UK Politics

Boris Johnson has been accused of abandoning British families to a life of poverty, after his legislative programme for the coming year contained no new measures to deal with the cost of living crisis.One think tank described the package set out in the Queen’s Speech as “cosmetic surgery for an economy facing a heart attack”.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also denounced it as “a thin address, bereft of ideas or purpose” delivered by a government “whose time has passed”.Mr Johnson told MPs that measures including a Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill to enable councils to boost renewal of run-down towns and a Brexit Freedoms Bill empowering ministers to scrap remaining EU rules would help get Britain “back on track” after the Covid pandemic.But he continued to reject demands for an emergency budget to help households who are being forced to choose between heating and eating.He also gave a strong signal that he has lined up with chancellor Rishi Sunak in resisting further financial support before the autumn budget, telling MPs: “However great our compassion and ingenuity, we cannot simply spend our way out of this problem.”Any help for households beyond the £22bn already announced would have to be balanced against the need to keep public finances “on a sustainable footing”, he warned.Meanwhile, the Treasury was quick to scotch any suggestion of an imminent extension of support, saying that further fiscal measures would have to wait until after the next review of the energy price cap in September.Senior ministers, including the PM and Mr Sunak, were on Tuesday evening assessing proposals from cabinet colleagues for money-saving measures that can be achieved without cost to the government, such as doubling the gap between MOT tests or increasing the ratio of children to carers in pre-school nurseries. Mr Johnson said the outcome would be announced in the coming days.But the Child Poverty Action Group said government support was “a far cry” from the help needed by families facing inflation forecast to top 10 per cent this year and energy bills expected to leap by a further £1,000 in the autumn.CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said Mr Johnson’s package of 38 bills offered “no short-term comfort for parents struggling to feed their kids in the face of rocketing prices, and no long-term vision for ending child poverty”.She warned: “Promises on levelling up and education will go unmet while families don’t have enough money to live on – and abandoning 4 million children to a life in poverty won’t be much of a legacy either.”Responding to a Queen’s Speech, delivered for the first time by the Prince of Wales, Sir Keir said that the contents of the government’s agenda failed to respond to the pressing challenges of the current moment.With the economy stalling and prices soaring upwards, the Labour leader said the UK was “staring down the barrel of something we haven’t seen in decades – a stagflation crisis”.And he denounced ministers’ “inertia” in the face of Labour demands for an emergency budget and a windfall tax on the excess profits of energy companies.“We need a government of the moment with ideas that meet the aspirations of the British public,” Mr Starmer told MPs. But he said that the Johnson administration was “too out of touch to meet the challenges of the moment, too tired to grasp the opportunities of the future … Their time has passed.”The Queen’s Speech package included controversial plans to scrap the Human Rights Act, to ban gay conversion therapy while allowing the practice to continue for transgender people and to allow the use of gene-editing to “precision breed” animals and plants.It set out measures to protect army veterans from prosecution for alleged crimes committed during the Northern Irish Troubles.But there was no place for the Employment Bill to enhance rights at work, which was promised as long ago as the Queen’s Speech of 2019, or for promised animal welfare legislation to ban the import of fur and foie gras.TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that mooted protections from pregnancy discrimination and rights to flexible working and fair tipping risked being “ditched for good”.“Bad bosses up and down the country will be celebrating,” she said.Anti-poverty charity Oxfam branded the failure to prioritise the rights of workers in precarious and low-paid jobs “a dereliction of duty”.Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that the absence of an Employment Bill meant that family carers would once again miss out on the week’s unpaid leave first promised to them in 2019.Mr Johnson’s repeated failure to deliver on the pledge was “insulting and woefully shortsighted”, said Sir Ed.Care England chief executive Martin Green said that the failure to set out plans for much-needed reform of adult social care left a “bitter taste” for the sector.Dr George Dibb, head of the IPPR think tank’s Centre for Economic Justice, said it “beggared belief” that the government’s programme contained such limited action in response to Bank of England warnings of a shrinking economy over the coming 18 months.Describing the package as “cosmetic surgery for an economy facing a heart attack”, he said: “This crisis calls for a major restructuring of the UK economy to drive higher wages, productivity, innovation, investment, and faster decarbonisation.“But the main brake on the economy in the short-term is shrinking household budgets as a consequence of the failure to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. Today’s Queen’s Speech contains almost nothing for families who are struggling to make ends meet.” More

