End of day summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
Ministers have held talks about an alternative to Rishi Sunak’s plan to exonerate those wrongfully convicted in the Post Office Horizon scandal. No 10 insisted it was pressing ahead with the bill announced last month, which would immediately quash the convictions of hundreds of post office operators.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced further junior doctor strikes in England, from February 24 to 28. The union said the government had “failed to meet the deadline to put an improved pay offer on the table”.
More than 100,000 patients in England face having their NHS care cancelled this month due to the fresh wave of strike action. Health leaders expressed alarm, warning the five-day walkout would jeopardise all efforts to tackle the record waiting list and push other services to “breaking point”.
Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has spoken of receiving death threats after she was described by former Tory MP Nadine Dorries as aligned to a plot controlling the top of the Conservative party. Badenoch said death threats had intensified since the publication of Dorries’s book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson.
Rachel Reeves has defended Labour’s U-turn on its pledge to spend £28bn a year on green projects. The shadow chancellor blamed the Tories and the economic impact of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, as she told BBC Breakfast she would not “make any apologies” for fiscal responsibility.
Keir Starmer said he believes the British public “appreciate” Labour being “straight” about its plans for the economy, after the party announced a major U-turn on its green spending pledge.
Rishi Sunak again refused to apologise for his transgender jibe at Keir Starmer in the Commons this week, rebuffing calls from Peter Spooner, Brianna’s Ghey’s father, for him to say sorry. The prime minister, appearing on BBC Radio Somerset, rejected the idea he had been making a joke.
Brianna Ghey’s murder has “humanised the debate” around transgender people in her native Warrington, and stopped local Conservative politicians from using trans issues for “culture war” attacks, according to Brianna’s local Labour MP.
Rishi Sunak has published his personal tax return. The tax return shows that the prime minister paid more than half a million pounds in UK tax last year.
We are closing this liveblog now. Thanks so much for joining us.
Ed Miliband has insisted he did not consider resigning over Labour’s junking of its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green projects.
The shadow climate secretary, seen as a key proponent of the policy, said the party’s plans still meet his criteria of moving the dial on climate, PA News reports.
He was said to have argued strongly for sticking with the £28bn figure as the Labour leadership considered a U-turn.
But he publicly rowed in behind Keir Starmer as the Labour leader announced its axing.
Asked whether he thought about quitting over the issue, Miliband told Channel 4 News on Friday:
Absolutely not. Because the test I apply is are we going to go into the next election, if we’re the next government, am I going to be able to be the energy secretary who can genuinely say Britain is leading the world?
Britain is going to move the dial on climate and that is the test. That’s why I’m in frontline politics because I care so much about this cause and my test of what we’ve come up with is - does meet the criteria I have? And absolutely it does.
He argued Labour still has a “massive agenda to invest in the future of the country” and that he has a “responsibility” to “make a difference” should he become energy secretary.
He said:
The only thing I can do, the only right thing to do, is to fight for the maximum possible ambition. And to make sure that in government we can make a difference. I’m confident we can.
Rishi Sunak has published his personal tax return.
The tax return shows that the prime minister paid more than half a million pounds in UK tax last year.
Updated
Ministers discuss alternative plan to exonerate Post Office Horizon victims
Ministers have held talks about an alternative to Rishi Sunak’s plan to exonerate those wrongfully convicted in the Post Office Horizon scandal.
No 10 insisted it was pressing ahead with the bill announced last month, which would immediately quash the convictions of hundreds of post office operators.
But this week the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, and business minister, Kevin Hollinrake, held discussions about an alternative put forward by the judiciary, under which the courts would overturn wrongful convictions, a process likely to take much longer.
Some senior lawyers have expressed concerns that quashing convictions by statute sets a dangerous precedent by allowing parliament and politicians to overturn the decisions of courts. Critics also say it lumps together innocent and guilty.
At least three MPs and one peer were briefed by ministers about the details of the alternative option. A fourth MP was told by a senior minister that the government was examining a new approach.
The alternative plan would bundle together wrongful convictions and overturn them through the court system, according to four people briefed on the details. They all said the new plan would require some more limited legislation.
