Closing summary
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Here is a summary of the latest developments:
The government’s outdoor smoking ban will aim to make “fewer places where you actually can smoke”, education minister Jacqui Smith has said. Responding to calls from industry that an outdoor smoking ban would be another “nail in the coffin” for hospitality, Smith told Sky News: “The biggest nail in the coffin of most people in this country is smoking – 80,000 people die every year from smoking related diseases.”
The reported outdoor smoking plans were met with despair by the pub industry, which claimed restrictions on outdoor smoking could harm a fragile sector still recovering from Covid. However, health experts backed the idea, while polling showed it had majority support among every demographic and voting group apart from Reform UK supporters.
A move to end the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners is to be extended to Northern Ireland, Stormont’s communities minister Gordon Lyons has confirmed. Lyons said he “strongly disagreed” with the move by the Labour government but said there was “no additional resource” which would allow the region to diverge from the UK decision. According to the PA news agency, all of the Stormont ministers have written collectively to the prime minister on the issue.
Thames Water has lobbied the government to intervene with the regulator to allow it to charge far higher bills, the Guardian can reveal. Advisers and board members of the beleaguered water company are understood to have met Whitehall officials in recent weeks to warn that allowing it to be temporarily renationalised would have a “chilling effect” on the entire UK’s appeal to international investors, sources familiar with the discussions told the Guardian.
Education minister Jacqui Smith dismissed reports of businesses being forced to accept employees’ demands for a four-day week, saying the government’s plans for flexible working would enable fewer days to be worked through compressed hours. She told LBC radio: “We think that flexible working is actually good for productivity.” She also spoke about government-funded childcare hours, saying that nurseries will have to provide options to parents rather than charge for additional provisions such as food or nappies during those hours.
Business groups have reacted to reports that the government will give workers the right to request a “compressed” four-day working week. Ben Willmott, head of public policy for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for human resources, said the government should “take stock” of recent rule changes around employment, which allow people to request flexible working when they start new jobs, before making more changes. Matthew Percival, director of Future of Work at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said flexible working “depends on the job”, and some workforces might not all be able to have flexibility at the same time if it means they cannot meet customer demands.
Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed from No 10 Downing Street, according to his biographer. Tom Baldwin said that after Starmer took office he had spoken with the prime minister in Thatcher’s former No 10 study, unofficially known as the Thatcher Room, where a portrait of her was on display. However, education minister Jacqui Smith pledged on Friday, during an interview with LBC radio, that portraits of Thatcher will remain in No 10.
Starmer has been warned against caving in to pressure to water down a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, after fresh evidence showing the financial hit for millions in insecure work. Bosses have told the prime minister he risks causing “real damage” for the economy if the government’s proposals for the biggest overhaul in workers’ rights for a generation are pushed through too quickly.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has called on landowners, local authorities and housebuilders to “unblock sites” and to “get shovels in the ground”. In the post on X, the housing secretary also linked to a piece in the Mirror, where she detailed plans for a New Homes Accelerator, described as “a crack team of experts from my department and Homes England”.
The prison population of England and Wales has hit a record high, with the number jumping by nearly a thousand in the past four weeks. The sharp rise is believed to have been driven by the number of jail sentences handed to those found guilty of taking part in recent riots.
Priti Patel has become the second Tory leadership candidate to hint that they might include former prime minister Boris Johnson as member of a their cabinet should they win the contest. Asked if she could see Johnson serving in her cabinet, Patel said: “Our party owes Boris Johnson a great deal. He’s a man that won us a 2019 general election and motivated the grassroots, and actually was a true leader. He really was.”
Speaking at her leadership campaign event in London on Friday, Patel declared herself the candidate who will make the Tories “compelling and attractive to young people” and promised to get the party “back to winning ways”. Also, during her speech, Patel denounced Starmer’s No 10 speech earlier this week as “one of the most feeble, pitiful and dishonest speeches you will ever hear”.
The government’s policy of ramping up immigration raids and detaining and deporting undocumented migrants is driving more people underground and increasing their risks of exploitation, dozens of charities have warned. In a letter on Friday, coordinated by Migrant Voice, more than 80 organisations called on the home secretary to make it easier for undocumented migrants to regularise their immigration status so they can work with less risk of falling prey to exploitative employers and human trafficking gangs.
Badger culling will end in England by 2029, the government has said. Some culls under existing licences will continue until 2026, according to sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), but it is highly unlikely any new ones will be granted.
The SNP needs to win back voters who defected to Labour rather than those who stayed at home, the party’s Westminster leader has said. The party met for its first conference since the election loss last month which saw them drop dozens of MPs, an event starting with a behind-closed-doors postmortem led by first minister John Swinney. Speaking to journalists after the session, Stephen Flynn said the party suffered from multiple “self-inflicted wounds” in the election campaign.
Environmental protesters – including John Swinney’s former teacher – have declared the Scottish first minister must “try harder to protect the climate”. Caro Wilkinson, who taught Swinney German when he was a pupil at Forrester High in Edinburgh, was among a group of campaigners from the Edinburgh Climate Coalition to stage a demonstration as the SNP conference got under way.
