Starmer launches Labour local election campaign and defends ‘difficult decisions’ over dropped pledges– politics live

Keir Starmer launches Labour local election campaign in the West Midlands

LIVE – Updated at 13:49

Opposition leader says some commitments were made before ‘the Tories did enormous damage to the economy’.

UN human rights committee urges government to abandon Rwanda bill

13:49

The United Nations human rights committee has urged the government to drop its Rwanda bill.

In a statement issued today, the committee said:

The committee voiced its concern over legislative initiatives, such as the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which contains elements to limit access to rights for asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants.

The committee regretted to see [the UK government’s] arrangements with third countries, particularly Rwanda, to transfer asylum seekers, and its efforts to adopt the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill despite the UK supreme court’s ruling that the arrangement would not be compliant with international law, particularly the prohibition of refoulement [returning asylum seekers to a country where they may face persecution].

It urged [the UK government] to swiftly repeal the discriminative legislative provisions within the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and to withdraw the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill, or repeal the bill if passed.

Labour council leaders in West Midlands declare loss of confidence in Tory mayor Andy Street

13:33Jessica Murray

A row is brewing between West Midlands mayor Andy Street and the Labour leaders of local authorities in his region.

Last night Labour leaders of four councils – Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Sandwell – sent an open letter to Street declaring they had lost confidence in his ability to lead the region. This is from John Cotton, leader of Birmingham city council.

The council leaders complained that Street had “repeatedly criticised the local authorities that make up the combined authority”, and said he had made “unfounded claims of success in areas where progress is significantly lacking”.

They also said after eight years in office “there are no achievements that can be pointed to” and Street had used the crisis in council funding for “political gain”.

A spokesperson for Street has responded this morning saying the letter was a “desperate attempt at gutter politics”.

“His plan is to put the West Midlands first, and he is delivering on it. There’s lots done, and lots more to do,” the spokesperson said.

The letter has also not gone down in all Labour quarters, with a number of councillors criticising it on social media. Labour councillor Kerry Jenkins in Birmingham said it was “petty political point scoring” and “debases the validity of your argument”.

Gove denounces Thames Water’s management as ‘a disgrace’, saying customers should not have to solve its funding crisis

13:28

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has delivered a damning verdict on the management at Thames Water. Commenting on the crisis at the company, which is dealing with a £500m investment black hole, Gove told broadcasters:

I think the leadership of Thames Water has been a disgrace. I think for years now we have seen customers of Thames Water taken advantage of by successive management teams that have been taking out profits and not investing as they should have been.

When I was environment secretary I called this out. They haven’t changed their ways. I have zero sympathy for the leadership of Thames Water. In my own constituency I have seen how they have behaved in a high-handed and arrogant way towards the consumers who pay their bills.

So the answer is not to hit the consumers, the answer is for the management team to look to their own approach and ask themselves why they are in this difficult situation, and of course the answer is because of serial mismanagement for which they must carry the can.

Jasper Jolly has more coverage of this story on his business live blog.

13:18

Reform UK has announced that Mark Butcher, a local charity worker, will be the party’s candidate in the Blackpool South byelection, the BBC’s Ellis Palmer reports.

According to a report in the Express, Butcher is “credited with saving scores of lives in the seaside town with the bus he launched with his wife Abbie to act as a mobile homeless shelter with their Amazing Grace charity.”

YouGov has published polling today showing support for Reform UK at 16% nationally – their highest level in a YouGov poll.

Hunt criticises Labour for saying it is not confident his plan to extend free childcare is viable

13:10

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has responded to Labour’s local elections campaign launch by suggesting that Labour cannot be trusted to devolve power to local communities. Keir Starmer has promised to give new powers to councils and mayors with a Take Back Control Act. (See 9.22am.)

He also accused Labour of not support the Tories plans to extend free childcare.

Responding to what Starmer said at the Labour launch, Hunt told broadcasters:

The Labour party in office devolved no powers to local authorities.

