Afternoon summary
Lord Agnew, a Conservative former Treasury minister, has said that Tom Scholar, permanent secretary at the department, was a malign influence and that Kwasi Kwarteng was right to sack him. (See 12.13pm.)
Kwarteng has told Treasury officials to refocus on getting annual growth to 2.5% rather than prioritising fiscal discipline.
Margaret Ferrier, the MP who admitted she had “culpably and recklessly” put people at risk after travelling by train from London to Scotland after testing positive for Covid-19, has been ordered to undertake a 270-hour community payback order. Ferrier was elected for the SNP, but was suspended by the party and now sits as an independent.
King Charles has resolved to “seek the welfare of all the inhabitants of Northern Ireland” in a formal response to the region’s assembly on his visit to Hillsborough Castle to meet the public and politicians. There is further coverage of all the events related to the death of Queen Elizabeth on our separate live blog. It’s here.
Photograph: Niall Carson/AFP/Getty Images
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The Conservative MP and former Brexit minister David Davis has written to the chief constable of Police Scotland to complain about the decision to charge a woman arrested for holding an anti-monarchy sign as a protest outside St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Davis, who is one of the Tories most committed to defending civil liberties, is one of many people who have condemned police attempts to silence republican protesters.
I wrote to the Chief Constable of Police Scotland yesterday, expressing my concern that an anti-monarchy protester has been charged by police. Since I wrote to him, a second protester has been charged. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/Wwl21pYQxL
— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) September 13, 2022
At a time of national mourning, we should all ensure that we behave respectfully. But we must not sacrifice the principle of free speech upon which modern Britain is built. I am a staunch monarchist, but republicans have as much right to voice their opinions as anyone else.
— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) September 13, 2022
One of the best media diatribes against the actions of the police in this regard has come from the LBC broadcaster Andrew Marr.
"A Monarchy that cannot survive some booing and a few pieces of cardboard is pretty flimsy thing, isn't it?"
— Our Republic (@OurRepublicScot) September 12, 2022
"If the suggestion is that we can have a king, or we can have free speech, then millions of us will say 'I'll have free speech, thanks'" pic.twitter.com/KdXQbohUKC
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Even the DWP computers will not be working on the day of the Queen’s funeral, the government has announced. It has said that people due to receive benefits or tax credits next Monday will get them paid on Friday this week, “the last working day before the bank holiday”. The Department for Work and Pensions has more details here.
If you are wondering why the blog is so quiet today, then my colleague Owen Jones has posted on Twitter excerpts from a memo that in part helps to provide an answer. It shows that Labour MPs have been told to abandon all political communication during the period of mourning for the Queen.
This has been sent to all Labour MPs by the party leadership, banning them from posting anything on social media except for tributes to the Queen or whatever the party tells them, and banning them from talking to the media. pic.twitter.com/v7ho8XWST6
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 13, 2022
In practical terms, this bans Labour MPs from discussing, say:
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 13, 2022
- The cost of living crisis
- The police killing of Chris Kaba
- The war in Ukraine
and, well, anything else
For those claiming that this guidance might only refer to statements on the Queen's death, no it does not.
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 13, 2022
A lot of the guidance is totally reasonable - suspend campaigning, but keep advice surgeries open etc
But it does ban MPs publicly talking about anything else. pic.twitter.com/77ippqscRW
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Sacha Lord, chair of the Night Time Industries Association trade body and the night time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, told the World at One that business organisations are desperate for clarity about the help they will get through the energy price guaranteed announced last week. He said firms were already going under “on a daily basis” and wait “sat in limbo” waiting for the emergency budget due next week.
He said:
I think we are now entering probably the most critical week for my industry in my lifetime. My phone is red hot and people are just at the end of their tether. And we already know that probably seven out of 10 pubs won’t make the winter if this help doesn’t come.
This is from my colleague Libby Brooks, showing how some protesters in Edinburgh have responded to the police arresting, or threatening to arrest, some people displaying anti-monarchy slogans.
Civil liberties protesters opposite St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh holding up blank paper and canvas: “This is t just a private funeral, it is an exercise in state sponsored myth building” pic.twitter.com/9gDw5Mxk11
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) September 13, 2022
And on the subject of government appointments, Henry Zeffman from the Times says five people were made ministers last week, according to the government’s website, without their names being included in the press release sent by No 10 to journalists.
A little odd: on Thursday the government sent round the last batch of ministerial appointments made by the Queen by press release (1/2) pic.twitter.com/pH73wyk6jd
— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) September 13, 2022
But the version on the government website has five extra ministers who were never press released https://t.co/DYbikcwVTb
— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) September 13, 2022
In any case, sounds like Liz Truss will wait until next Tuesday at the soonest to complete her first appointments pic.twitter.com/6JrNg7epvU
At the lobby briefing yesterday Downing Street admitted that Liz Truss had not completed her government reshuffle. New appointments were suspended following the death of the Queen.
According to an analysis by Arj Singh for the i, 55 posts remain unfilled. Singh says that, to fill all the posts that Boris Johnson had in his government, Truss will need to appoint 21 junior ministers in the Commons, nine Commons whips and 25 Lords ministers.
