Michael Gove endorses Rishi Sunak campaign
Michael Gove has backed Rishi Sunak to be the next Conservative leader, accusing Liz Truss of taking a “holiday from reality”.
He told The Times: “I do not expect to be in government again. But it was the privilege of my life to spend 11 years in the cabinet under three prime ministers. I know what the job requires. And Rishi has it.”
Gove, who was sacked as the levelling up secretary by Boris Johnson, added: “And here I am deeply concerned that the framing of the leadership debate by many has been a holiday from reality.
“The answer to the cost-of-living crisis cannot be simply to reject further ‘handouts’ and cut tax.”
A summary of today's developments
Labour has urged Boris Johnson to recall parliament next week so the government can offer more help to struggling households before the announcement of the new energy price cap. The opposition has written to the prime minister and both Tory leadership candidates warning that it is a “crucial deadline” for government action to tackle soaring energy bills, after inflation topped 10% for the first time in 40 years.
At the latest hustings in Manchester, Liz Truss sidestepped a question about a 2009 report which she co-authored emerging today which called for doctors pay to be cut by 10%. She said doctors and nurses “feel like they are being told what to do from Whitehall rather than understanding the situation in their local area and being able to respond to their patients’ needs”. The foreign secretary also called for more transparency about the police’s record on fighting crime and having league tables for forces.
At the hustings, Rishi Sunak was asked how he will deal with trade unions and said: “We need to crack on and pass a piece of legislation,” he says, referring to the minimum service bill which means they will not be able to hold the country “to ransom”. On crime, Sunak said he wants a new unit in the National Crime Agency to deal with grooming gangs and says we need to record the ethnicity of perpetrators.
A former executive at the oil company BP has called for increases to the energy price cap to be scrapped and for suppliers that fail to help households struggling with bills to be nationalised. Nick Butler, who worked for BP for almost 30 years and was group vice-president for strategy and development, said that expected rises in the cap should be abandoned by the industry regulator, Ofgem, which he said had been “overwhelmed by events” after turmoil in the global energy markets sent 29 British energy retailers to the wall.
Conservative leadership frontrunner Liz Truss has been accused of showing “her true colours” in an 2009 paper promoting government spending cuts including slashing doctors’ pay. Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in a controversial report she co-authored when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank, TalkTV discovered.
Railway changes will be imposed if workers do not agree to new deals, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said. The Conservative party has repeatedly targeted unions with criticism, in a move that the Trades Union Congress has argued is deliberately “picking a fight” for electoral purposes.
The frontrunner to be the UK’s next prime minister has made her views on unions clear: she has approvingly tweeted a report that she intends to make striking more difficult. “New laws will make it harder to call strikes and also guarantee minimum levels of service are maintained on public transport”, according to a report by the Daily Express, a newspaper which is strongly pro-government and is supporting Truss in the Conservative leadership race.
The under-fire rail operator Avanti West Coast has been “rewarded for failure”, Labour said, after the company was paid more than £17m in taxpayers’ money by ministers for performance and management fees in just two years, despite being the worst-performing operator on the rail network. The figures from 2019-20 and 2020-21 include almost £4m in bonuses to Avanti for “operational performance”, “customer experience” and “acting as a good and efficient operator”.
The UK’s transport department has announced £130m of funding for England’s bus network to make up for shortfalls in revenues caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The cash would help to cover six months of operations by the private companies who run England’s buses from October 2022 to March 2023, the government said.
A green thinktank has criticised Rishi Sunak’s promise to protect farmland from solar farms, saying biofuels use 77 times the amount of arable land. Dustin Benton, policy director at Green Alliance, said: “Solar energy isn’t standing in the way of food production in the UK. Instead, solar panels generate cheap, clean energy that doesn’t depend on Russia, and provide income to farmers too.”
Rishi Sunak’s campaign has hit out at frontrunner Liz Truss after she declined to attend a hustings organised by the National Farmers’ Union. Farmers now expect Truss to take part in a hustings with the NFU in September, after she was initially accused of snubbing the organisation by deciding not to attend the event on Friday.
Constituents of the Covid rule-breaking MP Margaret Ferrier are said to be “aghast” that she remains in post, as calls for her to resign gathered pace after she pleaded guilty on Thursday to “culpably and recklessly” exposing the public to the virus. The former Scottish National party politician, who now sits as an independent MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, faced immediate calls to stand down.