In just the last two years we have devolved powers to two-thirds of local authorities.

I am afraid this is a smokescreen for the fact that just this week the Labour party have said they are refusing to guarantee the free childcare offer for every child over the age of nine months.

That is going to be a hammer blow for families up and down the country who from next week are going to start to benefit from the biggest ever rollout of childcare in our history.

Hunt’s reference to Labour refusing to match the government’s plans to extend the availability of free childcare is prompted by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, telling Newsnight this week that Labour would review the commitment (which is not due to be implemented in full until September 2025) because it does not believe the resources are available to deliver what the government promised. She said:

This is Liz Truss all over again. They’ve got no plan about how they make it happen. I think they risk crashing the childcare system just as they crashed the economy under Liz Truss.

We’ve heard from providers that they are just going to really struggle to make this happen.

And what we hear from parents right across the country is that when they go and try to access these entitlements, these commitments that the Conservatives have made, the places just aren’t there.

Starmer says councils face ‘appalling’ funding situation, but warns Labour cannot reverse that easily

12:53

Q: Do you accept that, if you don’t win hundreds of council seats, you won’t be doing as well as Labour was before 1997?

Starmer says there are mayoral elections as well as local elections. Mayors and councils need to go together.

He says, to win the general election, Labour needs a bigger swing than in 1997. That is why he has been disciplined, and changed the party, he says.

Q: The Local Government Association says there is a £4bn shortfall in funding for local government. Will you address that?

Starmer says councils face an “appalling situation”.

He says he does not want to pay party politics with this. Councils under the control of all parties are under pressure.

He says three-year funding plans for councils, instead of one-year ones, would help.

But he says he cannot pretend that Labour can just turn funding taps on.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

I can’t pretend that we can turn the taps on, pretend that damage hasn’t been done to the economy, it has. The way out of that is to grow our economy and that takes me back to the plan that we are launching today.

Starmer claims Tories have stopped acting in national interest

12:51

Q: People are very despondent. Can you really make a difference?

Starmer says he can. Labour would spend funds that have been allocated for communities by the government, but not spent. And things like three-year funding settlements for councils would make a difference.

He claims the Tories are now only acting in their party interest. In their budgets, they are spending money that could go towards the public services on “gimmicks” that will help them politically, he says.

This is a very different Tory party. This is a Tory pary that has lost any sense of the national interest and is now passing budgets in their own party interest.

That happened at the last budget and, if they get the chance, they’ll do it again. The only purpose of that is to salt the ground for an incoming Labour government. It’s very important people understand that …

What’s happened now is unforgiveable … to leave your country after 14 years of government in a worse place than you found it is unforgiveable, whichever political party you are in. But that’s the state we’re in.

Number of magistrates’ courts cases being dealt with by secretive single justice procedure hits new record, figures show

12:33

The number of crimes being prosecuted behind closed doors in England and Wales has risen to its highest level on record since the measures were introduced, PA Media reports. PA says:

Last year, 787,403 criminal cases were dealt with by magistrates’ courts under the single justice procedure (SJP).

The latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures show this exceeds a previous peak of 784,325 recorded in 2019, signalling how the volume of cases being considered through the secretive process has now returned to levels similar to those seen prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

The figures comes after justice secretary Alex Chalk suggested the system needs reform amid concerns from magistrates.

SJP allows magistrates to handle some offences which would not result in jail time – like using a television without a licence, dodging train fares, driving without car insurance, speeding and truancy – in private rather than in open court. Although defendants can choose to attend their hearing in person.

12:27

Starmer’s speech and Q&A at Labour’s local elections launch – snap verdict

12:25

Labour until very recently said it was expecting a general election on Thursday 2 May, it was planning for such a contest, and if there had been an election then, parliament would have dissolved two days ago. Keir Starmer’s speech today would have been the launch of Labour’s national election campaign.