The fact that the judiciary has proposed an alternative demonstrates the concern among its members.
But Downing Street said the alternative route would not deliver swift justice to post office operators. A government spokesperson said:
The prime minister was clear – we will introduce primary legislation that will exonerate those impacted by the historic Horizon scandal.
A different government spokesperson said:
Ministers are absolutely committed to introducing new primary legislation to make sure that those prosecuted by the Post Office are swiftly exonerated.
Read more on this exclusive from my colleagues Eleni Courea and Pippa Crerar here:
My colleague Rowena Mason has the full story on Kemi Badenoch’s comments about Nadine Dorries in The Times.
Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has spoken of receiving death threats after she was described by former Tory MP Nadine Dorries as aligned to a plot controlling the top of the Conservative party.
Badenoch said death threats had intensified since the publication of Dorries’s book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, which claims a sinister cabal called “the movement” have “set out to control the destiny of the Conservative party” for 25 years.
In an interview with the Times, Badenoch said: “She [Dorries] thinks she’s just writing stuff, but people who have that kind of mindset latch on to it.
“If you get the unhelpful coalition of mental health issues and propensity to violence, then you read the Nadine Dorries conspiracy theory and decide you want to kill someone, it’s very, very nasty.”
Badenoch is a political ally of Michael Gove, who is portrayed by Dorries as part of the plot along with a Conservative aide, Dougie Smith, and former adviser Dominic Cummings.
However, the business secretary suggested in the interview that her friendship with Gove has suffered recently. “He did something that was very, very annoying,” she said. Asked whether it had ended their friendship, she said: “It’s not what it used to be, but he’s somebody I have to work with.”
The business secretary also complained that she is portrayed by Dorries as a puppet of Gove “as if I have no thoughts and no opinions of my own”, adding: “Like they’re saying, ‘She’s not that bright. It’s some man who is doing this.’”
In relation to the idea that she is manipulated by powerful men, Badenoch said her husband, Hamish, was more of an influence: “If there’s somebody who is doing that, wouldn’t it be the person who goes to bed with me every night and pays for my home and so on? Hamish is a huge influence on how I do things. Which I think is right, because this job affects his life.”
Read more here:
My colleagues Kiran Stacey and Eleni Courea have analysed Starmer’s plans to create a “bombproof” manifesto.
Labour has spent the past few weeks performing a series of U-turns on previously announced policies as it finalises its manifesto, culminating in Thursday’s announcement of a huge cut to its green spending plans.
Beyond the cuts to the £28bn annual spending pledge, party insiders have also let it be known they no longer intend to abolish the House of Lords, might reduce their planned tax on private equity profits and will not legislate to create a National Care Service.
All this is part of Starmer’s plans to create a “bombproof” manifesto, which he set out at the end of last year and is intended to ensure the party is ready in case the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, calls an election in May. That process reached its first major deadline on Thursday, but is likely to dominate much of the leadership’s thinking for several months to come.
“Part of the timing around today … is that all the shadow cabinet had to have their final proposals in today, fully funded, so that we can start putting them together for a manifesto,” Starmer told reporters on Thursday as he laid out the reasons for dropping the £28bn-a-year green plans.
A shadow minister added: “The [£28bn] green prosperity plan looked like a massive slush fund so it didn’t survive bomb-proofing.”
Starmer and his advisers have a sense of the main elements of the manifesto. The remaining green pledges, including a publicly owned energy supplier and a green sovereign wealth fund, remain. So does a set of proposals to strengthen trade union rights and employment protections known as the “new deal for working people” – despite pressure from corporate lobbyists to drop it.
More retail proposals will include a promise to set up free breakfast clubs in every primary school and to use money from taxing non-doms to train more nurses and midwives.
Read the full piece here:
Nadine Dorries has hit back at an interview Kemi Badenoch has given The Times, accusing the business secretary of ‘obsessing slightly’ over her book The Plot.
The former MP and author shared a screenshot of a small part of the interview where Badenoch claims Dorries suggested she ought to be running for mayor of London rather than as an MP, leaving her livid and feeling that Dorries was putting her back in her “urban” box and setting a cap on her ambition.
