Afternoon summary
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has refused commit to reversing the rise in employers’ national insurance in the budget. (See 2.13pm.) Responding to her comment at a CBI conference, Labour said this meant the Tories were now implicitly accepting the need for the tax increases announced by the government. (See 3.06pm.)
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has told the CBI that she is ruling out a further rise to overall public spending and that “public services now need to live within the envelope that we’ve set”. (See 4.46pm.)
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has said the UK’s flood defences are in the “worst condition on record” and promised the new Labour government has committed £2.4bn to upgrade them. There is more coverage on our Storm Bert live blog.
Scottish Labour accused of 'hypocrisy on stilts' after it plans vote on restoring winter fuel payments in Scotland
Scottish Labour will force a vote designed to re-design the Scottish government’s winter fuel payments, despite them being cut because of a decision by the UK government, PA Media reports. PA says:
Within weeks of taking office, chancellor Rachel Reeves set off a political firestorm by announcing the winter fuel payment would be means-tested, cutting spending and ultimately scuppering the Scottish government’s plan to offer its own universal counterpart.
But last week, Scottish Labour announced it would bring in re-designed payments, which would lower the bar for those who would receive them if it won the 2026 Holyrood election.
And today the party announced it would seek to bring the payments back by forcing a vote in Holyrood during stage three of the social security (amendment) (Scotland) bill.
Amendments submitted by the party would require ministers to make regulations that would make all pensioners eligible for winter heating assistance, while also allowing for any payments made to be recovered if the recipient’s household income exceeds an amount set by ministers.
Currently, winter heating assistance – as described in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 which the current bill is designed to amend – is “assistance (which may or may not take the form of money) given by the Scottish ministers under section 24 to an individual to meet, or help towards meeting, the individual’s heating costs during the winter months”.
The amendments would appear to make changes to the devolved benefit the Scottish government pushed back until next year after the chancellor’s announcement.
Commenting on the move, the Scottish government’s social justice secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, said:
This is hypocrisy on stilts from Labour.
After betraying millions of pensioners by taking away their winter fuel payment, they now expect people to believe that they can be trusted to stand up for pensioners.
Minister defends ICC, but says if Netanyahu visited UK, British court would have to decide on enforcing arrest warrant
Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister, has said that if Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, were to visit the UK, a court would ultimately decide if he should be arrested because of the international criminal court warrant against him over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Falconer was responding to an urgent question from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, who has strongly criticised the ICC’s decision. (See 1.13pm.)
Explaining what would happen, Falconer said:
In line with this government’s stated commitment to the rule of law, we respect the independence of the ICC. We will comply with our international obligations.
There is a domestic legal process through our independent courts that determines whether or not to endorse an arrest warrant by the ICC, in accordance with the ICC Act of 2001. This process has never been tested because the UK has never been visited by an ICC indictee, if there were to be such a visit to the UK, there would be a court process and due process would be followed in relation to those issues.
There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, two terrorist organisations. This government has been clear, Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law, that right is not under question, and the court’s approval of the warrants last week do not change that.
Patel said the ICC “appears to be drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s war of self-defence and Hamas terrorism” and she said the only beneficiaries of the decision were Hamas.
But Falconer urged her to respect the ICC. He said:
Diplomacy will continue, regardless of the process of the ICC, but I had understood it to be the common position of this house that the international rule of law is an important commitment.
The international criminal court is an important, the primary body, in enforcing these norms and the issues on jurisdiction and complementarity were heard by the pre-trial chamber, its three judges have issued their findings, and I think we should respect those.
Updated
Q: What are your grounds for optimism?
Reeves says she is hugely optimistic for Britain. The country has got so much going for it, she says.
Government has to play a part. But businesses have to play a part too, she says.
Government has to provide stability. And she says it has to remove the barriers that are in the way of growth.
As chancellor, Reeves says she has to get the whole of government thinking about how it can remove barriers holding up investment.
And that’s the end of the Q&A.
Reeves rules out further rise to overall public spending, saying services will have to 'live within envelope' already set
Reeves says public services now need to live within the envelope set.
She says departmental spending limits for beyond 2026 will be set out in the next phase of the spending review. She goes on:
But what I am really sure about … [is] that public services now need to live within the envelope that we’ve set. We will not be coming back to top up those budgets.
UPDATE: Reeves said:
We’ll be publishing the second phase of the spending review in spring next year.
But what I am really clear about, and I’ve said it already a couple of times today, [is] that public services now need to live within the envelope that we’ve set. We will not be coming back to top up those budgets. We have set the envelope for public spending, and it’s through reform and through economic growth that we need to be able to properly fund our public services and to improve living standards for ordinary families.