In fact, the speech we heard this morning may well have started life as a draft text for a national campaign launch. It was longer and better crafted than the sort of speech you normally get at a local election campaign launch. It did not contain anything particularly new, but it summarised the party’s key messages crisply. You can read it here.

What was much more interesting was the Q&A. During his four years as Labour leader Starmer has become increasingly confident in handling the media and today he was hard to fault. A lot of the media coverage will focus on the Angela Rayner story, and there is nothing that Starmer could have said that would have killed the story stone dead. But he defended her very robustly and, rather than sounding cowed or defensive when responding to questions on this from the rightwing papers that have been pushing the story, he took them on effectively, highlighting the fact that the Sun never asks for Tory ministers to publish their tax details from before they entered parliament.

He was robust on employment rights (see 11.17am), compelling about the Tories (see 10.51am), but the other really telling answer came when he was asked (by the Daily Mail) how people could trust him when he has U-turned so often on policy. Normally he responds to this question with a slightly apologetic line about how it is normal for people to change their mind. But today he managed to flip the question entirely, and used it to deliver an intregrity message that sounded strong. (See 11.11am.)

None of the questions caused him any real difficulty at all. It is hard to imagine Rishi Sunak exposing himself to this level of scrutiny and emerging unscathed in the same way. His local election campaign launch was a low-key event in a bus depot in Derbyshire last week, where he was cocooned by Tory activists and delivered an odd message about Labour “arrogantly” taking people for granted.

What’s the main takeaway from Starmer’s launch? It’s simple, really. He’s ready.

Starmer defends dropping some pledges, saying he’s taken ‘difficult decisions before election about what we can deliver’

12:06

Q: [From the Daily Mail] You have accused Boris Johnson of letting people down. But haven’t you done the same, by going back on some of your pledges?

Starmer says:

What I’ve done is to take difficult decisions before the election about what we can deliver.

Sometimes that has required us to adjust our position. So if you take some of the commitments we made on [the £28bn green investment plan], since we made that commitment, the Tories have done enormous damage to the economy and therefore we’ve had to adjust our plan.

I would rather level with the British public before the election, tell them straight what we can do, what we can’t do, and deliver on what we say we can do, rather than do what Boris Johnson did in the last election, which is to pretend he could deliver everything and then deliver nothing, because that leads you back to Amy’s question [see 10.46am] which is why do people not have faith in their politics?

I’ve taken a tough decision to not do things which an incoming Labour government might have wanted to do more quickly. But I’ve done it by looking down the barrel of the camera and saying to the British public, I will not make promises that I cannot deliver.

Starmer says Rayner shouldn’t publish her tax advice, arguing Tories don’t face these demands and ‘where does this end?’

11:19

Q: [From the Sun] Do you think Rayner should publish the tax advice she has received about the sale of her home?

Starmer replies:

No, she shouldn’t. Where does this end? Are you going to be calling for Tory ministers to publish all their legal and tax advice go back over the last 15 years?

This gets a round of applause from Labour supporters in the audience.

Starmer says workers’ rights plan, including ban on zero-hours contracts, will be implemented in full in first term of office

11:17

The final question was about Labour’s new deal for working people, its employment rights programme.

Q: You are under pressure from business to water this down. Will it be implemented in full in the first term of Labour government, including the ban on zero-hours contracts?

Starmer replied: “Yes.”

He went on:

Let me tell you for why, because I believe, deep down, that respect and dignity at work matters.

This goes back to what I said about my dad. It really matters that people feel respected and that they feel that they have their dignity at work.

But there is an additional reason … Every good employer knows that if you do treat people with respect and dignity of work, then that increases productivity, that increases the growth in your business and enterprise and it’s actually good for the economy.

Starmer attacks Tories for focusing on Rayner’s tax issues, rather than defending their record

11:00

Q: During the beergate scandal you said you would resign if you were found to have done anything wrong. Should Angela Rayner have to resign if she is found to have done anything wrong?