Boris Johnson appeared to taunt Sir Keir Starmer over the so-called Beergate saga as they walked into the Lords together for the Queen’s Speech.The PM smirked and asked the Labour leader if he had a “quiet weekend” – an apparent reference to renewed pressure on Starmer over the beer and curry he consumed with Labour staff last April.Sir Keir smiled before the pair engaged very briefing in small talk as they walked side by side in a procession of MPs in the chamber.Conservative MPs later jeered at Starmer over the Durham Police probe into the takeaway meal eaten during Covid restrictions – with one Tory backbencher joking that the Labour leader was suffering from “karma”.Graham Stuart put the boot into over the Durham Police probe into the takeaway curry eaten at event last April – telling Starmer “the only thing opening up for him in the north is a police investigation”.The Tory MP also joked that “never in the history of human conflict has so much karma come from a korma” – prompting further laughter from the Tory benches.It comes after Sir Keir said on Monday he will do the “right thing” and quit if he is issued with a fixed penalty notice in relation to a gathering in Labour offices, as he again denied breaking any rules.At the weekend, the Mail on Sunday published a leaked memo indicating the dinner had been planned as part of Sir Keir’s itinerary for a day of campaigning, and no further work was scheduled afterwards.Earlier on Tuesday, Home Office minister Kit Malthouse said that if Sir Keir did resign, it would not mean Johnson should do the same. “I don’t see why anybody, be they so high or so humble, should lose their job,” he told GB News.Tory MPs jeer at Keir Starmer over police probeIn his response to the Queen’s Speech, Starmer congratulated Johnson on becoming the “first resident of Downing Street” to be resident of a Labour council, after the Tories lost Westminster at the local elections.Sir Keir choose not to mention Partygate in the Commons, but accused Johnson of delivering a “pathetic” response to the cost-of-living crisis by presenting a “thin” legislative agenda to parliament.Johnson attempted to mock Starmer by referring to him as the “leader of the opposition of the moment” and referred to Labour MPs as “great quivering jellies of indecision” when it comes to nuclear energy.Meanwhile, in post-Queen’s Speech comments, Conservative Fay Jones welcomed the Online Safety Bill “which will protect the unsuspecting farmer from nefarious internet videos” – a joke about departing Tory MP Neil Parish being caught watching porn. More

A new Bill to crack down on dirty money in London has been criticised as feeble by the author of a study on the power of Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats.The Queen’s Speech promises an Economic Crime Bill to “ensure Putin’s cronies do not benefit from the UK’s open society”, following Russia’s assault on Ukraine.But Oliver Bullough said the legislation is on course to fail in a central task to precent the registration of hundreds of thousands of rogue firms at Companies House.The author of ‘Butler to the World: How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals’ accused ministers of sprinkling “a little bit of sparkly crypto-dust” over existing regulation of the agency.Branding Companies House “a sink of filth”, Mr Bullough said: “There are already laws regulating it, the problem is that they’re not enforced.He tweeted: “If this was a real Economic Crime Bill it would come with promises of vastly greater resources for the National Crime Agency, Serious Fraud Office and City of London police.“There is no point passing laws if you don’t also provide resources for them to be enforced. It’s like buying guns without also employing solders.”An initial Economic Crime Bill was rushed through in the last parliamentary session, ending years of stalling by the government after Russian tanks invaded UkraineMinisters acknowledged its weaknesses by admitting a second Bill will be needed, to “tackle illicit finance” and to “crack down on the kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists”.Fears have also been raised that it will still be possible to “cloak real property owners in anonymity”, using nominee directors and companies.Crown dependencies and overseas territories are still facilitating corruption and money laundering by resisting open registers of beneficial ownership of companies, critics say.Companies House allows 300,000 firms a year to be registered with no proper checks – in “moments, at minimal cost,” a former minister who quit over fraud warned.The government said the Bill would:* Give the Registrar of Companies more powers to become “a more active gatekeeper over company creation and custodian of more reliable data”.* Introduce identity verification for people who run companies, to improve the accuracy of Companies House data.* Create powers to seize and recover crypto assets, which are “the principal medium used for ransomware”.The campaign group Transparency International UK was more positive, calling the announcement of the legislation “heartening”.“For too long the UK’s lax company registration system has been open to abuse by those seeking to launder the proceeds of crime and corruption, said Duncan Hames, its director of policy.“The changes in this Bill would represent a significant step toward ending Britain’s role as a global hub for dirty money, but far more will need to be done if we are to stop the corrupt and other criminals using this country as a safe haven for their ill-gotten gains.” More

