UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe health secretary has said that flights carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off “within weeks” despite being unable to disclose whether the government had found a carrier.Victoria Atkins maintained she wants flights to take off “as quickly as possible”, adding that it’ll be “certainly within weeks”.But when quizzed on Sky News about which airline would be carrying out the return flights, Ms Atkins was unable to answer.She said: “The Home Office is working on this… believe you me the Home Office is ready to go.”Health secretary Victoria Atkins said flights to Rwanda will take off ‘within weeks’ More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe row over Angela Rayner’s previous living arrangements has deepened as her former aide reportedly wrote to police contradicting her claims.Former staff member Matt Finnegan, who made an employment tribunal claim against Ms Rayner in 2018, said there was “no doubt in my mind that this was Ms Rayner’s family home” when he visited her at what she says was her husband’s address in 2014.Police are investigating whether Labour’s deputy leader broke electoral law after Tory allegations that she may have given false information about her main residence a decade ago.She was registered at a former council house she bought in Stockport, but it is understood Conservative Party deputy chair James Daly has suggested neighbours say she lived with her husband at a separate property.Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has denied any wrongdoing over the row about her previous living arrangements More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailDetails of her first and last meeting with the late Queen and fleas being in No. 10 are among the stories revealed in Liz Truss’ new memoir.The first excerpt of her book, titled Ten Years to Save the West, made several candid confessions including how her husband predicted how her short premiership would end in tears and that she did not listen to the Queen’s advice.The bombshell revelations include that she spent several of her six weeks as prime minister “itching” because Downing Street was “infested” with the pests.In extracts from the book published by the Daily Mail, Truss admitted she went into “a state of shock” when told of Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022.Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland, which occurred just two days before the monarch’s death, Truss says the 96-year-old Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.Liz Truss Book More

Liz Truss Book (PA) Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Liz Truss has detailed her short tenure in Downing Street including her meeting with the late Queen in her new memoir. In the first excerpt of her book, titled […] More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA public row has erupted between a member of Labour’s front bench and ex-Labour MP Diane Abbott over the use of the private sector.Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting suggested Ms Abbott was being hypocritical for saying there was no principled case for using private healthcare to cut NHS waiting lists – as he highlighted how she had sent her son to a private school.Ms Abbott, who had the Labour whip withdrawn last April over claims of antisemitic comments, hit headlines in 2003 when it was revealed that she put her son in a £10,000-a-year school instead of a comprehensive as then prime minister Tony Blair aspired to improve education.She and Mr Streeting became embroiled in a spat on social media when the Labour frontbencher referred to “the principled case for using the private sector to cut NHS waiting lists while we rebuild our NHS – and why the alternative is working class people waiting longer”.Ms Abbott, a former shadow home secretary, contradicted him, adding the comment: “There is no principled case for using the private sector. Just as the “spare capacity” in private health Wes talks about does not exist. Only NHS doctors, nurses and the £million contracts Wes will give them.”But Labour’s health spokesman hit back, quote-tweeting her, and adding: “But you used the private sector while a Labour government improved public services,” implying she was guilty of double standards.He highlighted how she told The Mirror in 2012: “Since I made that decision, Labour built five new secondary schools in Hackney, one of them with some of the best GCSE results in the country. I wouldn’t have to make the same choice today.”Ms Abbott has previously claimed Mr Streeting is not prepared to invest enough money in the NHS More