Minister declines to endorse Starmer’s claim about some civil servants being comfortable with ‘tepid bath of decline’
In an interview on LBC this morning Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, was asked about Keir Starmer’s criticism of civil servants in his speech yesterday. (See 11.22am.) He would not endorse Starmer’s claim that some civil servants are comfortable with decline.
Pennycook said that the officials he had encountered as a minister were “some of the most dedicated, committed, professional people I’ve ever worked with”.
Asked by Nick Ferrari if that meant Starmer was wrong, Pennycook replied:
He’s not wrong …
We’ve also got to do government differently. I was asked on a couple of other programmes this morning about the construction capacity problems that we’re facing in terms of building those million and a half. We’ve got to do government differently. That isn’t an MHCLG problem. That cuts across the Department for Education, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Business. We’ve got to break down silos in government.
And I think therefore, we have got to say to the civil service, we want to do things a bit differently, and you’ll have to come on that journey with us.
But asked specifically about civil servants enjoying the “tepid bath” of declinism (Starmer’s metaphor), Pennycook replied:
I haven’t experienced any particular civil servants in a tepid bath of declinism. They share our ambition. They are working absolutely flat out to make the changes to the planning system that we’ve already taken forward, and they’ll continue to do that.
Key events
The former Tory MP Bob Stewart should be stripped of his right to access the parliamentary estate after showing “blatant disregard” in failing to register his employment by a defence company for two years, the Commons standards committee said in a report. PA Media says:
Stewart, who stood down as MP for Beckenham at the election, failed to register his employment as a consultant with Ksantex, a firm registered in Luxembourg but owned by Azerbaijan-born French citizen Khagani Bashirov, according to the committee.
Were he still an MP, he would also be subject to a 10-day suspension from the Commons, enough to kick-start the process that could pave the way for a by-election.
The former Army officer was employed by Ksantex between 2015 and 2017, and was paid more than £70,000 over that period.
He referred himself to parliament’s standards authority after media reporting suggested the job could conflict with his role as a member of the Commons defence committee.
In his initial defence, Stewart said he had registered a role with a company he called VES Consultancy several years previously, which was part of the “same group of companies” as Ksantex.
Parliament’s standards commissioner found the registry for VES Consultancy was incorrect, that the company was actually called Vnesh Expert Services, and that Stewart did not register all his earnings from the role he undertook there.
The commissioner also found Stewart failed to register his role with Ksantex, and payments from the company worth £32,277.87 in 2015, and £41,385.20 in 2017.
After examining the findings of the commissioner, the standards committee said Stewart should have declared his role with Ksantex as it “could have reasonably been inferred to be a defence-related company for at least some of the time” during which he worked for it.
In its conclusion, the committee said: “For a senior member to commit several breaches, spanning three codes of conduct and a period of 14 years, shows a blatant disregard for the rules. It is integral to the transparency of the standards system that members accurately register their outside interests and make declarations in relevant proceedings. Nor are minor sums involved in these repeated breaches: payments of £41,385.20 and £32,277.87, for example, went entirely unregistered.”
Justin Welby apologises ‘for the hurt’ caused by farewell Lords speech
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has apologised after being accused of making light of serious safeguarding failures in the Church of England.
Civil servants union boss writes to Starmer over ‘frankly insulting’ criticism
Dave Penman, head of the FDA senior civil servants’ union, has written to Keir Starmer urging him to rethink his “frankly insulting” criticism of Whitehall for being comfortable with falling standards, Rowena Mason reports.
TUV MP Jim Allister claims Windsor Framework has achieved what IRA wanted, pushing ‘border to Irish Sea’
Jim Allister has accused SDLP leader Claire Hanna of valuing the “nationalist reach” of post-Brexit trading arrangements over the “democratic detriment”, PA Media reports. PA says:
Hanna said the TUV leader was “inserting the dynamism” into conversations around Irish unity as he drove “people to seek to get out of the control of men like him”.
The pair had a heated exchange during the second reading of Allister’s European Union (withdrawal arrangements) bill, which would allow UK ministers to scrap parts of the Windsor Framework deal.
The framework was negotiated by former prime minister Rishi Sunak to mitigate trade concerns in Northern Ireland relating to the previous post-Brexit trade agreements under the Northern Ireland protocol.
Allister claims the framework enables a “democratic deficit” by implementing some EU law in Northern Ireland and creates a border in the Irish Sea.
The MP for North Antrim questioned Hanna on her “democratic credentials” as he compared the protocol arrangements to the terror campaign of the IRA during the Troubles.