Updated
Q: [From ITV’s Joel Hills] A CBI survey says half of businesses might have to let people go as a result of the budget. Will you reconsider any of the measures?
Reeves says she has made her decisions. She is determined to put the public finances back on a firm footing. Overall, the budget is good for jobs and good for growth, she says.
Reeves says she 'won't have to do budget like this ever again'
Reeves is now taking media questions.
Q: [From the Telegraph] Businesses are disappointed with the budget. Haven’t you betrayed them. And are you ruling out any more big tax rises on businesses?
Reeves says she faced a massive hole in the public finances. In the last parliament people saw what happened when government did not address that. She won’t be that sort of chancellor, she says.
She goes on:
Public services now need to live within their means, because I’m really clear, I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes …
At this budget, we did wipe the slate team to put public finances and public services on footing, and as a result, we won’t have to do a budget like this ever again.
And indeed, unlike the last government, I will only be doing one budget a year, so that this government can focus on what our number one priority is, and that’s growing the economy.
Reeves says she was able to 'wipe slate clean' with budget, and that she won't need another tax raid like this in future
Reeves says she had to “wipe the slate clean” with the budget.
But she says she will not need to deliver another budget with tax rises like that again.
You can be confident we’re not going to have to come back again and do another budget like this. So you can be confident about the tax rates we’ve set for this parliament, and public services now, these are within the means that we’ve set.
Reeves tells CBI she expects to be judged by whether or not she delivers growth
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, tells the CBI that “everybody knows that that inheritance [at the time of the budget] was pretty dire in terms of the back hole in the public finances”.
In line with the advance briefing, she says her critics have not been able to come up with alternative proposals.
Q: How will people know if your plans are working?
Reeves says she will be judged on whether the economy grows.
And that will only happen if investment starts to happen, she says.
I want you to judge this government on our number one mission, which is to bring growth back to the UK economy. We can’t do that overnight … But over this parliament, we going to return investment, we’re going to return growth to the economy, because, in the end, that’s the only way to ensure that Britain is competitive and to ensure that we pull our weight in the world to improve living standards for working people.
At the CBI conference Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has just started taking part in a Q&A. There is a live feed here.
Welsh government introduces legislation for tourism tax on overnight visitors in hotels, rentals and campsites
People who stay in Wales overnight, including children, are set to be charged a visitor levy under a scheme that could raise up to £33m a year to be ploughed back into tourism and culture, Steven Morris reports.
The Welsh government’s news release about the visitor accommodation (register and levy) etc. (Wales) bill is here. Commenting on the plan, Mark Drakeford, the finance secretary in the Welsh government, said:
We know tourism makes an important contribution to the Welsh economy and to Welsh life. We want to ensure its long-term sustainability.
That’s why we believe it is fair visitors contribute towards local facilities, helping to fund infrastructure and services integral to their experience.
Visitor levies are common around the world – benefiting local communities, tourists and businesses – and we want the same for Wales.
Money raised through a levy would be retained by local authorities and reinvested back into their local areas to support local, sustainable tourism.
It’s a small contribution that could make a big difference.
Government impact assessments for employment rights bill 'not fit for purpose', says watchdog
The government has been criticised for the quality of the reports it has produced assessing the likely consequences of its employment rights bill. A series of impact assessments (IAs) were published last month. But the regulatory policy committee (RPC), a body set up to scrutinise the quality of impact assessments, has published a report saying the work by the government for this is “not fit for purpose”. It says:
The RPC has assessed eight of the 23 individual IAs as ‘not fit for purpose’ and six of these are in the ‘highest impact’ measure category in the summary IA. The overall assessment for the bill IA is therefore ‘not fit for purpose’. Given the number and reach of the measures, it would be proportionate to undertake labour market and broader macroeconomic analysis, to understand the overall impact on employment, wages and output, and particularly, the pass-through of employer costs to employees.
Commenting on the report, Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said:
Labour’s impact assessment for their radical trade union charter has been rated ‘not fit for purpose’ by the government’s own regulator.
But businesses up and down the country knew this already. Just like the national insurance Jobs’ Tax, this bill is the second wave of an attack on job creators.
Starmer praises John Prescott during tributes in Commons
Keir Starmer is paying tribute to Prescott now.
He says Prescott was the longest-serving deputy PM ever and “a politician for working people through and through”.
In many respects, Prescott was ahead of his time, Starmer says. He championed causes like tackling climate change, fighting regional inequality, supporting the minimum wage, improving public transport, and building council houses.