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And that brings the hustings to an end.
The remaining hustings are Birmingham on August 23, Norwich on August 25 and London on August 31.
Truss was criticised by an audience member for “sounding like Labour” in wanting to “borrow £50 billion”.
The foreign secretary did not address the criticism but said her fundamental view is that high taxes fail to bring money in to the Exchequer.
Asked by an audience member whether she would build more houses to solve the housing crisis, Truss instead cites her plans to help people secure mortgages and criticised the planning system.
Truss declares she does “support fracking in areas where there is local support”, adding that the local communities should stand to benefit.
The foreign secretary also backs nuclear power and with drilling in the North Sea.
Asked whether local objections from “Nimbys” should be overruled, Truss says local communities need to be shown the benefits and this involves “encouraging” rather than overruling.
Sunak earlier spoke about wanting his football team Southampton to beat Manchester United this weekend, despite them in fact being scheduled to face Leicester City.
He was asked at the Manchester hustings how as a Southampton FC fan how he would get back to winning ways.
“I’m going to be unpopular for saying it here, starting by beating United this weekend,” he said.
Southampton are not due to play Manchester United until August 27.
Truss suggested that retired doctors could be asked to help clear the Covid backlog after many returned to work to help at the start of the pandemic.
Truss said doctors and nurses “feel like they are being told what to do from Whitehall rather than understanding the situation in their local area and being able to respond to their patients’ needs”.
Earlier today, a 2009 report Ms Truss co-authored came to light, which called for doctors pay to be cut by 10%.
Truss also suggested senior police staff could be removed from their posts if their force performs poorly in her league table.
It is now Truss’s turn for some questions.
The foreign secretary calls for more transparency about the police’s record on fighting crime and having league tables for forces.
“It does help the police be held to account,” she added.
Sunak is asked about levelling up, weeks after video footage showed him telling Tory members of his work diverting public funds from ‘deprived urban areas’.
He responds: “If we define levelling up as something that is only for the north we will pay a political price for it because it’s wrong.
“I am proud of my record delivering for the north and I will continue delivering for the north.”
On how he will help low and middle earning families, Sunak replies: “The best way to help those people is to make sure it’s only tough for one winter”.
He added it will not help families to do things that might make us feel better for “five minutes” and if inflation persists “we are all stuffed”.
On how he will deal with trade unions, Sunak says “We need to crack on and pass a piece of legislation,” he says, referring to the minimum service bill which means they will not be able to hold the country “to ransom”.
He added that the government must not put “fuel on the fire” of inflation and repeat mistakes that were made in the 1970s.
The Guardian’s Peter Walker gives his reaction to the questions posed by host Alastair Stewart.
Blimey. Hustings host Alastair Stewart is so far asking questions that actually seem a little bit too right wing and populist even for the audience of Tory members.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) August 19, 2022
The former chancellor believes countries that the UK agrees trade deals with must agree to take back their “failed asylum-seekers”.
Sunak is proposing a £10 fine for missed appointments and replicating the private health sector’s elective surgeries which he said allowed doctors to perform more operations.
Sunak said there were 50 million missed appointments in the NHS in 2021 which “deprives people of the care they need” and he calls for the need to be “bold and radical” to reform the NHS and learn from private healthcare.
Sunak adds he wants a new unit in the National Crime Agency to deal with grooming gangs.
It is now the part where the candidates get the proverbial grilling.
Sunak is asked about how he would keep Britain’s streets safe.
He claims “we do not talk enough” about grooming gangs and says we need to record the ethnicity of perpetrators.
Sunak added we should not let political correctness stand in the way and that we need to toughen up sentencing as people should be given a second or third chance “but not a nineteenth chance”.
Truss says before she became an MP in 2010 she was a local councillor and sat on the planning committee.
Repeating one of her favourite one-liners, she adds: “Those are hours of my life I will never get back.”
Truss reiterates her plan to make the most of the post-Brexit opportunities and get all the EU laws off the statute books by the end of 2023.
Truss pledges to build Northern Powerhouse Rail and wants to make the M62 the “super highway to success”.
Liz Truss enters the arena after a fairly bland campaign video in comparison.
Sunak insists he will not pursue policies that risk making inflation far worse, inadvertently criticising the economic plan of his rival Liz Truss for wanting to pass £50bn of debt to future generations, adding: “That is not right.”
