Summary of the day
From the “mortgage catastrophe” to Jeremy Hunt’s revelations from the government’s pandemic preparedness, there’s been plenty going on in Westminster. Here are the key points:
Polling suggested that most people wrongly think Rishi Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation would either mean prices going down (32%) or staying the same (31%). Only 23% said that this still meant prices would go up. Later in the day, Downing Street claimed the government is still on course to meet its target of halving inflation by the end of the year.
At the Ukraine recovery conference this morning Sunak gave a speech saying “Russia must pay for the destruction that they’ve inflicted”.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, wrote to Sunak urging him to scrap controversial legislation to address the legacy of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Later in the day, Ireland said it would consider taking legal action against the UK if parliament passes the Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill.
In PMQs, Keir Starmer said the cost of the Tory mortgage penalty is an extra £2,900 a year. Sunak replied that interest rates are at similar levels in Canada and the US and Australia and New Zealand, adding that the government has a plan to reduce inflation. The Guardian’s political correspondent, Andrew Sparrow, opined that Starmer won in the exchange, noting that he was “on very strong ground today because he devoted all his questions to what he called the Tory ‘mortgage catastrophe’”.
Jeremy Hunt appeared before the Covid-19 inquiry, where he dropped several bombshells, including that quarantining people sooner “might have avoided” the first coronavirus lockdown, the UK did not sufficiently learn from the experiences of Asian nations which had dealt with virus outbreaks, and that pandemic preparation exercises had “too narrow a focus”, only considered mitigation rather than prevention, and did not “ask the right questions”.
Mark Walport, David Cameron’s chief scientific adviser who also appeared before the Covid-19 inquiry, warned him in 2013 that the UK’s assessment of risks, including from pandemics, was not being used properly to prevent and mitigate dangers and was being kept too secret.
Labour insisted it still wants to abolish the House of Lords despite planning to swell its size with new peers in order to push through policy if it forms a government.
Suella Braverman rejected calls to move responsibility for the Windrush compensation scheme from the Home Office, with the home secretary saying it would cause “delay and needless bureaucracy”.
More than 1m households across Britain are expected to lose at least 20% of their disposable incomes thanks to the surge in mortgage costs expected before the next election.
Downing Street declined to say whether Shaun Bailey, the former London mayoral candidate for the Conservatives, should take up the peerage given to him in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours after a video emerged of him taking part in a mid-lockdown Christmas party.
Thanks for following today. Andrew Sparrow will be back tomorrow morning to update you on all the political news of the day.
Updated
Senior MPs have backed calls for the Foreign Office to do more to help a British citizen jailed for 25 years in Russia for opposing its invasion of Ukraine.
PA reports:
British-Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April after he was convicted of high treason by a Moscow court.
Kara-Murza has already survived two poisoning attempts by Russian agents, and has developed a medical condition which has deteriorated during his imprisonment to the point where he has lost feeling in his feet and one of his arms.
Evgenia Kara-Murza, his wife, now fears that he will die if he is not released from prison and has called for more action from the British government.
Her calls have received cross-party support from MPs, including members of the foreign affairs committee Sir Chris Bryant of Labour and the Conservatives Bob Seely and Alicia Kearns, the committee’s chair.
Updated
Ministers may be bringing in political “super-spads” through the backdoor by putting them on the boards of Whitehall departments, a leading committee of MPs has found, as it called for an overhaul of appointment rules, writes Rowena Mason, the Guardian’s Whitehall editor.
The public administration and constitutional affairs committee, led by William Wragg, the Conservative MP, called for new guidance to prevent “personal and political” friends of ministers being installed as non-executive directors of government departments.
It launched its inquiry into civil service boards a year after Matt Hancock was found to have appointed Gina Coladangelo, an unpaid adviser, to the board of the Department of Health and later started an affair with her. The committee said it was “difficult not to question her independence in this role”.
Updated
The Guardian’s political correspondent, Kiran Stacey, has the full report on Labour’s plan to appoint dozens of peers to the House of Lords if it wins the next election, despite promising to abolish the upper chamber altogether.
Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, said Labour’s priority would be to get legislation through parliament if it won the next election, even if that meant increasing the size of an institution it had promised to scrap.
The party has come under fire from some, including the Scottish National party, who have accused it of hypocrisy, given the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has previously warned about peerages being handed to “lackeys and donors”.
Smith told Times Radio on Wednesday:
There are 90 more Conservatives than Labour [members]. The priority for Keir will be ensuring he gets the Labour programme through.
[Starmer] is looking for people who are interested in doing a job of work, or from a particular area of expertise. When we see appointments from Keir, that is the kind of criteria he will be using.