Prescott was “a skilled negotiator, sometimes with immense and perhaps surprising sensitivity”, Starmer says. He says Prescott had a talent for bringing people together who had different points of view. He was someone who was not in politics for himself, Starmer says. And he was someone who was a team player who would support a position in public, even if he had opposed it in private before the collective decision was taken.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
Make no mistake, [Prescott] did things his own way, and forged his own path, and in doing so, he brought about some of the greatest transformation this country has ever seen, the linchpin of New Labour, because beneath the pugnacious exterior, John was a skilled negotiator, sometimes with immense and perhaps surprising sensitivity.
He had an incredible skill, which was the ability to bring people together from different starting points, whether that was his work on climate negotiations, or closer at home in his own party, to stand together in a better place. And that sums up another thing that the public, I think, sensed about John. He was not in it for himself.
He was a team player, and he was proud to play for Team Labour, that was never more evident than during the campaign season, when it was time to bring out the battle bus, which has become a tradition our deputy prime minister proudly continued this year, because the Prescott Express was a morale boost to any campaign.
It may have been arriving in a Tesco car park, but John was always met with a reception like Beatlemania and no wonder, the public were at the heart of John’s politics.
And it’s clear the public had a particular place in their heart for him too, and that was key to his popularity. And indeed, after the famous incident, it was the public who came out swinging for him.
Updated
In the Commons MPs are now paying tribute to John Prescott.
Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, recalls Prescott visting Hoyle’s constituency soon after Hoyle became an MP. He says there was so much pushing from reporters that a woman in the crowd broke her arm. Prescott insisted on going to visit her in hospital, Hoyle says. He says that is the sort of person he was.
Updated
Institute for Fiscal Studies proposes changes to inheritance tax extension to farms to make it fairer
The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank has published a paper suggesting two changes to the government’s plans to extend inheritance tax to farms that it says would make them fairer. The IFS is broadly supportive of what the government is doing, but it accepts that the change in inheritance tax rules has disadvantaged elderly farmers who, if they knew this was coming, would have already given away their farms to their children. Summing up the IFS arguments, David Sturrock, one of the authors of the paper, said:
Inheritance tax [IHT] relief for agricultural and business assets favours those whose wealth is held in these forms rather than others. It also provides a tax incentive for agricultural land to be used by the wealthy as a way to avoid inheritance tax. That is unfair, inefficient and creates economic costs.
Those objecting to the change claim that paying IHT will have detrimental effects on food production or the environment. But if government wishes to promote food production or certain uses of land, there are much better ways of doing so than through an inheritance tax break. It is also objected, as a matter of principle, that this could result in families having to sell up and move on from farms that have been in the same family for generations. That is an argument against inheritance tax in general – it can have the same effect on family homes, for example – rather than a strong case for protecting certain forms of assets specifically.
The exact design of the tax change is important, and there are two mitigations which the government could consider. There is a good case for making unused portions of the new £1m allowance inheritable by a spouse or civil partner, as happens for the main inheritance tax allowances. In addition, current farm owners passing away in the next seven years (but after the new regime comes into force in April 2026) will not have had the opportunity to avoid inheritance tax by making lifetime gifts. If the government wished to give current farm owners the same opportunity to avoid inheritance tax as owners of other assets, it could, for example, make lifetime gifts of agricultural property made before a certain future date inheritance tax free, regardless of the timing of the death.
Responding to the report, Tim Farron, the Lib Dem environment spokesperson, said
The government hid behind the IFS to try and justify this disastrous policy. That very same organisation is now telling them that their own proposals need an overhaul.
It would be beggars belief for the government to continue to push forward with these stupid plans.
They need to swallow their pride, realise the damage this family farm tax will do and axe the tax.
Labour claims Badenoch's refusal to commit to reversing employers' NICs rise shows Tories accept budget tax increases
Labour claims the Conservative party is now implicitly accepting the need for the tax increases in the budget. Referring to the Kemi Badenoch’s speech to the CBI, and her refusal to commit her party to reversing the rise in employers’ national insurance in the budget (see 2.13pm), a Labour spokesperson said:
After weeks of campaigning against it, Kemi Badenoch is now refusing to say whether she would actually reverse the employer national insurance rise. The opposition seem to finally accept that the damage they did to the economy made tax rises necessary - but the least the public deserve is an answer on what their actual position is.
It’s no wonder there was nothing to trail from the leader of the opposition’s speech: she has nothing to say.
