Starmer to keep saying Truss crashed economy despite legal letter, No 10 suggests – UK politics live

Yesterday Keir Starmer criticised the Tory government for not implementing the recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse when Kemi Badenoch pressed for a new inquiry at PMQs. Labour says it wants to implement the recommendations in the report published two years ago, but it has not said how it will do this in every case.

There are 20 recommendations in the report. One of them is for a tiered compensation scheme, open to anyone who “experienced child sexual abuse and exploitation where there is a clear connection to state or non-state institutions in England and Wales”.

According to a report in the Financial Times, the current government, and the last one, estimate this could cost around £7bn. The report says:

One former Tory official and a Labour figure both said they had been made aware of an initial estimate of close to £7bn for the compensation.

Another person who worked at the Home Office during [Rishi] Sunak’s government said there had been broader estimates of £5bn to £10bn for the cost. “We were pushing for it, but Rishi didn’t want to do it,” they said. “It was blocked.

The government says it wants to deliver “meaningful change” in response to the report’s recommendations, but that it is still working out potential costs.

Mick Lynch has said he will retire as general secretary of the RMT union after four years during which he became perhaps the most recognisable presence on picket lines amid the biggest rail and tube worker strikes for decades. Jasper Jolly has the story.

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has said he thinks there is a case for a “limited national inquiry” in child abuse by gangs.

Keir Starmer has not ruled out an inquiry, but he told MPs yesterday that survivors thought it was more important to press on with implementing the recommendations of the previous national inquiry and that he agreed. The Tories tried to turn a vote on the children’s wellbeing and schools bill last night into a vote in favour of a new inquiry, but they lost as Labour voted for the bill to proceed.

In an interview with the BBC, Burnham said:

In my view the government was right to reject that form of opportunism [the Tory amendment that was voted down].

But I did hear last night coming out of that debate ministers saying they are open to discussing issues now with survivors.

I will add my voice into this and say I do think there is the case for a limited national inquiry that draws on reviews like the one that I commissioned, and the one we have seen in Rotherham, the one we have seen in Telford, to draw out some of these national issues and compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account.

The PM’s spokesperson told journalists at the lobby briefing that it was wrong to suggest the government was about to change its mind on an inquiry. He explained:

We’ve had a national inquiry, it … engaged 7,000 victims, and what victims are telling us is that they want to see action, and that’s where the government is focused, and that’s why we’re not going ahead with another national inquiry.

As Patrick Wintour wrote in his preview, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, used his speech today to say the post-cold war peace was “well and truly over”. Here is the full quote.

The post-cold war peace is well and truly over. This is a changed strategic environment.

The number of conflicts higher than at any time since 1945. The spectre of famine from Gaza to Sudan. And the most refugees and displaced people on record.

I am occasionally asked on my travels, here and of course on the doorstep around the country, when will the Kremlin threat, this upheaval that we’re experiencing, end? When will things get back to normal? My answer is that they will not. Europe’s future security is on a knife-edge.

Bevin warned in 1948 that we would only preserve peace by mobilising such force and I quote, “As will create confidence and energy on the one side and inspire respect and caution on the other.” And this is exactly what we need now.

That’s why our foreign policy has had to change. Inspired by Bevin, I call our new approach Progressive Realism. Taking the world as it is not as we wish it to be. Advancing progressive ends by realist means.

NEU teaching union says pay problems ‘far from resolved’ as it ballots members on proposed 2.8% increase

Richard Adams

Schools in England face possible strikes later this year after the National Education Union announced it will hold an indicative ballot of members for industrial action over the Department for Education’s proposed 2.8% pay rise next year.

The NEU, the largest teachers’ union, will open the preliminary vote from the start of March on whether to proceed with a formal ballot. If carried, the union will then hold a formal strike ballot.

Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, said the union objected both to the 2.8% award as proposed by the government to the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), and to the lack of additional funding for schools to meet the pay rise.

Kebede said:

Government must face up to the fact that the problems in teacher pay are far from resolved. Since 2010 pay for teachers in England has declined by a fifth. The profession no longer attracts enough graduates to keep up with the soaring vacancies.

The current proposal of 2.8% is not sufficient to even start to address the crisis in recruitment and retention.

