A summary of today’s developments
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Here is a summary of today’s key developments:
Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said. Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.
The healthcare regulator is so badly run that patients in England cannot trust the safety ratings it issues for hospitals, care homes or GP practices, the health secretary has said. Wes Streeting said the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was in such deep crisis it was not able to do its basic job reliably. His warning came after an interim report by the public care doctor Penny Dash found the CQC was plagued by low levels of physical inspections, a lack of consistency in assessments and problems with a faltering IT system.
The government will not be “passing the buck” on building renewable energy infrastructure to future generations, the energy minister Michael Shanks said on Friday. Shanks also told MPs that some areas will have to host “nationally significant” power infrastructure such as solar farms in response to concerns expressed about the “detrimental impacts” on communities.
Rachel Reeves is expected to reveal a £20bn hole in government spending for essential public services on Monday, paving the way for potential tax rises in the autumn budget. Labour sources said the blame lay with the Tory government, describing it as a “shocking inheritance” and accusing the former chancellor of “presiding over a black hole and still campaigning for tax cuts”.
Mel Stride has become the fourth Conservative MP to announce they are joining the race for the party’s leadership. The former work and pensions secretary told BBC Breakfast on Friday he has been “fully nominated” as a candidate, joining Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader. Stride, the MP for Central Devon, said he believed he was the right person to “unite the party”.
The prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has said that the government will not proceed with efforts to question whether the international criminal court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant. “On the ICC submission … I can confirm the government will not be pursuing (the proposal) in line with our longstanding position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” the spokesperson told reporters on Friday.
The assisted dying bill has officially been introduced in the House of Lords as the health secretary said it is “a debate whose time has come”. Lord Falconer’s private member’s bill – the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill – was read out at the start of business in the House of Lords on Friday, and is expected to be debated in mid-November.
Powers introduced by the Conservatives to protect freedom of speech in universities have been halted by the new government in a dramatic about-turn, paving the way for ministers to scrap the legislation. Only days before it was due to come into force, the education secretary said she had decided to “stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal”. In response, the shadow education secretary, Damian Hinds, accused the government of being willing to “sacrifice the next generation on the altar of their own ideological dogma”.
Kemi Badenoch has accused one of her Conservative leadership rivals of a dirty tricks campaign against her as she continues to consider a bid for the top job. The shadow business secretary attacked her critics after a dossier was circulated claiming she was behind anonymous blog comments written 17 years ago in which the author celebrated being rude and made abusive remarks.
Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay called on MPs to “move beyond some of the comments made” about his stance on a string of pylons along England’s east coast. Making his maiden speech in the House of Commons on Friday, the Waveney Valley MP said he welcomes the government’s plan to scale-up renewable energy generation but added Whitehall must turn its attention towards adapting and mitigating “climate breakdown”. At Wednesday’s PMQs, Keir Starmer said Ramsay had opposed “vital clean energy in his own constituency” and added: “He talks about leadership, and I’d ask him to show some.”
People who lost relatives from the infected blood scandal will be able to apply for interim compensation payments from the autumn, a minister told the Commons on Friday. Nick Thomas-Symonds, who as paymaster general is a senior minister in the Cabinet Offic, also reiterated the government’s commitment to enacting the findings of the report into what happened.
Prime minister Keir Starmer changed his travel plans to get to the Olympics on Friday after Eurostar trains were disrupted due to sabotage attacks against French rail networks, Downing Street said. Starmer was meant to be travelling on the cross-Channel rail service from London to Paris for the Olympics opening ceremony, in his first visit to France since being elected earlier this month. But a spokesperson said he flew instead due to the delays and cancellations.
David Lammy has urged China to prevent its companies from supporting Russia’s war effort, the Foreign Office has said after the minister held his first meeting with his Beijing counterpart since Labour entered government.
GCSE exams “dominate” the education system and should be scrapped by the new government, the Tory architect of the qualification said on Friday. Kenneth Baker oversaw the introduction of GCSEs while serving as education secretary in the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. But Baker described the level of testing on students as “absolutely absurd” and said GCSEs should become a “victim” of the curriculum and assessment review announced by the new Labour administration.
Former Conservative party chairman Richard Holden said energy ministers have “refused to repeat this claim” that Labour’s clean energy plans will knock £300 off bills. Holden told the Commons on Friday that “Downing Street have been saying one thing, [energy minister Michael Shanks’] department have been saying another”. Shanks, replied: “I think it does take a bit of a brass neck to come here and talk about bringing down bills when the government that he supported for a long time saw those skyrocket.”
The SNP is heading towards the opposition benches at Holyrood if it does not address the internal “culture of hate”, Joanna Cherry has said. The former SNP MP, who lost her Edinburgh South West seat to Labour at the general election, said she will be stepping away from frontline politics to “reflect” on the future of her party.
The cost of England’s four biggest killer diseases could rise to £86bn a year by 2050, prompting calls for a crackdown on alcohol, junk food and smoking. The ageing population means the annual cost of cancer, heart disease, dementia and stroke combined will go from the £51.9bn recorded in 2018 to £85.6bn in 2050 – a rise of 61%.
The “writing is on the wall for greyhound racing”, an MSP has said as a bill aiming to ban the sport in Scotland gained enough support to proceed at Holyrood. Mid Scotland and Fife Green MSP Mark Ruskell said his member’s bill had won the backing of enough colleagues at the Scottish parliament to allow it to be introduced.