While the Tories try and work out what they think, Labour is getting on with fixing the foundations and rebuilding the country.
Updated
Badenoch says Tory policy review must go back to first principles, and not just involve minor tweaks
Simon Jack, business editor of the BBC, asked Kemi Badenoch about her claim that there was an alternative to the budget plans. (See 2.03pm.) If she did not agree with the taxes, what taxes would she raise instead? Or what services would she cut?
Badenoch said she did not accept the premise of the question. She went on:
We need to stop looking at everything as if it’s just a ledger where there’s taxes raised and services delivered. Not everything that government does is public services. We can do things better. We can redesign things.
Badenoch suggested there was no need for government to set up a football regulator. Although this was just a “tiny thing”, it was an example of unnecessary, “burdensome” regulation.
That is why I’m not talking about which tax will tweak here or which service we’re going to cut there. We need to completely change the way we talk about how our economy works.
She said she wanted “deep, real [policy] reviews, asking the right questions, not just a policy tweak here or there”. She went on:
If we’re going to rewire the state, we need to start from there and not just adjust little nods and levers on tax or insurance. Let’s think about everything from first principles.
Badenoch refuses to commit to reversing employers' national insurance rise in budget
During the Q&A after her speech Kemi Badenoch would not commit to reversing the rise in employers’ national insurance in the budget.
Asked if she would give such a commitment, Badenoch said that, if a tax increase is not raising money, the Tories would reverse it. “One of the things that we’re going to have to do is rewire everything,” she said. But she said she would not “comment on every bit of micro-policy” now.
However, she did say the fact so many firms are complaining about the tax, and saying that it will make employing people on low wages unaffordable, meant that the government should “look again” at the plan. And that would be something the Tories would look at when they started work on their policy platform, she said.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
Where we can see that a change that has been brought in in the budget ... will not raise any money, we will change that. What I’m not going to do is comment on every bit of micro-policy. There will be different budgets, there will be new things that occur, the system may change.
What I am starting with is principles, we believe that employer’s national insurance, while necessary to help us fund public services, is a tax on jobs.
The fact that so many organisations – especially those that have people who are on the lowest wages – are saying that this is becoming unaffordable means that we should look again, and that’s one of the first things that we’re going to be doing when we start our policy platform.
Updated
Badenoch rejects Reeves' claim there was no alternative to her budget
Badenoch ended her speech by referring to reports that, when Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, speaks to the CBI later, she will say no one has offered a good alternative to the proposal in her budget.
Badenoch said:
They will tell you there is no alternative, there is. We need an alternative strategy so we can finally unleash the power of business to make our country better.
I believe in the immense power of business to do good. You may not be the public sector. But many of you deliver critical services for the public.
So I will stand up for the values of business.
It’s time to defend free enterprise and capitalism, to defend lower taxes, less borrowing and healthy, real competition.
Badenoch said government could learn from business in adapting to change.
Government itself must change, it must change what it does if growth is ever properly to return.
We didn’t address this when we were in government and if Labour does not they will fail.
Government is going to have to learn from business about how to work better quicker and be more responsive.
We can no longer tolerate a situation where building roads takes decades.
Where Treasury decision making means railways don’t get built.
Where the planning system stops investments being made by you and your colleagues.
Over the last two decades, you have all had to transform your business models to account for massive societal and technological change.
It’s time that government does the same because what we have now isn’t working.
Badenoch calls for rethink in role of state
Badenoch called for a rethink in the role of the state.
We are trying to fix problems with the wrong tools. We are using a mindset and a paradigm that worked well in the late 20th century, but does not work well when we have aggressive competitor economies like China.
And when there is rapid technological innovation, when our society is getting older and the birth rate is still too low, more quangos, more interference, more regulations, more laws will not fix that.
We need to ask ourselves, ‘What is the role of the state? What can we do to create a level playing field and allow you to go out and fix those problems?’
Badenoch says politicians need to 'accept boundaries' and regulate less
Badenoch said she wanted politicians to cut back on regulation.
Politics needs to accept boundaries. Every day in the legislature, someone has a great new idea that sounds nice in principle, but in practice, creates more red tape, more bureaucracy, more burden. The incentive for us as politicians is to keep announcing new nice things.
But the way to fix things is not just about creating new laws. We must not be a bureaucratic state. We need to get a proper diagnosis of what is going wrong. Why is capital investment so low? Why is productivity still so stubbornly stalled?
I have read endless reports and many reviews with all sorts of potential solutions improving skills or getting our pensions working harder for us, and we have brought in regulations and policies to address this. And yet, still, things are not getting better. I think we need to look again.