Watch live as MPs debate government agenda set out in Queen’s SpeechLabour MPs have criticised the government for a lack of strategy in tackling the cost of living crisis in today’s Queen’s speech.MP Zarah Sultana spoke out against the measures laid out at the State Opening of Parliament, saying the government has failed to “outline any plans to solve” the “biggest fall of living standards since records began”. She added that the speech “shows the Tories don’t have a clue what life is like for ordinary people”. Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons that the Government had to face up to the cost-of-living crisis and the challenge of a stagnating economy to “get Britain growing again”.The Labour leader said: “If the Tories had simply matched Labour’s record on growth in government, people would have had higher incomes, boosting public finances and we could have spent £40 billion more on public services without having to raise a single tax.”Instead, he said, the UK was forecast to have the slowest growth in the G7 apart from Russia in the next year, and its public services were suffering. Show latest update

1652194454Prime minister says Britain cannot ‘spend’ its way out of cost of living crisis Boris Johnson told MPs: “However great our compassion and ingenuity, we cannot simply spend our way out of this problem, we need to grow out of this problem by creating hundreds of thousands of new high-wage, high-skill jobs across the country.”Intervening, Labour MP Sarah Owen (Luton North) said Mr Johnson had yet to give an apology to the “pensioners choosing between heating and eating, an apology to the children that have gone hungry throughout school holidays, and an apology to the hundreds of thousands of family members of Covid victims that were lost during the pandemic”.Mr Johnson replied: “Of course this Government is doing all we can to help people during the pandemic, to help pensioners – and by the way it was this Government that introduced the triple lock for pensioners to protect them.”The triple lock was introduced by the previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, while the current Government temporarily suspended the earnings element of the triple lock for 2022/23 due to concerns over the distorting impact of the coronavirus crisis on wages.Mr Johnson went on to defend support offered by the Government to help people, adding: “Be in no doubt, this is what I think everybody in this country needs to understand, what we’re doing is making sure that we have a strong economy with high-wage, high-skill jobs that will enable us to take this country forward.”Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:541652194223Opinion: Just saying things isn’t enough, prime minister – even if you can get Prince Charles to say them for you“The words ‘cost of living’ appeared in the intro, slotted in right at the top and dutifully read out by Prince Charles while Prince William on the other side of the crown and stared into the middle distance, trying not to look the long decades of his terrifyingly tedious future too closely in the eye.Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:501652193927Prime minister says the government will have ‘fiscal firepower to help families’ after 2024Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested that, after 2024, the Government will have “the fiscal firepower to help families up and down the country”.He added: “My right honourable friend the Chancellor and I will be saying more about this in the days to come. But at the same time as we help people, we need the legislative firepower to fix the underlying problems in energy supply, in housing, in infrastructure and in skills which are driving up costs for families across the country.“And this Queen’s Speech takes those issues head on. And above all, we are tackling the economic challenges with the best solution of all and that is an ever growing number of high wage, high skill jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs.“And we drive up employment by creating the right platform for business to invest, making our streets safer, 20,000 more police, creating a healthier population, 50,000 more nurses, funding the NHS to help them clear the Covid backlogs and giving the confidence that people know that they will be looked after in old age by fixing social care.“Delivering gigabit broadband, giving the remotest parts of the country have the access that they need, and using our Brexit freedoms to enable revolutionary technologies like gene editing to help our farmers grow more nutritious and more productive crops.“And it’s that combination of public and private sector together that is tackling unemployment with half a million people more on the payroll now before the pandemic began.”Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:451652193623Prime minister calls Starmer the ‘leader of the opposition of the moment’Boris Johnson is met with cheers in the Commons as he repeatedly calls Sir Keir Starmer “the leader of the opposition of the moment” as a jibe against the latter’s Beergate allegations. Read more about the Labour leader’s Beergate scandal and how it differs from Partygate:Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:401652193430Prime minister says despite aftershocks of pandemic still being felt, Britain will be fastest-growing economy in G7 by 2024Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the UK will be again the fastest-growing economy in the G7 by 2024.He added: “As we come to the halfway point of this Parliament, this country has seen off the biggest challenge any post-war government has faced, but the cost of the pandemic has been huge with the biggest fall in output for 300 years that necessitated government expenditure of £400 billion and the aftershocks are still being felt across the world with a global spike in energy prices, the impact we are seeing on the cost of food, and it’s precisely because this Government got the big calls right and made the tough decisions during the pandemic that we had the fastest economic growth in the G7 last year and will return to that status by the way by 2024.”Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:371652192970Labour leader thanks Queen for her ‘commitment to public duty’Sir Keir Starmer earlier paid tribute to the Queen, telling MPs: “Her dedication to Britain has been a reassuring constant in an ever-changing world, her commitment to public duty a reminder of the responsibilities we all owe each other, her dignity and her leadership an inspiration to all of us.“She will forever have all of our thanks for 70 years of service to our country. We all wish her well.”He added: “I also want to congratulate the Prime Minister, he’s achieved a new first, the first resident of Downing Street to be a constituent of a Labour council. I’m sure they will serve him well.”Sir Keir also thanked the mover and seconder of the Queen’s Speech, noting how Fay Jones could be an “iron lady in the making” after her exploits in completing an “ironman” race.Maryam Zakir-Hussain10 May 2022 15:291652192779Prime minister pays tribute to late Sir David AmessBoris Johnson has paid tribute to late Sir David Amess as he said time will not ‘diminish the shock’ of his death. More