Sunak opens with that regularly repeated rhetoric in the hustings about Britain doing something “extraordinary” for his family by allowing them to make a life.
He also vows to take on “lefty, woke culture” that seeks to cancel this country’s values and women.
Sunak said: “I will never let political correctness stand in the way of keeping us safe.”
Protesters gathered outside the Manchester Central Convention Complex chanting “Tories Out” with placards reading “no to Rwanda” referencing the government’s immigration policy.
Rishi Sunak is first on stage after his campaign video where the narrator, who sounded similar to actor Ray Winstone, talking about “everyone loves an underdog”.
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Alastair Stewart, who hosted the first ever televised leaders’ debate between David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Gordon Brown in 2010, will be hosting tonight’s hustings.
Sunak and Truss to go head-to-head in Manchester
The latest hustings is taking place in Manchester from 7pm. You can follow all the action here.
Summary
Here’s a round up of the key developments of the day so far:
Labour has urged Boris Johnson to recall parliament next week so the government can offer more help to struggling households before the announcement of the new energy price cap. The opposition has written to the prime minister and both Tory leadership candidates warning that it is a “crucial deadline” for government action to tackle soaring energy bills, after inflation topped 10% for the first time in 40 years.
A former executive at the oil company BP has called for increases to the energy price cap to be scrapped and for suppliers that fail to help households struggling with bills to be nationalised. Nick Butler, who worked for BP for almost 30 years and was group vice-president for strategy and development, said that expected rises in the cap should be abandoned by the industry regulator, Ofgem, which he said had been “overwhelmed by events” after turmoil in the global energy markets sent 29 British energy retailers to the wall.
Conservative leadership frontrunner Liz Truss has been accused of showing “her true colours” in an 2009 paper promoting government spending cuts including slashing doctors’ pay. Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in a controversial report she co-authored when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank, TalkTV discovered.
Railway changes will be imposed if workers do not agree to new deals, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said. The Conservative party has repeatedly targeted unions with criticism, in a move that the Trades Union Congress has argued is deliberately “picking a fight” for electoral purposes.
The frontrunner to be the UK’s next prime minister has made her views on unions clear: she has approvingly tweeted a report that she intends to make striking more difficult. “New laws will make it harder to call strikes and also guarantee minimum levels of service are maintained on public transport”, according to a report by the Daily Express, a newspaper which is strongly pro-government and is supporting Truss in the Conservative leadership race.
The under-fire rail operator Avanti West Coast has been “rewarded for failure”, Labour said, after the company was paid more than £17m in taxpayers’ money by ministers for performance and management fees in just two years, despite being the worst-performing operator on the rail network. The figures from 2019-20 and 2020-21 include almost £4m in bonuses to Avanti for “operational performance”, “customer experience” and “acting as a good and efficient operator”.
The UK’s transport department has announced £130m of funding for England’s bus network to make up for shortfalls in revenues caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The cash would help to cover six months of operations by the private companies who run England’s buses from October 2022 to March 2023, the government said.
A green thinktank has criticised Rishi Sunak’s promise to protect farmland from solar farms, saying biofuels use 77 times the amount of arable land. Dustin Benton, policy director at Green Alliance, said: “Solar energy isn’t standing in the way of food production in the UK. Instead, solar panels generate cheap, clean energy that doesn’t depend on Russia, and provide income to farmers too.”
Rishi Sunak’s campaign has hit out at frontrunner Liz Truss after she declined to attend a hustings organised by the National Farmers’ Union. Farmers now expect Truss to take part in a hustings with the NFU in September, after she was initially accused of snubbing the organisation by deciding not to attend the event on Friday.
Constituents of the Covid rule-breaking MP Margaret Ferrier are said to be “aghast” that she remains in post, as calls for her to resign gathered pace after she pleaded guilty on Thursday to “culpably and recklessly” exposing the public to the virus. The former Scottish National party politician, who now sits as an independent MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, faced immediate calls to stand down.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak face another hustings tonight in Manchester. The event is hosted by GB News presenter Alastair Stewart, who will interview both Tory leadership candidates separately from 7pm before they answer members’ questions.
Full story: Government will fund endangered bus routes in England
Regional bus services in England that were facing the axe have been given a reprieve after the government announced £130m of funding to keep them going for at least six months.