So I’m not standing here telling you that I have all the answers. I am letting you know that I have seen the system from the inside and it is broken.
Badenoch says she wants to focus on 'growth people can feel', not just GDP, or GDP per head
Badenoch also said she wanted to take a new approach to growth.
We have got to be more precise when we talk about growth. It is not just about increased GDP. It is not even just about increased GDP per capita. You can increase GDP by increasing immigration, but no one feels richer. In fact, some gets poorer. You can increase GDP per capita by getting more millionaires and billionaires to move to your country, but that won’t necessarily make everyone else better off. In fact, there are many studies that show even when nothing has changed, we are more likely to feel worse when we compare ourselves with those who are a lot wealthier than us.
I am talking about real growth, growth that people can see, growth that people can feel, seeing an improved environment around them, as well as having more money in their pockets to spend, knowing that we have enough money to provide security, to protect our families, but also to protect our country in increasingly dangerous times …
The bottom line is that economic growth is not the end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end is to make people’s lives better.
'Wealth not a dirty word' - Badenoch says Tories need to promote capitalism, business and competition
Badenoch says, as leader of the opposition, she wants to start by setting out principles, not policies.
So what are our principles? I believe that we need to have free and fair competition, not monopolies, not rent seeking, not corporatism, but in genuine competition that allows new entrants in and those who are no longer productive to evolve or leave the economy. That is what free enterprise is about.
We Conservatives must be the party of business, not just big business, not just corporates, but small business, too. Every big business started out as a small business, and that is why I am so concerned that the burden on them is still increasing with taxes, corporation tax, employers’ national insurance and new regulations …
So I am here to show you that I understand businesses values. I am not here to represent business interests. That’s your job. I’m here to let you know the Conservative party shares your values.
I’m often criticised for talking about capitalism. Someone once told me that capitalism is old fashioned. I don’t think so. I think it is important that we explain what capitalism in a free market environment means. Capitalism is not a dirty word, wealth is not a dirty word, profit is not a dirty word.
But we need to start explaining how these things deliver for the people out there people who often think that you are in it for yourselves.
Badenoch says she has given the most important economic jobs in her team to people with business experience – Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, and Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary.
Badenoch says she has been portrayed as 'cruel' because of her willingness to say government can't do everything
Kemi Badenoch starts by asking how you can tell if a politician will do what they say they will do. She goes on:
If you really want to know what someone is going to be like, look at what they did when they had the chance.
And speaking to all of you today, not just as leader of the Conservative party, but as a former business secretary, many of you would have heard me talk about how we needed to deregulate, and you would have seen examples of how I tried to lift the burden on businesses.
Badenoch says, as a minister, she opposed “well-meaning but burdensome regulation”.
She says people often want the government to solve everything. But often government just needs to get out of the way, she says.
This is a very difficult argument to make. People want the government to fix everything. They want the government to solve everything, and if you ever sound hesitant, then they will make you out to be a cruel, unfeeling person, as I have discovered, to my own personal cost.
And this is partly how we have got ourselves into a state where debt is at record levels, and we are spending more on debt servicing than we are on health or on education or on defence. That needs to change.
Kemi Badenoch speaks to CBI conference
Kemi Badenoch will soon be giving her first speech to a CBI conference as Conservative leader.
There is a live feed here.
At 3.30pm a Foreign Office minister will respond to an urgent question tabled by Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, about the international criminal court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamain Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
In an open letter to Keir Starmer about this yesterday, Patel said:
The White House has ‘fundamentally rejected’ the ICC’s decision. Not least because this decision will do nothing to help secure the release hostages, get more aid into Gaza or deliver a sustainable end to the conflict.
But, by contrast, the UK government’s response to the decision has been nonsensical. On Friday, the home secretary refused to say whether Mr Netanyahu would be detained if he travelled to the UK. This opens the farcical spectre of your government trying to sanction the arrest on UK soil of the leader of an ally of the UK, while you continue a diplomatic charm offensive with the Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
It falls to you to clarify the government’s position - now. The Government must make clear that it does not support an arrest warrant being issued which has no proper basis in international law. If the ICC is to regain any legitimacy, it must act within legal norms and correct this failure of leadership. The UK should lead the diplomatic pressure to bring about this urgent change.
After the UQ there will be a statement from Steve Reed, the environment secretary, on Storm Bert.
Updated
In a message yesterday on X, the social media platform that he owns, as well as promoting the petition calling for a UK election, the Trump ally and multi-billionaire businessman Elon Musk described Britain as “a tyrannical police state”.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked if Keir Starmer agreed with this, the PM’s spokesperson said he would not be drawn on individual comments. But he stressed Starmer’s commitment to law and order.