Conservatives jeered at Sir Keir Starmer over the so-called Beergate saga, as a Tory MP joked that the Labour leader was suffering from “karma” over his Partygate attacks.Backbencher Graham Stuart put the boot into over the Durham Police probe into the takeaway curry eaten at event last April – telling Starmer “the only thing opening up for him in the north is a police investigation”.Mr Stuart also joked that “never in the history of human conflict has so much karma come from a korma” –prompting further laughter from the Tory benches.The Tory MP added: “Free beer and cash were the electoral controversies then, as opposed to say, beer and curry today.”Starmer was seen grinning at the remarks, but deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner did not smile and shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy shook her head.It followed a terse exchange between Boris Johnson and Starmer as they walked into the Lords chamber together for Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech.The prime minister appeared to taunt the Labour leader by saying “nice weekend?” – an apparent reference to renewed pressure on Starmer over the takeaway eaten with Labour staff while campaigning in Durham.Mr Johnson and his opposite number were filmed smiling and engaging in apparent small talk as they walked side by side in a procession of MPs on Tuesday.It comes after Sir Keir said on Monday he will do the “right thing” and quit if he is issued with a fixed penalty notice in relation to a gathering in Labour offices.At the weekend, the Mail on Sunday published a leaked memo indicating the dinner had been planned as part of Sir Keir’s itinerary for a day of campaigning, and no further work was scheduled afterwards.Starmer’s move has been viewed as a bold gamble, with the opposition leader placing his future in the hands of Durham Police after it was announced last week officers would reopen an investigation into the event, where he drank beer and ate curry.The Labour party has sought to contrast Sir Keir’s actions with those of the PM – who has refused to quit after being fined by the Met Police over a gathering in No 10 in June 2020 to mark his 56th birthday.In his response to the Queen’s Speech, Starmer congratulated Mr Johnson on becoming the “first resident of Downing Street” to be resident of a Labour council, after the Tories lost Westminster at the local elections.In her own post-Queen’s Speech comments, Conservative Fay Jones welcomed the Online Safety Bill “which will protect the unsuspecting farmer from nefarious internet videos” – a joke about departing Tory MP Neil Parish being caught watching porn. More