Services in the north-east and South Yorkshire were at risk amid concern that many more routes could be cut back when Covid grants, which propped up routes during the pandemic, expire at the start of October.
The Department for Transport said on Friday it would provide further support to ensure that services keep running until March 2023.
The further £130m of support takes the total degree of pandemic funding to £2bn as bus companies wrestle with rising costs and continued low patronage of their services.
The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said:
At a time when people are worried about rising costs, it’s more important than ever we save these bus routes for the millions who rely on them for work, school and shopping.
Covid grants for bus companies were introduced to help sustain routes that had lost passengers during the pandemic.
They were extended in the spring for a further six months with £150m to stave off feared widespread cuts to services, but the government had previously warned that no further funding would be available.
Read more here:
Rishi Sunak’s campaign has hit out at frontrunner Liz Truss after she declined to attend a hustings organised by the National Farmers’ Union.
Farmers now expect Truss to take part in a hustings with the NFU in September, after she was initially accused of snubbing the organisation by deciding not to attend the event on Friday.
Sunak, her rival for the Tory leadership, did attend the event in Warwickshire, where he promised to lead the “most pro-farming and pro-countryside government this country has seen in decades”.
Sunak’s team said Truss’s absence “raises questions about her willingness to listen to the needs of farmers and the wider food industry”.
The NFU president, Minette Batters, told the Guardian on Thursday that it was a “shame” Truss did not want to attend the hustings.
Farmers have been among the groups angered by some of the post-Brexit trade deals championed by the foreign secretary, which they see as undercutting their livelihoods.
Truss was also expected to be quizzed about claims from the environment secretary, George Eustice, who supports Sunak, that she had been resistant to putting animal welfare standards in UK trade deals.
On Friday, an NFU spokesperson said Truss would attend a hustings with the farming body on 1 September.
If it goes ahead, it will be one of the final husting events of the leadership campaign.
The Sunak campaign said the former chancellor had “announced that he will set a new food security target, aggressively champion local produce, ensure the sector has the labour it needs, and take time to negotiate trade deals in the best interests of British farmers”.
A spokesperson added:
He will support farmers to boost their productivity and profitability and protect our best farmland. Farmers are the lifeblood of our nation. A Rishi Sunak-led government will make sure there is a bright future ahead for British agriculture, and he will always engage positively with the industry.
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More than 53,510 UK-based students were scrambling for places on university courses on Friday, the day after receiving lower grades in their A-level results, with many missing out on their offers in the most competitive year for university places in a decade.
This year’s number of applicants marked as “free to be placed in clearing” on the Ucas website is the highest in more than a decade, and compares with 39,230 in clearing at the same point last year. Some of these students missed their grades while others declined their offers, and some may decide not to go to university.
By Friday, 6,640 UK school-leavers had found places through clearing, a 33% increase on last year. A third more students – 23,640 – accepted their insurance choices after missing the grades for their top choice.
University admissions directors reported that they had seen unprecedented levels of demand in clearing, with phone lines busier than ever, including from students with top grades.
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Government announces £130m Covid bailout for England's bus network
The UK’s transport department has announced £130m of funding for England’s bus network to make up for shortfalls in revenues caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The cash would help to cover six months of operations by the private companies who run England’s buses from October 2022 to March 2023, the government said.
Bus companies – like other parts of the UK’s struggling public transport industry – have been fighting to attract customers back to their routes after passenger numbers slumped during the coronavirus lockdowns.
The government gave bus providers their first bailout (worth £400m) in April 2020 to protect routes while passenger numbers were down. Since then the value of funding made available to 160 companies had reached £2bn, the government said on Friday.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary who has had a busy day, said:
At a time when people are worried about rising costs, it’s more important than ever we save these bus routes for the millions who rely on them for work, school and shopping.
The Confederation of Passenger Transport, a lobby group for the bus and coach industry, perhaps unsurprisingly welcomed the money. A spokesperson said:
Today’s announcement will help bus operators and local authority partners to balance a network of reliable and affordable services in the short-term as bus networks adapt to new travel patterns.
For the longer-term, we will continue to work closely with central government and local authorities to encourage existing and new passengers to get on board the country’s buses, ensuring they are provided the best possible services.
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Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak face another hustings tonight, this time with Conservative members living in the north of England.
The event is hosted by GB News presenter Alastair Stewart, who will interview both Tory leadership candidates separately from 7pm before they answer members’ questions.