No 10 has indicated that that figure seems a bit high, and that it is not expecting to announce a further 55 appointments. But it won’t say exactly how many jobs remain unfilled, and how many posts will get filled when the reshuffle resumes next week.
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Tom Scholar was 'malign influence' at Treasury and Kwarteng was right to sack him, says former minister Lord Agnew
On his first day in office Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor, sacked the Treasury’s permanent secretary, Tom Scholar. This decision was widely criticised as a further step towards the politicisation of the civil service. In the past new governments have eased out senior officials they find uncongenial, but defenestrating a permanent secretary on day one is extremely rare.
However, in an article for the Times today Lord Agnew, who was a Treasury minister until he resigned in January, says Kwarteng was right to get rid of Scholar. Agnew says:
The removal of Sir Tom Scholar as the lead permanent secretary at the Treasury should be a cause for celebration.
Having worked in his department for nearly two years I saw at first hand the malign influence of the Treasury orthodoxy at play. Whether it was foot-dragging and passive resistance to creating a Treasury office in the north (in Darlington), which he fiercely resisted, or the botched arrangements in the construction of the bounceback loans during the pandemic, all roads led back to him.
It is not surprising to hear cries of dismay at his dismissal from an echo chamber of former mandarins, because that is what they mostly are: a metropolitan elite with their own self-reinforcing prejudices.
Agnew also says that Liz Truss should break up the Treasury, and put another department in charge of delivering growth. He says:
I hope very much that our new prime minister will build on her excellent decision and remove responsibility from the Treasury for driving economic growth. It has no idea how to deliver this. The system obsesses about measuring inputs, counting out the money distributed to departments, but has little clue of how to measure outcomes. Departments are infantilised in their management of money, with savings being automatically clawed back to the centre. This of course removes any incentive to think innovatively, creatively or cost-effectively.
Agnew cannot be dismissed as a Kwarteng stooge. When he resigned in January, because he felt the government was not doing enough to recover money wasted through fraudulent Covid loans, he said the performance of the business department (then headed by Kwarteng) on this issue had been “nothing less than woeful”.
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Giles Wilkes, who has worked as an adviser to Vince Cable and Theresa May on industrial policy, does not seem impressed by Kwasi Kwarteng’s dash for growth plan. (See 9.28am.)
If I were the Chancellor, I'd simply target 5.0% growth, and then my fiscal problems would be much easier
— Giles Wilkes (@Gilesyb) September 13, 2022
Met says officers have been reminded people have 'right to protest' amid concern about republicans being arrested
Jeremy Corbyn has joined those protesting about the arrest of people expressing their opposition to the monarchy in public places.
The arrests of republican protestors is wrong, anti-democratic and an abuse of the law.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 13, 2022
People should be able to express their views as a basic right. https://t.co/BPhNdHcJmi
And here is my colleague Ben Quinn’s story about the growing concern about the incidents in which republican protesters have been arrested, or threatened with arrest, by the police.
Last night the Metropolitan police issued a statement stressing that people “absolutely have a right to protest” and that officers have been reminded of this.
Statement regarding viral video from Parliament Square #Westminster today. pic.twitter.com/xbi4HJRNXh
— Metropolitan Police Events (@MetPoliceEvents) September 12, 2022
Tony Connelly, RTE’s Europe correspondent, posted a good thread on Twitter last night about the implications of the Maroš Šefčovič interview in the FT saying checks on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain could be reduced to just “a couple of lorries a day” with proper data sharing.
Here are some observations on the FT story following contacts with EU diplomats / officials: https://t.co/PhAkJYsPJj
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 12, 2022
And here are some of the points Connelly makes.
15/ The UK first promised to provide real time data in Dec 2020. Since then it's been a long back and forth: the EU complained the data was not real time, that it didn't allow the EU to use its risk mgt tools etc. The UK complained it had to hive off NI data from whole of UK
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 12, 2022
16/ However, UK sources say they have developed a bespoke system which will give EU officials data between 15-40 mins once the ferry has left GB. Both sides seem to be very close, but the Commission believes there are still compatibility issues.
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 12, 2022
17/ Sefcovic has made it clear that a breakthrough here would be significant. In that sense, hard lines and red lines in the coming weeks may be shadow boxing before real talking begins.
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 12, 2022
18/ EU officials still do not trust the Tory govt on the Protocol, and are wary that if Truss gets heavily pressured from the right over big state interventions on energy she may be tempted to play up a clash with the EU
— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 12, 2022
Connelly also says a lot will hinge on a call that Liz Truss is due to have with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president. The two leaders were trying to set one up last week but the death of the Queen put that on hold.
More people have crossed Channel in small boats to UK than in whole of 2021, figures suggest
More people have crossed the Channel in small boats to the UK so far this year than in the whole of 2021, government figures suggest. PA Media says:
Some 601 people were detected on Monday in 19 boats, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, taking the provisional total for the year to 28,561.
This suggests an average of 32 people per boat in the latest day of crossings.
Last year’s total was 28,526, according to official figures.