No 10 defends Starmer saying spiking being made criminal offence even though it's illegal anyway
Downing Street has defended Keir Starmer’s decision this morning to promote plans to make spiking a criminal offence (see 11.16am) – even thought it is already illegal.
Although No 10 said in its news release that spiking will become “a new criminal offence”, not that it will become an offence for the first time, people following the news casually could be lulled into thinking the government is banning something that is currently legal. Starmer himself implied this earlier today when he posted this on social media.
Spiking will be made a criminal offence.
My government was elected to take back our streets, central to this mission is making sure women and girls can feel safe at night.
Perpetrators of spiking will feel the full force of the law.
Asked if this was misleading, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists at the lobby briefing this morning that the government was creating a new offence to “send a very clear signal” that offenders should expect punishment. He went on:
This new legislation will also empower victims to report offences and give them confidence that the justice system will support them.
When it was put to him that Starmer’s tweet implied spiking was not already illegal, the spokesperson said the PM was referring to a new offence being created.
The spiking law is a good example of what the Economist’s Bagehot column described earlier this year as the “ban it harder” trend in British politics. “When it comes to tackling an injustice that is already against the law, the answer can be simple: ban it harder,” Bagehot wrote. On the subject of spiking in particular, the column said:
Spiking, in which a victim’s drink is drugged in order to rob or assault them, is a terrifying crime. It was already prosecutable under seven separate offences before the Home Office proposed legal amendments in December 2023 to show “without any doubt, spiking is illegal”. But the reason why prosecutions are rare, and the true scale of spiking hard to define, is because hospitals do not routinely test for drugs in emergency wards. A new offence is unlikely to change that.
Foreign Office announces further sanctions against Russia's 'shadow fleet' of oil tankers
The Foreign Office has announced a fresh wave of sanctions against Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers which it is using to try to evade international restricitons on its oil importants.
In a news release, the Foreign Office said:
Thirty ships in Russia’s shadow fleet, responsible for transporting billions of pounds worth of oil and oil products in the last year alone, have today been sanctioned by the UK. With half of the ships targeted today transporting more than $4.3bn worth of oil and oil products like gasoline in the last year alone, today is the largest UK package of its kind.
The move will further constrain the Kremlin’s ability to fund their illegal war in Ukraine and their malign activity worldwide, and brings the total number of oil tankers sanctioned by the UK to 73, more than any other nation - demonstrating the UK’s leadership on tackling the shadow fleet.
Starmer dismisses online petition calling for general election, saying it's driven by people who never backed Labour anyway
This is what Keir Starmer told ITV’s Good Morning Britain when asked about the online petition signed by 2 million people calling for an election on the grounds that “the current Labour government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election”. Starmer said:
Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election.
I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun. That isn’t how our system works.
There will be plenty of people who didn’t want us in in the first place.
So, what my focus is on is the decisions that I have to make every day.
Calling for a general election now when we had one less than six months ago and when the government has a working majority of 163 is clearly bonkers. But the petition is attracting signatures because it is being strongly promoted by high-profile rightwinger provocateurs like the X owner Elon Musk and the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
Starmer agrees that shoplifting is a terrible problem. And he says he will come back on the programme in the future to discuss how well he is doing this.
Q: The last time you were on this programme you said you would get your children a dog when you moved into No 10.
Starmer says he was in negotiations on that. But they have got a cat, he says, called Prince. But Prince has not yet met Larry, the Downing Street cat, he says (implying Prince does not leave the family flat). He says he is worried that Larry would win in a fight.
They end talking about Christmas, and cooking. Starmer says he does a lot of cooking, and that the dish his children like most is a pasta bake, with layers of sauce, with different cheeses. He likes to cook on a Saturday, he says. He says he is particularly proud of his tandoori salmon and tandoori Quorn.
Starmer says he's 'not surprised' that 'tough' decisions taken by government not popular with those affected
Q: Are you feeling the pressure? There is a petition signed by 2 million people calling for another election.
Starmer says he is not surprised that people who did not support Labour in the first place want the election to be re-run. But that is not how the system worked.
Q: Your approval rating is lower than Nigel Farage’s. That must be disappointing.
Starmer says, if you take the difficult decisions first, it is inevitable some people won’t be happy.
I’m not surprised, quite frankly, that as we’re doing the tough stuff, there are plenty of people who say, ‘Well, I’m impacted.’
