Closing summary
Downing Street has said Rachel Reeves will stay in post and has not offered her resignation, after the chancellor was seen in tears at prime minister’s questions. Reeves wiped away a tear on Wednesday after a series of questions from the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, who suggested Labour MPs had said she was “toast”. Badenoch suggested Keir Starmer had failed to confirm Reeves would stay in post until the election.
UK government borrowing costs have risen sharply amid speculation over Rachel Reeves’s position as chancellor, as City investors warned Labour’s welfare U-turn had blown a multibillion-pound hole in the public finances. After Keir Starmer failed initially to give his full backing to a tearful chancellor at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, the yield on 10-year UK government bonds, also known as gilts, had its biggest jump in a day since Liz Truss was in No 10, while the pound slumped.
There will be “a cost” to the government’s climbdown on welfare changes at the budget, one of Keir Starmer’s senior ministers has said, as a leading fiscal thinktank said new tax rises appeared increasingly likely. Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, defended Starmer and the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, after the second reading of the government’s main welfare bill passed its first Commons test only after a central element was removed.
Keir Starmer managed to avert a parliamentary defeat over his main welfare bill on Tuesday, but only by removing a central element. So where does the government’s latest climbdown leave the public finances? Read our explainer here.
Reform UK has hired a former Conservative MP who was suspended for using the N-word. Anne Marie Morris, who had the whip withdrawn by Theresa May in 2017 for using the term in a debate about Brexit, will lead Reform’s social care policy. She is one of several ex-Tories who have defected to Nigel Farage’s party. Morris had used the phrase “[N-word] in the woodpile” in an event at the East India Club, and apologised after the remarks came to light.
The battle to lead the Greens has been confirmed as a straight fight between a joint ticket comprising two of the party’s MPs, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, and the more insurgent offering of Zack Polanski, the deputy leader. A final list of nominations to head the party in England and Wales has resulted in a two-way battle for the leadership, while nine candidates are vying to be deputy leader.
The former head of the UK’s civil service has described the Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “dictator” and said Donald Trump had put “helpful pressure” on Europe to increase defence spending. Simon Case, who served as the cabinet secretary until December, when he stepped down on health grounds, said China had sent a clear message to “prepare for serious conflict” in Taiwan.
Discharging untested patients from hospitals to care homes during the Covid crisis was the “least worst decision”, the former health secretary Matt Hancock has told a public inquiry. In his testimony to the UK Covid-19 inquiry on Wednesday, Hancock defended the decision – which was later ruled illegal in a high court judgment – to move hospital patients into care homes during the early weeks of the pandemic to free up space.
Culture war-based coverage of cycling based on stereotypes of middle-aged men in Lycra could harm the nation’s health because it shifts focus away from the people and communities who benefit from physical activity, Chris Whitty has said. Speaking a day before the launch of the NHS’s 10-year-health plan, which is expected to focus heavily on prevention, the chief medical officer for England called on people to set aside media cliches and instead focus on “data which nobody can dispute”.
Twelve of England’s regional mayors have signed up to an unprecedented plan to create a “national active travel network”, focusing initially on helping children to walk, cycle or scoot to school safely. The scheme, which involves all non-London regional mayors other than one from Reform UK, is intended to fit into wider efforts to devolve transport planning, working with Active Travel England (ATE) to implement schemes they think would help their area.
Ministers are going to “have to work harder” to bring down small boat crossings, a member of Keir Starmer’s cabinet has said amid record numbers in the first half of this year, reports the PA news agency. Pat McFadden told LBC “everyone in government knows it’s a big challenge” but he declined to give an assurance that the figures would be down by this time next year.
Government has today announced that it is boosting legal aid rates for housing, debt, immigration and asylum, after almost three decades of stagnation.
The £20 million per year injection of extra funds will add at least 10% on current rates.
The increase equates to a new hourly rate of £69.30 for London lawyers and £65.35 for non-London lawyers.
The government’s decision to raise legal aid rates follows a legal challenge to the very low legal aid rates for civil matters, after which the government agreed to conduct a consultation about legal aid fee levels
While legal aid lawyers and their representative bodies such as Immigration Law Practitioners Association, welcome today’s announcement, they have warned that the changes do not go far enough and only relate to housing and immigration legal aid at a time when they say the entire civil legal aid system is in crisis.
Toufique Hossain (corr) of Duncan Lewis solicitors who worked on the legal challenge against the government, arguing that legal aid rates need to increase, said: “The right to access justice has long been held to be an important constitutional right for all, especially those who are vulnerable. For years, investment in legal aid has been woeful.
“We welcome this decision, in response to our legal challenge and hope the changes will go some way to improve the dire state of legally aided immigration and housing advice.”
