Badenoch will ‘absolutely not’ apologise for her PMQs invective against ministers, spokesperson says
Kemi Badenoch will “absolutely not” apologise for the language she used during PMQs, her spokesperson told reporters at a briefing afterwards.
The spokesperson said said he thought Badenoch had been nice to Keir Starmer in the chamber and she felt sorry for him. He said:
double quotation mark There was very little aimed at the prime minister. This was about a cabinet which has let him down, about a group of Labour MPs who have let him down and now they’ve got rid of him.
See 12.16pm for the Badenoch comments that prompted Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, to reprimand her for her language.
And see 1.31pm for a summary of her most harsh remarks.
Key events
Afternoon summary
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Photograph: House of Commons/PA
Jennifer Wiliams, who has been covered Andy Burnham as political editor of the Manchester Evening News and more recently as Northern England correspondent for the Financial Times, has got a very good long read on what he’s like in the FT. It is worth reading in full, but here she is on how Burnham differs from another mayor-turned-PM.
double quotation mark The day after Burnham’s storming victory in Makerfield, I asked someone involved in his campaign how he had won. As much as anything, they said, he “likes people and people like him”.Not long before that campaign, I saw him swamped by a crowd of middle-aged fanboys in a city centre bar, desperate to buy him a pint and canvass his opinions on football and craft ale. That popularity is real around here, as the result in Makerfield showed. If Burnham meets a person with a problem, says someone who has seen him at work, “he’ll do something about it. He’ll give out his number . . . How that works at Westminster scale, I don’t know, but it is genuine.”
That kind of emotional responsiveness is ultimately what drove both Burnham’s successes and failures in Manchester. Unlike [Boris] Johnson, who knew his political persona was a construct, it often seemed to me that even when Burnham’s showboating sounded incoherent, there was often a sincerity in the moment. “It is fair, absolutely,” says one person who has worked closely with him here, of this theory. “It’s built on that personal connection with individuals. It’s almost that the last person he spoke to, if he’s sympathetic or agrees with them, there’s genuine sincerity and he decides to act on it.”
Others are a little less complimentary. “I used to always see him at the end of the day,” another person who worked with him as mayor says, “because if you saw him in the morning, he’d have moved on by the end of the afternoon.”
Here is some more reaction to the appointment of James Purnell as Andy Burnham’s chief of staff.
This is from the Labour MP Dan Carden.
double quotation mark The clearest sign a big change is coming. Competence massively undervalued in Westminster. This is a bigger than a bold move.James is principled, a good guy, one of the best Ministers from Brown government and comes in knowing that @UKLabour has a lot to do to earn back a fair hearing from every part of society and every sector of the economy.
This is from Theo Bertram, a former No 10 aide to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who now runs the SMF thinktank.
double quotation mark James Purnell is a great choice for Chief of Staff. First of all he’s a nice guy – sensible, smart, excellent network & experience. He knows welfare & pensions well. Perhaps most relevant, he always chose very good advisers, not least a young Johnny Reynolds.
And this is from Neil Findlay, a former Scottish Labour MSP.
double quotation mark If Burnham surrounds himself with the current cabinet, advisers like Purnell and other discredited Blairite ultras he will fail and deserve to. He needs a clean break from the past with a new radical agenda driven by people who share his vision
Badenoch ‘lost her head’ at PMQs, says Bridget Phillipson
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has said that Kemi Badenoch “lost her head” at PMQs. (See 1.31pm, 1.36pm and 2.43pm.)
double quotation mark Kemi lost her head at PMQs – and afterwards too.It’s not the first time. She’s compared me to a Gestapo officer.
I wonder what it is about a working class woman driving record investment in state schools by ending private schools’ tax breaks that the Tories hate so much.
She also posted this on social media.
double quotation mark 3,008 more teachers in secondaries & special schools1,646 more teachers in colleges
Trainee teachers up 13%
Teacher pay up 9.5%
Record investment in schools
If standing up for state schools makes me a spiteful class warrior, I’ll wear it with pride.
Louise Casey says interim adult social care report will propose ‘quite big’ changes this year – which Burnham could speed up
Reform of the adult social care system may involve “a renegotiation of the social contract”, Louise Casey has told MPs.
Casey, an official with a long history of tackling difficult social problems on behalf of the government, is leading the independent review of adult social care. Giving evidence to the Commons health committee today, she said that an interim report published later this year would recommend some “quite big” changes.
She also said she wanted to launch a public debate about the case for reform. she said:
double quotation mark One of the things that has been missing on quite a significant scale is a sort of reset of the discussion with the public and to have a conversation with the public, which is two-way, on what their appetite is for, I suppose, a renegotiation of the social contract.And in order to do that we are about to – probably giving more away right now than I should do – but we hope in July we will commence that process in quite a big and deliberative fashion.
When the Casey review was commissioned, Casey asked to produce an interim report this year and a final report by 2028.
Referring to the interim report, Casey said:
double quotation mark We do intend to publish a report this year outlining what changes we think could be made and not wait. And some of those are quite big.
She also stressed that the deadline for the final report was “by 2028” – indicating it could come sooner.