Ousted MP David Duguid has said he would have won the seat lost by party leader Douglas Ross. Duguid was barred by Scottish Conservative officials from running for the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat, citing health reasons, but the former MP – who represented the now defunct Banff and Buchan seat since 2017 – said he would have won the contest Ross lost to the SNP on 4 July.
The Labour minister Patrick Vallance, who helped spearhead the country’s response to the Covid pandemic, has said he would not have served as a minister in a Conservative government. The former UK government chief scientific adviser was made a peer and appointed science minister this year after Starmer’s party swept to victory in the general election. And he made clear on Thursday that, if he had been asked by Rishi Sunak to consider serving in a Tory government: “I wouldn’t have done, no”.
James Cleverly has been accused of increasing the asylum backlog in the spring of this year by “dithering” over key decisions. Ministers under the then home secretary refused to give caseworkers permission to tackle outstanding cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act, departmental sources and the UK’s biggest civil service union have told the Guardian.
Eton college will raise fees by 20% as a result of the government’s removal of the VAT exemption on private schools, it said in a letter to parents. From January, the government plans to remove the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools to enable funding for 6,500 new teachers in state schools.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has said the UK is “deeply worried” by the “methods Israel has employed” in an IDF military operation in the occupied West Bank. In a statement on Friday morning, an FCDO spokesperson said: “We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.”
An Olympic gold medal-winning canoeist will be among climate activists protesting in Windsor this weekend to demand the Labour government takes climate action seriously. Extinction Rebellion, which is organising the three-day event, which began on Friday, said it had been disappointed by the new administration’s lack of action on reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Cleaners and caterers working at the Foreign Office have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a dispute over pay. Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) employed by contractor OCS voted by 100% to reject a pay offer the union said would have given most of them no more than the voluntary living wage of £12 an hour.
Updated
Move to end universal winter fuel payments for pensioners to be extended to Northern Ireland
A move to end the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners is to be extended to Northern Ireland, Stormont’s communities minister Gordon Lyons has confirmed.
Lyons said he “strongly disagreed” with the move by the Labour government but said there was “no additional resource” which would allow the region to diverge from the UK decision, reports the PA news agency.
Meanwhile, the Stormont executive has written to prime minister Keir Starmer raising concern that the change will have a “negative impact on a significant number of people of pension age in Northern Ireland”.
Labour has said that the policy will stop winter fuel payments for people in England and Wales who are not in receipt of pension credit or other means-tested benefits. Lyons has now confirmed that the change will also apply to Northern Ireland.
He said:
On 29 July 2024 the chancellor of the exchequer announced that entitlement to winter fuel payments in England and Wales would be restricted to those people receiving pension credit or other means-tested benefits only. I strongly disagree with this decision.
The estimated additional cost to the block grant of maintaining universal entitlement to a winter fuel payment in Northern Ireland for winter 2024/25 is £44.3m, and this does not include any additional delivery or staffing costs.
Regrettably, there is no additional resource available in the budget to allow us to diverge from the UK government decision without significantly cutting other public services.
I have made clear to the secretary of state for work and pensions my total opposition to this decision and outlined the detrimental impact it will have on many people in Northern Ireland.
I am committed to ensuring that people can access all the support to which they are entitled and would encourage anyone affected by these changes to check their benefit entitlement.”
According to the PA news agency, all of the Stormont ministers have written collectively to the prime minister on the issue. The letter, seen by the news agency, states that ministers “convey our collective concern at your government’s intended changes to the winter fuel payments scheme.”
The letter goes on to say that the decision “will have a direct and negative impact on a significant number of people of pension age in Northern Ireland who are already struggling with the consequences of the rise in the cost of living”.
In a summer punctuated by an election and then riots there has not really been a “silly season”, the traditional news-light period when holidaying MPs become worked up about trivialities. That is until now – thanks to a row about a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.
What is known is that the slightly austere painting of the former prime minister by the artist Richard Stone has been moved from the Downing Street study where it had hung since 2009, when Gordon Brown commissioned it.
This one fact was enough to prompt front page stories in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, as well as apocalyptic responses from the likes of the former Tory minister John Redwood, who said it showed Keir Starmer “wants to drag Britain down”.
Meanwhile, Priti Patel, asked about Starmer’s decision at her Conservative leadership campaign launch, said: “I think it tells us everything really about his priorities. His priorities are not on serving the country, his priorities are literally just about tinkering at the margins.”
Somewhat more cryptically, the official Conservative X account posted a story about the painting with the words: “Tell me you’ve got a problem with women without telling me you’ve got a problem with women.”
What is going on? It does seem Starmer was responsible for the decision to remove the portrait. According to Tom Baldwin, the prime minister’s biographer, when they met in the room recently, Starmer agreed that the large, gilt-framed picture was “unsettling” and he was likely to take it down.
“And he has,” Baldwin told a literary event in Glasgow, comments initially reported by the Herald newspaper.
A No 10 source said the portrait was “not on the wall any longer” but declined to say where it had gone. Jacqui Smith, the Labour former cabinet minister, newly made a peer and a skills minister in the education department, told LBC it would remain in No 10, but again gave no details.
