Mel Stride appointed shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary as Kemi Badenoch announces team – as it happened

Kemi Badenoch Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

6.03pm GMT

Early evening summary

• Kemi Badenoch has appointed Mel Stride shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary as she began to put together a Conservative frontbench team billed as uniting the party. And Robert Jenrick is becoming shadow justice secretary, Steven Swinford from the Times reports. He says:

Robert Jenrick has accepted the role of shadow justice secretary in Kemi Badenoch’s new shadow cabinet

Badenoch offered him the role after a bitterly fought leadership contest

An ally of Jenrick said: ‘Rob thinks the party needs to come together and take the fight to Labour. Unity could not be more important. He’s eager to expose Labour’s dreadful record on law and order’

• University tuition fees in England are to go up next autumn for the first time in eight years, the government has said. The Conservatives have described this as a broken promised. Laura Trott, the new shadow education secretary, said:

With Keir Starmer elected to Labour leadership on a pledge to scrap tuition fees, no mention of the rise in the manifesto, and the education secretary saying in just July this year Labour had no plans to raise fees, students can be forgiven for feeling betrayed. This is another broken Labour promise to add to the long list.

• The government argument that just one-third of farmers will be affected by the new inheritance tax rules is in direct conflict with data produced by the its own environment department, the NFU has pointed out.

• Keir Starmer has said people smuggling should be seen as a global security threat similar to terrorism. (See 11.36am.)

5.53pm GMT

Mel Stride, the new shadow chancellor, is on record as saying that he thinks parental benefits are too generous. Labour sources have been flagging up an article that Stride wrote for ConservativeHome in 2012, when he was a backbencher, saying maternity and paternity leave rights meant it was “not uncommon for an employee to take multiple breaks from work in relatively close proximity and for up to a year on each occasion”. This was unfair on employers, he argued. He went on:

The politics around this issue are tricky, with worldwide experience showing that changes in this area of employment law tend to ratchet in one direction alone – towards greater generosity to employees …

There have though been some notable examples of countries rowing back in this area in recent years, including Germany. If we want to provide a massive shot in the arm for British business and entrepreneurship I would hope that we could seriously consider following their example with at least a close look at relaxations in protected-employment
legislation for smaller businesses.

Kemi Badenoch, the new Tory leader, would almost certainly agree, based on what she said about maternity pay and business regulations during Tory conference.