Updated
Speaking to the Covid-19 inquiry, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis made it impossible to boost NHS funding sooner to better prepare for the pandemic.
The Chancellor admitted feeling “concerned” about the “fragility” of the NHS and Social Care systems after Exercise Cygnus in 2016 and announced an increase in funding in June 2018.
Asked whether this funding announcement was too close to the pandemic to address problems in the NHS, he said:
When I arrived NHS budget was £101 billion; when I left it was £124 billion. That was negotiation for an additional £33 billion.
As a country, we had very fragile finances in 2010 following the global financial crisis, and we had to do some work in order to get ourselves in a position where we could afford the big increase that I negotiated in 2018.
I don’t think it would have been possible to negotiated that increase any earlier because I don’t think the funding existed to do so.
The’s some reaction to the Institute for Fiscal Studies report, which warns that interest rate rises could mean that 1.4 million mortgage holders lose at least a fifth of their disposable income.
Speaking in parliament, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said:
We will not hesitate in our resolve to support the Bank of England as it seeks to strangle the inflation in the economy – and the best policy is to stick to our plan to halve it.
But I also want to make sure we do everything possible to help families paying higher mortgage rates in ways that do not themselves feed inflation.
So later this week I will be meeting the principal mortgage lenders to ask what help they can give to people struggling to pay for more expensive mortgages and what flexibilities might be possible for families in arrears.
Tom Wernham, a research economist at IFS and an author of the report, said:
Many families bought homes – often with sizeable mortgages – when interest rates were very low. As people’s fixed-term offers come to an end, they are going to be exposed to much higher interest rates.
For many, the increase in monthly repayments is going to come as a serious shock – on average it will be equivalent to seeing their disposable income fall by around 8.3%.
And for 1.4 million mortgage holders – half of whom are under 40 – mortgage payments are set to rise by an eye-watering 20% of disposable income or more.
The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Pat McFadden, said:
With inflation staying high and these new warnings that the Tory mortgage penalty will continue to painfully squeeze family finances, it’s clear this government can’t fix these problems because they are the problem.
Instead of squabbling over peerages and parties and ruling out any action on mortgages, the Tories should be taking responsibility and acting now.
Updated
Hunt says quarantining people sooner 'might have avoided' the first lockdown
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said quarantining people sooner “might have avoided” the first coronavirus lockdown.
He said:
If there was one thing that could have slowed the progress of Covid when it actually arrived, it was to understand the importance of early quarantining to stop the disease spreading, and to understand there are types of pandemic where it is worth putting a massive amount of effort into slowing the spread.
One of the very first [uestions] we should have been asking ourselves is: ‘Is this one of those pandemics that you can actually slow and save lives early on or not?’ And I don’t think we had asked those questions.
The chancellor added that lockdown in the UK didn’t happen until March 2020, adding:
In that period, transmission had increased to about 5,000 a day, and then it was inevitable that you were going to have to use a lockdown. Had we got on the case much earlier with that approach, we might have avoided that.
Updated
The government should have looked to Asian nations to deal with the pandemic
The UK did not sufficiently learn from the experiences of Asian nations which had dealt with virus outbreaks, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, told the Covid-19 inquiry.
Hunt said:
I think there was a groupthink that we knew this stuff best and there was a sense, with perhaps the exception of the United States, that there wasn’t an enormous amount we could learn from other countries.
And certainly, this is with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think people were really registering particularly Korea as a place we could learn from. I think it is very notable that Korea did not have a lockdown in the first year of the pandemic. They avoided a lockdown at all.
And what I think is interesting is that the reason they had that superb response — in the second half of the pandemic, quite a lot of east Asian countries didn’t do very well because they didn’t get their vaccines out as quickly as we did here — but in that first year I don’t think there was any doubt that places like Taiwan and Korea did incredibly well.
Updated
The government did not ask 'the right questions' in pandemic preparation
Speaking at the Covid-19 public inquiry, Jeremy Hunt suggested the government had “too narrow a focus” when preparing for a pandemic as part of Exercise Cygnus in 2016.
Speaking about the exercise, Hunt, who was health secretary between 2012 and 2018, told the inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC:
We didn’t ask the other question which was: what can we do to stop it getting to that point where 200-400,000 people have died?
I don’t think we were asking the right questions. What we should have done is thought much more widely about the question. I think that operation had a very narrow focus, a too narrow focus.
He added that there was not “nearly enough thought” put into preparing Britain for a pandemic not based on flu.
He said:
There was another assumption that we were very good at dealing with pandemics. We all thought it.
By the way, it wasn’t just us. Johns Hopkins University in America said that the UK was the second-best prepared country in the world in the global health security index in 2019.
