Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Frances Perraudin

General election: Farage says claims Tories bribed Brexit party candidates are 'fact' – live news

Afternoon summary

  • Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics this morning, Brexit party leader Nigel Farage has insisted that claims the party’s candidates were offered jobs by the Conservatives to persuade them to stand aside were “fact”. Scotland Yard announced yesterday that it was assessing two allegations of electoral fraud in relation to the claims. Farage accused Boris Johnson’s party of corruption.

Is he calling Ann Widdecombe a liar? Perhaps he is, I don’t know. Ann Widdecombe made it perfectly clear she received two phone calls, from a senior official in number 10, offering her a job on the negotiating team if she stood down as an election candidate. Fact.

  • Jeremy Corbyn has told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show his government would allow “a great deal of movement” of people, in a sign Labour would look to keep a liberal immigration regime with Europe if Brexit goes ahead. The party’s 2017 manifesto said free movement would end at the point of Brexit, but a motion passed by Labour conference argued for the UK to “maintain and expand” free movement.
  • Labour’s Kensington parliamentary candidate Emma Dent Coad is to report her Lib Dem rival – and former Tory MP – Sam Gyimah to the police over claims he made that she “was part of all the discussions that went on” regarding the cladding that was on Grenfell Tower. “If this is a political game, shame on him. We’ve sent rebuttals with all the links and all the evidence is there,” she told the Guardian. You can read the full story here.

Guardian environment correspondents Sandra Laville and Matthew Taylor report that the Conservative party’s record on tackling the climate crisis has been condemned by leading scientists and former government advisers.

Experts have accused the Conservatives of copying right-wing politicians in the US by deliberately weakening environmental protections. Meanwhile, new analysis by Labour reveals environmental policies put forward since 2017 and opposed by the Tories would have led to emissions reductions of over 70m tonnes a year by 2030 – more than the annual emissions of Portugal.

Conservative politicians have criticised Angela Eagle – former Labour leadership hopeful – for retweeting this image of the foreign secretary.

She has dismissed it as a joke:

Labour’s candidate in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire – Gloria de Piero’s old seat – has tweeted pictures of her office with its windows smashed.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said:

The force was called to Outram Street in Sutton on November 17, 2019 at around 10.30am following reports of criminal damage. The incident is believed to have happened between 5.30pm on Saturday to 10am on Sunday.

A number of windows have been smashed. If you saw the incident or have any information please call 101 quoting incident number 266 of 17 November 2019.

The Guardian’s northern correspondent Nazia Parveen reports that housing and fire chiefs have criticised the government over a “cladding lottery” and called for an overhaul in UK fire safety regulations after a fire at student flats in Bolton.

An investigation has been launched after more than 200 students were evacuated when a fire ripped through the upper part of the town-centre six-storey building, which is cladded in high-pressure laminate (HPL) material.

The mayor of Salford city council, Paul Dennett, who leads the Greater Manchester’s high rise taskforce set up after the Grenfell tragedy, said it was an industrial crisis and called on the government to invest more funds in what he described as a “cladding lottery”.

You can read the full story here:

Labour has claimed that its living wage commitments would give workers who earn the national minimum wage at least £9,000 more by 2024 than the Tories.

The party has said:

Coupled with Labour’s pledge to not raise income tax or national insurance contributions for the bottom 95% of earners, this means a worker on the minimum wage will be at least £6,000 better off after tax.

Analysis of latest ONS figures on earnings also shows that Labour’s pledge to immediately introduce a £10 an hour Real Living Wage for all workers over 16 will give approximately 7.5 million people a pay rise, including over 1.2 million young people.

The current minimum wage is £8.21 for people 25 and over and £4.35 for 16-17 year olds.

The Conservatives have responded with a statement from chief secretary to the treasury, Rishi Sunak:

Since 2010, under the Conservatives, the lowest paid workers have £4,500 more in their pockets thanks to increases in the living wage and tax cuts.

Whilst we’ve been working to make sure you keep more of the money you earn, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour would take the equivalent of a month’s extra wages from you after hitting you with higher taxes to pay for their spending splurge.

The Guardian’s political correspondent, Peter Walker, commenting on Conservative immigration plans. See Raab’s comments from earlier.