Allister told MPs: “For some – not all – but for some enthusiasts about the protocol arrangement of a nationalist or Irish republican persuasion, there is a political gain here that subsumes all doubts they might have as democrats. And it is this: that for 30 years and more, the IRA terrorised through bomb and bullet to try and push the border to the Irish Sea. ‘Brits Out’. Push the border to the Irish Sea. That is precisely what the protocol has done. It has pushed the border to the Irish Sea.”
Hanna shouted “shame on you”, to which Allister said: “Now [Hanna] may from a sedentary position object, but the challenge to her is: is her nationalism more important to her than her democratic credentials? How can [Hanna] – who calls herself a Social Democratic and Labour member – how can you look her constituents in the eye and say, ‘I believe you are not worthy to have your laws made by those you elect, and I would rather they are made by those you don’t elect’? Is it because the nationalist reach of the protocol is more important than the democratic detriment of the protocol?”
In her reply, referring to Allister, Hanna said: “It is his actions, in fact, that are inserting the dynamism in the question about constitutional change. Every time he pulls a stunt like this, he drives more people to seek to get out of the control of men like him. I, as a democrat, every day I accept, the constitutional reality I accept, we’re members of the United Kingdom. I’m seeking to change that democratically, so he will never again question my commitment to democracy in Northern Ireland.”
The debate on the bill ended without a vote, because the debate was still going on at 2.30pm. In other words, it was takked out. It won’t be debated further.
Swinney says relations between UK and Scottish governments now ‘incomparably better’ than under Tories
Keir Starmer has posted a video clip on social media about the British-Irish Council meeting, stressing his commitment to working with the leaders of devolved governments.
My government will deliver for working people across the whole of the United Kingdom, working closely with the devolved governments to bring about national renewal. pic.twitter.com/cCof8B19qr
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) December 6, 2024
At his press conference earlier, John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, was asked if he thought there had been a reset in relations with London. He said relations were now “incomparably better” then they were when the Tories were in power.
I have made no secret of the fact that relationships between the Scottish government and the United Kingdom government today are incomparably better than they were immediately before the general election. The relationship with the last United Kingdom government latterly, I speak only for the government that I lead, was awful. They could not have been more disrespectful. They could not have been more awful.
Keir Starmer came to see me the Sunday after the election. We’ve had a number of one to one meetings. We had another one this morning, which I very much welcome … So the dialogue is incomparably [better].
No 10 plays down claims Starmer’s talk of ‘missions’, ‘milestones’ and ‘foundations’ confusing to voters
The Daily Mail splashed today on a Quentin Letts’ sketch mocking Keir Starmer’s speech yesterday, particularly for its use of jargon. In its news story the paper says:
In a jargon-laden speech, the prime minister set out seven ‘pillars’, six ‘milestones’, five ‘missions’, three ‘foundations’ and a ladder that would guide his government.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson played down claims that these terms were all confusing. He explained:
The missions are the mandate for change. The foundations run through everything we do, but the milestones are a really important, tangible way the public can hold us to account.
Pat McFadden says Edinburgh will get UK data it needs’ to lift two-child benefit cap – but stresses SNP policy not yet funded
Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, has said the UK government will provide Scotland with the data it needs to abolish the two-child benefit cap – while playing down the significance of the SNP’s commitment to get rid of it.
Speaking at a press conference in Edinburgh alongside John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, McFadden said that, although the Scottish government has announced the policy, it has not yet said how it will fund it.
In her budget on Wednesday, Shona Robison, the Scottish government’s finance secretary, announced that from April 2026 the SNP government would start paying families to compensate them for the impact of the UK-wide policy, originally introduced by the Tories, which stops parents getting child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children.
To implement this, the Scottish government has said that it will need to access benefits data held by the UK government’s Department of Work and Pensions. Swinney told press conference that he had raised this with Keir Starmer in talks this morning and that Starmer had said the UK would “work constructively” with Swinney’s government on this.
McFadden confirmed this saying, that he would ensure that the Scottish government gets “any data it needs for this”.
But, in response to several questions on this topic, McFadden repeatedly said the SNP pledge was not yet funded. He said:
Any commitment has to be funded. Funds, as I understand it, have not yet been committed [for the SNP policy]. That is true for all of us in government. If we make a commitment, we have to fund it.
Swinney said the Scottish government has set aside money in the 2025-26 budget enabling it to “do the work that is necessary to left the two-child limit”. He was referring to £3m set aside to enable his government to develop systems allowing the money to be paid.
