broken no rules.

But this morning, Vikki Howells, the chair of the Labour group of Senedd members, told Radio Wales Breakfast that two members are currently unwell. Both the Tories and Plaid have refused to “pair”, the informal arrangement under which a member will agree not to vote when a political opponent is ill to maintain the balance of votes.

Howells said the decision not to pair showed the vote was a “gimmick designed to undermine our democracy”.

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, said the Welsh people and Welsh Labour had lost confidence in Gething. “The only person left supporting Vaughan Gething is Keir Starmer,” he said.

According to a poll, more than half of the public think Gething is “doing badly” as first minister. About 57% of people think he is doing a bad job at leading Wales, according to a YouGov poll of 1,066 Welsh voters for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University. Just 15% said he was doing well.

Updated

Sunak/Starmer debate on ITV watched by 4.8m people, figures show

Around 4.8m people watched ITV’s first leaders’ debate between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night, a healthy figure that is still substantially down on the 6.7m who watched the same event during the 2019 general election.

Although the election is of substantial interest to some people, the collective audience for programmes on other channels during the same 9pm timeslot was far larger. This included The Great British Sewing Bee on BBC One (3.1m viewers), England Women’s football on ITV4 (peaked at 1.4m), ITV2’s Love Island (1m), or Channel 5’s Into the Amazon with Robson Green - (400,000).

The audience for television debates has steadily declined since they were first held in 2010, reflecting both the lack of novelty and a general audience drift away from live television towards streaming services such as Netflix which don’t feature news content.

One of the challenges for broadcasters is fitting their election programming in around coverage of the Euro 2024 football tournament, Glastonbury festival, and Wimbledon tennis championships - all of which are set to dominate the media in the final weeks of the campaign. BBC News’ deputy CEO Jonathan Munro told the Guardian the clash with other events was “quite a nightmare” and the broadcaster was operating at “maximum stretch” in terms of what it can cover.

Tuesday night’s event was one of only two events featuring the leaders of the two main political parties going head-to-head, with the other due to be hosted by the BBC at the end of the month.

Updated

Why Treasury says it cannot endorse claim Labour would raise taxes by £2,000

It is routine for Treasury officials to cost policy proposals from the opposition. MPs can use written parliamentry questions to find out how much government policies might cost, and there is an assumption that it is fair for ministers to do the same with opposition policies.

But these exercises always produce figures that are dubious. That is not because people don’t trust Treasury officials to produce fair, impartial costings. It is because, to produce those costings, they have to make assumptions that go beyond the limited information the opposition will have published about its plans, and these assumptions come from special advisers, the political advisers working in the Treasury. They are inclined to make assumptions presenting their opponents’ plans in the worst light.

However, this is not the point that James Bowler, the Treasury’s permanent secretary, is making in his letter to Labour. (See 9.26am.) The Treasury has explained where it is using partisan assumptions in its costings documents.

Instead, Bowler is pointing out that the Tory £2,000 tax rise claim is based on a document costing Labour’s policies that includes figures that have not been signed off by the Treasury at all.

Labour has identified three of these in its document rebutting the Tory claims.

First, it says the Tories are assuming Labour would spend £2.4bn over four years on a fair pay agreement for social care. It says: “This was included in the Tory dodgy dossier but not in the government costings – meaning that even with spads [special advisers] providing the assumptions they could not get officials to sign this off.” It says it is not known yet how much this might cost, because it has not been negotiated.

Second, Labour says the Tories are including £2bn being spent on support for Ukraine. It says the Treasury did not approve including this – because it is within the government’s spending plans anyway.

And, third, Labour says the Tories are assuming that Labour would only raise £100m a year from extra inheritance tax revenue towards the end of the decade from its crackdown on non-dom status, not the £430m a year Labour claims. The Tories say “HMT figures” show the Labour calculation is wrong. Labour says: “There has been no opposition policy costing published explaining the assumptions behind this figure. This suggests that the Conservatives either don’t have such a figure, have not actually costed Labour’s policy in this area, or they have and the assumptions are such a stretch that they would not stand up to any scrutiny.”