The SNP has issued a statement in response to the BBC and Sunday Times investigation that accuses the UK government and the British army of covering up the killing of children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Journalists have obtained documents that allegedly contain evidence implicating troops in killing children and the torture of civilians.

The reports claim to have obtained new evidence from inside the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which investigated alleged war crimes committed by British soldiers in Iraq, and Operation Northmoor, which investigated alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

The government closed IHAT and Operation Northmoor in 2017, after Phil Shiner, a solicitor who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, was struck off from practising law amid allegations he had paid people in Iraq to find clients.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC earlier:

All of the allegations that had evidence have been looked at by the armed forces prosecuting authorities, because we want to have accountability where there’s wrongdoing ... What we’re quite rightly doing is making sure spurious claims or claims without evidence don’t lead to the shadow of suspicion, the cloud of suspicion hanging over people who’ve served their country for years on end. And we’ve got the right balance.

Lunchtime summary

  • Jeremy Corbyn has told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show his government would allow “a great deal of movement” of people, in a sign Labour would look to keep a liberal immigration regime with Europe if Brexit goes ahead. The party’s 2017 manifesto said free movement would end at the point of Brexit, but a motion passed by Labour conference argued for the UK to “maintain and expand” free movement. The Labour leader said:

A lot of EU nationals have made their homes in this country and made a massive contribution to our society. A lot of British people lie in different parts of the EU and many of those families have been through unbelievable stress. So they absolutely must have the right to remain and bring their families here.

You can read our full report here.

  • The foreign secretary Dominic Raab has said it is not “remotely likely” that the UK will leave the EU without a deal. Also speaking to Marr, Raab initially declined to get into “hypothetical negotiating objectives” when asked if a no-deal would take place if the UK failed to secure its fishing objectives in trade talks. But he later replied: “I don’t think it’s remotely likely”. Critics have warned a no-deal Brexit could still occur at the end of 2020 given the lack of time to negotiate the future relationship between the UK and EU.
  • The US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri has told ITV’s Exposure that Boris Johnson brutally cast her aside “like some one-night stand”, leaving her “heartbroken” since he became prime minister and the controversy over their four-year relationship became public. The full interview will be aired on ITV’s Exposure this evening. Here’s our story.
  • Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics this morning, Brexit party leader Nigel Farage insisted that claims the party’s candidates were offered jobs by the Conservatives to persuade them to stand aside were “fact”. Scotland Yard announced yesterday that it was assessing two allegations of electoral fraud in relation to the claims.

Updated

Nigel Farage: Tory bribery claims are 'fact'

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics this morning, Brexit party leader Nigel Farage insisted that claims the party’s candidates were offered jobs by the Conservatives to persuade them to stand aside were “fact”.

It has been claimed that Brexit figures – including Ann Widdecombe – were offered post-election roles or peerages as part of an attempt to get them to stand down at the general election, something the Conservatives have denied. Scotland Yard announced yesterday that it was assessing two allegations of electoral fraud in relation to the claims.

Farage said:

Is he calling Ann Widdecombe a liar? Perhaps he is, I don’t know. Ann Widdecombe made it perfectly clear she received two phone calls, from a senior official in number 10, offering her a job on the negotiating team if she stood down as an election candidate. Fact.

You can agree with Ann’s views in life or disagree, but the fact that she’s a very honest woman, I think nobody would ever disagree with. Fact.

Fact number two, [Boris Johnson’s chief strategic adviser] Sir Eddie Lister, rang up our candidate for Peterborough, offering him a job in higher education if he stood down as a candidate. They’re the things that are already out in the open. What I have said, John, is there was actually a package put together, in which eight senior figures of the Brexit party would go to the house of Lords and be offered a place in the negotiating team.

It’s corruption. It’s corruption.

The Brexit party leader said the situation showed how absolutely “rotten and broken” politics has become.

Labour's Emma Dent Coad to report Lib Dem rival Sam Gyimah to the police

Labour’s Kensington parliamentary candidate Emma Dent Coad is to report her Lib Dem rival – and former Tory MP – Sam Gyimah to the police over claims he made that she “was part of all the discussions that went on” regarding the cladding that was on Grenfell Tower. Dent Coad won the marginal constituency from the Conservatives by 20 votes in 2017.