Dorries claims in a further tweet that it was not her suggestion that Badenoch run for London mayor but a party donor who was involved in the interview process for Mayoral candidates.
Kemi Baddenoch gives an interview in the Times today where she obsesses slightly about THE PLOT and makes this untrue claim. I’ll post the WhatsApp exchange next to prove it. pic.twitter.com/9wAoywk7cA
— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) February 9, 2024
Updated
Sinn Fein’s Stormont first minister Michelle O’Neill said her attendance at a police graduation ceremony “fulfils” her commitment to be first minister for all.
Speaking at the event in Belfast, O’Neill said:
It’s a great day for the six graduates who have now been attested this afternoon and I wish them the very best for their future career in policing.
I think it’s so important that our policing service reflects the diversity of our society that we have, so I wanted to be here and be part of wishing these new constables the very best in their journey.
I became first minister last Saturday. I said I would be a first minister for all and that includes these new constables who have graduated today. I also think it fulfils my commitment of being first minister for all.
When the invite came in for today, I wanted to be here because it is such an important time.
The government must increase fines on utility companies that dig up pavements for roadworks, then pour in concrete rather than fixing the mess, a government adviser has said.
Telecoms and water companies are creating “street scars” in a “wasteful process” that is marring British high streets, Nicholas Boys Smith, who chairs the Office for Place in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has said in a report.
He uses the term “street scars” to describe black or grey slabs of concrete that disfigure the paving of streets and pavements, examples of which can be seen all over the UK.
Boys Smith told the Guardian: “It’s a ridiculous and wasteful process. One set of workers turn up and ruin the road. And then, if you’re lucky, months later another set turn up and put it back together again.”
The government adviser, who runs the thinktank Create Streets, blamed the privatisation of utility companies for the number of street scars.
Keir Starmer called on the prime minister to resolve the dispute with junior doctors and end the strike.
He told broadcasters:
I don’t want these strikes to go ahead. I don’t think anybody who uses the NHS wants the strikes to go ahead, I don’t think the doctors want them to go ahead.
What I do want is for the government to get in the room and negotiate and bring this to an end.
Around Christmas time they were dancing around saying ‘well, there may be a deal but we won’t go in the room first’. I thought that was pathetic.
We now learn from officials that it is the prime minister himself who is personally blocking deals which could resolve this issue.
I think the public will be frustrated, bordering on angry now, with the prime minister for letting this drag on for so long. Resolve it.
Keir Starmer was pressed on Labour’s shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood’s claim that the party has seen a “loss of trust” from Muslim voters over its stance on the war in Gaza.
He told broadcasters:
I think everyone can see that the conflict in the Middle East has caused great concern across the country, and in the end I think we all want to see the same thing. The terrible terrorist attack on October 7 – 27,000 people now have been killed in Gaza – that’s intolerable, many of them children.
So we have to get to a ceasefire, a sustainable ceasefire, and that means stopping the fighting, creating the space for humanitarian aid to get in, which is desperately, desperately needed, getting the hostages out and creating the first step of the process, the only way this will be resolved, which is a two-state solution.
You can follow our liveblog on the Middle East crisis here:
Keir Starmer defended his decision to extend the windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
He told broadcasters:
What I have done is go to Aberdeen and talk to the oil and gas industry for a two-day intensive discussion about the transition that we want to make, which is going to have to be made. They know that, they’re investing a huge amount in renewables.
What they want is a government that is going to work with them on that transition and that is why the British jobs bonus is so important, because I want to ensure that as we transition we get the new jobs of the future and don’t lose any jobs.
So yes I’ve been having those discussions with them, very productive discussions, because I want to ensure that those jobs in Scotland are preserved and we add further jobs too.
Starmer says British public 'appreciate' Labour being 'straight' with them over major U-turn
Keir Starmer said he believes the British public “appreciate” Labour being “straight” about its plans for the economy, after the party announced a major U-turn on its green spending pledge.
Speaking on a trip to the West Midlands, the Labour leader said:
Every family knows that they’ve had to adjust their plans. We’ve now had to adjust our plans.
And I think the British public appreciate us being straight and saying because of the damage the Tories have done, we can’t now do everything that we wanted to do.