A justice minister has volunteered to wear an alcohol monitoring tag used to help cut re-offending rates for prison leavers. James Timpson said he expects to gain “first-hand insight” from wearing the device, which he said gives people a chance to “rewrite their behaviour”.
Government will not be 'passing the buck' on building renewable energy infrastructure, says Michael Shanks
The government will not be “passing the buck” on building renewable energy infrastructure to future generations, the energy minister Michael Shanks said on Friday.
Shanks also told MPs that some areas will have to host “nationally significant” power infrastructure such as solar farms in response to concerns expressed about the “detrimental impacts” on communities.
The PA news agency reports that MPs had a general debate on Friday on making Britain a “clean energy superpower”, with the Great British Energy bill due to receive its second reading after the summer recess.
Conservative MP for Huntingdon Ben Obese-Jecty raised the East Park Energy solar farm, a proposed project in his constituency, which he said would be “larger than Gatwick airport”.
He said local residents have “grave concerns” over the scale of the development and asked the minister if he would commit to rural communities having a say on the government allowing large solar farms to be built in their local areas “given the detrimental impacts”.
Shanks replied:
We’re not in any way going to remove the ability of communities to be part of, of course, a consultation process in the planning system.”
He added:
But at some point, we have to have this national recognition that there is infrastructure that we need that is nationally significant.
Some communities will have to host that infrastructure and there should be benefits for those communities in doing it.
But that doesn’t mean that we should stop doing it and I’m afraid the days of government passing the buck to a future generation to fix these issues are gone.
We need to tackle this crisis and that means we will be building and there will be projects in communities, with consultation of course, but nationally significant projects will have to go ahead if we want to reach the targets by 2030.”
Elsewhere in the debate, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for climate change Wera Hobhouse said the race to net zero is the “major economic opportunity of the century”.
She said:
The green economy must sit at the heart of economic growth, and the government has work to do to reverse the damaging narrative of the previous government, that this is about green versus growth.
And also to reverse the unforgivable failures of the last Conservative government, which delayed, blocked or even reversed urgent action on climate change. Now is the time to move forward.”
Winding up, Tory shadow energy minister Joy Morrissey pointed to plans for a government-backed company called Great British Energy to “accelerate Britain’s pathway to energy independence”.
Morrissey said the plan “is simply the government subsidising high-risk projects for the private sector on the one hand, whilst decimating our oil and gas industry on the other”.
Hobhouse intervened and said:
Is the shadow minister not aware that exactly this negative narrative from her party has held us back in the way to net zero?”
In his winding up speech, Shanks said:
The rhetoric that we’re now hearing from this Conservative party is a million miles from that David Cameron conservatism that said we should take the environment seriously.”
He added:
The reason that we’re on this journey is not because of some sort of ideological commitment to net zero, but because we know it is the only way to deliver the energy security that we need to reduce our dependence on volatile gas prices and to deliver the cheaper energy that we know will bring down bills.”
Prime minister Keir Starmer changed his travel plans to get to the Olympics on Friday after Eurostar trains were disrupted due to sabotage attacks against French rail networks, Downing Street said.
Starmer was meant to be travelling on the cross-Channel rail service from London to Paris for the Olympics opening ceremony, in his first visit to France since being elected earlier this month.
But a spokesperson said he flew instead due to the delays and cancellations.
France is welcoming dozens of heads of state and government and royalty for the Olympics that begin with the opening ceremony on the River Seine on Friday.
Just hours before the ceremony, arson attacks threw France’s high-speed rail network into chaos affecting tens of thousands of passengers, in what officials called premeditated acts of “sabotage”.
One in four Eurostar trains were cancelled, the company said, with the disruption set to continue over the weekend.
You can follow updates on the 2024 Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony via this live blog:
Updated
Also making her maiden speech on Friday, Liberal Democrat MP Pippa Heylings spoke about chalk streams in her South Cambridgeshire constituency, describing them as “our blue veins, the silvery threads weaving together our villages”.
She said young people “want action on the twin climate and nature emergencies”, and added:
I speak to them now – I want what we do in this chamber to restore your faith, give you agency, so that together we can be the change that we want.”
Torcuil Crichton, Labour MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar in Scotland, said:
Two generations of my constituents have earned energy security for this country from the North Sea, and two generations more will as well as we make that just transition to renewables.”
Also on the Labour benches, Zubir Ahmed said in his maiden speech that his father settled in Scotland in 1963, where he drove buses then black cabs, which he “still does”.
The Glasgow South West MP said:
I believe it is important to be unashamedly proud of the fact that we are demonstrably the most successfully diverse ethno-religious legislator in the world.”
Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire Sarah Bool vowed to champion hidden disabilities. She said she “understands the difficulties of adapting to life with a hidden condition” after she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes three years ago, but added:
One upside is I always will be carrying some form of sweets for a low blood sugar, so you know where to come if you need.”
Adrian Ramsay urges MPs to 'move beyond' comments made about pylon stance, as he makes maiden speech
Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has called on MPs to “move beyond some of the comments made” about his stance on a string of pylons along England’s east coast, reports the PA news agency.
Making his maiden speech on Friday, the Waveney Valley MP said he welcomes the government’s plan to scale-up renewable energy generation but added Whitehall must turn its attention towards adapting and mitigating “climate breakdown”.
Ramsay leads the Greens in England and Wales with Carla Denyer, the MP for Bristol Central who made her maiden speech on 18 July, and is one of four from his party newly elected to the Commons at the general election earlier this month.
At Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, Keir Starmer said Ramsay had opposed “vital clean energy in his own constituency” and added: “He talks about leadership, and I’d ask him to show some.”
Ramsay said in his maiden speech:
If we are to scale up renewable energy at pace – the pace required to tackle the climate emergency – we do need to take communities with us and make infrastructure decisions that are right for the long term.
So what I’ve called for in relation to the infrastructure proposals that are currently on the table for East Anglia is a proper options assessment of the different ways in which the energy generated by new windfarms in East Anglia is connected to the grid.”
The National Grid has plans for a 112-mile power line between Norwich in Norfolk and Tilbury in Essex, through Ramsay’s constituency which straddles the Norfolk and Suffolk boundary, to help connect offshore windfarms with the grid.
Referring to the prime minister’s wish to “reset” the tone of political debate, Ramsay said:
I’d ask that we move beyond some of the comments that have been made in this chamber to date on the particular infrastructure proposal that I referred to, and that the government commits to working with communities to ensure that infrastructure decisions are made in a way that properly accounts for the issues raised by wildlife organisations and local communities.”
The Green party co-leader also said “far more public policy attention needs to be given to how we adapt to a changing climate, as well as mitigating against the worst excesses of climate breakdown”, and he raised dentistry when he told the Commons he “had examples in Suffolk of people telling me they’ve resorted to pulling out their own teeth”.
He said:
Whether it’s the growing use of food banks, whether it’s people suffering from flooding or the decline in our services, I want to see real action that genuinely accounts for the needs of our rural communities.”
In her speech last week, Denyer vowed to speak up in parliament “regardless of whether others might find it contentious, and regardless too of whether we are swimming against the popular tide”.
Updated
A justice minister has volunteered to wear an alcohol monitoring tag used to help cut re-offending rates for prison leavers.
James Timpson said he expects to gain “first-hand insight” from wearing the device, which he said gives people a chance to “rewrite their behaviour”.
Speaking as peers considered a report on community sentences, Timpson described electronic monitoring as a “useful tool” to monitor compliance.
They can be used for several purposes, including monitoring alcohol levels in the wearer’s sweat every 30 minutes, tracking the location of offenders throughout each day and making sure offenders do not stray from home if they are under a curfew.
Timpson was previously the chief executive of the shoe repair company Timpson, which trains and employs former prisoners, and also served as chairman of the Prison Reform Trust.
The rehabilitation campaigner, who oversees prisons, parole and probation in his new role, told peers:
Data from alcohol monitoring for community sentences shows devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert for over 97% of the days worn.
This provides offenders with a real chance to rewrite their behaviour and change the narrative of their life.
I myself have volunteered to be fitted with an alcohol tag and look forward to gaining first-hand insight into the experience of those who are electronically monitored.”
The assisted dying bill has officially been introduced in the House of Lords as the health secretary said it is “a debate whose time has come”.
The title of former Labour justice secretary Lord Falconer’s private member’s bill – the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill – was read out at the start of business in the House of Lords on Friday, and is expected to be debated in mid-November.
It is possible a private member’s bill on assisted dying could be chosen for debate in the Commons, when a ballot takes place in September.
Lord Falconer, who described assisted dying as “the UK’s next great social reform”, said he had asked for his bill to have its second reading debate in November “so that colleagues in the House of Commons can, if they wish, hold their own debate and vote on second reading in advance of the House of Lords”.
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The Tories accused the government of being willing to “sacrifice the next generation on the altar of their own ideological dogma” after the education secretary announced a controversial free speech law would be postponed.
Shadow education secretary Damian Hinds said:
Free speech is a fundamental right, and this must extend to universities.
Without the ability to freely express views in higher education, these centres of learning risk becoming centres of co-option and intolerance.
The fact this Labour government is willing to scrap the measures we put in place to protect these rights makes clear that they are willing to sacrifice the next generation on the altar of their own ideological dogma.”
Updated
Ed Miliband: people must be persuaded of need for pylons near homes
Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said.
Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.
“Communities have the right to see the benefits,” he said, though he stopped short of specifying what measures Labour could take. Allowing local people a share in the projects could be one way, he added. “This is not just about community benefits but community shares, community ownership.”
He said the government would seek to minimise the impacts of new infrastructure on nature and the landscape. “We can integrate concerns about nature right at the beginning of the planning process,” he said. “There is a way of doing this that is positive for nature.”
Labour launched Great British Energy earlier this week, a nationally owned organisation that will invest billions in energy projects around the UK, including offshore wind. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, is aiming for 20m homes to be powered by offshore wind by the end of the decade, but that will require large amounts of new infrastructure, in the form not just of windfarms but grid connections and pylons to transport the power to where it is consumed.
Local groups have raised concerns about pylons and other infrastructure, and in some areas called for a pause while plans are scrutinised. Miliband indicated he was aware of the concerns but said that in his view the infrastructure was sorely needed to revive the UK economy and move to a clean energy future.
“I’m in the persuasion business, not the telling business,” he told a conference on Friday morning of the Labour Climate and Environment Forum, a group for Labour MPs with green leanings that intends to push the government towards more environmental policies. “Persuasion is very important.”
You can read the full piece here:
Kemi Badenoch accuses Tory leadership rival of ‘dirty tricks’
Kemi Badenoch has accused one of her Conservative leadership rivals of a dirty tricks campaign against her as she continues to consider a bid for the top job.