Under the representation of the people act it is illegal for any person to “publish any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct, unless he or she can show that he had reasonable grounds for believing that statement to be true”.

Updated

The Liberal Democrats have sent a legal letter to the BBC about leader Jo Swinson being left out of the broadcaster’s election TV debate.

In the letter sent to the corporation’s director-general Tony Hall, the party’s lawyers said that the exclusion of Swinson was “clearly unlawful”. The party has already launched a High Court challenge against ITV over its decision not to include Swinson in the debate it has arranged.

The ‘BBC Prime Ministerial Debate’ on Friday 6 December will see a head-to-head between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn live from Southampton. ITV is to hold ‘Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate’ this coming Tuesday.

The Lib Dem letter reads:

The BBC’s approach is fundamentally disrespectful to the many millions of people who strongly support remaining in the EU. It ignores their concerns, their right to be heard and to be represented. People need to hear the arguments about Remain and Leave in a balanced way, but the leaders of the Labour Party and Conservative Party both want Britain to leave the EU. That means the BBC’s leaders’ debate has no place for those who take the opposite view.

As you should be aware, the BBC is under a strict legal obligation to achieve ‘due impartiality’ in its election broadcasting. The exclusion of any voice of Remain in the leaders’ debate will clearly put the BBC in breach of that obligation.

The SNP have similar complaints and they are taking legal action against ITV over its exclusion from a general election debate. Speaking to Andrew Marr this morning, the party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford said:

We’ll be in court tomorrow, because it’s grossly unfair. [...] We are the third party at Westminster. We’ve been in the government in Scotland for the last 12 years, we’re leading the polls in Scotland at 42% in the YouGov poll last week. And we’ve got to recognise that the public take their views from these debates.

Deborah Mattinson, a founding partner of research and strategy consultancy BritainThinks, has written in the Observer that very little seems to be getting through to voters in the election campaign so far.

“What have you picked up about the election so far?” I asked a focus group of undecided voters last week. Although they had plenty to say about policies, parties and politicians, their confident chatter died away fast. Eye contact was avoided. No one could think of anything that related to the campaign.

A recent poll found a similar lack of engagement. Four thousand voters were asked what “incidents, events, stories etc” they had noticed. The winning score, at 42%, was for “none”. In second place came the 5% mentioning Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Grenfell remarks. Just 2% mentioned “Brexit” and 1% NHS funding.

The shadow home secretary has responded to comments by Michael Gove in the Mail on Sunday. He wrote:

Under EU rules, European nationals arriving here have preferential access to free NHS care whereas other migrants have to wait until they’ve paid into the system and secured settled status, a process which typically takes five years. It’s unfair that people coming from European countries can access free NHS care without paying in while others make significant contributions.

Abbott points out that EU workers pay taxes like everybody else, so it is wrong to say they aren’t “paying in”.

Here are some highlights from this morning’s political broadcast interviews.

  • Jeremy Corby told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that he would want his government to allow “a great deal of movement” of people if he became the next prime minister. Asked whether Labour would pledge to end free movement in its election manifesto – as it did in its 2017 manifesto – the Labour leader said we would have to wait until the document is unveiled on Thursday.

A lot of EU nationals have made their homes in this country and made a massive contribution to our society. A lot of British people live in different parts of the EU and many of those families have been through unbelievable stress. So they absolutely must have the right to remain and bring their families here.

  • Foreign secretary Dominic Raab told Andrew Marr that it was now “not remotely likely” that the UK would leave the UK without a deal. “Could we leave without a deal?” said Marr. “I think it’s, no,... I don’t think it’s remotely likely,” Raab responded.
  • Asked about claims that the Tories offered peerages and jobs to Brexit Party figures in return for them standing aside, security minister Brandon Lewis told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday:

We have not offered any deals to anybody. I think what’s rather surreal with this conversation, not least of all is the fact that actually as chairman I removed Ann Widdecombe’s membership of the Conservative Party because she had joined the Brexit Party - that’s completely in breach of our constitution - but also because we’re the party saying we need to get a clear Conservative majority, we are fighting these seats to get Brexit done and deliver for people.

  • Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth refused to say whether immigration would increase or decrease under a Labour government.