I would much rather be straight with the British public than make a promise I can’t keep.
Asked whether there was anything he could guarantee would be in the party manifesto come the election expected this year, Starmer said:
Since we announced the green prosperity plan, we’ve made a number of very important commitments to gigafactories, to tidal development, to Great British energy... national wealth fund... all of the commitments I’ve made on outcomes, they all remain, and they’re fully costed.
He added:
What we’re not going to do is make further announcements of further investment. Everything we’ve announced so far... all of that remains.” about its plans for the economy, after the party announced a major U-turn on its green spending pledge.
Updated
Raising the state retirement age to 71 would condemn millions of middle-aged people to misery as they get older, Britain’s biggest independent organisation of older people and a former pensions minister have said.
The National Pensioners Convention (NPC), which represents more than 1.15 million members, said the proposals “in no way reflects the harsh reality of getting older in the UK”.
The general secretary, Jan Shortt, said: “These proposals will affect everyone currently in their early-50s and younger, and will considerably add to the one in four pensioners already living in poverty. They will condemn even more people to a miserable retirement, as well as increasing pressure on already struggling public services.”
Shortt said the proposals favoured only higher-income groups because although the number of people living longer had been increasing, the number of those living with ill-health – and therefore not able to work longer – was also rising.
She said:
Making those already living with ill-health wait even longer to claim their pension will only increase poverty and the demand on already-creaking services, such as health and care.
Ros Altmann, the former pensions minister, agreed.
She said:
Raising the state pension age to 71 should be unconscionable. Only the top 10% of the UK population stay healthy into their early 70s, so cutting costs by making unwell workers wait longer, favours the well-pensioned, higher paid.
Chronological age is too inflexible as a unique criterion of eligibility for a state pension, which is part of every worker’s social contract. In addition, neither the NHS nor the UK labour market are prepared for this policy – the former because of the big health differentials across the country and the second, because it is rife with ageism.
Read the full story here:
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said Rishi Sunak bears responsibility for the latest planned strike by junior doctors.
He said:
Rishi Sunak is personally blocking a deal with the junior doctors.
He bears responsibility for the cancelled operations and appointments desperate patients will face once again.
This can’t go on. Patients are desperate and staff are worn out.
If the Conservatives have given up on governing, they should step aside so Labour can get the NHS back on its feet.
Rishi Sunak has criticised local councils for putting up council tax too much, even as authorities struggle to cope with funding shortfalls that have left several on the brink of bankruptcy.
The prime minister criticised councils in England for requesting permission to raise council tax by more than 5% as they look to balance their budgets amid a national crisis in local authority funding.
Council leaders looking to raise tax by more than the 5% cap either have to be granted permission from central government or hold a local referendum on doing so. Bedfordshire is the only council ever to have held such a referendum, holding a vote in 2015 in which local residents rejected the idea of higher tax rates.
This week the government granted permission to a series of councils to raise taxes by more than the 5% cap, including Thurrock, Woking, Slough and Birmingham. Ministers refused to allow Somerset to do the same, however, as council leaders there look to close a £100m budget deficit.
Sunak told BBC Radio Somerset:
It’s important that councils manage the cost of living for their residents, and councils that are asking the government to just allow them to whack in incredibly high council tax rises – [that] is not right.
We can strike the balance between councils raising the money they need, but making sure they don’t unnecessarily burden people.
Read more here:
Junior doctors in England to strike again after pay talks break down
Junior doctors are to stage fresh strike action in England for a 10th time after talks between their union and the government broke down again.
Ministers, health officials and representatives from the British Medical Association (BMA) had been locked in negotiations for weeks since last month’s record six-day stoppage, trying to find a resolution to the pay dispute.
But the Guardian understands a last-ditch meeting on Thursday between Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, and the BMA failed to result in any immediate solution to end the stoppages. As a result, the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee has voted unanimously for another five days of strikes this month.
Junior doctors in England will strike from 7am on 24 February to midnight on 28 February.
The decision was announced a day after the latest NHS figures revealed that 7.6m health treatments were waiting to be carried out in England at the end of December, relating to 6.37 million patients.