Q: Is it harder than you expected?
Starmer says he always knew this would be difficult. But he came into politics to take difficult decisions, he says.
He says there are 7 million people on waiting lists. He wants to bring them down.
Asked what his experience of government has been like, Starmer says he is taking the hard decisions first.
I think anybody who’s turned around an organisation or a business will tell you, and they’re right, if you’re really going to turn something around, you have to do the hard yards upfront. Don’t look at a tough decision and then leave it for a year or two.
So we’re doing the tough stuff. But in the budget, which is probably the toughest, I’m really pleased that we were able to put so much money into the National Health Service … Anybody watching this who uses the NHS will know we absolutely had to make that a priority.
Starmer says halving violence against women and girls is one of the missions of his government.
It will be hard, but he is determined to do it, he says.
He urges people to text messages to British Transport Police on the 61016 number if they see a woman being harassed on a train.
Q: Shouldn’t there be more police officers on the trains?
Starmer says he cannot say every text sent to that message will prompt a response. But sometimes it has led to offenders being arrested getting off a train.
Keir Starmer is being interviews on ITV’s This Morning.
He is being asked about his plans to tackle spiking. He says he first announced he would make it a specific criminal offence in an interview on this programme 18 months ago.
He says he is pleased to be back to say this is actually happening.
CBI chief says tax rises like those in budget should never be imposed on business by surprise again
Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI chief executive, has given the government credit for “drawing the curtain on a near decade of instability at home”.
But, in line with the advance briefing, she also used her speech to the CBI conference this morning to argue that the tax rises in the budget will harm business.
She said:
What really defines growth is the decisions made in boardrooms up and down the country.
It’s CFOs [chief financial officers] asking, ‘can we afford to invest? Can we afford to expand? Can we afford to take a chance on new people?’
Well after the budget, the answer we’re hearing from so many firms is still ‘not yet’.
The rise in national insurance, the stark lowering of the threshold, caught us all off guard.
Along with the expansion and the rise of the national living wage – which everyone wants to accommodate – and the potential cost of the employment rights bill, they put a heavy burden on business.
She also said that tax rises like this should never be imposed on business by surprise again.
From now on, we need to shift from consultation to co-design.
Tax rises like this must never again be simply done to business. That’s the road to unintended consequences.
Instead, we need an elevated partnership for a higher purpose.
There is more coverage of her speech on our business live blog.
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips urges people to intervene in women being harassed in public
In her interview on the Today programme this morning Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, was asked about a call from UN Women UK for bystanders to be more proactive in intervening to protect women being harassed or threatened in public spaces.
Asked if she she would advise people to intervene, Phillips replied:
Yes, I would, but I would say always do it safely.
If you say something in the street that’s really worrying you, you should ring 999.
But what I would say is that you can definitely ask if somebody is all right in the street. There’s no active aggression in that.
Phillips also said she was speaking from a club where staff were trained to intervene in this sort of way if they say men bothering women on the dance floor. She said there was nothing offensive about asking a woman if she was OK.
MPs will have a free vote on assisted dying, the government is neutral, and that means cabinet ministers are on different sides of the argument. But when asked about this on LBC this morning, Jess Phillips, the Home Office minister, denied suggestions that this was causing acrimony. She said:
I actually don’t sense a degree of tension. Those who have now become famous for their opposition to it, the likes of Wes Streeting, for example, I literally just text him and said, ‘Are we going for dinner this week?’, so even though me and him feel differently about this issue, it is a matter of conscience.
The i has splashed today on the cabinet splits over assisted dying. It says 14 cabinet ministers support the bill, but eight are opposed.
I: Cabinet split over assisted dying #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/2LdpTZkh4e
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) November 24, 2024
More than 20 police forces in England and Wales are sending plainclothes officers into bars to look out for predatory sexual behaviour, Keir Starmer is being told at the meeting in Downing Street he is hosting on spiking this morning.
In a statement released in advance, assistant chief constable Samantha Millar, the National Police Chiefs’ Council violence against women and girls strategic programme director, said:
Spiking is a complex offence to investigate as drugs can pass through the system quickly and there is often a lack of evidential opportunities, which is why quick reporting and early evidence gathering, including forensic testing, is key.
Police forces across the country have been working proactively to stop spiking from happening in the night-time economy and improve feelings of safety for women and girls. This includes regular, targeted patrols of busy town centres and visiting organisations, such as universities, to raise awareness of the symptoms of spiking.
Forces also work closely with bars, pubs and clubs to tackle spiking, and during the first national spiking police week of action in March, forces collectively visited over 1900 licensed venues to ensure that staff understood how to support victims.