Thames Water lobbied Whitehall to press Ofwat on allowing higher bills
Thames Water has lobbied the government to intervene with the regulator to allow it to charge far higher bills, the Guardian can reveal.
Advisers and board members of the beleaguered water company are understood to have met Whitehall officials in recent weeks to warn that allowing it to be temporarily renationalised would have a “chilling effect” on the entire UK’s appeal to international investors, sources familiar with the discussions told the Guardian.
Thames is one of the biggest challenges facing the new Labour administration, after the company was brought to its knees by sewage scandals, fines and huge debts. Its attempt to convince the government to put pressure on Ofwat is the latest tactic in an increasingly desperate scramble to repair its threadbare finances and avoid being pulled on to the state’s balance sheet. This week Thames demanded the watchdog allow it to increase bills by 59% – an average of £228 a year – for its 16 million customers across London and the Thames valley.
The call for government to intervene and potentially overrule Ofwat risks bringing into question the watchdog’s independence. The body was created in 1989 when Britain’s water and sewage services were privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s government, in order to set limits on the amounts regional monopolies could charge consumers.
Thames Water declined to comment.
You can read the full piece here:
Updated
Eton college will raise fees by 20% as a result of the government’s removal of the VAT exemption on private schools, it said in a letter to parents.
The PA news agency reports that the £52,749-a-year private boys’ school said fees will “likely” increase in January, meaning most parents will have to pay about £63,000. Parents whose sons are in receipt of 100% bursaries will not be affected by the increase, the college said.
From January, the government plans to remove the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools to enable funding for 6,500 new teachers in state schools.
Currently, private schools do not have to charge 20% VAT on their fees because there is an exemption for the supply of education.
In a letter to parents on Friday, the Berkshire boarding school said:
The provost and fellows regret that the government has chosen to tax education in this way. Furthermore, we are disappointed that the introduction of VAT will take place partway through an academic year and at short notice.
We recognise the concern that will be felt by many parents following this announcement.”
According to the PA news agency, the college said it will do its “utmost” to ensure that financial assistance is available to all those who cannot afford the additional VAT and that it will consider increasing the current £10m financial assistance pot to help those who “now face an unaffordable increase in the cost of their education”.
PA news agency said that the government had been approached for comment.
Updated
Badger culling to end in England by 2029, government says
Badger culling will end in England by 2029, the government has said.
Some culls under existing licences will continue until 2026, according to sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), but it is highly unlikely any new ones will be granted.
The National Farmers’ Union has been lobbying government to keep the badger cull until there is definitive proof bovine tuberculosis (bTB) can be stopped without killing badgers.
However, Defra ministers have said not enough research has been done in recent years to find out whether badgers carry the disease.
It is thought more than 200,000 badgers have been culled in the past decade, and the government will commission a population survey to ascertain the damage the cull has done to wildlife populations. The last such survey was carried out in 2012. It will also create a badger vaccination taskforce and set up a scientific survey to find out whether wild badgers are carrying bTB.
Daniel Zeichner, the minister for food security and rural affairs, said:
Bovine tuberculosis has devastated British farmers and wildlife for far too long. It has placed dreadful hardship and stress on farmers who continue to suffer the loss of valued herds and has taken a terrible toll on our badger populations.
No more. Our comprehensive TB eradication package will allow us to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament and stop the spread of this horrific disease.”
You can read the full piece here:
Ousted MP David Duguid has said he would have won the seat lost by party leader Douglas Ross, reports the PA news agency.
Duguid was barred by Scottish Conservative officials from running for the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat, citing health reasons. Earlier this year, he suffered a spinal stroke and subsequently contracted pneumonia, telling the BBC he “flatlined” on two occasions.
But the former MP – who represented the now defunct Banff and Buchan seat since 2017 – said he would have won the contest Ross lost to the SNP on 4 July.
Asked in an interview with the BBC if the party made the wrong decision in barring him from standing, Duguid said:
Evidently – we lost the seat. I think I would have won it.
The last official communication I had with the party when they came to visit me that last time, I didn’t know Douglas was going to be the candidate.”
He went on to say he “had the incumbency” and constituents “knew me, and I’m a half-decent MP or a fully decent MP”.
He added:
I thought any new candidate was not going to have that incumbency, which may not be worth that many votes, but it could have made a difference between winning or losing.”
The decision of Ross to step into the seat in the days before nominations closed, Duguid said, made the situation “even worse”.
Within days of the decision to stand again for Westminster, Ross announced he would step down as party leader after the election and would quit as an MSP if he won the contest. Ross lost the seat to the SNP’s Seamus Logan by less than 1,000 votes.
Cleaners and caterers working at the Foreign Office have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a dispute over pay, reports the PA news agency.
Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) employed by contractor OCS voted by 100% to reject a pay offer the union said would have given most of them no more than the voluntary living wage of £12 an hour.
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said:
The results of a PCS cost-of-living survey were presented to OCS which demonstrate the financial pressures our members are under.