The announcement from the BMA will alarm medical leaders and NHS bosses, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating health of many of those stuck on waiting lists.
The Guardian revealed last month a warning from health officials that thousands of cancer patients could die early if ministers and junior doctors did not urgently resolve their bitter pay row.
On Thursday, the latest performance statistics showed more than a third of cancer patients in England were facing potentially deadly delays, with thousands of people forced to wait months to begin treatment.
Earlier this week Rishi Sunak was accused of personally holding up a deal to end doctors’ strikes despite warnings from the health department and NHS England that waiting lists would continue to soar unless the dispute was resolved.
Read the full story here:
Junior doctors 'not ready to be reasonable', says health secretary
The planned strike action by junior doctors shows that they are not “ready to be reasonable,” Victoria Atkins has said.
In a statement, the health and social care secretary said:
I want to find a reasonable solution that ends strike action. This action called by the BMA junior doctor committee does not signal that they are ready to be reasonable.
We already provided them with a pay increase of up to 10.3% and were prepared to go further. We urged them to put an offer to their members, but they refused. We are also open to further discussions on improving doctors’ and the wider workforce’s working lives.
I want to focus on cutting waiting times for patients rather than industrial action. We have been making progress with waiting lists falling for three months in a row.
Five days of action will put enormous pressure on the NHS and is not in the spirit of constructive dialogue. To make progress I ask the Junior Doctors Committee to cancel their action and come back to the table to find a way forward for patients and our NHS.
Updated
BMA junior doctors’ committee co-chairs Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi said in a statement:
We have made every effort to work with the government in finding a fair solution to this dispute whilst trying to avoid strike action.
Even yesterday, we were willing to delay further strike action in exchange for a short extension of our current strike mandate.
Had the health secretary agreed to this, an act of good faith on both sides, talks could have gone ahead without more strikes. Sadly, the government declined.
The glacial speed of progress with the government is frustrating and incomprehensible.
The health secretary was quite clear in media interviews during our last action that she would meet us ‘in 20 minutes’ when no strikes were planned. She also made clear that she had a further offer to make.
It turned out to be more than 20 days before we were offered a meeting with a minister. When we did it wasn’t with the Health Secretary, and there was no offer on the table.
Time has been lost that could have been used to negotiate with us, or at least with the Treasury and the prime minister for the mandate to make a credible offer.
From the very start of the industrial action, we have been clear that there is no need for strike action as long as substantial progress is made, and we remain willing to carry on talking and to cancel the forthcoming strikes if significant progress is made and a credible offer is put forward.
The BMA said the new round of strikes would be the last on their current mandate with members but “we are already balloting for six months more”.
Junior doctors to strike in England again from 24-28 February
The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced further junior doctor strikes in England, from February 24 to 28.
The union said the government had “failed to meet the deadline to put an improved pay offer on the table,” PA News reports.
It added:
In a show of goodwill, the BMA provided the Health Secretary with an option to delay further strike action.
She was asked to extend the current strike mandate for a short period - and thus allow talks to continue with the aim to achieve a resolution for this year’s dispute.
Disappointingly, she declined to agree to extending the mandate.
The BMA said the strikes could still be called off “if a credible offer is made”.
Updated
Kemi Badenoch says death threats have 'intensified' since publication of Nadine Dorries book
Kemi Badenoch has said she has received more death threats since the release of The Plot, Nadine Dorries explosive book on the downfall of Boris Johnson.
In The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, Dorries put forward elaborate conspiracies about those at the top of government and claimed a sinister cabal called “the movement” have “set out to control the destiny of the Conservative party” for 25 years.
Badenoch made the comments in a profile interview with The Times. While being interviewed, the business secretary showed journalist Janice Turner a phone message from her Westminster office manager reporting a death threat to the police.
These threats have intensified, she said.
She [Dorries] thinks she’s just writing stuff, but people who have that kind of mindset latch on to it.
If you get the unhelpful coalition of mental health issues and propensity to violence, then you read the Nadine Dorries conspiracy theory and decide you want to kill someone, it’s very, very nasty.