The shadow business secretary attacked her critics after a dossier was circulated claiming she was behind anonymous blog comments written 17 years ago in which the author celebrated being rude and made abusive remarks.
Badenoch posted in response on social media that it was “amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to play dirty tricks”, claiming that “apparently, a leadership campaign has sent a ‘dirty dossier’ of ‘strong comments’ from 20 yrs ago to the Westminster lobby”.
It's both amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to play dirty tricks.
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) July 25, 2024
3 things happened today that show why the public are put off politics:⁰
1) Apparently, a leadership campaign has sent a "dirty dossier" of “strong comments” from 20 yrs ago to the… https://t.co/Vu7PZd84dS
She added: “We can do better than this, and I will be saying and writing more about how in due course.”
Badenoch also said much of the “discourse across the political spectrum is obsessed with the petty and the puerile”.
The claims within the dossier were first published in the Spectator, which asked: “Could these be the online comments of young Kemi Badenoch?” Some of the comments talked about stereotypes of Thai and Nigerian women, while another branded Diane Abbott a “hypocrite”.
Another said:
Most of the people who changed the world, for good were notoriously rude. It was the bad people, Idi Amin, Hitler etc who were charming and respectful. People like you would have been defending them that they were good people because they had good manners. Robert Mugabe was also once known for his good manners!!”
Friends of Badenoch said she had owned a user profile on the website but that much of the material in the dossier was from another poster calling themselves “kemi”. They said it was a common name and that there was a lot of impersonation happening on the website, and that Badenoch could not remember which, if any of the remarks were made by her.
You can read the full story here:
Labour puts Tories' 'freedom of speech' law for universities on hold
A controversial new law that could see universities and student unions fined for failing to uphold “freedom of speech” could be repealed under Labour, the education secretary has announced.
Bridget Phillipson said there were concerns the legislation would be “burdensome” on providers and the Office for Students (OfS) watchdog.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which was due to come into force next week, will be put on hold to allow for time to consider options “including its repeal”, she said.
In a written ministerial statement on Friday, the education secretary said:
I am aware of concerns that the act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long-term plans as soon as possible.
To enable students to thrive in higher education, I welcome the OfS’s plans to introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges.”
The act, introduced by the previous Tory government, sought to place a duty to “secure” and “promote the importance of” freedom of speech and academic expression.
Phillipson has signalled that Labour wants an end to so-called “culture wars” on campuses after a number of high-profile protests – including at Oxford before a talk by academic Kathleen Stock over her views on gender identity.
Higher education institutions will still have a legal duty to uphold freedom of speech under existing legislation.
When the new powers were introduced, the Conservatives said it would allow speakers to express views which others may disagree with as long as they did not cross a threshold into hate speech or incitement of violence. Critics argued the measures went too far and could lead to further disruption.
A review of the OfS by public servant David Behan warned there was a perception that the watchdog is “not sufficiently independent” and recommended its structure be revised.
In her statement, Phillipson said the regulator, which would have been allowed to fine or sanction institutions under the new law, should “more sharply focus” on key priorities such as the financial stability of universities.
“The government accepts the core analysis of the review and as set out in our manifesto, we recognise that strong regulation is a crucial element for a stable, world-leading higher education sector, that delivers for students and the economy,” she said.
She added:
I have written to colleagues separately about my decision to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal.”
The PA news agency reports that Downing Street rejected suggestions that the move amounted to a weakening of free speech. Asked by journalists whether the decision was a backslide, a Number 10 spokesperson said:
I disagree with that characterisation, but it is also right to listen to concerns and take stock, and that’s what the department is doing.”
You can read more on this story here:
Updated
The “writing is on the wall for greyhound racing”, an MSP has said as a bill aiming to ban the sport in Scotland gained enough support to proceed at Holyrood, reports the PA news agency.
Mid Scotland and Fife Green MSP Mark Ruskell said his member’s bill had won the backing of enough colleagues at the Scottish parliament to allow it to be introduced.
His proposed prohibition of greyhound racing (Scotland) bill aims to make it an offence to permit greyhounds to compete in races at tracks in Scotland.
He said:
I am delighted to have received the backing of MSPs from across the political spectrum, and will be pushing ahead with my member’s bill.
I hope that the Scottish parliament will unite behind my proposed legislation and take the chance to act and to save the lives and limbs of countless greyhounds in future.”
According to the PA news agency, data from 2023 showed 109 greyhounds died trackside in the UK, an increase on the number for 2022 – with a further 4,238 greyhounds injured last year
Ruskell said:
My bill aims to protect greyhounds from the many risks that come from being forced to race around tracks at high speed. With industry figures showing that the death rate is going up across the UK, it’s time to take action.
Public opinion is on our side, and I am heartened by the support that my bill has received so far. I urge racecourse owners and the wider industry to listen hard and to stand up for Scotland’s greyhounds by putting paws before profit and ending the races for good.
You can tell a lot about a society from how it treats voiceless animals. I believe that we are a nation of dog lovers, and that is why we need to ensure they are protected.
The writing is on the wall for greyhound racing in Scotland, it’s time for us to put the wellbeing of these wonderful dogs ahead of gambling company profits.”
A spokesperson from the Greyhound Board of Great Britain, which is the regulator for licensed greyhound racing, said:
We note the Scottish Green party’s statement on the status of their proposed bill. We also note that the Scottish government has recently said, at this time, they are not persuaded of the need to ban greyhound racing in Scotland.