As for how the benefits payments themselves would be funded, Swinney said that would be addressed in the 2026-27 budget.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that lifting the two-child benefit cap on a UK-wide basis would cost about £2.5bn a year.
The SNP has repeatedly criticised Keir Starmer’s government for refusing to lift the two-child benefit cap, a policy which is widely seen as a major contributor to child poverty. Although Labour MPs and activists would like to see the cap abolished, Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, have used their refusal to abolish it immediately as a sign of their commitment to fiscal responsibility.
In the press conference McFadden said that the UK government and the Scottish government both wanted to cut child poverty. He says the UK government has set up a taskforce looking at how this can be done, but he added:
We don’t believe it is just about benefits. We think there are other things that contribute to child poverty. And the conclusions of the child poverty taskforce that we’ve established will report next year.
Badenoch hits back at Starmer over his joke about her McDonald’s/being working class comments
In his speech yesterday Keir Starmer started with a joke about Kemi Badenoch claiming that she was working class as a teenager because she was working in McDonald’s.
As Politico reports, Badenoch hit back last night in a speech she delivered in Washington. The Conservative leader said that if a Tory had made a comment like that about a black party leader, they would have been accused of racism. She said:
The truth is that the left are not that interested in ethnic minorities, except as a tool to fight their battles against the right. In fact, just this morning, the British prime minister … made a joke about how I worked at McDonald’s. He would never have dared to do that if I was a leftwing activist, and if a Conservative prime minister had made those comments about a Black party leader, they would have been called a racist and asked to resign.
As Christian Calgie reports for the Express, Badenoch devoted most of her speech to her claim that liberalism has been “hacked” because policies based on tolerance are being exploited by people who do not support western democratic values.
The Institute for Government thinktank has published an assessment of Keir Starmer’s speech yesterday which covers his attack on the civil service. (See 11.22am.) The IfG is not as critical as Dave Penman from the FDA, but it says Starmer “needs to be careful not to alienate and disillusion his workforce”. But civil servants should also take account of what Starmer is saying, the IfG says.
In one of the most memorable passages Starmer said that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. Combine that with his earlier direction to his newly appointed cabinet secretary Chris Wormald to work on “nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state” and you have a sense of a prime minister frustrated with the support he is getting from the system.
Starmer’s instruction should be taken as a call for the civil service to rediscover its policy creativity and shake off the passivity which can characterise the minister-official relationship. Mission-led government requires innovative thinking, creativity and a willingness to listen to external voices, so Wormald and his colleagues can use Starmer’s new interest in internal reform to show how imaginative and energetic they can be in service of the government’s agenda. That must go alongside radically improving how the centre of government works, by restructuring and slimming down the Cabinet Office and building capacity in No.10 to hold the rest of government to account for delivering on the direction set by the Plan for Change.
Starmer needs to be careful not to alienate and disillusion his workforce, and the approach of some ministers in the last government showed that crude blob-bashing does not work. But at this moment of leadership change in the civil service, senior officials need to show they can rise to Starmer’s challenge. The new cabinet secretary inherits this plan, so Chris Wormald – who starts his new job on 16 December – has just been given a very public set of performance objectives by the prime minister.
Reform UK claims Tory co-chair’s comments about Farage/Musk links shows Tories in ‘total panic’
Reform UK has accused the Conservative party of being “in a state of total panic” about Nigel Farage’s links with Elon Musk.
Farage’s party issued the statement in response to a Sky News report saying that Lord Johnson of Lainston, co-chair of the Conservative party, criticised Reform UK for its links with Elon Musk in a private call with activists.
In her story for Sky News, Alexandra Rogers says:
In a recording of a video call with Tory activists heard by Sky News, Lord Johnson of Lainston said it was “extraordinary” that Mr Musk, the owner of X and Tesla and the world’s richest man, was “basically buying one of the political parties here”.
He said Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, should “be frankly embarrassed about that”, saying he risked becoming a “puppet of a foreign politician” if he accepted any donations from Mr Musk.
Although there have been reports saying Musk could donate $100m to Reform UK, Farage has said that he did not know anything about this until approached by the paper running the story. He has also said he does not think this will happen.
A Reform UK spokesperson said:
This leaked recording is the latest demonstration of a Conservative party in a state of total panic about the momentum of Reform UK in British politics.
Back to bats, and a reader points out that Natural England, a government advisory body, published a blog on a government website last month defending the requirement for HS2 to take steps to protect bats. (See 9.25am.)