She pointed out that Dorries, who blames Badenoch for abetting the downfall of Johnson when she resigned as cabinet minister, claimed in The Plot that the minister is being manoeuvred by powerful men and portrays her as a puppet of Michael Gove.
“As if I have no thoughts and no opinions of my own,” Badenoch said, complaining that her best speeches are attributed to him. “Like they’re saying, ‘She’s not that bright. It’s some man who is doing this.’”
Updated
Scotland’s hospitals have experienced “a significant fall in productivity” despite record spending and staffing levels, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned, and are making slow progress to recover from the Covid pandemic.
A new IFS analysis has found Scotland’s NHS, which is run by the devolved government in Edinburgh, handled 8% fewer elective patients, 8% fewer outpatient appointments and 21% fewer emergency admissions in the second quarter of 2023 compared to pre-pandemic.
That was despite Scottish health spending being 10% higher in real terms, with 9% more hospital consultants and 6% more nurses, than in 2019. The number of people on elective waiting lists has leapt by 87% since the start of the pandemic.
While England’s NHS has worse A&E and elective waiting times, its staffing and spending levels are increasing faster and its recovery from the Covid crisis has been faster. In the first half of 2023, England’s hospitals provided 4% more outpatient appointments than in 2019, while Scotland’s delivered 6% fewer.
NHS funding in England is also growing at a far greater rate, comparatively, closing the gap on per capita spending. At the start of devolution, Scotland spent 22% more than England; in 2019, the gap was 3%.
These findings raise questions about Scottish government rhetoric around NHS reform. Humza Yousaf, the first minister, and former health secretary, hit back at Scottish Labour revelations in Holyrood yesterday that 12,000 died waiting for ambulances or emergency treatment in Scotland last year by asserting spending and staffing were at an all-time high.
Max Warner, a co-author of the IFS study, said cuts in bed numbers, sicker patients and continuing Covid hospitalisations contributed to the situation.
He said:
Without a substantial boost to hospital productivity, there is a risk that even additional funding and staffing will not bring the Scottish NHS back to pre-pandemic performance.
Brianna Ghey’s murder has “humanised the debate” around transgender people in her native Warrington, and stopped local Conservative politicians from using trans issues for “culture war” attacks, according to Brianna’s local Labour MP.
Charlotte Nichols, elected to parliament in Warrington North in 2019, said:
Most people haven’t necessarily met a trans person. And I think what happened to Brianna really gave people someone that they identify with and made them think about some of these issues with an actual human being.
Nichols said the discussion about transgender identities was “very abstract” for most people, but that her constituents had collectively grieved for a transgender girl and learned that being trans “isn’t something that’s bad or scary”.
She added:
It has really humanised the debate.
The MP said her local Conservative opponents would now not dream of following the lead of Rishi Sunak, who joked at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday that Keir Starmer could not define a woman. Sunak has refused to apologise for the jibe, made as Brianna’s mother was sitting in the public gallery with Nichols.
Nichols said:
I did previously find myself getting flak from local opposition parties if I raised LGBT issues. They would say, ‘this isn’t important’ or ‘you’re woke’ or whatever, the usual nonsense. That is not a thing that is said any more. It would be seen as being hurtful to Brianna’s family and her friends.
She noted that while she was mocked by some in the national media for a recent parliamentary question about trans people, the local Warrington Guardian reported it supportively.
Nichols asked the minister for women and equalities to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to allow transgender people who are deceased to be legally remembered by the gender they lived by.
The MP said Brianna’s parents, Esther Ghey and Peter Spooner, had set a powerful example by being so open about their love for their daughter, who transitioned when she was 14.
Read the full story here:
Updated
Sunak says Labour 'absolutely don't have a plan' after their U-turn on green pledge
Rishi Sunak has mocked Labour as having no plan, after Keir Starmer dropped the party’s £28 billion environmental pledge, PA reports.
He said:
I think what Labour announced yesterday just demonstrates what we’ve been saying - they absolutely don’t have a plan.
Their signature economic policy is in tatters, and when you don’t have a plan, you can’t deliver any change for the country.
In contrast, our plan is working. If you look at what’s happening with the economy, inflation has come down from 11% to 4%.