They had subcategories and one of their subcategories was which countries were best prepared for preventing the spread of a virus and scaling up treatment quickly, and we were top. We weren’t second best, we were top.
And so there was I think a completely wrong assumption and I think the truth is we were very well prepared for pandemic flu because we had put a lot of thinking into it. Exercise Cygnus was a huge thing.
But we hadn’t given nearly enough thought to other types of pandemic that might emerge and that was, with the benefit of hindsight, a wholly mistaken assumption.
Updated
The Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Robert Booth, has the full report on this morning at the Covid-19 public inquiry:
David Cameron’s chief scientific adviser warned him in 2013 that the UK’s assessment of risks, including from pandemics, was not being used properly to prevent and mitigate dangers and was being kept too secret, the inquiry has heard.
Professor Sir Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser until 2017, wrote to the then PM about his concerns, and told the inquiry that the national risk assessment “was locked in departmental safes most of the time and I felt that that wasn’t the most effective way”.
“The whole point of [a] risk assessment is that you will be able to use it to see if you can stop something happening in the first place,” he said. “If it is going to happen – to mitigate your numbers, reduce its effects.”
Walport, a member of the prime minister’s council for science and technology until 2020, backed calls from Oliver Letwin, the former Cabinet Office minister, for the creation of a new post of minister for resilience.
Updated
Labour has insisted it still wants to abolish the House of Lords despite planning to swell its size with new peers in order to push through policy if it forms a government.
PA reports:
Keir Starmer’s spokesman said he was standing by the pledge to get rid of the upper house in the first term of a Labour administration, but said there could be “interim reforms”.
Under the current makeup, Labour would need 90 more peers to surpass the Tories’ 263 members and become the largest party in the upper house.
The party conceded that it may take more than one term to shift the balance but said it still wants to replace the “indefensible” Lords with a new elected chamber in a first term.
Starmer’s spokesman said:
Every government when they first come into power do not have a majority within the House of Lords because of the nature of the appointments process.
And every government as a matter of custom and practice looks to make appointments to the House of Lords but it’s not something that’s done in one fell swoop, it’s something that takes time and often takes more than a term in government for that to happen.
That reform of the House of Lords will be in the first term of a Labour government.
He said new Labour peers would be expected to back abolition, with the full details of the policy to be set out ahead of the next general election.
Updated
There’s more from the Covid-19 inquiry today as Jeremy Hunt makes his appearance.
The chancellor said that Exercise Cygnus, which was designed to assess the UK’s preparedness and response to an influenza pandemic, should have focused more on prevention, rather than assuming that “you pretty much couldn’t stop it”.
Hunt, who was health secretary between 2012 and 2018, said the cross-government exercise in October 2016 was not to examine the UK’s preparedness but to “establish how well the UK would cope in a situation in which pandemic influenza had already taken hold”.
He told the inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC:
I know you may well want to talk about the issue of groupthink, but I think this was the first example.
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight – this was not what I thought at the time and I, with retrospect of course – I wish I had challenged at the time.
But there were no questions asked at any stage as to how do we stop it getting to the stage of 200-400,000 fatalities.
It was an assumption that if there was pandemic flu, it would spread, using layman’s terms ‘like wildfire’, and you pretty much couldn’t stop it.
Updated
Suella Braverman has rejected calls to move responsibility for the Windrush compensation scheme from the Home Office, saying it would cause “delay and needless bureaucracy”.
PA reports:
The scheme, set up in the wake of a scandal in which many British citizens were wrongly detained or deported, has been criticised, while the process of handling claims and offering payouts has been branded slow and inefficient.
But the home secretary said changes had been made to simplify the scheme for users, and maintained it should be kept under the Home Office remit.
In an interview with ITV News as Britain prepares to mark the Windrush 75th anniversary, she said:
It’s right that the Home Office maintain ownership over the scheme because to do otherwise would cause delay and needless bureaucracy.
Campaigners and a lawyer who has helped claimants over the years have argued that people do not have faith in the Home Office, and said it is inappropriate to have the “perpetrators” of the scandal running the compensation scheme.
Meanwhile, Age UK has said the scheme is letting down older people with “increasing numbers dying before ever receiving the compensation they are due”.
Updated
The government has accused peers of trying to delay strike reforms that unions fear will make it easier to sack workers.
The House of Lords had made a series of amendments to the strikes (minimum service levels) bill aimed at protecting workers and trade unions, requiring the government to consult further and conduct an impact assessment on the changes.
But today, the House of Commons overturned the amendments after pleas from the government frontbench to allow the bill to become law.
The bill would allow ministers to impose minimum levels of service during industrial action by ambulance staff, firefighters, railway workers and those in other sectors deemed essential.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called for an “urgent rethink” by ministers and warned that the bill, if not amended, will mean that workers who lawfully vote to strike could be forced to attend work or be sacked if they do not comply.