Starmer says Rayner has answered plenty of questions on this. She has taken legal advice that has satisifed her. He goes on:

The fact that the Tory party is spending more of its time and energy pursuing this issue, rather than answering questions and [accounting] for what they’ve done after 14 years … tells you everything you need to know.

He does not actually address the question about whether Rayner should have to resign if found to have been at fault.

10:54

Q: Labour is committed to ending fire and rehire. Does that apply to Labour councils? In Coventry Labour councillors are considering a fire and rehire policy?

Starmer says he does not want to comment on local disputes, but he says he is opposed to fire and rehire wherever it happens.

10:52

Starmer says, when he praised Margaret Thatcher, it was because she had ‘a sense of driving purpose”, and a mission for the country. It was not because he supported her polices, he says.

10:46

Q: Is the real enemy not the Tories, but the sense that nothing can change?

Starmer says that is an interesting question. He fears that the Tories have beaten the hope out of people. He wants to change politics so that people know it is about service.

We’ve got to give people hope, hope that politics can change, that we can return to a place where promises matter, where values and standards and public life matter, where you don’t see your politicians simply looking to enrich themselves … resigning because they didn’t get put in the House of Lords …

We must return politics to the service of working people. I’ve been serving all my life. I believe in service, I fundamentally believe in it. And I want politics returned to service so that when people are electing the Labour government, they know that’s the government that’s going to serve.

Starmer says Angela Rayner has his ‘full support, full confidence, today and every day’

10:43

Q: The police have reopened their investigation into Angela Rayner. Does she have your full support?

Starmer replies:

Angela has my full support, my full confidence, today and every day as we work together to take the Labour party back into government so we can serve the interests of workers.

That reply, which is more full-throated than replies to these sort of questions normally are, generates a round of applause from Labour supporters in the room.

10:33

Starmer says, when he visits towns outside Wesminster, he finds they are not short on ambition.

In many ways I feel they’re screaming out for a government that simply matches their ambition.

10:32

Starmer has finished his speech and is now taking questions from the media.

The first question is from the Wolverhamption Express and Star. Starmer starts by expressing condolences over Peter Madeley, the paper’s political editor who died recently from cancer at the age of 50.

Starmer insists that Labour will deliver for Dudley.

10:27

Starmer is summing up the Labour offer.

This Labour party with Rachel Reeves as chancellor will value every pound as if it’s yours – because at the end of the day, it is.

He lists the five Labour missions.

One, higher growth, with a reform planning system, no longer blocking the homes, the infrastructure, the investment that the country needs.

Two, safer streets, with 13,000 Extra neighbourhood police officers cracking down on the antisocial behaviour which blights so many of our town centres.

Three, cheaper bills with GB Energy, a new publicly owned company harnessing clean British power, not foreign oil and gas.

Four, more opportunities for your children, more mental health support in our schools, expert teachers in every classroom, new technical excellence colleges, training our kids in the skills they need, our businesses want.

And, five, our NHS back on its feet, 2 million extra appointments every year, a plan to cut the waiting list, start clearing the backlog, rescue NHS dentists and end the 8am scramble at your GP surgery.

10:26

Keir Starmer is speaking now.

He thanks Angela Rayner for her introduction, and jokes that anyone going for a drink with her should avoid her favourite drink, Venom (a near-lethal cocktail).

The launch is in Dudley, and Starmer says Labour is campaigning to win here.

He says he had hoped to be launching a general election campaign.

I was hoping we’d be launching a different election campaign here today. But unfortunately the prime minister has bottled it.

He wants one last, drawn out summer, with his beloved helicopter. And so, we’re going to have to use these local elections to send him another message and show his party – once again – that their time is up. The dithering must stop, the date must be set, because Britain wants change, and it’s time for change with Labour.

Rayner says she won’t publish advice she says refutes claim she did not pay full tax owed after house sale

10:24

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has said she will not publish the tax advice that she has received relating to the sale of a house she sold before she became an MP.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said she would only publish information of that kind if the Tory MPs who have criticsed her over the sale agree to publish their own tax details going back more than a decade. There is no indication any of them will.

