No 10 declines to hit back at Trump’s special envoy who claimed Starmer’s Ukraine policy amounts to posturing
Downing Street has refused to respond directly to the claim from President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff that Keir Starmer’s stance on Ukraine amounts to “posturing”.
Asked if Starmer was happy for one of Trump’s closest advisers to be talking in these terms, the PM’s spokesperson said that Starmer himself has explained in detail why he is working on plans for a “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine, and why a peace deal would need military underpining.
Asked if Witkoff’s comments came up in the Trump/Starmer call last night (see 12.31pm), the spokesperson said the focus of that conversation was on the economic deal.
Asked if Starmer intended just to ignore the comment, the spokesperson replied:
We’re focused on the outcome here. The prime minister could not be clearer about the role of the coalition of the willing, and the value of it. That’s why we are embarking on three days of detailed operational planning this week.
The prime minister is focused on delivering the right outcome in Ukraine. There’s frequent engagement with President Trump to that end, with shared vision with President Trump in terms of bringing a durable peace in Ukraine.
Asked if the PM would deny that he is posturing, the spokesperson said Starmer was focused on the substance of the operational planning phase of the coalition of the willing.
In his interview, asked about Starmer’s Ukraine policy, Witkoff said:
I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.
Key events
Afternoon summary
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Peter Kyle, the science secretary, has confirmed in an interview with Politico that the UK is discussing with the US watering down the digital services tax in a way that would help American tech firms.
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Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, has said his party is not doing enough to grab the attention of the public. In an interview implicitly critical of Kemi Badenoch, the party leader, he told PoliticsHome:
We need to do more and we need to work much harder to earn the right for the public to listen to us again. Because the problem we have in the Conservative party, particularly after the defeat that we had, is that many people within the Conservative party now were there when we were in government.
Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow levelling up secretary, has told MPs that the Conservatives will not vote against the planning and infrastructure at second reading tonight. But they will seek to amend it in later stages during its passage through parliament, but in ways that won’t undermine “the ambition to accelerate the delivery of new homes”, he said.
Defra faces cuts, Steve Reed tells MPs
Helena Horton
Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has told the environmental audit committee that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will face cuts in the spending review and the environmental regulator will “have to do more with less”.
He said the Office for Environmental Protection and the “rest of Defra” will “have to do more with less” and that the priority has to be “cutting NHS waiting lists” rather than funding Defra.
Reed added that the targets to improve nature in the environmental improvement plan – which sets targets for issues like air quality, water quality, and tree planting- will be watered down as they are currently unachievable.
He told the committee: “It is better to have targets that are achievable than targets that are not”, adding:
They are stretch targets but I want them to be reachable, rather than targets that no one thinks we have a hope in hell of ever achieving.
He warned that a lack of clean drinking water is imperilling growth and risking rationing. There has not been a major reservoir built in England in 30 years.
Reed added:
A lack of clean drinking water infrastructure is holding back growth around Cambridge, we cannot build the data centres and gigafactories that we need because they have very high demand for water. As things stand, by the mid 2030s some parts of the country will be looking at rationing drinking water.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a thinktank run by the former PM, has published a briefing paper on the planning and infrastructure bill being debated by MPs this afternoon. It says it is “a promising piece of legislation” which, if implemented properly, “could be momentous, marking a break from the system that has long caused us to under-build the infrastructure the country needs to thrive”.
But the thinktank says the government should be going even further to remove the regulatory and legal obstacles that hold up planning. It says:
The government has already begun to address the statutory requirements by reducing the number of statutory consultees and amending the scope and timeframe in which statutory consultees can comment on Town and Country Planning Act applications.
However, the government should seek to go further in also cutting statutory requirements within the development consent order regime, which contains significant requirements at the pre-application stage. For example, aligning consultation requirements in the development consent order and Town and Country Planning Act systems could shorten pre-application periods and limit unnecessary stakeholder engagement.
A more transformative reform would be a shift towards “bright-line” rules – similar to permitted-development rights – where meeting clear, predefined standards guarantees approval. This approach, often called zoning, could reduce ambiguity and limit grounds for judicial review. Progress is underway through national development management policies, as TBI has previously recommended, but further steps are needed to embed clear, unambiguous rules into local plans via national policy.
Plaid Cymru says Treasury could raise ‘billions’ by tightening tax loopholes as alternative to disability benefit cuts
Plaid Cymru says there are various measures Rachel Reeves could use to raise money as an alternative to cutting disability benefits.
In an open letter to the chancellor, ahead of the spring statement tomorrow, Ben Lake, the Plaid Treasury spokesperson, identifies three potential options. He says:
The Office for Budget Responsibility is widely expected to downgrade the performance of the UK economy, and I am concerned that the government’s response to cut public spending will harm the most vulnerable in Wales by increasing poverty and exacerbating inequality.