Over 50% reported having to skip a meal or not being able to afford to put the heating on in the colder months and 67% said they had come into work when unwell because they can’t afford to take time off to recuperate. This level of financial hardship in a civilised society is completely unacceptable.
Our members have sent a clear message to OCS that they must act now to make an improved offer or face disruptive strike action.
This strike action will be a powerful reminder of how fundamental our members are to keeping the Foreign Office running. The Foreign Office must now consider insourcing the contract in line with the policy of the new government.”
The SNP needs to win back voters who defected to Labour rather than those who stayed at home, the party’s Westminster leader has said.
The party met for its first conference since the election loss last month which saw them drop dozens of MPs, an event starting with a behind-closed-doors postmortem led by first minister John Swinney.
Speaking to journalists after the session, Stephen Flynn said the party suffered from multiple “self-inflicted wounds” in the election campaign. But with the party having dropped 15% of its share of the vote, and Labour seeing an almost 17% increase, Flynn said the SNP would have to win back those who looked elsewhere.
“I actually think the bigger question there is those SNP voters who didn’t vote for the SNP, who voted for a different party, who voted for the Labour party,” he said. “It’s those people that we need to firstly acknowledge, and we need to win back their support and their trust, and the best way to do that is to get on with the business of delivery.”
The PA news agency reports that when asked about specific issues with the party’s delivery, Flynn referred to an earlier interview on Friday where he said:
While the Scottish people were in the midst of a cost of living crisis, we were having an argument with the UK government about a bottle bank. That breeds frustration within the populace and it’s something which I felt on the doorstep.”
Flynn is referring to the deposit return scheme (DRS), a recycling project which was effectively blocked by the previous UK government. But he added:
I don’t just blame the election result on delivery problems or priority problems.
I blamed it on many of the self inflicted wounds that we’ve had, I’ve acknowledged the fact that, ultimately, the Labour message of change was very crisp and clear and people understood it and believed in it, because they wanted rid of the Tories.”
The challenge for the party, he added, was “how we re-engage, re-imagine what the SNP stands for” that brings the Scottish electorate “back on side” with the party ahead of the 2026 election.
Members who were involved in the “open and frank discussion” on Friday morning, Flynn said, would be “pleased” the party had held the session.
Updated
Prison population hits record high in England and Wales
The prison population of England and Wales has hit a record high, with the number jumping by nearly a thousand in the past four weeks.
The sharp rise is believed to have been driven by the number of jail sentences handed to those found guilty of taking part in recent riots.
A total of 88,350 people were in prison as of 30 August, Ministry of Justice figures show.
This is up 116 from 88,234 a week ago and an increase of 988 from 87,362 four weeks ago on 2 August.
It is the highest end-of-week figure since weekly population data was first published in 2011, according to analysis by the PA news agency.
It also surpasses the highest total ever recorded, which was 88,336 at end the February 2024, based on separate figures for the end-of-month population size.
The riots, fuelled by the far right after the stabbing of three young girls in Southport, came after the Labour government announced emergency measures to ease overcrowding in its first week in power.
Shabana Mahmood, the lord chancellor, set out legislation last month to reduce the amount of time inmates must spend in jail before they are automatically released, lowering it from 50% of their sentence to 40%, in an attempt to manage overcrowding.
She warned that jails becoming too full could spark a breakdown in law and order on the streets within days. Police cells would be filled with arrested suspects and convicted prisoners, she claimed, a situation that could be exploited by looters and criminals.
You can read more on this story here:
Updated
UK immigration strategy increases risk of exploitation, say charities
The government’s policy of ramping up immigration raids and detaining and deporting undocumented migrants is driving more people underground and increasing their risks of exploitation, dozens of charities have warned.
In a letter on Friday, coordinated by Migrant Voice, more than 80 organisations including Care4Calais, City of Sanctuary UK, Anti-Slavery International, Doctors of the World UK and Safe Passage International are calling on the home secretary to make it easier for undocumented migrants to regularise their immigration status so they can work with less risk of falling prey to exploitative employers and human trafficking gangs.
On 27 August, the Home Office announced it had conducted a week-long “intensive operation” into illegal working with 275 premises targeted, 135 of them receiving notices for employing illegal workers.
Although the government says it wants to protect vulnerable people exploited by unscrupulous employers, 85 “illegal workers” were detained in the operation.
“While this operation marks an important step forward, our commitment to tackling this issue is ongoing. We will ensure those who break the rules face the full force of the law,” the home secretary said.
The government deported more than 200 people to Brazil this month, the largest single deportation on record. Since Labour came to power there have been at least nine deportation charter flights.
Nazek Ramadan, the director of Migrant Voice, said:
Immigration raids and deportations do not address the fundamental issue that the majority of those who become undocumented in the UK do so through no fault of their own.
Issues such as errors on paperwork or a lack of communication from the Home Office can lead to people who have lived in the UK for decades losing status overnight.
Rather than penalising people for becoming undocumented, this government must take a new approach and create simpler routes for them to regain a documented status.”
Business groups have reacted to reports that the government will give workers the right to request a “compressed” four-day working week.
Ben Willmott, head of public policy for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for human resources, said the government should “take stock” of recent rule changes around employment, which allow people to request flexible working when they start new jobs, before making more changes.