Scotland currently has no licensed greyhound racecourses and we continue to work with those in Holyrood to set out the extensive welfare protections that would be offered under our own existing regulatory regime.”
Tory architect of GCSE qualifaction says they should be scrapped by new government
GCSE exams “dominate” the education system and should be scrapped by the new government, according to the Tory architect of the qualification, reports the PA news agency.
Kenneth Baker oversaw the introduction of GCSEs while serving as education secretary in the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
But Lord Baker of Dorking described the level of testing on students as “absolutely absurd” and said GCSEs should become a “victim” of the curriculum and assessment review announced by the new Labour administration.
Prof Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), has been appointed by the government to lead the review, which is aimed at ensuring a child’s background does not prevent them from receiving a high standard of education.
It will also work to ensure young people aged 16-19 have access to qualifications and training to prepare them for the workplace.
According to the PA news agency, Lord Baker questioned the future of GCSEs as the House of Lords debated a report which called for the English baccalaureate (Ebacc) to be axed.
The Ebacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps children’s options open for further study and includes English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history, and a language.
Lord Baker said the previous Conservative government “dismissed out of hand” the report when it was presented in December 2023.
Speaking on Friday, he told the House of Lords:
We were told that our recommendations to change the curriculum were absurd because the curriculum – which was Ebacc and Progress 8 – was the best that had been invented by mankind and as for the assessment system of GCSE, the best examination system in the world, the person who invented it was brilliant.
I invented it and I now want to scrap it because this is an exam which dominates the whole educational world.
I spoke to a young student last week who has just done her GCSEs. I said, ‘How many exams did you take?’, she said ‘I took 27 exams, nine in five days’. That is absolutely absurd.
The GCSE dominates the whole education system and I hope it’ll be a victim of the review that the government sets up.”
Lord Baker said it was needed in the 1980s as 80% of children left school at 16, adding:
Now, only 5% leave at 16. The qualification that’s important is what people get at 18.”
The Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee’s report warned the education system is too focused on academic learning and written exams, with reform “urgently needed”.
The Bishop of Chichester, the Rt Rev Martin Warner, earlier highlighted the importance of performance arts in the emotional development for youngsters.
He said:
One of our leading independent schools, Brighton College, intentionally uses the arts to break down stereotypes of gender and sexual orientation. So, for example, a key rugby player can also be the lead in a dance troupe.
And as we face an unprecedented surge in male violence against women, these performative processes of education that tackle emotional insecurities and unexamined prejudice should find an important place in any school curriculum.”
Updated
Britain drops its challenge to ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders
The prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has said that the government will not proceed with efforts to question whether the international criminal court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
“On the ICC submission … I can confirm the government will not be pursuing (the proposal) in line with our longstanding position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” the spokesperson told reporters.
You can read more on this story here:
Updated
David Lammy urges China to prevent its companies from supporting Russia’s war effort
David Lammy has urged China to prevent its companies from supporting Russia’s war effort, the Foreign Office has said after the minister held his first meeting with his Beijing counterpart since Labour entered government.
According to the PA news agency, the foreign secretary is said to have stressed the UK’s “ironclad” commitment to backing Ukraine in bilateral talks with Wang Yi on the sidelines of an Asean gathering in Laos on Friday.
“They had a constructive first discussion and the foreign secretary outlined this government’s vision for a long-term, consistent and strategic approach to UK-China relations,” the Foreign Office said.
The foreign secretary urged China to “prevent its companies supporting Russia’s military industrial complex which poses a material threat to international security and prosperity,” the department said.
Both sides agreed to “work towards building long-term communication channels”, reports the PA news agency.
The meeting comes after it emerged Russian president Vladimir Putin has relied on supplies from China to wage his invasion of Ukraine in the face of western sanctions.
Nato’s Washington DC summit earlier this month declared that Beijing had become a “decisive enabler” of the Russian war effort through the supply of components to the defence industry.
A Labour MP urged the government to safeguard jobs and said no one should be left behind by the UK’s transition to a clean energy superpower.
Mary Glindon, the MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend, said:
I welcome Labour’s manifesto commitment to manage the North Sea in a way that does not jeopardise jobs, however, I’d be grateful if the minister [Michael Shanks] could set out in practical terms how he will safeguard important jobs and invest in communities like mine.
Britain’s potential to become a clean energy superpower is, of course, not only exciting, but necessary. As the government speeds up this journey, I urge ministers to ensure that no one is left behind.”
Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho claimed energy bills will not reduce under Labour.
Coutinho told the Commons:
The people now sitting on the benches behind the minister will have been telling their new constituents that their plans would save them £300 on their energy bills – they said it in hustings, they said it on local media, they said it on their leaflets. But they will have noticed by now that their ministers are no longer saying that at all.
And this is the problem, when you get into government, and you speak in the house, you cannot use numbers for which you have no basis.”
This was met with laughter from the Labour benches. Coutinho continued:
They will learn this, they laugh, but their voters won’t forget that they made them that promise.”
She added:
They all know that their leadership has sold them down the river on this one, because the prime minister and the secretary of state know those savings cannot be delivered. In fact, their approach to energy will add huge costs to people’s bills.
That’s not us being evil Tories on this side of the house, that’s also the view of the European lead for Mitsubishi Power who said that Labour party plans would require a huge sacrifice from Brits.”
Former Conservative party chairman Richard Holden has said energy ministers have “refused to repeat this claim” that Labour’s clean energy plans will knock £300 off bills.