I note that several practical alternatives have been proposed to raise additional revenue for the UK government, and I would be grateful to understand whether they have been considered in advance of the spring statement.
It has been estimated that charging national insurance on limited liability partnerships such as large corporate law firms, for example, or closing loopholes allowing overseas-based online vendors to avoid paying VAT, in addition to cutting the subsides for oil and gas companies could raise billions to help meet the government’s current fiscal rules without the need for further austerity.
Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, is speaking now in the second reading debate for the planning and infrastracture bill. The government has published a news release with a summary of what the bill will do.
Rayner said the bill was needed because Britain “just can’t build anything anymore”.
Under the Conservatives, home ownership was collapsing, and homelessness soaring, she said.
The time it takes to secure planning permission for major projects has almost doubled in the last decade. At more than four years, it’s slower and more costly to build big infrastructure in England than in France and Italy. No new reservoir has been built for over 30 years. There are countless examples, like the critical new road improvement scheme for Norwich that would create jobs and speed up journeys, yet it was held up for two years by unsuccessful legal challenges.
Alexander says she won’t act as ‘armchair electrical engineer’ and will wait for outcome of Heathrow fire review
Ruth Kelly, the former Labour transport secretary who is now a non-executive director at Heathrow, will conduct a review of the airport’s internal resilience, MPs were told.
Heidi Alexander, the current transport secretary, mentioned the Kelly review as she confirmed that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has also commissioned its own inquiry into the electricty substation fire that closed Heathrow on Friday.
In a statement to MPs, Alexander also insisted that the cause of the fire is not thought to be suspicious.
Alexander said:
Regarding the cause of the fire, the Metropolitan police confirmed that the fire is not believed to be suspicious. However due to the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure, the Met’s counter-terrorism command are leading our inquiries into this matter.
This is due to the specialist resource and capabilities within that command which can assist in progressing this investigation at pace to help minimise disruption and identify the cause.
There will of course be learnings to ensure we avoid such incidents from reoccurring. That is why on Saturday the energy secretary [Ed Miliband] working with Ofgem, commissioned the independent National Energy System Operator (Neso) to urgently investigate this incident.
The review will also seek to understand any wider lessons to be learned for energy resilience, for critical national infrastructure. Neso has been asked to report back to Desnz (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) with initial findings within six weeks.
In addition, Heathrow has asked Ruth Kelly, former secretary of state for Transport, and an independent member of Heathrow’s board, to undertake a review of its internal resilience. The Kelly review will analyse the robustness and execution of Heathrow’s crisis management plans, the airport’s response and how it recovered the operation.
In response to a question from her Tory shadow, Gareth Bacon, about why Heathrow is reliant on a single substation, Alexander said she did not want to act as an “armchair electrical engineer” and that she would be waiting for the Kelly report.
She also said the Cabinet Office was conducting its own resilience review of critical national infrastructure.
Healey accuses Tories of ‘Brexit rhetoric’ as he dismisses claim UK to be shut out of EU €150bn defence fund for good
James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, has accused Emmanuel Macron, the French president, of putting fishing rights ahead of European security.
During defence questions in the Commons, Cartlidge suggested UK manufacturers cannot win contracts from a €150bn EU defence fund because of Macron, and his supposed desire to protect the rights of French fishermen in talks with the UK about the Brext deal.
Cartlidge said:
We provide unconditionally to European Nato countries, our nuclear deterrent 24/7. Our army is in Estonia, defending Europe’s eastern flank, and we have done more than any other European nation to support Ukraine.
So can I ask the secretary of state if he and the prime minister will stand up to President Macron and stress to him, this is the worst possible time to prioritise fishing rights over Europe’s collective security?
In response, John Healey, the defene secretary, urged Cartlidge to “drop that Brexit rhetoric”. He also said he expected the UK to negotiate a security deal with the EU that would allow British manufacturers to be part of the EU fund. He explained:
The European Union, when they produced their defence and security white paper last week, set in place specific arrangements for any third nation like the UK that strikes a defence and security partnership with the European Union – exactly what we went to the country with as a promise to undertake as a UK government – any country with a partnership in place then has potentially access to those sort of programmes, that sort of funding. That’s what we will try and negotiate for this country and our industry.
Tories on course to narrowly win Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoral election, poll suggests
YouGov has released some polling that suggests the Conservative party is narrowly ahead in the contest to be the next mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, with Labour in second place. The polling was released by Labour Together, which says it shows why Lib Dem supporters should back Labour.
In 2021 the Conservative candidate in the contest got the highest first round vote. But, once the Lib Dem voters were redistributed under the supplementary vote system, Labour’s Nik Johnson won on the final ballot.
The last government then changed the voting system for mayoral elections to first past the post (FPTP). The YouGov figures imply the Tory candidate, former MP Paul Bristow, is currently on course to win.