The frontrunner to be the UK’s next prime minister has made her views on unions clear: she has approvingly tweeted a report that she intends to make striking more difficult.
“New laws will make it harder to call strikes and also guarantee minimum levels of service are maintained on public transport”, according to a report by the Daily Express, a newspaper which is strongly pro-government and is supporting Truss in the Conservative leadership race.
The rule changes could include raising the threshold for strike action – already fairly stringent in the UK – and limit the number of strikes unions can carry out once they have received the backing of votes.
She will push through changes “within a month of becoming prime minister”, the Express reported.
As Prime Minister, I will not let our country be held to ransom by militant trade unionists.
— Liz for Leader (@trussliz) August 19, 2022
💬 @Daily_Express: https://t.co/hGjPNPZLqH pic.twitter.com/AhzPtfbk0b
The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) describes UK strike laws as “complex and multilayered with detailed regulations introduced by Conservative governments over years”. This already includes a requirement for 40% of the total workforce (including those who do not vote) to vote in favour of action.
If the strike is in important public services, 4⃣0⃣% of the total workforce must vote in favour of the action.
— EPSU (@EPSUnions) August 19, 2022
👮🏽♀️👮🏽♂️Polices are also limited in terms of union membership and the right to strike. There are also further restrictions for postal workers, seamen and prison officers. pic.twitter.com/1wBOOAUbGl
Follow our business liveblog here for more on the strikes:
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Constituents of the Covid rule-breaking MP Margaret Ferrier are said to be “aghast” that she remains in post, as calls for her to resign gathered pace after she pleaded guilty on Thursday to “culpably and recklessly” exposing the public to the virus.
The former Scottish National party politician, who now sits as an independent MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, faced immediate calls to stand down, including from the leader of her former party, Nicola Sturgeon, in October 2020 when it emerged she had visited a number of venues in her constituency and spoken in the Commons while awaiting the result of a Covid test.
After Ferrier, 61, admitted she had failed to self-isolate and had “exposed people to risk of infection, illness and death” at a hearing prior to a planned trial at Glasgow sheriff court, those calls for her to resign have once more gained momentum.
Martin Lennon, a Scottish Labour councillor for Rutherglen Central and North said:
Most people here are aghast that this has gone on so long.
The fact that she pleaded guilty is the cherry on top. If she plans to squat in the seat until the next election, she needs to do the decent thing.
She had a really good reputation locally, but now has tarnished all that.”
Read more here:
Following the news that Vladimir Putin will be heading to the G20 meeting in Indonesia in November, Rishi Sunak has said he would lobby the summit to ban the Russian president while Liz Truss said previously she would use it as an opportunity to “call out” Putin.
A spokesperson for Sunak said:
Our G20 partners and allies have a collective responsibility to call Putin’s abhorrent behaviour out.
Sitting round a table with him isn’t good enough when he is responsible for children being killed in their beds as they sleep.
We need to send a strong message to Putin that he doesn’t have a seat at the table unless and until he stops his illegal war in Ukraine.
Last month, Truss – who is currently the foreign secretary – said it would be important to confront Putin in front of allies like India and Indonesia.
She said:
I would go there, and I would call Putin out.
Indonesia is head of the G20 this year and has faced pressure from the west to uninvite Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been invited to attend the summit in Bali.
You can follow our Russia-Ukraine war liveblog here:
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Labour has accused the government of allowing water companies to “cut corners”, after new figures showed 1,076 years’ worth of raw sewage has been dumped into UK waterways since 2016.
Here’s the report from PA Media:
Figures obtained by the party from the Environment Agency through freedom of information requests indicate that, since 2016, raw sewage has been pumped into the natural environment for a total of 9,427,355 hours.
Labour warned that the figures, which equate to 392,806 days’ worth of raw sewage discharge, probably do not cover the full scale of pollution.
The shadow environment secretary, Jim McMahon, attacked water companies and the government over the findings.
He said:
Families across Britain are trying to enjoy the summertime. Whilst water companies are paying billions in dividends, the Tories have allowed them to cut corners and pump filthy raw sewage on to our playing fields and into our waters.
Labour will put a stop to this disgraceful practice by ensuring there can be enforcement of unlimited fines, holding water company bosses legally and financially accountable for their negligence, and by toughening up regulations that currently allow the system to be abused.