Rayner has repeatedly said that she did nothing wrong, and that she paid all the tax she owed. But Tory MPs have suggested, on the basis of information published in a new biography of Rayner by Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative deputy chair, that rules were broken, and yesterday Greater Manchester police said it was reviewing its decision not to investigate some of these allegations.

Rayner says she has had tax advice saying she did not owe capital gains tax on the sale, as some Tories have alleged. But, in an interview on the Today programme, asked why she would not publish it, she replied:

Because that’s my personal tax advice. But I’m happy to comply with the necessary authorities that want to see that.

She said she would hand over the information to the police and HM Revenue and Customs,adding: “But I’m not going to put out all of my personal details for the last 15 years about my family”.

Rayner said that if James Daly, the Tory deputy chair who reported her to Greater Manchester police, Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt published their tax details for the last 15 years, she would do the same. She added:

If you show me yours, then I’ll show you mine.

Starmer claims Tories still committed to ‘madness of unfunded tax cuts’

10:21

Starmer says Labour offers economic stability. And he claims the Tories are committed to “the madness of unfunded tax cuts”.

Here’s what voting Labour means this year. A plan that starts, as it must – with economic stability. Look at the Tories now, once again in desperation, committing to the madness of unfunded tax cuts. £46 billon to abolish national insurance, with no way of funding it other than risky borrowing or cutting your pension and our NHS.

It’s like they think Liz Truss never happened. And maybe for their bills, for their mortgage, for their cost of living – it didn’t. But beyond the walls of Westminster, working people have paid an enormous price.

10:19

Starmer says Labour would devolve power to local communities.

Britain has an economy that hoards potential and a politics that hoards power. And it’s no coincidence or accident that this leaves us with more regional inequality than anywhere else in Europe.

But he says there are no “easy answers” to providing the route to recovery.

If we want to change our economy, we must also change our politics and put an end to politics that is done to communities, not with them. No more political hero complexes, no more fantasies, no more easy answers that require nobody – politicians or people – to lift a finger. The Tory era of politics as performance art is coming to an end. But to get Britain out of this hole, we all need to roll up our sleeves, because national renewal is a partnership.

10:16

Starmer describes the choice at the local elections:

Stability with Labour or chaos with the Tories, unity or division, renewal or decline, a changed Labour party ready to serve the interests of working people or a Conservative party [that only serves itself].

Starmer says Dudley is where Boris Johnson gave a speech setting out his levelling up plans. And he accuses Johnson of betraying the hopes he raised.

People say to me the worst thing you can do in politics is prey on peoples’ fear. Yet in some ways, preying on their hopes is just as bad. That’s what the Tories did with levelling up.

Starmer says he can understand why people in a town like Dudley wanted to believe in levelling up.

We in the Labour party understand what towns and cities have been through over the decades. It’s our history, our communities, and in many cases, the story which has shaped our families.

The ‘chest-out’ pride that grows when you are certain that your contribution is respected is still there. But over the years it’s become a little less sure of the ground beneath its feet, in need of a stronger foundation, and a government willing to see communities like this, not as a charity case or a political client but as a source of growth and dynamism ready to be unlocked …

My dad was a toolmaker and he always felt, particularly when this was playing out during the 1980s, that he was looked down upon and disrespected in certain circles. Equally, my sister is a care worker, so I will never accept that it’s only the work of the past which deserves our pride and respect. The working people of this country: the carers, the couriers, the drivers, the teachers, the warehouse workers, nurses and supermarket staff, my Labour party stands for them.

10:06

Rayner also describes Rishi Sunak as like someone who promises to get the first round in when you are going for a night out, and then never delivers.

She says we could be months away from the reset of a nation.

It is time for change, she says. She goes on:

We used to say the Labour party is a moral crusade or is nothing. Well, I’m telling you now that my moral crusade is to fight for working people who built this land so that they will benefit again from the growth that they create.