YouGov has the Conservatives currently on 31%, Labour on 27%, the Lib Dems on 20%, Reform UK on 13%. the Greens on 6% and others on 3%. These figures exclude the 22% who told YouGov they did not know how they would vote on 1 May.
Eleri Kirkpatrick-Lorente, policy adviser at Labour Together, said:
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough looks set to go the wire with Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck.
Convincing voters who currently say they will vote for the Liberal Democrats to back Anna Smith [the Labour candidate] and stop a Tory mayor from winning offers Labour the clearest path to victory.
With these kinds of elections often decided on hyper-local issues, Labour will be looking to focus on the things that matter most to voters like potholes and public services such as buses, housing and healthcare.
The YouGov poll shows relatively high support for taxing the rich as a policy to improve the public finances. (See 2.18pm.) In an interview with the Today programme this morning, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, was asked if a wealth tax was a viable option. He replied:
We’re already in a world where taxes are the highest they’ve been in the UK. The chancellor, the government, tied themselves in knots in their manifesto, and they already broke that commitment [not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT] by increasing national insurance in the autumn. That does mean they’re very unlikely to increase income tax or VAT.
Wealth taxes are difficult to implement. There’s not really any examples around the world of an effective wealth tax. But you can have a go.
You need to be clear what you mean. Do you mean people with £1m or £10m or £100m? Do you want it to be one-off, or do you want it to be annual?
I think the key question here is not for an economist, it’s for a lawyer. Could you actually make this stick? I think there’ll be a lot of very happy lawyers if you tried to this because, obviously, people with £10m have got quite a lot of money to find ways around it.
The key fact, though, is if you want serious money, you have to do, broadly speaking, what the chancellor did back in October. You have to raise one of the big taxes, and she decided to raise national insurance.
Of course, income taxes are rising because we’re having allowances and thresholds frozen for a very long period of time. That’s dragging more and more of our income into income tax, and that’s why we’ve had this historically extraordinary increase in taxes over the last five years, and that increase is continuing over the rest of this decade.
So I think it’s really important to be clear, for those who are asking for increased taxes, this is the biggest period of raising taxes we’ve ever had, or at least we’ve had since the second world war.
Poll suggests it is getting harder for Labour to blame last Tory government for tax decisions it has to take
YouGov has published some polling about attitudes to the public finances which help to illustrate why the challenge facing Rachel Reeves on Wednesday is so difficult.
With government spending under pressure, the Treasury has three option. But the poll shows that all three of them have limited support: cutting spending (25%), raising taxes (18%) and raising borrowing (8%).
Instead, what voters would prefer are the options that seem to be off the table: raising spending (27%), cutting taxes (33%) and cutting borrowing (42%).
Reeves has ruled out raising taxes in the spring statement, and she does not have the scope to increase borrowing (see 10.47am), and so the announcement is expected to focus on cuts.
The poll also suggests it is becoming increasingly hard for Labour to blame the last Conservative government for the decisions it has to take.
And it suggests that, if people are asked what specific policies they would favour to improve the public finances, two specific ideas come top: one popular with leftwingers (taxing the rich) and one popular with the right (cutting immigration and benefits for migrants).
Reform UK choses local councillor and ex-magistrate Sarah Pochin as candidate for Runcorn and Helsby byelection
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is a Guardian senior political correspondent.
Reform UK have selected a local borough councillor to fight the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, seen as a key electoral and organisational test for Nigel Farage’s party.
Sarah Pochin is a former local justice of the peace who has worked in the private sector for companies including Shell and what was formerly Caradon, the building supplies firm, Reform said.
In a potentially good fit for a party recently shaken by internal ructions with the suspension of Rupert Lowe, one of their five MPs, Pochin’s time on Cheshire East council saw her either ejected or suspended from both the Conservatives and the local independent group.
In 2020, she was expelled by the Tories after agreeing to become mayor after being selected by the then-ruling Labour-independent coalition. In 2022, she quit the independents after being suspended for rejoining the Conservative party to vote in its leadership election. It is not known if she supported Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak.
The byelection, the date for which has not been announced, was triggered after Mike Amesbury, the sitting Labour MP, resigned after being given a prison sentence for punching a constituent.
Amesbury was suspended by Labour and lost the party whip in October after a video of the incident on a night out was published online. He was given a 10-week prison sentence, suspended for two years.
While Amesbury won a near-15,000 majority last year, Reform came second and Farage’s party has talked up its chances of taking the seat.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said:
Sarah is a great candidate who has enjoyed a successful career in private business and has represented the local community as a magistrate for the past 20 years. She has honourably resigned from that role to fight this by-election for Reform UK. Vote for a lawmaker, not a lawbreaker in Runcorn and Helsby.
At the No 10 lobby briefing, asked if Keir Starmer would be turning down his pay rise as an MP (see 1.07pm), the PM’s spokesperson said MPs receive the pay rise whether they want to or not. But he confirmed that the government is continue with the freeze for ministerial salaries.
