A summary of today's developments
This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading it, emailing in and commenting below the line. You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics reporting here.
Here is a summary of today’s key developments:
Keir Starmer took part in his first prime minister’s questions (PMQs) as prime minister on Wednesday amid backbench unease over a vote on the two-child benefit cap that saw him suspend seven Labour MPs. Starmer was accused of dodging questions about the rebellion as he sought to strike a consensual tone. Asked by two Scottish National party MPs about the revolt, Starmer instead talked about the SNP’s record on child poverty.
Rishi Sunak faced Starmer for the first time as the leader of the opposition at PMQs on Wednesday, during which he pressed Starmer on the UK’s support for Ukraine. Conservative leader, Sunak said: “Can I ask that he continues to be responsive to Ukraine’s new requests so that they don’t just stand still, but can decisively win out against Russian aggression?”
Eluned Morgan has been confirmed as the new leader of Welsh Labour and is to become the first female first minister of Wales. Lady Morgan, 57, the health secretary in the Labour-led Welsh government, was the only candidate to put herself forward to replace Vaughan Gething.
Speaking to reporters after PMQs, Starmer’s political spokesperson defended the decision to suspend the rebels, saying the prime minister had been consulted on the move. “We’ve been very clear on our position on the two-child limit, and why we did not commit to removing it both during the campaign and since,” she said.
Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey said during PMQs that the prime minister “has many messes that he has inherited”. One of these, said Davey, was the “scandal over the carer’s allowance repayments”. Starmer agreed and added: “I’m sorry to have to report to the House it’s not the only crisis that we’ve inherited. There’s a crisis and a failure absolutely everywhere.”
Starmer said he will not apologise for his plans to impose VAT on private schools, after he was challenged on the proposal during his first PMQs in his new role. As he defended the policy, the prime minister argued that every parent has aspirations for their children no matter which school they go to.
Jonathan Ashworth accused the seven Labour MPs suspended for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap of “gesture” politics. The former Labour MP, who played a prominent role in his party’s election media campaign but was unseated in the general election, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “They knew that this amendment was never going to pass because of the commanding majority Keir Starmer has.”
Zarah Sultana has said she “slept well” after being suspended by the Labour party over a Commons rebellion on the two-child benefit cap – and suggested she was the victim of a “macho virility test”. Sultana, one of seven from the party’s left stripped of the whip on Tuesday night for backing an SNP motion to scrap the cap said: “I slept well knowing that I took a stand against child poverty that is affecting 4.3 million people in this country and it is the right thing to do and I am glad I did it.”
One of Scottish Labour’s new MPs has insisted that the policy of Scottish and UK Labour on the two-child cap is “identical”, despite Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar previously called for an end to the measure. In the aftermath of the Labour rebellion on the SNP amendment to scrap the cap yesterday, Blair McDougall told BBC Radio Scotland this morning: “I think what ministers have said to me this week on the two-child cap is identical to what people in the Scottish Labour party are saying. The position is absolutely identical.”
The EU and UK are expected to hold their first summit next spring, as contacts warm under the new Labour government. A summit between the leaders of the EU’s main institutions and Keir Starmer is “somewhere pencilled in mentally in the agenda” for next spring, a senior European official told the Guardian.
The consumer finance expert Martin Lewis replied to a tweet by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Carla Lockhart, where she referred to voting to “lift the two-child cap on Child Benefit”. Lewis, posting on his X account, wrote on Wednesday morning: “There is NO two child cap on Child Benefit. The vote was on the two child limit for Universal Credit & Tax Credits. I hope this is just a poorly drafted tweet and not a misunderstanding of what was voted on.”
James Cleverly has said he thinks the Conservative party is the most successful political movement in human history but that it has recently given the impression of being more focused on internal rows than serving the public. The shadow home secretary, who was the first to declare he is running for the Tory leadership, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ve also got to recognise that at this general election those things we have achieved were overshadowed by a number of negatives, so we didn’t get the cut-through for our successes and the criticisms really, really landed.”
Plans to tackle misogyny in schools could take up to 20 years to have an impact on society, the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, has said as she outlined measures to protect women and girls. Phillips spoke the day after the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”.
Rachel Reeves must overhaul the allowance that has resulted in thousands of unpaid carers being saddled with life-changing debt, and in some cases threatened with criminal prosecution, the consumer finance expert Martin Lewis has said. Lewis has written to the chancellor, identifying four measures that he says are possible to enact without great cost to the taxpayer that would remedy financial injustices, including changes to the child benefit charge and removing withdrawal penalties from lifetime Isas.
The government is to pause imminent funding cuts to BTecs and other applied general qualifications while it reviews planned reforms to post-16 qualifications, the education secretary has announced. Funding for scores of courses was due to be withdrawn as early as next week as part of the last government’s plans to simplify the system of vocational qualifications and expand its T-level programme of technical qualifications.
Cabinet secretary, Simon Case, is reportedly being advised to step down permanently from his role for health reasons at the end of this year, writes Politico. The outlet reported that “Case is currently working at full capacity, but the condition is affecting his mobility and he now walks with the aid of a stick”.
Updated
Responding to the latest crime statistics, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, said:
“Years of Conservative neglect and failure to give the police the resources they need and put bobbies on the beat mean that now victims do not know if they will ever see justice after facing these invasive crimes.
The former home secretary now wants to run for Conservative party leader, yet he couldn’t even get the basics of his last job right.
Cleverly’s crime catastrophe shows how utterly unfit the Conservatives were for government and why the country voted so decisively for change with a record number of Liberal Democrat MPs elected.
The new Labour government must now address these Conservative failures, put more police on the streets, make communities feel safe again and ensure victims get the justice they deserve.”