Mortgage rates are starting to come down, wages are rising and, because of that, we’ve been able to start cutting people’s taxes.
So someone earning £35,000 getting a tax cut of £450 kicked in in January, that shows that when you have a plan, you can make a difference.
And if we stick to our plan, I can give everyone that peace of mind that the future is going to be better.
And as we saw yesterday, the alternative is the Labour Party who have no plan and that means no change and just going back to square one.
Updated
Rishi Sunak was grilled on potholes and the lack of NHS dental care during an appearance on BBC Radio Devon.
The prime minister, who is on a visit to the South West, brushed off criticism of his dental recovery plan from the British Dental Association (BDA), telling the station:
Everyone will have their views, I’m confident that it will make a difference.
It’s a significant amount of money. It’s two-and-a-half million appointments, which will take us back to pre-Covid levels.
On Thursday, the BDA said the government’s recovery plan was “unworthy of the title”, stating nothing in it can meet the government’s stated objectives of providing NHS care to all who need it, or the prime minister’s pledge to “restore” NHS dentistry.
Pressed on claims government funding to fix potholes is only a “drop in the ocean”, Sunak said:
Well, I think the numbers I’ve got show that it’s growing next year. And that’s why we have to make priorities and decisions right.
Obviously, I think everyone knows there isn’t a bottomless pit for these things.
Updated
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has hinted at plans to launch a tax-free “British Isa” investing in UK company shares at the spring budget, as part of efforts to revive the country’s stock market.
A British stock Isa would allow investors to buy a certain amount of UK company shares, without paying tax. Currently, the government charges a 0.5% tax, known as the share purchase stamp duty, for any shares bought in the UK.
It comes as Hunt tries to find cost-free announcements that could help win over voters and businesses as the Tories lag well behind Labour in the polls before a much-anticipated general election.
The incentive, which some expected Hunt to announce as part of the autumn statement last November, could also complement government plans to sell shares in NatWest – which is still 38.6% government owned since its 2008 taxpayer bailout – to retail investors later this year.
Read more here:
Rishi Sunak again refuses to apologise for trans jibe at Keir Starmer, despite request from Brianna Ghey's father
Rishi Sunak again refused to apologise for his transgender jibe at Keir Starmer in the Commons this week, rebuffing calls from Peter Spooner, Brianna’s Ghey’s father, for him to say sorry.
Brianna, 16, was lured to a park in Cheshire and murdered in February last year. Last Friday, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both 16, were jailed for at least 22 and 20 years respectively. Ratcliffe was found to have been partly motivated by hostility to Brianna’s transgender identity.
Sunak is under continued pressure to apologise for making a joke at the expense of transgender people at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, just after he was told by the Labour leader, Starmer, that Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, was in the public gallery.
The prime minister, appearing on BBC Radio Somerset, rejected the idea he had been making a joke.
He told the station:
That is not what I did, it is wrong to say that.
What happened was a tragedy and using that to try and detract from the completely separate and very clear point I was making about Keir Starmer and his proven track record of U-turning on multiple policy issues because he doesn’t have a plan.
Updated
Rachel Reeves defends Labour's green investment U-turn
Rachel Reeves has defended Labour’s U-turn on its pledge to spend £28bn a year on green projects.
In a move that prompted an angry response from environmental groups, unions and some in the energy sector yesterday, Keir Starmer and Reeves jointly announced they would slash the green prosperity plan to under £15bn – only a third of which would be new money.
The shadow chancellor blamed the Tories and the economic impact of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, as she told BBC Breakfast she would not “make any apologies” for fiscal responsibility.
I’ll make no apologies for ensuring that our plan is fully costed, fully funded and deliverable within the inheritance we’re going to get.
It is going to be a bleak inheritance after the damage the Conservatives have done to our economy.
She said:
In the almost three years that I’ve been shadow chancellor, I think people have heard loud and clear from me that fiscal responsibility, economic responsibility, are the most important things for me because it is absolutely essential that the public finances are managed well.
And when economic circumstances change, your plans have to change as well.
In case you missed it, here’s the full story on that U-turn:
I will be looking after the politics blog today. If you have any tips or questions, please get in touch: nicola.slawson@theguardian.com.
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