The 2022 figure to date is nearly double the number that had been detected by this point last year, which was just under 14,500.
There have been 3,518 crossings recorded in September so far, analysis shows.
August 22 saw the highest daily total on record, with 1,295 people crossing in 27 boats.
It is more than four months since the then home secretary Priti Patel announced plans to send migrants to Rwanda to try to deter people from crossing the Channel.
But no deportations have taken place because the policy is being challenged in the courts and since Patel’s announcement 23,293 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey across the Channel.
Suella Braverman, the new home secretary, told Home Office staff last week she wants to end all small boat crossings. My colleague Mark Townsend had the story for the Observer on Sunday.
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Truss's plans to increase energy supply likely to have no impact on cutting bills before price guarantee ends, says thinktank
In her speech to MPs last week, Liz Truss said that, as well as curbing price increases this winter, she would be “ramping up [energy] supply”.
But in its report today the Resolution Foundation says there is “very little” chance that the supply measures announced by Truss will have any impact on bills before the energy price guarantee (EGP) expires in October 2024. It says:
The EPG is rightly being accompanied by measures to reduce costs and increase energy supply. But there is very little chance that new North Sea oil and gas licences, lifting the moratorium on fracking, and a continued focus on new offshore wind and nuclear capacity will have any impact on bills by the time the EPG expires. There was no mention of onshore wind and solar, which can be built quickly and are unaffected by global price of hydrocarbons.
Truss energy and tax plan ‘will give richest families twice as much support’
Last week, when Liz Truss announced her energy price guarantee, the two leading thinktanks that analyse government spending – the Institute for Fiscal Studies (here) and the Resolution Foundation (here) – gave it a mixed reception. Although they both pointed out that it was expensive and untargeted, they said it would at least prevent millions of households facing catastrophe this winter.
As they have had more time to consider the plans (although the word “plans” may be going a bit too far – there is no firm detail on how the policy will be delivered, and the package for business is little more than a bullet-point wishlist), the two thinktanks have started to sound more sceptical. Yesterday Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said the proposals were “incredibly expensive” and “totally untargeted”. And today the Resolution Foundation has published a 28-page analysis of the announcement.
As my colleague Richard Partington reports, the RF report says richest families will gain twice as much as poorest ones from the Truss approach.
This analysis refers to the 2023-24 financial year, when the energy support measures announced by Rishi Sunak may fall away (Truss has not committed to extending them), but national insurance will be cut. The RF says:
On current plans, the only part of the government’s cost of living measures that are due to continue into 2023-24 are the EPG [energy price guarantee], and the higher National Insurance (NI) threshold. It is also clear that the new chancellor plans to reverse the rise in NI rates (previously due to be rebranded as the health and social care levy in April). If this were to be enacted next year, as the right panel in figure 6 shows, then ‘support’ overall will be skewed more towards better-off households, with the highest-income decile benefiting by £4,700 on average while the poorest tenth receive £2,200.
Here is figure 6.
Here is the full RF report, and here is its summary.
UK pay growth lags behind inflation as cost of living crisis bites
Pay growth failed to keep pace with rising prices in July despite a jump in average wages, according to official data that showed the cost of living crisis continued to affect millions of households throughout the summer, my colleague Phillip Inman reports.
Kwasi Kwarteng ‘tells Treasury to focus entirely on growth’ ahead of expected emergency budget next week
Good morning. Public national life and the news (not always the same things) are both still dominated by the events taking place to mourn and commemorate Queen Elizabeth, and there is full coverage on our separate live blog. I will be covering some of the political aspects of those developments here, but mostly the blog today will be in “and in other news” territory.
And in other news? Attention is starting to focus on what Liz Truss will announce in the emergency “budget” pencilled in for late next week, as my colleagues Pippa Crerar and Rowena Mason report.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor, will be delivering what the government is calling a “fiscal statement”, not a full budget, and in the Financial Times today George Parker and Chris Giles say he has told the Treasury that it needs to focuse “entirely on growth”.
The mood among Treasury staff was described by one insider as “grim” after Kwarteng last week sacked Tom Scholar, the popular and highly experienced permanent secretary, on his first day as chancellor.
Kwarteng, addressing all staff on a conference call, praised Scholar’s record and said the Treasury had been an “excellent finance ministry”, a reference to the department’s longstanding adherence to fiscal discipline. He said Scholar’s departure did not herald more big changes at the top.
But he said that it now needed to focus “entirely on growth”, said one person on the call, who added: “He said there was a need to do things differently under fresh leadership.”
Kwarteng also argued that if Britain could return the trend rate of growth to 2.5%, its long-term rate before the 2008-09 financial crisis, reducing the deficit would be easier in the long term, the FT reports.
This is entirely consistent with what Truss proposed during the Tory leadership contest. But Kwarteng is not the first chancellor to think that promoting growth might be a good idea, and his predecessors have found that it is easier said than done. And there is a reason the Treasury has never been “entirely” focused on growth. As Edward Heath’s government discovered in the 1970s, a misguided dash for growth can have a disastrous impact on inflation. Some Tories have warned that Truss may make the same mistake.
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