Peers have been trying to amend the bill to ensure workers cannot be sacked if they fail to comply with a work notice on strike days.
But MPs rejected the Lords amendment aimed at ensuring this protection 277 to 209, majority 68.
Peers’ attempts to ensure the government consult further on the bill and conduct an impact assessment were rejected by MPs 283 to 205, majority 78.
A series of amendments from the Lords aimed at ensuring unions are not tasked with ensuring their members obey work notices were also overturned. MPs rejected them 280 to 214, majority 66.
Business minister Kevin Hollinrake said the amendments from peers were not a “meaningful attempt” to reach agreement, adding:
I fear we are having a somewhat repetitive debate which is delaying us from getting on with the important business of minimising disruption to the public during periods of strike action.
Justin Madders, Labour’s shadow business minister, said the Lords were attempting to make the bill “slightly less draconian”, adding that Labour opposes the legislation as a whole.
He said:
This bill is the act of a weak government that has lost the authority and the will to govern for everyone, a government that prefers legislation to negotiation, prefers diversion to resolution and prefers confrontation to consultation.
The proposals are currently in the stage of the parliamentary process known as ping-pong, in which the unelected Lords and the Commons send the bill back and forth until they can agree the final wording.
Updated
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has said the UK would be “very supportive” of Ukraine being allowed to skip part of the process for joining Nato.
Speaking at a press conference at the Ukraine recovery conference in London, he said:
We have seen Ukraine evolve, and evolve incredibly quickly.
Jens Stoltenberg at the Nato informal foreign ministers (summit) said that actually, many of the requirements of membership action plan are actually being delivered.
The reform of their armed forces is happening while engaged in conflict.
I think the UK’s position would be very, very supportive if we moved on from the membership action plan recognising that the offer to both Sweden and Finland didn’t require that and Ukrainians have demonstrated their commitment to reform the military for requirement of Nato membership through their actions on the battlefield.
And I think all Nato allies recognise that.
Also unveiled at the conference was a pledge from the UK to offer new virtual-reality (VR) training for at-sea Ukrainian cadets as part of a new package of support.
The government said the training would be provided through VR headsets to help participants practise for real-life scenarios.
Ukrainians will also be sponsored to take part in three-year cadetships to UK container ships and other large vessels.
The Department for Transport will also support secondments for Ukraine’s air traffic controllers to train in the UK, with the latest funding following on from £10m previously announced to help repair Ukraine’s rail infrastructure.
Updated
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, has said he was reassured during his time in the Cabinet Office that the UK was in a “pretty strong state of preparedness” for any future pandemic.
Speaking to the Covid-19 inquiry, he said that preparations for a no-deal Brexit put the country in a “strong position” to respond to other challenges.
Dowden, who was minister for the Cabinet Office from July 2019 to February 2020 and had previously worked in the department, said he had taken an interest in planning, including for a possible flu pandemic.
He said:
I asked for further specific briefing on that – received that briefing – and indeed, throughout my time as a minister, received further briefings, all of which were consistent with advice that we were broadly in a pretty strong state of preparedness.
Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Dowden about a 2019 memo about the national security council THRC – threats, hazards and resilience contingencies programmes – which suggested that work on pandemic influenza was expected to be affected by the “step-up in planning for a no-deal exit from the European Union”.
Dowden said:
We had to ensure that we allocated resources according to where the greatest risk lay.
Now, it was the case at that time that ‘no deal’ was the default position of the government, so – and this is worth remembering the kind of frankly, apocryphal warnings that were being delivered about the consequences of no-deal Brexit, for example in relation to medicine supplies and elsewhere – it was appropriate that … we shifted the resilience function to deal with this.
He added that there was a “flip side” to the preparations for a no-deal Brexit – known as Operation Yellowhammer – which made the UK “match-fit” for the pandemic.
Dowden’s evidence contrasts with that from the government’s former chief scientific adviser, who also gave evidence in the morning.
Professor Sir Mark Walport, who held the post from 2013-2017, said the UK was “not operationally prepared” for a pandemic.
He said:
I think that focus in richer countries had moved away from infectious diseases after the second world war.
With the rise of chronic inflammatory diseases, cardiac disease, hypertension, diabetes, there was much more of a focus on those and away from infection.
Updated
The Liberal Democrats are blaming the government’s “chaotic mismanagement of the economy” for the “savage cuts” that homeowners are facing to their disposable incomes due to rising mortgage rates and are calling for ministers to provide support.