Holden told the Commons on Friday:
It’s been causing quite a lot of confusion in the national media over the last couple of days when Downing Street have been saying one thing, [energy minister Michael Shanks’] department have been saying another.”
The energy minister, Michael Shanks, replied:
I think it does take a bit of a brass neck to come here and talk about bringing down bills when the government that he supported for a long time saw those skyrocket.
We’ve been very clear, bills will come down, we said that throughout the campaign, we said that yesterday and we stand by that because bills must come down, but this isn’t going to happen overnight.”
Deirdre Costigan, Labour MP for Ealing Southall, asked the minister:
Would he agree with me that the party opposite have confused many of my residents with their support for public ownership but only if it is ownership by foreign governments of our energy infrastructure and not by the British government?”
Shanks told MPs:
There is a confusion at the heart of the Conservative party’s plans – they’ve been very happy now to hand over key parts of our national infrastructure to foreign governments for the profits go to the public in those countries, but ideologically opposed to any suggestion that the British taxpayer should have any stake in those futures.”
The SNP is heading towards the opposition benches at Holyrood if it does not address the internal “culture of hate”, Joanna Cherry has said, according to the PA news agency.
The former SNP MP, who lost her Edinburgh South West seat to Labour at the general election, said she will be stepping away from frontline politics to “reflect” on the future of her party.
Writing in The National, she issued a warning to SNP leader John Swinney: “The enormity of what happened to the SNP vote at the general election must not be ignored.”
I’ve decided to step back from frontline politics for a while. My last column for the @ScotNational sets out why. I remain a member of @theSNP & I hope the reflection & radical change that is needed will come but I want timeout. https://t.co/owcus6icl6
— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) July 25, 2024
The KC was one of 39 SNP politicians who lost their seat on 4 July, with just nine party MPs elected to Westminster.
She said:
The SNP need urgently to address what has gone wrong and what led to this huge drop in our vote, or we will suffer another rout at the 2026 Holyrood election.
I don’t sense any great appetite on the part of the leadership of the party to do this properly.”
She said she is not currently considering a Holyrood run herself, and warned: “Opposition is where the SNP are heading at present.”
Cherry has been one of the loudest internal critics of her party’s leadership in recent years, clashing with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon over gender reform laws in particular.
The PA news agency reports that in her final column for the pro-independence newspaper, Cherry said she will remain a member of the SNP but will do so from the background until the party addresses it “culture of hate”.
She said:
Unfortunately, a culture of hate against those who dare to disagree has been allowed to flourish in the SNP without anyone in authority having the courage to address it and it has poisoned our discourse and prevented proper debate.”
She said it is “profoundly depressing” to see where the party, and the pro-independence movement, has landed almost a decade after the Scottish referendum.
“The positivity is gone and some people within our movement feel they have licence to attack those with whom they disagree in the most unpleasant terms,” she said. “No wonder we are putting voters off.”
Cherry added:
Back in 2014 had I foreseen the level of abuse and harassment I would have to endure as an SNP MP, simply for daring to question the direction the party was taking, I would never have left my legal career to enter elected politics.”
However, she went on to say she did not “regret having done so for a moment”.
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Energy minister Michael Shanks said “it’s not good enough to bury your head in the sand” in relation to declining jobs in North Sea oil and gas.
He told the Commons on Friday:
We were very clear during the election that the future of the North Sea is incredibly important, that that future is a transition away from the oil and gas industries that you see at the moment.
And of course, what the previous government needs to recognise as well is that the North Sea is a declining basin.
We have lost thousands of jobs in that over the past decade and that will continue in the future unless we accelerate our transition in the North Sea to the clean energy jobs of the future.
It’s not good enough to just bury your head in the sand and pretend that this problem doesn’t exist. What we need is a plan to give people secure jobs for the future so that they are long term and sustainable. Not this idea that we can just carry on as business as usual.”
He added:
The whole point of GB Energy is to move us away from over reliance on gas. If we’re not relying on gas prices, we remove that risk to bills from the shocks that we get from the international markets of gas prices but we only do that if we invest in the clean energy of the future.”
Wes Streeting said that it is important to talk about the “enormous risks” of legalising assisted dying as parliament is due to debate the issue on Friday.
The health secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday:
I think this will end up being both an ethical debate – is this right in principle? And it will also go to being a practical debate – can this work in practice?”
He said he had watched some of his grandparents die “slowly and painfully” and that looking back:
I wish that choice had been available to them in their terminal illness but tempering that is a reflection that there are enormous risks.
He added:
Could someone be coerced and not just directly coerced, would someone feel that inner pressure, that inner voice that says, ‘I’m a burden to my family?’.
I would never want someone to choose to end their life through assisted dying feeling like they’re a burden on someone else.
Is palliative care in this country good enough so that that choice would be a real choice? Or would people end their lives sooner than they wish because palliative care, end of life care, isn’t as good as it could be?”
David Lammy met his Chinese counterpart during his visit to Laos, the Foreign Office said.
“They had a constructive first discussion and the foreign secretary outlined this government’s vision for a long-term, consistent and strategic approach to UK-China relations,” the department said.
He set out that the government would cooperate where we can, compete where needed and challenge where we must. He made clear the UK would always stand firm in prioritising our national security, as well as supporting human rights.
The foreign secretary welcomed the opportunity to work with a fellow member of the UN security council and the world’s second largest economy to combat global challenges like climate change.”