Andy Burnham, who is set to become PM later this month, has said that he wants to make reform of the adult social care system a priority. As health secretary before the 2010 election, he developed plans for a levy on inheritance to fund adult social care – only to see it attacked as a “death tax” by the Tories. Their campaign was so successful it stopped all parties revisiting the idea for at least a decade.
Burnham has recently floated the levy idea again. Last month he said:
double quotation mark It’s not about asking people to pay more, it’s just people paying in the most unfair way possible at this moment in time and I think there’s a much better way of doing it.
Casey said she had spoken to Burnham, earlier in her review and more recently. She said he had done “an awful lot of work on social care in Manchester”.
Asked if she would be able to expedite the process if that was something Burnham – should he become prime minister – wanted, she said: “Yes.”
She said:
double quotation mark Ministers have always been incredibly supportive of the fact that if we can bring the overall piece of work in earlier, we should.
The former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has moved to renounce and forfeit his knighthood and membership of the privy council after he was found guilty this week of child sex offences.
The current DUP leader Gavin Robinson and Ulster Unionist leader Jon Burrows were among those who called for Donaldson’s knighthood and privy counsellorship, the Press Association reports.
Today Donaldson’s solicitor John McBurney said that his client has signed a letter to renounce his knighthood. He also said Donaldson had also signed a letter to resign from the privy council, a life appointment afforded to senior politicians.
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Nigel Farage was among more than 4,000 attendees at the fourth summit organised by Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). Its financial backers include Ben Delo, a British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business and who has has given £4m to Reform UK.
ARC is also backed by the British hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall, an owner of GB News, and the Dubai-based Legatum investment fund.
Other speakers this week include prominent rightwing thinkers whose ideas are being drawn from by populist movements across European and elsewhere. Farage was followed on the main stage by Katy Faust, the founder of the US group Them Before Us, which has argued for measures that would effectively ban or significantly restrict gay people from having children.
Organisations with stands at the event include the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US, which is also ramping up its activities in Britain. It describes itself as a Christian legal advocacy organisation that defends fundamental freedoms around the world.
Among others taking part in a panel at ARC today was Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber and former Ukip candidate also known by his online pseudonym Sargon of Akkad. He previously was the focus of controversy over comments such as a pronouncement that he “wouldn’t even rape” a female Labour MP.
Speakers tomorrow will include Sarah B Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and an official who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies.
Starmer to remain in Commons as backbench MP after resigning as PM, No 10 says
Keir Starmer’s political spokesperson has said that he will remain as a backbench MP for the rest of this parliament when he leaves No 10. He said that the PM was “going to remain”.
There had been some speculation about Starmer standing down as MP for Holborn and St Pancras. Tony Blair and David Cameron both left the Commons soon after resigning as PM. But, as explained in a post on the blog on Monday, Blair and Cameron did not have to worry about their party losing the seat in the subsequent byelection.
At a post-PMQs briefing, asked if Starmer might take another cabinet job if offered one by Andy Burnham, the spokesperson said Starmer told his ministers this week that “this is the end of my journey, but this is not the end of yours”.
Burnham plans to move parts of No 10 operation to Manchester
Andy Burnham is planning to move parts of the No 10 operation to Manchester as part of measures to devolve power away from London, Kiran Stacey reports.
Tories rebuked by statistics watchdog for wrongly saying welfare spending higher than income tax revenue for first time
Kemi Badenoch has been rebuked by the UK statistics watchdog over a “not wholly accurate” claim about government spending on benefits, the Press Association reports. PA says:
double quotation mark The Tory party released a document that said that “for the first time ever, the total welfare bill is now higher than total receipts from income tax” after the king’s speech last month.In a letter to the Conservative leader, the UK Statistics Authority said that spending on social security does exceed income tax revenue, but that “this is not a recent or first-time occurrence.”
Figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) suggest this has been the case since at least 2011 and the gap has narrowed in recent years, with the positions forecast to reverse in 2026/27, the watchdog said.
“We have reviewed the published statistics and assessed that this claim is not wholly accurate,” interim chair Penny Young wrote.
The Conservatives also focused mainly on out-of-work and sickness benefits in their wider statement and should have made clear that the “total welfare bill” included other benefits like the state pension, it added.
Young said: “Overall, we are concerned that the inaccuracy of the ‘first time ever’ element of the claim, combined with the absence of this contextual explanation, could lead to misunderstanding among members of the public about welfare spending.”
She added: “Given the prominence of this claim, and the evidence that it is not accurate, we hope that you might consider how best to clarify it so that it fully supports public understanding of trends in taxation and welfare spending.”
A Tory ected.
This is not the first time in recent week the UK Statistics Authority has reprimaned the Tories over welfare figures. Last month it wrote to Badenoch saying that a claim she had made at PMQs about universal was misleading because most of those cases were people migrating from a predecessor benefit to UC, the replacement benefit.
Here is video of Keir Starmer defending his record at PMQs.
‘Significant harm’: children’s watchdog decries Home Office plan to push out refused asylum seekers
Shabana Mahmood has been told that her crackdown on refused asylum seekers, including the forcible removal of children from the UK, will cause “significant harm”, in an intervention by an independent watchdog. Rajeev Syal has the story.
