Closing summary
Today’s blog is coming to a close. Thank you for joining us. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Grant Shapps said any government that doesn’t look again at its transport plans after the Covid-19 pandemic “is acting outside the reality of the situation”, when asked about signs Rishi Sunak may be ready to scrap the northern section of the HS2 high-speed rail line before the Conservative conference opens in Manchester next weekend. Shapps said: “You’ve also got to realise that in the time coronavirus happened, people stopped travelling entirely for a while and haven’t gotten back to the normal patterns of travel. Any government that doesn’t then look at their plans and resequence them is I’m afraid acting outside the reality of the situation.”
Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said Labour was “not going to make decisions about national interest projects that involve tens of billions of pounds without all of the information being available”. He added: “When the government makes a decision and publishes the information, we will consider that properly and announce it in a professional way.”
Donald Trump has expressed his approval of Rishi Sunak’s decision to delay a series of measures aimed at curbing emissions. Trump, who formally withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement in 2020, said: “I always knew Sunak was smart.”
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has said people in the north of England are treated like “second-class citizens when it comes to transport”. Commenting on the government’s potential move to scrap the Manchester leg of HS2, Burnham said: “London never has to choose between a north-south line and an east-west line and good public transport within the city. Why is it that people in the north are always forced to choose, why are we always treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport?
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Our north of England editor Helen Pidd has written an analysis of the political risks involved with scrapping the HS2 Manchester leg.
Liberal Democrats call for triple social media tax to fund mental health worker in every school
The Liberal Democrats are calling on the government to triple tax for social media firms to fund a dedicated mental health professional in every school in England, PA reports.
The proposal, which will be debated at the party’s conference in Bournemouth, would see the 2% digital services levy raised to 6% of company revenues.
This would provide funding for a mental health worker to be placed in 22,000 state schools across England, the party says.
Munira Wilson, the party’s education and children spokesperson, said:
Young people are facing a mental health emergency and we need to act now to tackle it.
Both the pandemic and the rise of social media have done enormous damage to children’s mental health. Conservative ministers have completely failed to grasp the scale of this crisis. They have neglected young people and let them down again and again.”
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Trump backs Sunak’s delay of measures aimed at curbing emissions.
Donald Trump has expressed his approval of Rishi Sunak’s decision to delay a series of measures aimed at curbing emissions.
On Thursday, Sunak announced he would be pushing back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers. The move sparked a furious backlash from the automobile and energy industries.
Trump, who formally withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement in 2020, said: “I always knew Sunak was smart,” Reuters reports.
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said:
Prime Minister Sunak of the United Kingdom has very substantially rolled back the ridiculous ‘climate mandates’ that the United States is pushing on everyone, especially itself.
I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue.
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Hello, I’ll be helming the blog while Sammy takes a quick break. If you need to get in touch, please email me at aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com
The Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has said Rishi Sunak has a “damn nerve” to claim delays to key climate pledges are for the benefit of households.
Harvie, who is the zero carbon buildings minister for the Scottish government, said the prime minister’s pledge to delay the ban on sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by five years – to 2035 – would have a knock-on effect on Scotland’s net zero ambitions.
Speaking on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show, Harvie said the announcement was “profoundly worrying” and “deeply irresponsible”, as he condemned the lack of communication with devolved administrations.
“Some of the irresponsibility of this is about their unwillingness even to talk to Scottish or Welsh governments in advance,” he said.
“We’ve been trying [to work together] and yet at the last minute you get this bizarre announcement saying we’re going to put a wrecking ball through a lot of the existing climate commitments. There’s a problem with leadership here.”
He said the plans would have a direct impact on Scottish climate targets but would not “change our determination to go as far as we can”, although he said: “It does make a lot of this really, really difficult.”
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Andy Burnham says people in north of England treated like 'second-class citizens' when it comes to transport
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has said people in the north of England are treated like “second-class citizens when it comes to transport” as the government suggests it may axe parts of HS2.
Speaking to Trevor Phillips on Sky News, Burnham said: “An east-west line is really important for north of England, as well as north-south. Why is it always that people here are forced to choose? That we can’t have everything, ‘you can have this or you can have that but you can’t have everything’?
“London never has to choose between a north-south line and an east-west line and good public transport within the city. Why is it that people in the north are always forced to choose, why are we always treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport?
“This was the parliament that said they would level us up. If they leave a situation where the southern half of the country is connected by modern high-speed lines, and the north of England is left with Victorian infrastructure, that is a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm over the rest of this century.
“And that is why people here are fed up with false promises and also watching now what seems to be the desperate acts of a dying government. This is really not right and not fair to people here who were given so many promises.”
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Paulette Hamilton, who was a Birmingham city councillor from 2004 to 2022 before being elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington in a byelection, has told BBC Politics Midlands she was not aware of the council’s £760m equal pay debt when she left the council.
She said: “When I left the council there was no talk of this massive liability. It wasn’t even on the table.”
“When I left the council there was no talk of this massive liability. It wasn’t even on the table.”
