UK politics live: Starmer addresses leaked plan for outdoor smoking ban and refuses to rule out fuel duty hike

Although they wouldn’t admit it, the model for the PM and his chancellor is less Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – and more David Cameron and George Osborne, writes Andrew Grice:

The prime minister is looking to recreate David Cameron’s 2010 deal with France during his European tour in Germany and France.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy at the time signed the The Lancaster House treaties in a bid to strengthen defense security with the UK.

Keir Starmer now wants to forge new agreements on defence and security with Berlin and France – with immigration and trade also on top of the agenda.

Sir Keir has faced pressure from the opposition over his move to reset relations with Europe.

But the PM previosuly reiterated he wil not reverse Brexit measures.

Conservative leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat said his party created “the biggest unaccountable quango in the western world” by making NHS England independent.

He said: “I’ve already said elsewhere that my party needs to acknowledge our own failures. We said migration would come down, it went up. We said taxes would come down, and overall, they went up.

“We also need to accept that our attempts in the coalition period to reform the NHS, made with the best of intentions, failed. By making NHS England independent we created the biggest unaccountable quango in the western world.

“By allowing it to centralise power we stopped trusting frontline professionals and local staff. By creating complex clinical commissioning procedures we created a bureaucracy instead of eliminating it. By putting so much power into the hands of the NHS chief executive, we made her responsible for everything but accountable for nothing.”

He added: “We did not keep our promises on rebuilding hospitals. We did not manage to get waiting lists down.

“Now we can blame inflation, and we can point to Covid. Both of these are important factors, but no matter, we did promise more than we delivered. Now, Labour look like they’re about to make the same mistake. We need a new approach.”

Tory leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat warned that Sir Keir Starmer’s government would drag the UK back to the 1970s by caving in to unions’ pay demands.

In a speech in central London, Mr Tugendhat warned the government’s actions could result in rising inflation.

Mr Tugendhat said: “(Sir Keir) is already losing control of pay across the public sector, with other unions now demanding more and threatening more strike action. It feels like we are heading back towards the 1970s and the days of wage-price spirals.

“Just as importantly, it’s a missed opportunity for reform and a chance to make our public services better.”

He claimed Labour was “owned lock, stock and barrel by the unions”.

“The unions gave Labour more than £25 million over the last parliament and in return Labour are giving in to the unions’ demands: scrapping laws that guarantee minimum services during strikes, ending rules that make sure strikes only happen when members actually want them and showering unions with public money, no strings attached.”

He said Sir Keir was right to warn of a “painful” budget to come because “he has splashed the cash on his friends and left you to pick up the bill”.

GMB Scotland members have voted to accept a new pay offer, cancelling planned strikes among cleansing workers.

The union was one of three which had planned to walk out, but 78% of members instead voted to back the deal, which offers up to 5.6% for frontline staff.

But, despite the planned action being scrapped, Keir Greenaway, the union’s senior organiser in public services, said: “Council leaders’ lack of urgency and stubborn refusal to ask the Scottish Government for support meant negotiations and uncertainty went on far longer than necessary.

“It should not take imminent strike action to deliver a fair offer but, while it came too late, the deal was above inflation for all staff and weighted to benefit frontline workers most.”

He added: “Ministers implying a fair pay offer for our members means cuts to spending are only diverting attention from the real cause of the crisis in our public services.

“We have endured more than a decade of cuts not because of staff being paid fairly but because our governments, at Westminster and Holyrood, have failed to properly fund the public sector.”

First Minister John Swinney has said he will be “very mindful” of funding for the arts despite “difficult choices” facing the Scottish government, after some of the country’s top musicians called for more cash.

Paolo Nutini, Biffy Clyro and Franz Ferdinand were among more than 170 figures to sign an open letter addressed to the First Minister in response to the closure of Creative Scotland’s open fund due to financial pressures.

They have joined a chorus of discontent from the arts sector, after 130 individuals and organisations urged the Scottish Government to restore funding last week.

The move was described as “disappointingly short-sighted” by Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos, while the letter warned of a “cultural catastrophe”.

The First Minister said: “I understand the concerns that have been expressed by members of the artistic community about funding for culture and the arts.

“It’s a very important part of our country that we support and nurture investment in cultural and artistic activity.

“The government already spends over £50 million in the Creative Scotland budget, and we’re obviously facing very challenging economic and financial times at this particular moment and we obviously want to continue to invest in artistic and cultural activity.”

As the PM speaks in Germany in an attempt to undo some of the damage of the previous administration, Sean O’Grady weighs up the options for mending our relationship with the EU

The UK will join a trade bloc with countries including Australia and Canada before Christmas, after ratification was agreed by a sixth country.

The UK’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will happen by 15 December, the Department for Business and Trade said on Thursday.

The announcement comes after Peru became the sixth country to ratify the UK’s deal, after Japan, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand and Vietnam.

Currently there are 11 countries signed up to the CPTPP deal, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia and Brunei.

According to the Department, more than 99 per cent of current UK goods exports to CPTPP members will be tariff-free once the deal comes into force, and could boost the economy by about £2 billion annually by 2040.

The UK concluded its negotiations to join the CPTPP in March 2023, and a Bill received Royal Assent in March this year.

Trade minister Douglas Alexander said confirmation that the UK will join the bloc was “good news for UK businesses”.

Spending by councils in England on temporary accommodation for homelessness has soared by more than 40 per cent in a year, as charities branded it “unfathomable” and “absurd”.

Net spending – which is different between the total outgoings for local authorities and their income – for the year to March was £1.06 billion.

This was a rise of 42.5% on the previous year, when expenditure stood at £743 million.

Both housing charity Shelter and homelessness charity Crisis criticised the lack of investment in long-term solutions such as new social housing, describing temporary accommodation as “grim” and “often damp and mouldy”.

Figures published earlier this month showed a record high of more than 150,000 children living in temporary accommodation in England at the end of March.

A total of 117,450 households were in this situation at that point, some 74,530 of which were households with children.