He said: “Flexible working arrangements such as compressed hours, job sharing and term-time working can help people balance their work and home life commitments, while also supporting employer efforts to recruit and retain staff.
“However, flexible working has to work for both the business and workers if it’s to be sustainable and this needs to be recognised in any changes to regulation.
“It would make sense for the government to take stock of the impact of recent changes introduced only in April to enable people to request flexible working from day one of employment, before seeking to make further changes.”
Matthew Percival, director of Future of Work at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said flexible working “depends on the job”, and some workforces might not all be able to have flexibility at the same time if it means they cannot meet customer demands.
He said: “Businesses supported making asking for flexible working a day one right because good conversations about what can be mutually beneficial shouldn’t be unduly delayed.
“When the government sets out how it wants to change this law, businesses will be looking to see that it doesn’t become prohibitively difficult or expensive to say ‘no’ to unreasonable requests.”
Priti Patel hints she might add 'phenomenal' Boris Johnson to cabinet if she becomes Tory leader
Priti Patel has become the second Tory leadership candidate to hint they might include former prime minister Boris Johnson as member of a their cabinet should they win the contest.
Asked if she could see Johnson serving in her cabinet, Patel said: “Our party owes Boris Johnson a great deal. He’s a man that won us a 2019 general election and motivated the grassroots, and actually was a true leader. He really was.
“That’s a matter for him now, obviously, in terms of his choices, what he chooses to do going forward.”
She added: [Johnson] has just been phenomenal to our party and actually for our country, in my view, as well.”
Last Wednesday, Robert Jenrick told the Telegraph he would be “delighted” to include Johnson in his shadow cabinet if he won the Tory leadership contest.
Updated
Tory leadership hopeful Priti Patel has declared herself the candidate who will make the Tories “compelling and attractive to young people”.
Just 8% of under-30s voted for the Conservatives at the last general election. In comparison, 9% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 10% of 25 to 29-year-olds voted for Reform UK, while 41% of the younger group and 45% of the slightly older group ticked their box for Labour.
Patel was questioned by a young party activist who said she found it a “hard sell” to convince her friends to vote Tory.
She said: “When I joined the Conservative party 30 years ago, we were the party for young people, and we had the energy, the enthusiasm, and that’s where we need to be all over again.”
She added: “The Conservative party used to be the party for young people because if you wanted to work hard, succeed, get on in life, this was the place to be - and I can tell you now, under my leadership, that’s exactly what I will do.
“I will make us compelling and attractive. Show that if you want to get on in life, this is the party that can absolutely represent you and others, a whole generation of young people, because that’s who we are, as Conservatives.”
On reports Keir Starmer had moved a portrait of Margaret Thatcher in No 10, she said: “I think it tells us everything really about his priorities.
“His priorities are not on serving the country, his priorities are literally just about tinkering at the margins, hiding behind great portraits of great Conservative female prime ministers. That’s why we need to get him out of office.”
Updated
Environmental protesters – including John Swinney’s former teacher – have declared the Scottish first minister must “try harder to protect the climate”, reports the PA news agency.
Caro Wilkinson, who taught Swinney German when he was a pupil at Forrester High in Edinburgh, was among a group of campaigners from the Edinburgh Climate Coalition to stage a demonstration as the SNP conference got under way.
According to the PA news agency, she recalled her former student as being “intelligent and caring”, adding:
His kindness was clear when he organised a class whip-round when I was pregnant to buy me a teddy bear for my new baby.”
However, she also insisted the first minister was “clever enough to know how urgent the threat of climate change is”, adding that she hoped he “cares enough for the planet to take the action that’s needed”.
Wilkinson said:
If he does, he’ll speak out against the huge Rosebank oilfield, reject the proposed Peterhead gas-fired power station and do what he can to put the Scottish government back on course to fight climate change.”
The conference comes after the Scottish government ditched its target to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030 – although ministers insist they are still committed to the overall goal of reaching net zero by 2045.
'No more climate betrayal'
— The National (@ScotNational) August 30, 2024
Protesters from the Edinburgh Climate Coalition have gathered outside the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on the first day of the SNP’s conference pic.twitter.com/dd5yGu7pLe
Commenting after the protest, Edinburgh Climate Coalition spokesperson Luke Henderson said:
People around the world are already suffering from the impacts of changed climate in fires, floods and landslides, but the Scottish government is going backwards and slowing down the action that will improve lives and cut climate pollution.
Renewable energy is already far cheaper than new fossil fuels whilst solutions like making public transport more affordable and accessible will help more people get to where they need to be.”
Priti Patel denounced prime minister Keir Starmer’s No 10 speech earlier this week as “one of the most feeble, pitiful and dishonest speeches you will ever hear”.
Speaking at her leadership campaign event in London on Friday, Patel said:
Earlier this week, we had the spectacle of a Labour prime minister standing in the rose garden of Downing Street, delivering one of the most feeble, pitiful and dishonest speeches you will ever hear.
He was feeble in his claim to say that he was tough with the trade unions in pay negotiations. That was after he immediately rolled over to appease his paymasters at the expense of the British taxpayer.