It added that Lammy had “underlined the UK’s ironclad commitment to Ukraine and urged China to prevent its companies supporting Russia’s military industrial complex which poses a material threat to international security and prosperity.”
“Both sides agreed to work towards building long-term communication channels.”
The cost of England’s four biggest killer diseases could rise to £86bn a year by 2050, prompting calls for a crackdown on alcohol, junk food and smoking.
The ageing population means the annual cost of cancer, heart disease, dementia and stroke combined will go from the £51.9bn recorded in 2018 to £85.6bn in 2050 – a rise of 61%.
The four conditions together account for 59% of all deaths and result in 5.1m years of life lost.
Experts say the findings, published in the Lancet Healthy Longevity journal, show that the new government must take determined action to improve the population’s health in order to stop the costs of ill-health becoming overwhelming.
Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “These projected costs should terrify the Treasury.”
As the number of over-65s increases in the coming years, the cost of dementia alone will double to £23.5bn, and the financial impact of strokes would rise by 85% to £16bn, the research found.
Similarly, the cost of heart disease would increase by 54% to £19.6bn and that of cancer – which is the costliest of the four conditions – by 40% to £26.5bn.
You can read the full story here:
Rachel Reeves should apologise for “misleading voters”, the leader of the SNP in Westminster has said as the chancellor is expected to announce there is a £20bn black hole in the public finances.
Stephen Flynn claimed the SNP had warned Labour’s plans would result in around £18bn in cuts or tax rises and that voters were “due a refund”.
“At minimum, you should apologise for misleading voters. If Labour’s election campaign was a product in a shop, voters would be due a refund for false advertising,” he said in a letter to the chancellor.
Flynn said:
More importantly, you must now come clean on where the axe will fall under your plans and whether you intend to cut public services, raise taxes or both – having previously denied you would do either.”
He added:
The excuses currently being lined-up will set alarm bells ringing that the Labour government plans to continue Tory cuts and public services will be starved of the cash they need – just as we have seen with the failure to scrap the two-child benefit cap this week.
The SNP is ready and willing to work in cooperation with the Labour government to deliver the change voters in Scotland were promised – but we also have a duty to stand up for Scotland’s interests and hold the Labour government to account where real change isn’t forthcoming.”
Wes Streeting said the UK is a “long way” from fixing the NHS with GPs “really struggling”.
“We’ve got unemployed GPs in our country at the moment, at the same time as people are struggling to access a GP,” the health secretary told BBC Breakfast.
“GPs are really struggling. They are struggling and patients are struggling to find and access GPs.”
He added:
It’s about making sure we fix the front door of the NHS so that people can see a GP when they need one and they get the right care in the right place at the right time. And we’re a long way from that situation today.”
Infected blood victims' families can apply for interim compensation from autumn
People who lost relatives from the infected blood scandal will be able to apply for interim compensation payments from the autumn, a minister has told the Commons, also reiterating the government’s commitment to enacting the findings of the report into what happened.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, who as paymaster general is a senior minister in the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for the compensation scheme, said this would help relatives who had not yet been able to receive support.
The plan was for interim payments of £100,000 to the estates of those who died due to being infected with contaminated blood or blood products, and whose deaths have not yet been recognised, he told MPs in a statement.
“Work is progressing to ensure these payments are made as soon as we are able to, and I’m pleased to confirm to the house today that applications for these payments will open in October and we will set out further details of this in due course,” he said.
Thus far, Thomas-Symonds said, about £1bn had been paid in compensation, out of an estimated £12bn due in total. While some relatives have worried ministers might hope to reduce the amount paid out due to the fiscal situation, Thomas-Symonds said the government was “committed to acting on the findings of the infected blood inquiry report to ensure swift resolution”.
He added: “We are also committed to working on a cross party basis and will work with others to deliver the compensation scheme and get final payments to victims as soon as possible.”
Updated
Rachel Reeves expected to reveal £20bn shortfall in public finances
Rachel Reeves is expected to reveal a £20bn hole in government spending for essential public services on Monday, paving the way for potential tax rises in the autumn budget.
Labour sources said the blame lay with the Tory government, describing it as a “shocking inheritance” and accusing the former chancellor of “presiding over a black hole and still campaigning for tax cuts”.
They pointed to spending concerns on the asylum system, welfare, defence and prisons. However, work is still being done on the audit and the final figure of £20bn could shift as officials examine the spending commitments of each department.
When Reeves sets out the findings of her Treasury audit on Monday, she will also announce the date of the spending review and the budget in October.
Experts expect she will be forced to announce tax changes in the budget, with options including capital gains or inheritance taxes and slashing other tax reliefs. Reeves has ruled out changes to income tax, VAT, national insurance and corporation tax – the largest revenue raisers.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, told business leaders this week that the public finances were “in the worst place since the second world war”.
A Labour source said:
On Monday, the British public are finally going to see the true scale of the damage the Conservatives have done to the public finances.
They spent taxpayers’ money like no tomorrow because they knew someone else would have to pick up the bill. It now falls to Labour to fix the foundations of our economy and that work has already begun.”
You can read the full story here:
Assisted dying bill to be introduced into House of Lords
Keir Starmer is under pressure to fulfil a promise to allow a parliamentary vote on legalising assisted dying as a bill is to be introduced into the House of Lords on Friday.
Lord Falconer, who was lord chancellor in Tony Blair’s government, will propose a private member’s bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill adults after coming second in a ballot of peers last week.