Responding to the Institute for Fiscal Studies report showing that interest rate hikes could mean that 1.4 million people lose 20% of their disposable income, Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem’s Treasury spokesperson, said:
These stark figures show struggling homeowners are facing savage cuts to their incomes as mortgage rates go through the roof.
The blame for this lies squarely with this Conservative government and their chaotic mismanagement of the economy. Jeremy Hunt has totally failed to get inflation under control and millions of families are paying the price through a crippling Conservative mortgage penalty.
It is shocking that the government is still refusing to help struggling households despite being responsible for this cost of living catastrophe.
Rachel Hall here taking over from Andrew Sparrow for the rest of the day. If there’s anything we’ve missed, do drop me a line.
Updated
No 10 claims government still on track to halve inflation by end of year
Downing Street claims the government is still on course to meet its target of halving inflation by the end of the year. At the time Rishi Sunak made the promise in January, inflation was running at 10.1%.
At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, asked if Sunak was on course to fulfil his pledge, the PM’s spokersperson said: “That remains the target.”
Asked of the government was on track to meet it, the spokesperson said:
Yes. Despite some of the coverage at the time [of the announcement of the pledge] this was never something that was straightforward.
It was rightly an ambitious target that we remain committed to and it can only be achieved with fiscal discipline.
That is all from me for today.
My colleague Rachel Hall is now taking over.
Ireland will consider legal action against UK if Northern Ireland Troubles legacy bill passed, says Varadkar
Ireland will consider taking legal action against the UK if parliament passes the Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill, Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish PM) said today.
Speaking in the Dáil in response to the question from Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, who asked what the Irish government would do if the bill were passed, Varadkar said:
The bill has not yet been enacted, and certainly if it is enacted, if it does become law, we will then at that point give consideration to whether an interstate case is appropriate, so we certainly don’t rule that out.
An interstate case would involve Ireland taking the UK to the European court of human rights on the grounds that the bill breached the European convention on human rights because the convention obliges the UK to ensure Troubles-related deaths are properly investigated.
Explaining why Ireland opposed the bill, Varadkar said:
I just want to reiterate and restate the government’s opposition to this legacy bill.
We think it’s entirely the wrong approach to give former army servicemen, former IRA and paramilitary terrorists immunity from prosecution.
We owe it to the victims to make sure that we all do everything we can to make sure that any information that can be given to the police is given to the police and that those people are prosecuted if at all possible.
And that’s why we’re very much against this legacy bill and I’ve made that very clear to the prime minister, as has the tánaiste [Micheál Martin] with his counterparts.
It’s been discussed with the US president, and is discussed at European level as well.
Unionists in Northern Ireland also oppose the bill. See 11.06am.
Updated
No 10 says it is up to Shaun Bailey to decide if he should take up his peerage in light of Partygate controversy
Downing Street has declined to say whether Shaun Bailey, the former London mayoral candidate for the Conservatives, should take up the peerage given to him in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours, PA Media reports. PA says:
Bailey has come under pressure to turn down his peerage after a video emerged of a mid-lockdown Christmas party at Conservative headquarters thrown by his campaign.
Asked whether he should take up his seat in the Lords, the prime minister’s press secretary said: “That is a matter for the individual.”
If he did take his place in the upper chamber, it would be “a matter for the whips” whether he sits as a Conservative.
The press secretary insisted Rishi Sunak had merely been following the precedent in allowing Johnson to recommend honours for his supporters.
Updated
1.4m UK mortgage holders face 20% hit to disposable income from rate hikes
More than 1m households across Britain are expected to lose at least 20% of their disposable incomes thanks to the surge in mortgage costs expected before the next election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned. Richard Partington has the story here.
The IFS paper is here.
Here is an extract from the IFS report.
In March 2022, households with a mortgage were spending an average of £670 per month on mortgage payments, £230 of which was on interest payments. Figure 1 shows how those figures will change if mortgage interest rates remain at their current level, relative to a situation where the March 2022 interest rates persisted. On average those in mortgage-holding households will pay almost £280 more each month, with 30 to 39-year-olds paying almost £360 more. This will be a significant hit to mortgagors’ disposable incomes (i.e. incomes after mortgage payments) at a time that families are already under strain – on average disposable incomes will fall by 8.3%, with those aged 30-39 again seeing the biggest hit (almost 11%). For some the rise will be substantially larger: almost 1.4 million – 690,000 of whom are under 40 – will see their disposable incomes fall by over 20%.
And here is the IFS chart illustrating these figures.
Updated
PMQs - snap verdict
It was obvious that Keir Starmer won those exchanges when Rishi Sunak started his final answer with the words: “No amount of personal attacks and petty point-scoring will disguise the fact that [Starmer] does not have a plan for this country.” Complaining about “personal attacks and petty point-scoring” at PMQs is a serious category error; it is a bit like playing football and then moaning about your opponents only being interested in kicking the ball into the back of your net.