He was pitiful to claim that he is locking up criminals after spending years in parliament voting against tougher prison sentences for violent criminals and sex offenders, and campaigning to block the deportation of dangerous foreign national offenders.
He was completely dishonest with his complaints and his claims about the British economy that he has inherited, which were clearly made to justify his nasty financial assault on the very people who deserve dignity in their retirement.”
She added:
All we have seen over the last 56 days is a Labour government of self-service, politics without principle.”
Updated
Priti Patel has launched her Conservative leadership campaign in London promising to get the party “back to winning ways”, reports the PA news agency.
Patel said:
The Conservative and Unionist party is the greatest political party in the world, and I’m proud to stand here today for its leadership. Under my leadership, I will bring our party experience and strength, and I will get us back to winning ways.”
She added:
I have heard loud and clear what the British people have had to say, and while we will reflect and learn on the lessons, under my leadership our party will be firmly focused on the future.
So today, eight weeks on, our attitude will change, and we will draw a line in the sand because it’s time to move on and move forward.
I’m an optimist with clear goals, and I will revive our party so that we can provide the leadership that our great country needs, because conservativism has not failed.
Our values and our principles remain as true as ever, and they are still shared by the majority of the public.”
An Olympic gold medal-winning canoeist will be among climate activists protesting in Windsor this weekend to demand the Labour government takes climate action seriously.
Extinction Rebellion, which is organising the three-day event, which began on Friday, said it had been disappointed by the new administration’s lack of action on reducing fossil fuel emissions.
The event includes a funfair, a large campsite, speakers, art and music. A few of the actions will be centred around Windsor Castle but, contrary to media reports, the activists say they have no plans to “storm the castle” and that all events will be non-disruptive.
Activists are calling on the government to set up a citizens’ assembly to tackle the climate crisis.
Etienne Stott, XR UK spokesperson and an Olympic gold medal-winning canoeist, said:
The first job of the state is to protect its citizens and keep them safe. Politicians are too close to and too compromised by the vested interests of the oil barons and media billionaires to carry out this primary duty of care. A citizens’ assembly is a proven mechanism that can be deployed to bypass these corrupting influences and get things done in a way that is fair for all and bridges political divides.”
Campaigners say they will keep protesting despite a more climate-friendly government having been elected. This is because, they say, Labour is maintaining the status quo on many issues, including “using the same outdated climate targets and [they] don’t have a plan that is consistent with the Paris agreement, the latest science and global equity”.
TUC warns Keir Starmer: do not water down ban on zero-hours contracts
Keir Starmer has been warned against caving in to pressure to water down a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, after fresh evidence showing the financial hit for millions in insecure work.
Bosses have told the prime minister he risks causing “real damage” for the economy if the government’s proposals for the biggest overhaul in workers’ rights for a generation are pushed through too quickly.
Labour’s workers’ rights overhaul has become one of the biggest battlegrounds between the new government and businesses. In a meeting with business groups and trade unions earlier this month, it is understood that Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, and Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, reassured employers that they would take a staggered approach to introducing the reforms.
After meeting the bosses of Britain’s largest employers’ groups on Thursday, Rachel Reeves promised the government would “co-design” its policies with business on shared priorities to boost economic growth.
“Under this new government’s leadership, I will lead the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury in our history – with a laser focus on making working people better off,” said the chancellor.
However, Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), warned banning zero-hours contracts should remain a top priority despite heavy lobbying from bosses.
“I would challenge any business leader or politician to try and survive on a zero-hours contract not knowing from week to week how much work they will have,” he said.
“It’s time to drive up employment standards in this country and to make work pay for everyone. The government’s forthcoming employment rights bill will help create a level playing field – and stop good employers from being undercut by the bad.”
You can read the full piece here:
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has said the UK is “deeply worried” by the “methods Israel has employed” in an IDF military operation in the occupied West Bank.
In a statement on Friday morning, an FCDO spokesperson said:
The UK is deeply concerned by the ongoing IDF military operation in the occupied West Bank.
We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
The risk of instability is serious and the need for de-escalation urgent. We continue to call on Israeli authorities to exercise restraint, adhere to international law, and clamp down on the actions of those who seek to inflame tensions.
The UK strongly condemns settler violence and inciteful remarks such as those made by Israel’s national security minister Ben-Gvir, which threaten the status-quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem.
It is in no one’s interest for further conflict and instability to spread in the West Bank.”
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has called on landowners, local authorities and housebuilders to “unblock sites” and to “get shovels in the ground”.
In a post on X, Rayner wrote:
We inherited a Tory housing crisis.
Too few homes have been built.
Ordinary people can’t get on the housing ladder. There’s no time to waste. I’m calling on landowners, local authorities and housebuilders to help unblock sites and get shovels in the ground.”
We inherited a Tory housing crisis.
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) August 30, 2024
Too few homes have been built. Ordinary people can’t get on the housing ladder.