These only account for a small proportion of what Labour says are mistakes in the Tory document. I will post more on its main objections to the Tory figures (involving the Tories getting the Treasury to produce costings based on what Labour says are false assumptions) shortly.

Updated

How papers covered Sunak/Starmer debate

Here is a summary of how the papers covered last night’s debate by Jonathan Yerushalmy.

Treasury says Sunak not entitled to say it thinks Labour would raise taxes by £2,000, as he claimed in debate

In the debate last night Rishi Sunak claimed that “independent Treasury officials” were behind the claim that Labour would raises taxes for every family by £2,000. He said:

This election is about the future. And I’m clear that I’m going to keep cutting people’s taxes and as we now are.

You want to put everyone’s taxes up by £2,000 pounds. This is really important.

Independent Treasury officials who have costed Labour’s policies and they amount to a £2,000 pound tax rise for every working family.

Mark my words. Labour will raise your taxes. It’s in their DNA – your work your car, your pension. You name it, Labour will tax it.

This morning it emerged that James Bowler, permanent secretary at the Treasury, has said that this figure should be not presented as an official Treasury one. In a letter to Darren Jones, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Bowler said:

In your letter you highlight that the £38bn figure used in the Conservative party’s publication [the basis for the £2,000 per household claim] includes costs beyond those provided by the civil service and published online by HM Treasury.

I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service.

I have reminded ministers and advisers that this should be the case.

Henry Zeffman from the BBC had the scoop.

In an interview with LBC Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said this letter showed that Sunak was “lying to the British public” last night. He said:

It has just broken on Twitter, or X as it’s now called, that the permanent secretary of the Treasury wrote to Tory ministers telling them that they could not use these figures, so they have been caught red-handed lying to the British public.

Every single policy that we put forward in this campaign will be fully costed and will explain where the money is coming from.

Updated

Labour accuses Sunak of lying like Boris Johnson about tax plans in ITV debate

Good morning. We got snap reactions to the ITV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer late last night, but sometimes the considered reactions are a bit better and there is plenty of time to mull over them today. Election campaigning is relatively light today, because Sunak and Starmer are attending the D-Day commemorations this morning, but there is still plenty to say about the debate, and the news this morning is dominated by the Tories and Labour trying to spin what happened to their advantage.

Here is the Guardian’s overnight story.

Keir Starmer’s main problem last night was that he was slow, and then a bit cursory, in rebutting Rishi Sunak’s central claim – that Labour would put taxes up by £2,000 for the average family. When this claim was first made last month, Labour produced a detailed response, arguing, fairly convincingly, that the figure was misleading because it was based on multiple assumptions about what Labour actually is proposing. In the debate Starmer (eventually) described the claim as “absolute garbage”. This morning Jonathan Ashworth, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, went further. In an interview with the Today programme, he described Sunak as Boris Johnson-style liar. He said:

Rishi Sunak was exposed as desperate last night – desperately lying about Labour’s tax plans, making accusations about Labour’s tax plans which are categorically untrue.

Labour will not put up income tax, will not put up national insurance, will not put up VAT.

Rishi Sunak was resorting to lying because he is desperate. And what do desperate people do when in a corner? They lie.

We saw it with Boris Johnson over the parties in Downing Street in lockdown. And Rishi Sunak has exposed himself as no better and no different than Boris Johnson with his lies last night.

I will post more from Ashworth’s interview soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Kate Forbes, Scotland’s deputy first minister, campaigns for the SNP in Bathgate and Linlithgow.

Morning: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer attend the D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth.

3pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Romsey.

Around 4pm: Members of the Senedd (MSs) debate a motion of no confidence in Vaughan Gething, the first minister. The debate will last about an hour.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

Updated

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