PMQs is an environment where leaders have to combine clear, broad-brush strategic messaging with sly digs that undermine the standing and authority of their rivals. It is a hard trick to pull off; too high-minded, and you look naive; too personal, and you just look nasty. Starmer gets the balance just about right, and today his jibes against Sunak were considerably more effective than anything coming in the opposite direction. In his second question, he mocked Sunak’s novel explanation for why he was not answering questions about the privileges committee’s report.
I realise the prime minister spent all week saying he doesn’t want to influence anyone or anything. He is certainly keeping to that with his answer.
Later Starmer delivering a cutting joke about Sunak’s interest in the California mortgage market, and there was a slightly less funny, but perhaps equally potent, sneer about Sunak’s use of helicopters. Increasingly, Sunak’s flight habits may be creating, or exacerbating, an image problem, because they reinforce the view that he is not like ordinary people. Caring for ordinary people, and understanding their problems, are two areas where Starmer has the biggest advantage.
Starmer vs Sunak (18 June):
— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) June 19, 2023
Starmer leads on EVERY SINGLE leadership characteristic polled, including:
Cares about people like me (42% | 24%)
Is a strong leader (36% | 28%)
Can build a strong economy (39% | 33%)
Can work well with foreign leaders (38% | 34%) pic.twitter.com/Sahb5fFEvZ
But jokes will get you nowhere without an argument, and Starmer was on very strong ground today because he devoted all his questions to what he called the Tory “mortgage catastrophe”. As is often the case, a story about an individual conveyed the political argument most effectively.
This morning I spoke to James in Selby. He’s a police officer, working hard to keep people safe every day. The Tory mortgage penalty is going to cost him and his family £400 more each and every month. That’s nearly £5,000. He told me this morning that they’ve decided to sell their house, to downsize and he’s just told his children they’re going to have to start sharing bedrooms. Why should James and his family pay the cost of the prime minister’s failure?
Sunak was never likely to have a brilliant comeback on this issue. His responses were a mixture of: 1) it’s a global problem; 2) we have a plan, and we are taking action; and 3) Labour would make it worse. None of these points sounded as if were likely to be very persuasive to James in Selby.
Sunak also did not seem to have resolved whether or not the Tories are attacking Labour for not having a plan for the economy, or for having a plan for the economy which is flawed. At various points he deployed both arguments. Either would have worked; combined, they don’t.
The one surprise, perhaps, was that Starmer did not say more about the privileges committee debate, and Sunak’s abject failure to take a stance on it. Given that real life (ie mortgages) can and should trump the Westminster personality pantomime, Starmer’s decision to mostly leave this issue was probably the right one. But when Labour’s Kevin Brennan raised it later, and challenged Sunak to respond to the claim that he had been “weak” (see 12.24pm), his response was particularly underwhelming. Starmer could probably have scored a clear hit on this topic too.
Updated
Tim Farron (Lib Dem) says 3.5 million people live in radiotherapy deserts. His constituents need to do a three-and-a-half hour round trip to get this treatment.
Sunak says he is aware of the problem. The NHS is rolling out local diagnostic centres, he says.
Updated
Deidre Brock (SNP) says with Boris Johnson finally exposed as a liar, and more and more evidence coming out about the damage of Brexit, will Sunak apologise for backing it.
Sunak says the UK has grown faster than France and Italy since it left the single market.
Steve McCabe (Lab) asks if any of the papers the government is trying to withhold from the Covid inquiry relate to the “eat out to help out” scheme promoted by Sunak when he was chancellor.
Sunak does not answer directly, but says more than 55,000 documents have been handed over.
Updated
David Davis (Con) asks about British universities helping the Iranians with research that might have a military function.
Sunak says these allegations are being investigated.
Andrew Slaughter (Lab) asks if the government is still committed to finishing new hospitals in his constituency by 2030.
Sunak says the hospital-building programme has been expanded, but schemes in cohort four will be in construction by 2030.
Updated
Kevin Brennan (Lab) asks if the word “weak” describes the PM’s performance this week.
Sunak says what is weak is Labour’s unwillingness to stand up to the unions that fund them.
Updated
Asked by Dame Meg Hillier (Lab) if a law breaker should be allowed to become a law maker, Sunak says he has just followed precedent on honours.
That was a reference to Shaun Bailey, who was made a peer in Boris Johnson’s honours list, and who attended a Tory party where lockdown rules were ignored.
Anne Marie Morris (Con) says nearly half of people have been somewhere where cash is not accepted. Will the PM ensure that any entity providing a public service have to accept cash.