There’s no time to waste. I’m calling on landowners, local authorities & housebuilders to help unblock sites & get shovels in the ground.https://t.co/Tkjv6nvOPC
The housing secretary also linked to a piece in the Mirror, where she detailed plans for a New Homes Accelerator, described as “a crack team of experts from my department and Homes England”. Rayner wrote:
The Accelerator – a crack team of experts from my department and Homes England – will rapidly identify planning blockages, fix problems and support local authorities and developers to get shovels in the ground. It will help people make new lives and start families of their own.”
Rayner said “up to 200 large sites around the country where outline or detailed plans are ready to go but construction has yet to begin” have already been identified.
Cleverly accused of aggravating asylum backlog by ‘dithering’ on key decisions
James Cleverly has been accused of increasing the asylum backlog in the spring of this year by “dithering” over key decisions.
Ministers under the then home secretary refused to give caseworkers permission to tackle outstanding cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act, departmental sources and the UK’s biggest civil service union have told the Guardian.
A leaked email from May indicates that senior staff overseeing asylum caseworkers were waiting for “key decisions to be made in the coming weeks” and diverting staff to other tasks.
The number of asylum decisions fell dramatically in the weeks before the July general election, data released last week showed. Between March and June this year, the Home Office made decisions on 15,965 applications, down from 24,348 in the first three months. Only 1,150 asylum interviews took place in June, down from more than 8,000 last October, according to the data.
Fran Heathcote, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents asylum caseworkers, said:
We’re aware of the slowdown in asylum decisions between March and June but this in no way reflects a lack of effort or performance from our members.
Instead many of our members were diverted on to other workstreams whilst the Illegal Migration Act prevented decisions being made on asylum claims made since March 2023 and the previous government dithered on making the decisions required to unlock these.
Our members tell us that processing of claims has started to ramp up again since replacement arrangements were introduced in the king’s speech.”
You can read the full piece here:
Keir Starmer ‘gets rid of’ 10 Downing Street’s Thatcher portrait
Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed from No 10 Downing Street, according to his biographer.
Tom Baldwin said that after Starmer took office he had spoken with the prime minister in Thatcher’s former No 10 study, unofficially known as the Thatcher Room, where a portrait of her was on display.
Speaking at an event organised by Glasgow’s Aye Write book festival, Baldwin said: “We sat there, and I go: ‘It’s a bit unsettling with her staring down as you like that, isn’t it?’”
Starmer replied yes and, when asked whether he would “get rid of it”, the prime minister nodded, according to Baldwin.
Baldwin added: “And he has.”
The portrait of Thatcher, painted by Richard Stone, was commissioned by Gordon Brown and unveiled at a private reception in 2009.
Brown invited Thatcher to tea at Downing Street shortly after he succeeded Tony Blair in 2007 and told her he intended to commission the painting.
The artwork, which cost £100,000 and was paid for by an anonymous donor, was the first of a former prime minister to be commissioned by No 10.
Thatcher chose the jewellery and buttons she was shown wearing in the portrait.
The decision to take down the painting, first reported by the Herald, has been criticised by some in the Conservative party.
Greg Smith, the MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, told the Telegraph the decision was “utter pettiness from Starmer” and claimed that it showed he had “no respect for our history and previous prime ministers”.
You can read the full piece here:
Nurseries will have to provide options to parents rather than charge for additional provisions such as food or nappies during government-funded childcare hours, education minister Jacqui Smith has said.
She told Sky News:
What we’ve been very clear about in our guidance is where providers feel that they need to charge for food, for example, or for nappies within the government-funded childcare hours, that has to be something that is optional, so parents need to be able to provide their own nappies or provide the lunch themselves.
But I do take the point that there is a real challenge for early years providers in delivering this big ramping up of provision.
It is a very good thing, it’s a very good thing for children, and it’s a very good thing for parents in terms of their work choices, but it is something where we need to continue working very hard alongside the providers, and we will do over the next year to make sure that we’ve got those 85,000 extra places and the 40,000 extra staff that will be necessary in order to enable us to get at least close to that entitlement next year.”
The Labour minister Patrick Vallance, who helped spearhead the country’s response to the Covid pandemic, has said he would not have served as a minister in a Conservative government.
The former UK government chief scientific adviser was made a peer and appointed science minister this year after Keir Starmer’s party swept to victory in the general election. And he made clear on Thursday that, if he had been asked by Rishi Sunak to consider serving in a Tory government: “I wouldn’t have done, no”.
“As a civil servant, I’m very happy to serve under any government, and would do so because that’s the role of the civil service,” Lord Vallance added. “But as a minister, obviously, you then have [a] political angle to that as well, and that adds a layer of complexity. You can’t be a minister and not part of a political system, and that’s different.”
Last year, Vallance’s private diaries from the Covid pandemic made the headlines, revealing his frustration with the politicians at the heart of government at the time. But he said his main concern was about science not being integrated in the system.
“I am not sure I was individually critical of what ministers were doing,” he said. “What I said was I thought the government as a whole didn’t have a mechanism well enough developed to take science and technology into all the places it needs to be, because I can’t think of a single area of policy or operations where science technology or engineering wouldn’t make a difference,” he told the Guardian.