The party said areas affected by raw sewage discharge include popular tourist and bathing spots, such as rivers and beaches.
Labour also said the data shows there has been a 2,553% increase in the number of monitored discharge hours between 2016 and 2021, with the party arguing that the situation is “drastically worsening” under the Conservatives. In 2016, the Environment Agency recorded 100,533 hours’ worth of spills. By 2021, that figure had rocketed to 2,667,452.
Earlier this month, a story in the Telegraph suggested that official plans to reduce the level of raw sewage discharged into waterways had been temporarily shelved. However, the government now appears to be sticking to the September deadline.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pointed to a statement released on its website on Thursday, which said the government is “taking action” on sewage discharges, with the current administration being the first to set an expectation on water companies to significantly reduce discharges from storm overflows.
The water minister, Steve Double, said:
We are the first government to take action to tackle sewage overflows. We have been clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.
This is on top of ambitious action we have already taken, including consulting on targets to improve water quality which will act as a powerful tool to deliver cleaner water, pushing all water companies to go further and faster to fix overflows.
Work on tackling sewage overflows continues at pace and we will publish our plan in line with the 1 September statutory deadline.
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A green thinktank has criticised Rishi Sunak’s promise to protect farmland from solar farms, saying biofuels use 77 times the amount of arable land.
Dustin Benton, policy director at Green Alliance, said:
Solar energy isn’t standing in the way of food production in the UK. Instead, solar panels generate cheap, clean energy that doesn’t depend on Russia, and provide income to farmers too.
A much better way of feeding people would be to stop using food crops to fuel cars. Biofuels for cars are a zombie policy. It’s now cheaper to decarbonise transport by getting more electric vehicles on the roads and freeing up land we’ve used for biofuels for food production instead.
Green Alliance said biofuel production covered 108,000 hectares of arable land, enough to grow food for 3.5 million people, while solar farms covered only 1,400 hectares.
The thinktank added that land used for solar farms could be used to grow crops at the same time.
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Full story: Liz Truss called for patients to be charged for GP visits, 2009 paper reveals
Conservative leadership frontrunner Liz Truss has been accused of showing “her true colours” in an 2009 paper promoting government spending cuts including slashing doctors’ pay.
Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in a controversial report she co-authored when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank, TalkTV discovered.
It came days after the Guardian revealed a leaked recording of Truss saying that British workers needed “more graft” and suggesting they lacked the “skill and application” of foreign rivals.
Polls have consistently put Truss as clear favourite to win the race for No 10, with polling expert Sir John Curtice saying he would be “extraordinarily surprised” if she does not take office.
Labour said Truss’s report from 13 years ago, entitled “Back to Black”, revealed that “the reality of her agenda is devastating cuts”.
In the document, the seven authors, including Truss, recommended cutting £28bn in a year by introducing “user charges for GPs” and reducing the pay of registrars, consultants, GPs and managers by 10%.
Read more here:
The under-fire rail operator Avanti West Coast has been “rewarded for failure”, Labour said, after the company was paid more than £17m in taxpayers’ money by ministers for performance and management fees in just two years, despite being the worst-performing operator on the rail network.
The figures from 2019-20 and 2020-21 include almost £4m in bonuses to Avanti for “operational performance”, “customer experience” and “acting as a good and efficient operator”.
At the same time, the firm raised prices, with an open return from Manchester to London – barely a two-hour journey – costing £369.40.
The performance-related fees, signed off by transport ministers, came despite Avanti being the worst-performing operator in the country with almost half of its services arriving late. In the last two years alone the firm received more than 50,000 complaints, the most of any operator and almost double that of the parallel east coast mainline operator, LNER.
Avanti, co-owned by the Italian national railways, has come under renewed criticism for slashing services between major cities by up to two-thirds on the west coast mainline, and earlier this week passengers were forced to climb a fence at Oxenholme station in Cumbria after being locked in as their train arrived 100 minutes late.
Avanti West Coast, whose contract is due for renewal in October, already has the lowest passenger satisfaction rating possible, a figure the transport minister Charlotte Vere said last month was “terrible”.
Despite this, the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed it would continue to hand over millions of pounds in management fees, after ruling out fining the operator for the failing service.
The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has warned her counterpart, Grant Shapps, that the government “cannot continue to wash their hands of responsibility, nor reward failure” as the damage to the economy from the ongoing failure of the private operator mounts.