In March, Starmer said he was in favour of changing the law. He promised Esther Rantzen, the television presenter who has terminal cancer and is campaigning for assisted dying, that if he became prime minister he would ensure parliamentary time to debate the issue and allow a free vote. He repeated the pledge after winning the general election.
But some advocates for a change in the law fear that the prime minister may decide to wait for a private member’s bill to be introduced in the Commons. A ballot of MPs is due to be held in September.
Starmer was committed to ensuring parliamentary time for a bill on assisted dying, said Falconer. But a Commons bill was a “much more certain route” than a bill originating in the Lords.
There were “a number of MPs who are keen to take this issue forward” if they were successful in a ballot, he told the Guardian. “It’s a significant social reform and it has a really good chance of success. It would be a bill for which an MP would be remembered. It might not be my bill, but I just want to get this through. And there is a sense now that the stars are aligned and a bill will get through one way or another.”
Falconer’s bill would allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults to have the option of assisted dying alongside access to high-quality end-of-life care. The individual would need to meet strict eligibility criteria, be assessed by two independent doctors, and self-administer the medication if their request was approved.
You can read the full piece here:
Updated
Wes Streeting’s warning (see 9.49am BST) came after an interim report by the public care doctor Penny Dash found the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was plagued by low levels of physical inspections, a lack of consistency in assessments and problems with a faltering IT system.
Streeting has promised to “grip the crisis” at the CQC by taking immediate action to increase oversight of the body and give patients more confidence in their care.
He said:
How can you tolerate a situation where one in five of your health and care providers has not received a rating? How can you tolerate ratings being reached on the basis of only a partial inspection of the organisation, melded in with inspection reports dating back over a number of years?”
Streeting has announced four immediate steps the government and CQC will take to restore public confidence and give patients a more accurate picture, including recruiting a senior cancer doctor to review the body’s assessments.
Dash found that about a fifth of the locations the CQC had the power to inspect had never received a rating, while other organisations had not been reinspected for years. One inspection was about a decade old.
There was a lack of experience among inspectors, the report said, some of whom checked hospitals despite never having visited one before. Another inspector of a care home had never met a person with dementia.
Dash, who began her investigation in May, also found that social care providers were waiting too long for their registration and rating to be updated, with implications for local capacity.
You can read the full piece by Kiran Stacey and Pippa Crerar here:
Patients cannot trust CQC’s hospital safety ratings, says Wes Streeting
People should take what the Care Quality Commission (CQC) says “with a pinch of salt”, Wes Streeting has said.
The health secretary said he was “brutally honest” with the public before the election that problems with the NHS would “take time to fix”, but he had not anticipated that the regulator would have “failed to such an extent”.
Streeting told BBC Radio 5 Live:
I don’t think we need to manage the public’s expectations because to be fair to the public, whether it’s on the economy or the NHS or the other big challenges we’ve inherited, people know that they’re going to take time to fix. We were honest with people ahead of the election.”
He added: “I was brutally honest with people as the shadow health and social care secretary.”
On the problems faced by the NHS, he said: “It’s not going to be easy … things are worst than we expected.”
Asked whether he was saying that people should “not believe a word” of information they read on the CQC website, he said: “I’d say take it with a pinch of salt.”
Updated
Mel Stride has become the fourth Conservative MP to announce they are joining the race for the party’s leadership.
He told BBC Breakfast on Friday:
What we know from the general election is that we’re in a very, very difficult place as a party, and I worry about that because I care about my party and I care about my country.
We’ve substantially lost the trust of the British people and we’ve lost our reputation for competence, and I believe that I’m in a very good position to address those issues going forward.
In terms of trust, I think [the party] needs somebody who is going to be able to unite the party. People are not going to vote for a party that’s at each other’s throats all the time.
I am respected, I think, right across the parliamentary party. I was chair of the Treasury select committee, the leader of the House of Commons, all of those things are roles about bringing people together.”
Stride said he was “politically well placed” to unite the Tory parliamentary party. “My background is growing companies from scratch,” he told LBC. “I believe I have the right skills and approach to bring us to a point where we can get back into political contention.”
Stride retained his seat by just 61 votes at the general election.
You can read more on this story here:
Updated
Mel Stride becomes fourth Conservative MP to join party leadership race
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s latest UK politics live blog. I’m Amy and I’ll be bringing you updates today.
Mel Stride has become the fourth Conservative MP to announce they are joining the race for the party’s leadership.
The former work and pensions secretary told BBC Breakfast on Friday he has been “fully nominated” as a candidate, joining Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader.
Stride, the MP for Central Devon, said he believed he was the right person to “unite the party”.
Shadow communities secretary Kemi Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Sunak, and former home secretaries Suella Braverman and Priti Patel are expected to put themselves forward before nominations close at 2.30pm on Monday.
Meanwhile, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to share an update on a spending audit she ordered Treasury officials to produce. Her update will reveal “the true scale of the damage the Conservatives have done to the public finances”, a Labour source said, amid concerns over a black hole in the public finances of around £20bn.
In the House of Commons today, there will be a general debate on making Britain a clean energy superpower, while Keir Starmer is under pressure to fulfil a promise to allow a parliamentary vote on legalising assisted dying as a bill is to be introduced into the House of Lords on Friday.
Lord Falconer, who was lord chancellor in Tony Blair’s government, will propose a private member’s bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill adults after coming second in a ballot of peers last week.
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