His comments came alongside the announcement that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has reopened recruitment for a new chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
You can read the full piece here:
Education minister Jacqui Smith has pledged that portraits of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher will remain in No 10, amid reports Keir Starmer had one moved after finding it “unsettling”.
Asked if she was ever unsettled by the portrait of the UK’s first female PM, Smith told LBC:
There were several times I was unsettled in No 10 but it wasn’t usually by the portraits, I have to say.
Keir Starmer, can’t win, can he? A few months ago, people were having a go at him because he said he thought he could learn from the leadership of Margaret Thatcher.
Pictures of Margaret Thatcher will remain in No 10. You can take that as a Jacqui pledge, but I think probably Keir Starmer is more concerned about actually sort of cracking on with the job of getting the country to work properly than where the pictures are.”
Education minister Jacqui Smith has dismissed reports of a businesses being forced to accept employees’ demands for a four-day week, saying the government’s plans for flexible working would enable fewer days to be worked through compressed hours.
She told LBC radio:
We think that flexible working is actually good for productivity. So the four-day week that I know is on the front of quite a lot of newspapers today, what we’re actually talking about there is the type of flexible working that enables you to use compressed hours.
So perhaps instead of working eight hours a day for five days, you work 10 hours a day for four days.
So you’re still doing the same amount of work, but perhaps you’re doing it in a way that enables you, for example, to need less childcare, to spend more time with your family, to do other things, that encourages more people into the workplace, which is an enormous part of that growth mission.”
Asked about jobs such as teachers who would not be able to do a four-day week using compressed hours, Smith said:
Well, no, and nor can lots of other people, but that doesn’t mean that those people that can do it shouldn’t have the ability to do it.”
Starmer faces pushback from pubs over ‘bonkers’ outdoor smoking curb plans
Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking.
The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would potentially prohibit tobacco use outside pubs and restaurants, including on pavements. The restrictions would come on top of existing plans to gradually outlaw smoking year by year.
While the latter proposal was devised under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives argued restrictions on outdoor smoking were about “social control”, with Priti Patel – among those standing to replace Sunak as Tory leader – calling them “beyond stupid”.
The plans were met with despair by the pub industry, which claimed restrictions on outdoor smoking could harm a fragile sector still recovering from Covid. However, health experts backed the idea, while polling showed it had majority support among every demographic and voting group apart from Reform UK supporters.
The plan, first revealed via documents leaked to the Sun, would restrict outdoor smoking outside pubs and restaurants, as well as clubs, and at universities, children’s play areas and small parks, and potentially shisha bars. It was unclear whether this could also cover vaping.
The measures would be included in an already-announced tobacco and vapes bill, which intends to gradually make all smoking illegal by prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after January 2009. When this was announced in July’s king’s speech, it did not mention changes to outdoor smoking.
As public health is devolved, the measures would apply to only England, with the other UK nations deciding if they wanted to follow suit.
You can read the full piece by Peter Walker, Sarah Butler and Caroline Davies here:
Outdoor smoking ban would aim to make 'fewer places where you can actually smoke' says education minister
Good morning, and welcome to today’s blog, bringing you the latest news across the UK’s political scene.
The government’s outdoor smoking ban will aim to make “fewer places where you actually can smoke”, education minister Jacqui Smith has said.
Responding to calls from industry that an outdoor smoking ban would be another “nail in the coffin” for hospitality, Smith told Sky News:
The biggest nail in the coffin of most people in this country is smoking – 80,000 people die every year from smoking related diseases.”
She added:
We will think about all sorts of different ways, as the last time I was in government, we introduced the smoking ban, the first smoking ban, there was a lot of concern at that point about how it was actually going to work.
I think most people now, including in the hospitality industry, would say our pubs, our restaurants, are much better places because they’re no longer filled with smoke.”
Smith further stated:
What we’re trying to do is to make, both through lifting the age at which you can start smoking, by providing ways in which you can get out of smoking, and by making fewer places where you actually can smoke, we want to make it much more likely that people who are direct active smokers will actually want to give up smoking, and by doing that, safeguard their own health and safeguard the NHS and the pressures that smoking brings on to it.”
More on that in a moment. In other developments:
James Cleverly has been accused of increasing the asylum backlog in the spring of this year by “dithering” over key decisions. Ministers under the then home secretary refused to give caseworkers permission to tackle outstanding cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act, departmental sources and the UK’s biggest civil service union have told the Guardian.
The Conservative MP Esther McVey has been urged to “get a grip” after she posted a poem about the Holocaust to criticise government plans to introduce outdoor smoking bans. McVey, the MP for Tatton and a former cabinet minister, posted on X the words of Martin Niemöller’s 1946 poem First They Came, about inaction from within Germany against the Nazis.
Keir Starmer has been warned against caving in to pressure to water down a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, after fresh evidence showing the financial hit for millions in insecure work. Bosses have told the prime minister he risks causing “real damage” for the economy if the government’s proposals for the biggest overhaul in workers’ rights for a generation are pushed through too quickly.
Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned. Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos.
Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed from No 10 Downing Street, according to his biographer. The decision to take down the painting, first reported by the Herald, has been criticised by some in the Conservative party.