Read more here:
Truss accused of showing 'true colours' over doctors' pay comments
The Tory leadership candidates face a further hustings with voting party members in Manchester on Friday, as frontrunner Liz Truss was accused of showing “her true colours” in an unearthed 2009 paper promoting vast government spending cuts.
Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in the controversial report she co-authored when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank, PA Media reports.
Polls have consistently put Truss as clear favourite to win the race for No 10, with elections guru Sir John Curtice saying he would be “extraordinarily surprised” if she does not take office.
He told the Times that the foreign secretary “would have to foul up in some spectacular fashion” for her rival Rishi Sunak to enter Downing Street.
Labour said Truss’s report from 13 years ago, entitled “Back to Black”, revealed that “the reality of her agenda is devastating cuts”.
In the document, the seven authors - including Truss - recommended cutting £28bn in a year by introducing “user charges for GPs” and reducing the pay of registrars, consultants, GPs and managers by 10%.
The report also called for the abolition of universal child benefit, the removal of the winter fuel payment, and the axing of several major military procurement projects including the Royal Navy’s planned aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales – which were described as “inappropriate defence projects”.
Truss’s campaign attempted to distance the Tory leadership candidate from the paper, with a campaign spokesperson saying:
Co-authoring a document does not mean that someone supports every proposal put forward.
Liz is focused on her bold economic plan to boost growth, cut taxes and put money back into hardworking people’s pockets.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said:
Liz Truss’s track record shows her true colours. She is out of touch and out of step with the public.
The reality of her agenda is devastating cuts that risk national security, punishing patients already facing record waiting times and cutting the pay of frontline workers. Her desperate attempts to distance herself from her own views now will fool no one.
Updated
Transport secretary threatens imposition of rail changes
Railway changes will be imposed if workers do not agree to new deals, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said.
The Conservative party has repeatedly targeted unions with criticism, in a move that the Trades Union Congress has argued is deliberately “picking a fight” for electoral purposes.
Shapps is likely to remain transport secretary until at least 5 September, when a new Conservative party leader – likely to be Liz Truss if recent polls are correct – will be in place. There is little sign there would be a change of attitude under a new leader.
Asked on Friday by Sky News if compulsory redundancies were on the table for rail workers, Shapps said (PA Media reports):
The deal that is on the table actually means largely no compulsory redundancies at all.
If [the unions] are not prepared to put that deal to your membership we will never know whether members would accept it.
What I do know and I can say for sure is if we can’t get this settled in the way that we are proposing, which is ‘please put the deal to your membership’ then we will have to move to what is called a section 188; it is a process of actually requiring these changes to go into place so it becomes mandated. That is the direction that this is moving in now.
Shapps claimed that outdated work practices needed to be updated – a characterisation of the industry that is disputed by the unions, who argue that employers are trying to use modernisation as an excuse to reduce members’ real pay and conditions. Shapps said: “If we can’t get those modernisations in place we will have to impose those modernisations but we would much rather do it through these offers actually being put to their members.”
Follow our business liveblog for more on the rail strikes:
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Full story: Recall parliament early to tackle soaring energy bills, Labour urges PM
Labour has urged Boris Johnson to recall parliament next week so the government can offer more help to struggling households before the announcement of the new energy price cap.
The opposition has written to the prime minister and both Tory leadership candidates warning that it is a “crucial deadline” for government action to tackle soaring energy bills, after inflation topped 10% for the first time in 40 years.
Ofgem will announce the new level at which energy bills will be capped next Friday, with forecasts predicting an increase to £3,582, or 82% above the current cap.
Annual energy bills are expected to hit £4,500 a year from January, and £5,456 from April, with warnings that households across the country face serious hardship without government intervention.
Labour this week unveiled a £29bn plan to freeze the cap at the current level of £1,971 for six months from October, which would save the average household £1,000, piling pressure on the next prime minister to follow suit.
Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, has now written to the prime minister, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, urging them to recall parliament two weeks early and to freeze the price cap before winter.
Across Britain, people are having to make unthinkable choices about how to pay their bills, causing endless worry for households and businesses.
In seven days, Ofgem will announce the rise of the energy price cap. Against the backdrop of a rise in inflation to 10.1%, this won’t just send households into a further spiral of worry, pushing them to cut back even further ahead of the winter. But it will create another shock for our economy.