Sunak says, as technology changes, organisations should be able to decide what forms of cash they accept.
Updated
Liam Fox (Con) says the UK is performing better than EU countries in some respects.
Sunak says Fox is right to highlight the improvement in the economic outlook. Unlike Labour, the government won’t talk Britain down, he says.
Stephen Farry (Alliance) says there is still no executive in Northern Ireland. Will the PM work on a financial package for a restored executive.
Sunak says he shares Farry’s frustrations on this. He wants the executive restored. Over £7bn has been given to Northern Ireland since 2014, on top of Barnett funding. He says the government is considering what more is needed.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, quotes some of Sunak’s comments about improving economic performance, and says Sunak has taken honesty lessons from Boris Johnson.
Sunak says the government is on track to reduce inflation.
Flynn says Ireland, and the eurozone area, have better inflation records. Will Sunak admit that Brexit broke the economy?
Sunak says the rise in inflation and interest rates is a global phenomenon. Government involves difficult decisions. The SNP won’t do that, he says.
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Philip Davies (Con) asks Sunak to commit to new oil and gas production in the UK.
Sunak says that is an excellent point. A block on North Sea oil and gas investment would mean dependence on imports would rise.
Starmer says things may look fine from the vantage point of Sunak’s helicopter. With the honours list, the Tories are rewarding those guilty of economic vandalism.
Sunak says Starmer is making petty points. But he cannot disguise the fact he does not have a plan. Labour is all talk; the government is delivering, he says.
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Starmer says over the next two years 7.5 million people will be in the same boat. Repossessions are up. What is the PM doing about that?
Sunak says the mortgage interest scheme is more generous. Borrowers are being allowed to extend their terms, or switch to interest-only payments. He says repossessions are still at a level below the level pre-pandemic, and three times below the level inherited by the Tories.
Starmer says Sunak may have a keen interest in the mortgage market in California, but he is talking about the UK. He says he spoke to someone this morning who is having to move to a smaller home because his mortgage was going up £5,000 a year.
Sunak says Labour’s policy would make things worse. He says the IFS says Labour’s plans would put up interest rates. The IMF has said what the government is doing is right.
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Starmer says 'Tory mortgage penalty' is an extra £2,900 a year
Starmer says the cost of the Tory mortgage penalty is an extra £2,900 a year. How is that delivering for home owners?
The question [Sunak] refuses to answer, he actually knows the answer to this question, is £2,900 extra. That’s the cost to the average family of the Tory mortgage penalty.
Now he was warned by experts about this as long ago as autumn last year, but he either didn’t get it, didn’t believe it or didn’t care because he certainly didn’t do anything, and when I raised this a couple of months ago, he had the gall to stand at that despatch box and say he was delivering for homeowners. How is an extra £2,900 a year on repayment delivering for homeowners?
Sunak says interest rates are at similar levels in Canada and the US and Australia and New Zealand. The government has a plan to reduce inflation. Labour borrowing would make the situation worse, as would banning new exploration in the North Sea, and giving in to unions. Labour polices “are dangerous, inflationary and working people would pay the price”.
Perhaps [Starmer] could explain why interest rates are at similar levels in the US, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, why they’re at the highest level in Europe that they’ve been for two decades.
That’s why it’s important that we have a plan to reduce inflation, but in contrast what do we hear from [him]. He wants to borrow an extra £28bn a year, that would make the situation worse …. He doesn’t have many policies, but the few that he does have all have the same thing in common, they’re dangerous, inflationary and working people would pay the price.
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Starmer says Sunak has spent the week saying he does not want to influence people; that answer shows he is still doing it, he suggests. He says Tory economic failure is to blame. How much will this cost householders?
Sunak says the government is getting on with the job.
Keir Starmer pays tribute to the Windrush generation. And he says the passing of Glenda Jackson leaves a space in our cultural and political life that cannot be filled.
Does the PM agree with his MP who said Britain faces a mortgage catastrophe?
Sunak says the government needs to help people with mortgages. That is why the government wants to halve inflation. He said that was important before he got that job. The IMF backs that.
Mark Menzies (Con) asks about support for the nuclear fuel industry.
Sunak says the government is supporting the industry. The domestic nuclear fuel sector has a critical role to play, he says.
Patricia Gibson (SNP) asks how much living standards have fallen since Sunak has been in office.
Sunak says the government has done much to support people with the cost of living.
Rishi Sunak starts by talking about the Ukraine recovery conference. And he pays tribute to the contribution of the Windrush generation on the 75th anniversary of the boat’s arrival.
We may get a lot of economics at PMQs today. Graeme Wearden has all the latest on his business live blog.
Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs
PMQs is about to start.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
In the Commons Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, is taking questions.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, tells Heaton-Harris that his party wants the government to legislate to ensure that the Northern Ireland protocol does not constrain trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Heaton-Harris says the government is willing to provide these assurances in legislation, but he says he also wants the DUP to say when it is willing to lift its boycott of power sharing at Stormont.
This is from Damian Lyons Lowe, head of the polling firm Survation, on Rishi Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation, and his company’s research as to what people think it means. (See 9.40am and 10.31am.)
Rishi Sunak has associated himself with an inflation pledge that he can't control, is going the wrong way, is confusingly delivered and apparently likely to disappoint much of the public: https://t.co/dpZJtzw5gx
— Damian Lyons Lowe (@DamianSurvation) June 21, 2023
On the subject of maths (see 10.31am), this is from Chris Giles, the Financial Times’ economics editor, on the difficulty Rishi Sunak now faces in meeting his inflation pledge.
Some basic maths
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) June 21, 2023
To meet @RishiSunak "halve inflation" pledge, prices must not be more than 5.4% higher in Q4 this year than in 2022.
Six months of data in, they have already risen 3.6%
It's looking decidedly tricky now...
... need monthly increases of 0.3% (May was 0.7%)
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has written to Rishi Sunak urging him to scrap controversial legislation to address the legacy of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, PA Media reports. PA says:
Donaldson said that an “amnesty for terrorists is not only an affront to justice but a gateway to further attempts to rewrite and airbrush the past”.
The Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill proposes an effective offer of immunity from prosecution for perpetrators of crimes during the Troubles who cooperate with a truth-recovery body.
It would also halt future civil cases and inquests linked to killings during the conflict.
While the government introduced a number of amendments to the bill earlier this month, the Stormont parties, Irish government and victims’ groups remain opposed to it.
The bill has gone through the Commons and is close to finishing its passage through the Lords, where its report stage debate starts this afternoon.
Donaldson said:
I have urged Rishi Sunak to recognise that imposing this bill against the express wishes of communities and political parties in Northern Ireland would be a retrograde step.
Reconciliation will not be achieved by sacrificing justice. Access to justice must be preserved and the principle of everyone be equal under the law should be protected.
The bill must be scrapped and for good.
180 pupils a day in England given special needs support plan
The number of pupils in England issued with a special needs support plan has more than doubled in the last eight years to 180 a day, driving up deficits in local authority budgets to “unmanageable levels”, Sally Weale reports.
Here is another finding from the Survation poll showing how many people do not understand inflation, and what Rishi Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation would actually mean in practice. (See 9.40am.)
It suggests only around a third of people can accurately say what a 5% annual inflation rate would do to the cost of a £1 loaf.
One consolation for Sunak is that at least this does vindicate his call for more maths and economics teaching.
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'Russia must pay for the destruction that they’ve inflicted', Sunak tells Ukraine recovery conference
At the Ukraine recovery conference this morning Rishi Sunak gave a speech saying “Russia must pay for the destruction that they’ve inflicted”. Alexandra Topping has full coverage on our Ukraine live blog.
Most voters wrongly think Sunak's halving inflation pledge would stop prices going up, poll suggests
Good morning. Inflation figures are out today, and they are worse than expected. Richard Partington has the story here.
And Graeme Wearden has more on his business live blog.
This is certain to be come up at PMQs later.
Rishi Sunak used to work in finance before becoming an MP (his first job was at Goldman Sachs) and he is something of an economic geek. In some respects that makes him well qualified to lead the country at a time of economic difficulty. But geeks don’t always have a good grasp of how the public at large thinks, and this morning Survation has published some fascinating polling about Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation by the end of the year.
The obvious problem with the pledge is that, although it looked easy to achieve at the start of the year, now economists are less certain about that.
But potentially a more serious problem is that the pledge has created unrealistic expectations. Halving inflation will not mean that prices go down. But when Survation asked people what it would mean in practice, most people wrongly said that the pledge would either mean prices going down (32%) or staying the same (31%). Only 23% said that this still meant prices would go up.
That suggests many people may end up being disappointed when they realise Sunak’s economic promises aren’t delivering quite what they expected.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Rishi Sunak speaks at the Ukraine Recovery conference.
Noon: Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
After 12.45pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to first the strikes (minimum service levels) bill, and then to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill.
Mid afternoon: MPs debate a Labour motion that would set aside government Commons business on 12 July to allow time for the animal welfare (kept animals) bill, which has been dropped by the government, to be passed.
2pm: Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. He will be followed by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor. The current hearings are about preparedness, and so they will be questioned about the government jobs they did before 2020 (Cabinet Office minister and health secretary respectively).
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