We want a balanced approach to immigration and what that means for the NHS is if a hospital trust thinks that a surgeon or a nurse or a midwife is qualified enough to come to our country to care for our sick and our elderly and offers them that opportunity, then they should be allowed to come to our country to care for our sick and our elderly.

Here are some more details on Labour’s dentistry announcement.

The party has pledged to scrap band one dentistry charges, giving everyone a free teeth MOT with their dentist, including checks for oral cancers. They say this will save money in the long run, taking pressure off GPs and hospitals.

The British Dental Association has estimated that the measures would cost £450m per year. Here are some key passages from the announcement:

Charges put people off from going to their dentist, and actively undermines prevention - nearly 1 in 5 patients delay going to the dentist because they can’t afford to see one ...

The current system is also putting pressure on the wider NHS. Around 380,000 patients with toothache are choosing to head to their GPs who cannot provide dental treatment, costing the NHS over £20 million a year. Around 135,000 patients per year are also estimated to attend A&E units with dental problems, at a cost of £18 million.

Today’s measures are also aimed at improving children’s oral health. More than 100 children a day have rotting teeth removed in hospital, when nine in ten cases could have been prevented. Tooth decay remains the leading reason for hospitals admissions among 5 to 9 year olds, and are more than double those for tonsillitis.

Corbyn says that their proposals for re-nationalisation are “very, very modest”. The water companies are failing and so is Royal Mail.

He finishes the interview by saying he is “determined to win it and looking forward to winning it on 12 December”.

On the party’s pledge to give people free dental check-ups, Corbyn says that the measure would actually save money because it would prevent more expensive – and painful – problems emerging. “You should look at expenditure as investment in the future,” he says.

Asked if he agrees with army chief Nick Carter’s comment that NATO was the most successful military alliance in history, Corbyn says he wouldn’t define it as that but as “a product of an attempt to bring people together after the second world war”.

On Trident, Corbyn says the nuclear deterrent would part of “nuclear non-proliferation discussions” if he became prime minister. The real insecurities in the world are not the same as they were in the Cold War, he says, they are more to do with cyber-security.

Corbyn is asked about the SNP’s Ian Blackford’s insistence that his party would insist on a Scottish independence referendum in the first year of a Labour government. Corbyn says he cannot promise that. “We are not doing deals with anybody, we are not forming coalition,” he says.

The issue of an independence referendum should not come “in the early years of a Labour government”, says Corbyn. He says the SNP will have a choice between bringing in a Tory government with all its austerity measures and a progressive Labour government.

Corbyn: wait for the manifesto for Labour's policy on freedom of movement

We paid £11bn into the EU budget last year to access the bloc’s market. Would Corbyn agree to that, says Marr. The Labour leader says it depends how much they were asking for but that we need to maintain access to EU markets.

Corbyn is asked if the Labour party’s manifesto will repeat its 2017 promise to end free movement.

“You’ll have to wait until Thursday [when the Labour manifesto will be unveiled] to find out the wording of it,” says Corbyn. A lot of EU nationals have made their homes here and make a massive contribution to this society, he says. They should be able to remain.

Marr asks the Labour leader about his party’s conference motion to “extend free movement”. Corbyn says he thinks the movers of the motion had in mind “family reunion”, so allowing people to bring members of their family to the UK from outside the EU. (The Conservative party is interpreting the motion as meaning the extension of free movement to other countries.)

Will free movement end if we leave the EU? “There will be an awful lot of movement,” says Corbyn.

Updated

Corbyn refuses to say if he wants the UK to stay in the EU or leave

Corbyn is on Marr. Asked if he wanted the UK to leave the EU or not, he said he would put that choice to the British people and that he wanted “a close relationship with the EU”.

“We will negotiate a credible option of leaving and put that along side remain and put that to the British people,” he said, adding that negotiations with the EU would start as soon as they entered government.

Marr points out that most of the senior members of the shadow cabinet have said they would campaign to remain in any second referendum. “You don’t know who I’m going to take with me into those negotiations,” said Corbyn.

“However people voted in the referendum, they didn’t vote to loose their job, they didn’t vote for a deregulated society,” he says.

A Labour-negotiated deal would be put to the party’s conference as well as to parliament, he says.