Thousands of teachers voted for the change that Labour promised for education. They promised to invest in education, to recruit 6,500 teachers and to value education and to secure the life chances of our children. We need to see their commitment in deeds as well as words.

Sentiment alone will not fill the excessive teacher vacancies nor will deliver the world class education our children deserve.

The DfE’s evidence to the STRB submitted last month was that a 2.8% pay rise “would maintain the competitiveness of teachers’ pay” despite the challenging financial backdrop facing the government.

Musk was ‘digging deep into historic misogyny’ in language he used attacking Jess Phillips, MPs told

Peter Walker

The shadow women’s minister, Mims Davies, has condemned Elon Musk’s abuse directed at Jess Phillips and others, in comments which went notably further than those of her leader, Kemi Badenoch.

Speaking in a Commons debate on violence against women and girls, one scheduled by coincidence a day after furious exchanges about whether there should be a new national inquiry into so-called grooming gangs, Davies said she backed Badenoch’s call for the inquiry.

However, she strongly condemned Musk, who has called Phillips, the safeguarding minister, a “rape genocide apologist” and a “witch”. Davies also warned that such language could make it less likely that women and girls who are abused and raped would want to come forward.

There was a good turnout for the debate, but no one attended from Reform UK, some of whose MPs had spoken out very robustly on Wednesday about grooming gangs and the need to better protect women and girls.

As Phillips sat opposite on the Labour benches, Davies said:

Let’s all agree in this chamber this afternoon, and say quite clearly: we do not accept, or see any way that we should accept, any abuse directed to us as members of parliament, as ministers, and people speaking up for women and girls, that we have seen in recent days.

She warned against what she called “a leap from rhetoric to intimidation, and then potentially to violence when it comes to the political arena”, saying:

We need to make sure that that doesn’t seep down into what victims feel might happen to them if they come forward and speak out.

Speaking after Davies, Sarah Owen, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons women and equalities committee, said studies showing that around one in three women say they had been sexually assaulted meant misogyny was a far wider problem than often billed.

In referring to Phillips as a “witch”, Musk had been “really digging deep into historic misogyny”, she added.

Elon Musk relentless social media attacks on Labour over recent days and weeks have been so extreme, and frequently false and absurd, that people have found it hard to work out to what extent he’s serious, and to what extent this is just some behavioural abnormality.

According to the Financial Times, he’s serious. Anna Gross and Joe Miller report that Musk has “privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election, according to people briefed on the matter”. In their story, Gross and Miller say:

Musk, the world’s richest man and key confidant of US president-elect Donald Trump, is probing how he and his rightwing allies can destabilise the UK Labour government beyond the aggressive posts he has issued on his social media platform X, the people said.

“His view is that western civilisation itself is threatened,” one of the people added.

Musk has sought information about whether it might be possible to build support for alternative British political movements — notably the rightwing populist Reform UK party — to force a change of prime minister before the next election, according to associates.

Labour’s agriculture plans will increase chicken waste in rivers, say campaigners

Helena Horton

Labour’s proposal to loosen planning regulations for farmers will deluge rivers with chicken faeces, environmental campaigners have warned. As Helena Horton reports, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, promised farmers today they would be able to build larger chicken sheds, but experts have said this would create “megafarms” and contribute to river pollution.

The Conservative party is saying that Rachel Reeves should cancel her trip to China because of the turmoil in the bond market. (See 12.10pm.)

But Philip Hammond, who was chancellor when Theresa May was PM and who is now a Tory peer, told the World at One that Reeves should press on with the visit. He said:

I wouldn’t personally recommend the chancellor to cancel her trip to China. I think the trip to China is important, and I think this can wait until she gets back next week.

But I do think she will need to reassure parliament about what is going on when she does get back next week.

Asked who worried the chancellor should be, he said:

I think it’s right that we don’t get obsessed with single day movements in the markets, because there are a lot of short-term drivers in the markets as well.

But it’s clear that, on a medium term trajectory, the markets are concerned about the sustainability of the fiscal position in the UK and about the robustness of the UK economy.

If he was still chancellor, he would be “worried about the trend of what is happening”, he said.