With businesses and households on the brink, we cannot wait to act. Families deserve a government that is on their side, and is ready to take the action needed now to meet the scale of this national emergency.
Earlier this month, the Lib Dem leader, Sir Ed Davey, called on the government to announce an emergency budget to deal with the cost of living crisis. Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, has also urged the prime minister to bring back MPs before the end of the summer recess.
Read more here:
A former executive at the oil company BP has called for increases to the energy price cap to be scrapped and for suppliers that fail to help households struggling with bills to be nationalised.
Nick Butler, who worked for BP for almost 30 years and was group vice-president for strategy and development, said that expected rises in the cap should be abandoned by the industry regulator, Ofgem, which he said had been “overwhelmed by events” after turmoil in the global energy markets sent 29 British energy retailers to the wall.
Butler is also calling for a “forensic examination” of the accounts of remaining suppliers to ensure they are still viable businesses.
Ofgem is expected to announce next week a rise in the price cap, which is supposed to protect consumers. This could mean annual bills jumping from an average of £1,971 to £3,582.
Butler, who was a senior policy adviser to Gordon Brown, echoed the former prime minister’s view that energy firms unable to offer lower bills should be re-nationalised.
Writing for the Guardian, Butler said:
As with the financial sector in 2008, if the private energy sector fails to meet the needs of the society it serves, its functions must and will be taken on by the government. The companies involved now must show they understand that they must use their skills and resources in the public interest.
Butler’s comments come as the government assesses options to help households facing soaring energy bills this winter. His former employer BP has been accused of “unfettered profiteering” during the energy crisis, aided by a rise in wholesale oil and gas prices caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Read the full story here:
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Health sector leaders have warned the UK faces a “humanitarian crisis” of worsening health outcomes unless the government does more to help with rising energy costs.
Families are looking ahead to a grim winter as experts predict the cap on energy bills will hit close to £3,600 a year from October, before rising again next year, PA Media reports.
Surging prices mean people will have to choose between skipping meals to heat their homes or living in poor conditions, the NHS Confederation said in a letter to ministers.
Matthew Taylor is chief executive of the body, which represents NHS leaders, and was quoted by the BBC and the Times as saying:
The country is facing a humanitarian crisis.
Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions.
This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities.
The regulator is set to announce the new price cap, which will come into effect from October, next Friday.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have suggested plans to freeze bills at the same level as now, while many of the biggest energy suppliers have backed a similar idea. But the government has made it clear it will not do anything substantial until a new prime minister is in office on 5 September.
On Thursday, the trade body for energy companies called for more support on top of the £400 promised to households in May.
Dhara Vyas, Energy UK’s director of advocacy, said:
Time is running very short ahead of October and we know many customers are already struggling after the last price rise – so the predicted increases will simply be unaffordable for millions of households.
Given the urgency, our industry believes the most practical way to help customers ahead of Christmas will be to increase the amount of support made through the existing bills support scheme.
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Tories must show they're 'serious' about bills crisis and recall parliament, says Labour
Labour is calling for the government to get a grip on the energy crisis and said the two Tory leadership candidates need to show they are “serious” about the problem and back a recall of parliament.
Ofgem is expected to announce next week a rise in the price cap, which is supposed to protect consumers. This could mean annual bills jumping from an average of £1,971 to £3,582.
The opposition party has written to Boris Johnson, as well as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, to ask for MPs to return to Westminster on Monday in a bid to propose their plan to freeze the cap.
Asked by Sky News what the purpose of a recall would be, shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said:
It would be so that we can pass the legislation that would be necessary for us to override the price rise, the rise in the price cap that Ofgem will be announcing in seven days’ time.
That could happen next week if we get back to parliament on Monday. That is up to the government to request of the Speaker, and they can do that.
The prime minister is perfectly capable of opening his email which I sent him last night asking him to do just this. I have also asked both leadership candidates to back that call.
If they are really serious about helping working people and struggling households and businesses through this cost-of-living crisis, they should back our call right now and we should be passing that legislation next week.
The Labour frontbencher added:
The time to act is now; the government has failed. They could have acted weeks ago, they could have acted months ago in fact when Labour first called for a windfall tax on oil and gas way back in January.
Welcome to today’s politics liveblog. I’ll be covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or think I’ve missed anything. My email is nicola.slawson@theguardian.com and I’m @Nicola_Slawson on Twitter.
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