A Brexit Freedoms Bill in today’s Queen’s Speech promises to “seize the benefits” of EU withdrawal by making it easier to relax regulations – but gives no examples of Brussels rules the government would scrap.Six years after the UK voted to leave the EU and two years after its formal withdrawal, Boris Johson’s government has yet to deliver the bonfire of Brussels red tape promised by the Leave campaign.Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg was reduced to appealing to newspaper readers for ideas on what rules and regulations could be reformed or abolished.The Bill unveiled today promises to “seize the benefits of Brexit by ensuring regulation fits the needs of the UK, which in turn will enable economic growth”.But there is no mention of business concerns that deviation from EU regulation may in many cases increase the burden of red tape by forcing firms to comply with two separate – and possibly conflicting – regimes.The head of consumer research at international delivery company ParcelHero, David Jinks, warned: “Companies trading oversees will not want to see any divergence between UK and EU regulations which would mean their products can’t be sold in Europe.“It is fine in principle that the new Brexit Freedoms Bill ‘will enable law inherited from the European Union to be more easily amended’. However, where that means significant divergence from EU law for products, packaging or online services, businesses will not want to have to meet two different sets of regulations.”More than 1,400 pieces of EU-derived law were transferred into UK law as part of the Brexit settlement, in order to prevent a chaotic “legal black hole” in the immediate aftermath of withdrawal.The new bill will allow the amendment or repeal of many of these measures to be rushed through by using “secondary legislation”, which can be enacted by ministers without full parliamentary scrutiny. Government sources said this would save “decades of parliamentary time”, but critics fear it hands too much power to the executive to institute changes with potential profound implications.The legislation will also remove the principle of supremacy of EU law, which still applies to 2,376 acts of parliament passed before Brexit.Government sources said this would “assert the sovereignty of parliament” and ensure that “there is no higher law than an act of parliament”.Mr Johnson said the bill would allow the UK to “get on with growing our economy by making the most of our Brexit freedoms” and would “attract business and investment and encourage innovation by making the UK the best regulated economy in the world”. More

Boris Johnson is to fly to Finland and Sweden to discuss the Nordic countries’ ambitions to apply for membership of Nato.The visit will be seen as a red rag to Moscow, after Russian president Vladimir Putin used fears of an expanded Nato alliance as a justification for his invasion of Ukraine.Finnish president Sauli Niinisto is expected to confirm his country’s stance on membership on Thursday, while an announcement is expected from Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats on Sunday following consultations over the weekend.Mr Johnson will meet his counterparts in Stockholm and Helsinki during a one-day trip on Wednesday, taking questions from the press in both countries.After decades of neutrality, the question of Nato membership was thrust to the top of the political agenda in both Sweden and Finland by the invasion of Ukraine in February, which threw a harsh spotlight on the vulnerability of Russia’s neighbours to aggression from Moscow.A formal application to join Nato could be made at the alliance’s June summit in Madrid and is likely to be fast-tracked, though getting the signatures of all 30 alliance members could take up to a year.Setting out the UK’s position ahead of Mr Johnson’s visit, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We support countries’ democratic capability to decide on things like Nato membership.“We understand the positions of Sweden and Finland and that is why the prime minister is going to discuss these broader security issues.” More

Boris Johnson’s government will push ahead with legislation to allow the gene editing of animals and crops in a bid to improve Britain’s agricultural productivity.The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill outlined in the Queen’s Speech is aimed at promoting “efficient” farming and food production – stripping out rules inherited from the EU after Brexit.Gene editing is considered to pose less of a risk that genetic modification (GM) since it does not involve the introduction of DNA from another species.But the practice is still controversial, with campaigners warning about potential animal welafre implications from a “high-tech free-for-all”.The use of technology has been restricted by a 2018 ruling from the European Court of Justice that determined it should be regulated in the same way as GM.Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has been keen to find ways to ditch EU rules so the UK can increasingly diverge from Brussels.The government hopes that simplified regulation will allow gene editing to increase disease resistance in crops, which can in turn reduce the use of pesticide – as well as boosting production.Gene editing makes changes to the traits within a species of plant or animal much more quickly and precisely than traditional selective breeding, used for centuries to create stronger crops and livestock.Plans for the bill include two notification systems where breeders and scientists will need to notify Defra of precision-bred organisms. The information collected on precision-bred organisms will be published on a public register.The World Animal Protection group said the legislation had the “potential for catastrophic welfare implications” – urging the government to consider animal welfare when it comes to drawing up the bill.Lindsay Duncan, the group’s farming campaign manager said gene editing “does not take into consideration the severe welfare impacts selective breeding has already had on millions of farmed animals in the UK.”GM Freeze, an umbrella group of organisations seeking to highlight concerns about the impact of genetic modification, also argues that not enough is known about gene editing.The group said the government “appears to have decided that what we don’t know does not matter and that we should take our chances with potential adverse effects on people, animals and the environment”.Separately from the gene editing bill, a Brexit Freedoms Bill in today’s Queen’s Speech promises to “seize the benefits” of EU withdrawal by making it easier to relax regulations. More