— BBC News Midlands (@bbcmtd) September 24, 2023
Former Birmingham city councillor @PauletteHamilto says she didn’t know about the council’s £760m equal pay debt when she left to become Labour MP for Erdington in March 2022.… pic.twitter.com/Z71hm1YdBf
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In Manchester, the first buses to be brought back into public control in England since deregulation in the 1980s have begun their first services.
So it turned up! 😅
— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) September 24, 2023
The first ever @BeeNetwork service arrives at Farnworth Bus Station at 4.30am.
Greater Manchester is back in control of its buses. 👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/tYEXQpDo8y
Labour not going to make decisions about billion-pound projects 'without all the information available', frontbencher says on HS2
Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Labour party “would love to see HS2 being built in full” but that it was “not going to make decisions about national interest projects that involve tens of billions of pounds without all of the information being available”.
Last week, Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds said: “We will build HS2 in full … to Manchester and the eastern leg to Leeds. And we will build ‘northern powerhouse’ rail in full.”
Jones said: “What he means is of course we would like to see the government build HS2 in full.”
He added: “When the government makes a decision and publishes the information, we will consider that properly and announce it in a professional way.”
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When asked about the Lib Dems scrapping their aim to build 380,000 new homes a year, instead committing to build 150,000 properties for social housing, Davey said: “We think top-down targets leads to developer-led processes” where “you see the wrong houses being built in the wrong places”.
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Victoria Derbyshire begins her interview with the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, with a pretty brutal word cloud reflecting what voters say when asked what Davey stands for politically.
Our political deputy editor Peter Walker has screengrabbed it.
Appearing on BBC1's Kuenssberg show, Ed Davey is presented with one of the more damning word clouds of recent memory - what voters say when asked what Davey stands for politically. pic.twitter.com/9DThGZkuf4
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 24, 2023
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Grant Shapps said he “entirely” backed the government’s U-turn on banning the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
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When asked if the government was to blame for HS2’s increasing costs, Shapps said: “Environmental considerations are making it more expensive to complete various different parts of the [project].”
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Grant Shapps is speaking to Victoria Derbyshire, who is covering for Laura Kuenssberg this morning, and is continuing to emphasise fiscal constraints – including the impact of coronavirus and the war in Ukraine – that he says could be considerations for a HS2 “resequencing”.
He said: “On HS2, we do have to respond to the budgets. In particular, we’ve been hit not just by coronavirus but also by the war in Ukraine, and I think any responsible government looks at that and says: does this still stack up for what the country requires in terms of where it’s spending its resources?”
He added that when it came to “the sequencing of what happens next, there’s a perfectly legitimate question when we’ve been hit by the enormous costs of coronavirus – probably about £400bn and probably another £100bn from the war in Ukraine.
“People rightly will say: well, look, there’s a balance of money that needs to be spent on health, education, defence and many other things.”
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Pressed on HS2, Grant Shapps says any government that did not reconsider transport plans post-Covid 'would be acting outside reality'
Grant Shapps said any government that doesn’t look again at its transport plans after the Covid-19 pandemic “is acting outside the reality of the situation”, when asked about signs Rishi Sunak may be ready to scrap the northern section of the HS2 high-speed rail line before the Conservative conference opens in Manchester next weekend.
When questioned on whether the government was considering revising plans for HS2 to run from Euston to Manchester, Shapps told Trevor Phillips on Sky News that Sunak “is prepared to take these difficult long-term decisions [that are] not always popular”.
He said: “You’ve also got to realise that in the time coronavirus happened, people stopped travelling entirely for a while and haven’t gotten back to the normal patterns of travel. Any government that doesn’t then look at their plans and resequence them is I’m afraid acting outside the reality of the situation.”
He added that HS2 was “difficult in terms of pacing and expectations” and that “there is always going to be and there has always been a question of how you pace the development of that line”.
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Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, says an inheritance tax cut cannot be done “until money is available to cut”.
Speaking with Trevor Phillips on Sky News, when asked if the government was actively considering an inheritance tax cut, he said: “Generally I’m in favour of all taxes being lower, but we’ve got to be fiscally responsible. We can’t do that until money’s available to cut whichever tax.”
He added: “I think that inheritance tax is particularly punitive and unfair. But nonetheless, we also understand that we’re in a fiscal straitjacket. And the chancellor said only last week that looking ahead to the autumn statement and the budgets that he doesn’t see room for tax cuts. You’re asking me about something for which decisions haven’t been made.”
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Lib Dems call for entirely new Brexit deal, as Ed Davey says ‘root and branch reform’ of relationship with EU needed
Good morning, I’m Sammy Gecsoyler and I’ll be kicking off the politics liveblog.
Speaking to the Observer, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said he was clear that an entirely new EU deal was needed, as the current arrangement was failing the UK.
“I worry that these other parties are flip-flopping around on this issue,” he said. “They’re essentially tinkering at the edges. We need root-and-branch reform to our relationship with our European friends, our closest trading partners.
“We voted against the deal because we said it was a terrible one – Labour voted for it. We’ve spent all the time since then criticising the deal, arguing that you needed a comprehensive new deal that was better for our farmers, better for our economy, security, energy. We need a complete reset and a much better deal.”
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