Hammond said some of what was happening was due to trends in the global economy. But he says businesses in Britain were also expecting the government to take measures that would “provide a visible and clear boost to economic growth”, and they had not happened. As a result business was “confused, angry, disrupted in terms of what the direction of travel is”, he said. He went on:

I think we now need a message from the chancellor that she understands the concerns of business and that she is going to put business investment and economic growth at the very front of her agenda.

Graeme Wearden has more on the bond market story in his business live blog.

An academic who’s an expert in media law has been in touch to give me his assessment of Liz Truss’s cease and desist letter. (See 11.58am.) He does not want to publish his name, but he says that if Truss ever did try to sue Keir Starmer for libel, she would not stand a chance.

He also describes the letter as a classic example of a Slapp.

He says:

The letter sent by Truss’s lawyers to Starmer does not explicitly threaten to sue for libel, but the language in which it is couched makes such a threat implicit. However, a libel claim in these circumstances would certainly fail.

Under section 4 of the Defamation Act 2013 – enacted, of course, under a Tory-led coalition government – there is a defence for statements made with a reasonable belief that making them is in the public interest. Political debate is a classic example of public interest speech, and the courts will steer clear of evaluating its content. It does not matter whether, on a technical economic analysis, Truss did in fact ‘crash the economy’. What matters is the fact that there is a legitimate, robust political debate around whether she did that. Starmer has weighed in on one side of that debate, and she has been free to put the other side (which she has, vigorously).

All the court needs to find is that: (a) Starmer’s comments were on a matter of public interest, and (b) Starmer, in making his comments, reasonably believed that communicating them to the public at large was in the public interest.

‘Public interest’ has never been defined at law, but in the context of the cut and thrust of general election debate, and political debate more generally, a court would undoubtedly find in Starmer’s favour on this, because it would not endorse setting a precedent that risked shutting down debate on the economy between leading politicians.

Incidentally, since there has been much debate around so-called Slapps (strategic lawsuits against public participation), much of the ostensible concern about which has been raised by Conservative politicians in recent years (as well as outlets such as the Guardian), it is perhaps worth pointing out that Truss’s letter is a textbook example of a Slapp. It implicitly threatens a totally unmeritorious legal claim in a bid to cause the prime minister to stop making statements on a matter of public debate. It is a strategic attempt to silence political criticism – something that is, quite nakedly, a Slapp. At this point, there is no specific anti-Slapp law in the UK, although existing civil procedure mechanisms would in all likelihood prevent such a claim reaching trial.

During his interview round this mornig David Lammy, the foreign secretary, rejected claims that the government is applying a definition of Islamophobia that says people should not talk about Muslim grooming gangs.

Kemi Badenoch raised this issued at PMQs yesterday. She told Keir Starmer:

The Labour party has adopted the APPG [all-party parliamentay group] definition of “Islamophobia”. The same APPG report said that talking about sex groomers was an example of Islamophobia. This is exactly why people are scared to tell the truth.

And today the Times is running a story saying the APPG definition that Badenoch was talking about “put ‘grooming gangs’ in inverted commas and suggested that using the term in relation to Muslims was racist”.

Badenoch was referring to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslim, which put out a statement yesterday saying Badenoch misrepresented what it was saying.

The APPG summarises Islamophobia as “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. In a report published in 2018, it does not say all references to grooming gangs are Islamophobic. But it says it would be Islamophobic to talk about Muslim grooming gangs in circumstances where, if the perpetrators were Christian, that would not be mentioned.

And, as an example of Islamphobia, it says:

Using the symbols and images associated with classic Islamophobia (e.g. Muhammed being a paedophile, claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule) to characterise Muslims as being ‘sex groomers’, inherently violent or incapable of living harmoniously in plural societies.

Asked about this in interviews this morning, Lammy said the Labour party had accepted the APPG’s definition of Islamophobia. But he said the government had not adopted that definition, and the government’s definition was “still being determined”.

And he told Times Radio:

That’s a process that’s underway and we’ve got to wait to see where that comes out.

But I’m quite sure that that process will not lead to anything that is an impediment in going after paedophiles, whatever their background, religious background, ethnicity, or the colour of their skin. Very, very clear on that.