Rayner ends by introducing Keir Starmer, saying he is someone who “always gets his round in”.

Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer speak at Labour’s local elections campaign launch

10:03

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has described the Tory levelling up agenda as like a burnt-out car. The Mirror’s Lizzy Buchan has posted this from the launch, where Rayner is speaking.

Starmer praises ambition behind Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda and blames Sunak for blocking it

09:28

Good morning. Keir Starmer is launching Labour’s local elections campaign this morning, and to mark the event he has discovered his inner Boris Johnson. He has written a joint article with Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, praising the ambition behind levelling up, Johnson’s flagship domestic policy priority.

This is not new territory for Starmer. Much of his leadership has been about trying to win back the “red wall” voters who deserted Labour for the Tories in 2019 and it’s why he has told them he wants to “make Brexit work”, not rejoin the single market. Like Johnson, Starmer has criticised what is said to be the new Labour economic model, one over-reliant on financial services in the City of London to generate revenue to subsidise the rest of the UK.

But there is a new twist in the article today; Starmer is blaming Rishi Sunak for blocking levelling up. (Demonising Sunak for thwarting Johnson, you could say he’s discovered his inner Nadine Dorries too.)

In their article Starmer and Rayner write:

Where you are born often dictates where you end up. That people from Blackpool have a life expectancy of ten years fewer than those in Westminster is a travesty. Instead of pitting areas against one another and relying on the square mile of the City of London to keep the UK economy afloat, we’ll tackle Britain’s regional divide and match the ambition people have for their community. It will be at the heart of our mission-led government.

It’s understandable that working people might have become disillusioned or cynical, because one of the biggest tragedies of the past 14 years is the sense that things can’t change. But they can and they will.

The Tories started to understand this with the levelling-up white paper. Much of the analysis in it was good. And there were parts that talked a good game about how Britain needed to build up all parts of the country.

But the policy was killed at birth by the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who refused to back it; the chaos and corruption of the Tory government under Johnson, and a failure to give regions the levers to make it happen. The “cap in hand” approach left places patronised, not empowered. A few million pounds for local projects was not part of a co-ordinated strategy but part of a short-term giveaway — and local people have seen through it.

Labour was not quite so complimentary about the levelling up white paper when it was published.

As well as being deputy leader, Rayner is shadow levelling up secretary and she will be in charge of this portfolio in a Labour government. She wants to find another name for levelling up (the concept, but also by extension the department). It has been reported that “powering up” is one option, although you would assume they would be able to come up with something better.

In their article Starmer and Rayner argue that Labour’s plans to devolve more powers to metro mayors and local authorities will go a long way to delivering levelling up. They say:

Whitehall under the Tories has become too passive and overly centralised. We will turn that on its head, delivering a far more active central government willing to give local leaders the levers needed to turbocharge their areas. We will change the relationship. Partnership in pursuit of common national missions, not buck-passing and division.

Our Take Back Control Act will entrust power to local leaders, who know their area best and have skin in the game. We will widen English devolution so that every community is taking advantage of the opportunities it brings. We will deepen devolution so combined authorities have a path to gaining powers over transport, skills, housing and planning, employment support, energy and can get a long-term integrated funding settlement in return for exemplary frameworks for managing public money. This will enable local leaders to develop powerful local growth plans that attract specialist industries and enhance their local strengths.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Keir Starmer speaks at the launch of Labour’s local elections campaign in the West Midlands. Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, and Richard Parker, the party’s candidate for West Midlands mayor, are also there.

11.30am: The Reform UK MP Lee Anderson holds a press conference in Blackpool to unveil the party’s candidate in the forthcoming byelection.

12pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.

Also, in the Scottish parliament, an assisted dying bill drafted by the Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur is being published.

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Blow for Sunak as revised figures confirm UK did go into recession last year

09:26

Official figures have confirmed that the UK economy went into recession at the end of last year, after the latest estimate found it contracted in the last two quarters of 2023, Phillip Inman reports.