To coincide with the meeting, the British Transport Police says it is relaunching text-to-report number, 61016, which “is now free across all major networks, allowing women to discreetly contact British Transport Police for help if they are or someone else is being harassed on the train”.
Updated
Russia plotting to use AI to enhance cyber-attacks against UK, Pat McFadden will warn
Russia and other adversaries of the UK are trying to use artificial intelligence to enhance cyber-attacks against the nation’s infrastructure, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, will warn at a Nato conference in London later today. Dan Sabbagh has the story.
Updated
Vote on assisted dying bill impossible to predict, says minister
Good morning. There is plenty happening today. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, are both speaking at the CBI conference, where the CBI chief executive Rain Newton-Smith is warning about the impact of the budget on business. Keir Starmer is hosting a meeting at Downing Street about plans to protect women from spiking. “My government was elected on a pledge to take back our streets, and we will never achieve this if women and girls do not feel safe at night,” he says. There will be tributes to John Prescott in the Commons this afternoon. But one issue is going to dominate the week, the vote on the assisted dying bill on Friday, and already that is a big topic of discussion.
Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, has been giving interviews this morning and she told the Today programme she is finding it impossible to predict if the bill will pass the second reading vote. She said:
We do not know how this vote is going to go. I literally couldn’t call it for you at the moment …
Each week I think a different thing. Last week I thought it wouldn’t [pass]. This week I think it might. Honestly, I’ve learned over the years not to try and second guess parliament.
Phillips is not the only person finding the vote hard to call. Eleanor Langford from the i has been keeping a tally of how MPs intend to vote and last night she published her figures on social media.
Since the assisted dying bill was announced, I've been keeping a close eye on MP views
— Eleanor Langford (@eleanormia) November 24, 2024
I've found 207 supportive and 141 opposed... but there are still 291 we don't know about
(N.B. Can't share full spreadsheet due to anon declarations. Total excludes Sinn Fein and Speakers.) pic.twitter.com/G9N1TXsNoX
Since the assisted dying bill was announced, I’ve been keeping a close eye on MP views
I’ve found 207 supportive and 141 opposed... but there are still 291 we don’t know about
(N.B. Can’t share full spreadsheet due to anon declarations. Total excludes Sinn Fein and Speakers.)
I should underline that these figures are *not* a prediction of the vote, but an interesting look at the direction MPs are leaning
With 291 MPs not stating a view at the time of writing, the vote very easily could go either way
We’ll know the actual result on Friday afternoon
According to Janet Eastham’s story in the Daily Telegraph today, supporters of the bill think it will pass – provided MPs who have said they support it are willing to vote for it.
A source close to the MPs campaigning in favour of legalisation told The Telegraph: “If all the MPs who have said they support the Bill turn out and vote for it, then it will pass.”
When MPs last voted on assisted dying, in 2015, the bill was easily defeated by 330 votes to 118. After the election many people assumed that the Labour landslide, and the drastic change in the composition of parliament, meant that there is now a majority for assisted dying. But in recent weeks there have been indications that opponents of the bill are gaining ground, in part because Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary (the two cabinet ministers who would have most responsibility for implementing assisted dying) have come out against it forcefully.
In interviews this morning Phillips said she would be voting for assisted dying, as she did in 2015. She also rejected the suggestion that Mahmood’s criticism of the bill could be disregarded because it was motivated by religion (something Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, suggested yesterday). Asked if it was wrong for Mahmood to impose her faith on others, Phillips said:
She will make the decision about how she votes on assisted dying on a matter of conscience, just exactly like I will. How she comes to that and what moral code she uses to come to that will be exactly the same as the moral code that I use to come to that decision as well …
I think that Shabana is making a decision on what she thinks is best for her constituents, like every constituency MP.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer hosts a meeting in Downing Streeting on measures to protect women from spiking.
10.05am: Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI chief executive, speaks at the start of the CBI’s annual conference.
After 11am: Keir Starmer is due to be interviewed on ITV’s This Morning.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
1.30pm: Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leaders, speaks at the CBI conference.
1.40pm: Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, speaks at the Nato cyber defence conference.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
3.30pm: Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, and Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, give evidence to the Commons public acccounts committee about NHS finances.
After 3.30pm: MPs are expected to pay tribute to John Prescott in the Commons following his death last week.
4.10pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, takes part in a Q&A at the CBI conference.
5pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, speaks at a press conference with his German, French, Polish and Italian counterparts after they hold a meeting in Berlin.
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