Labour would back a customs union with the EU. “We have to be realistic about where British trade is at the moment”, says Corbyn, and about half of UK trade is done with the EU.

Jeremy Corbyn on Marr
Jeremy Corbyn on Marr Photograph: Jeremy Corbyn on Marr/BBC

Updated

Raab says migrants should pay into the NHS

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab is on Marr, talking about Conservative plans on immigration – some of which have been set out this morning.

Asked about the previous target of getting immigration down to 10s of thousands, Raab says that – speaking as the son of a refugee – he thinks that immigration can be very beneficial, but that people coming to the UK should have to wait five years before they can claim benefits and that they should pay into the NHS.

His party has said that the “vast majority” of migrants will need a job offer to come to the UK to work if they form the next government, regardless of where they are from in the world. They say there will be a small number of exceptions, including high-skilled scientists and those who want to come to the UK to start a business.

Asked what groups of migrant workers the party wanted fewer of in the UK, Raab said he didn’t want to stigmatise groups. He said he wanted to invest in innovation so that the UK was more productive and he wanted to reduce the need for cheap labour from abroad.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab speaking to Andrew Marr
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab speaking to Andrew Marr Photograph: Foreign secretary Dominic Raab speaking to Andrew Marr/BBC

The Conservatives have pledged that access to benefits will be equalised between EU nationals and those from the rest of the world, meaning non-UK citizens will typically need to wait five years before they are able to claim benefits. Under current rules, EU migrants can access welfare and services after being in the UK for three months.

The party said it would put an end to the practice of child benefit being sent abroad to support children who do not live in the UK and that it would increase the immigration health surcharge from £400 to £625. They said the change will raise more than £500m a year.

The surcharge was introduced in 2015 in a clampdown on so-called “health tourism”, and has previously been doubled from £200 to £400.

Updated

Good morning and welcome to Politics live.

Prince Andrew’s bombshell interview with Emily Maitlis for BBC’s Newsnight last night is likely to dominate this morning’s news agenda. The Duke of York claimed that he could not have had sex with a teenage girl in the London home of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell because he was at home after attending a children’s party at Pizza Express in Woking. You can read the full story here and some analysis here.

In politics news, the US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri has told ITV’s Exposure that Boris Johnson brutally cast her aside “like some one-night stand”, leaving her “heartbroken” since he became prime minister and the controversy over their four-year relationship became public. The full interview will be aired on ITV’s Exposure this evening.

Writing in the Observer, Jeremy Corbyn has said the Labour government will pass an emergency “NHS protection” law if it wins the general election, to ensure that powerful US pharmaceutical companies cannot infiltrate the health service and dramatically force up the price of drugs. The party has also pledged to provide free NHS dental check-ups for everyone in England this morning. Corbyn said that over half of adults and 40% of children haven’t been to the dentist in the last year.

If you don’t go to the dentist for check-ups, you end up storing up problems in the long term. Over 100,000 are admitted to hospital every year because of problems with their teeth.

The Labour leader is due on the Andrew Marr show shortly. I’ll bring you the latest from that.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
'It Feels Good' Oprah Video Resurfaces Allegedly Normalising Paedophilia in Disturbing Childhood Remarks
A resurfaced video of Oprah Winfrey discussing child abuse has sparked debate, with claims of normalising abuse. Fact-checkers clarify the context.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
There are sharks in Las Vegas feasting on hundreds of pounds of fish every week
Becky O’Brien always wanted to work with ocean life, but she didn’t realize she’d be able to do the job in the middle of the Las Vegas desert
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Jennifer Lopez's Micro Mini Dress Is Nude, But Not Naked
She bared it all without going sheer.
Marie Claire
Marie Claire
Maine boyfriend moves in, agrees to pay utilities. Then on payday, he goes on ‘a little shopping spree’ instead
Moving in with a partner can teach you a lot about a relationship.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Camera sensors love green. But as a photographer, I have a love-hate relationship with green
I know it’s St. Patrick’s Day, but sometimes the photographer in me has a love-hate relationship with the color green
Digital Camera World
Digital Camera World
This '80s classic with undeniable chemistry' is exactly what you need to stream on Prime Video if you love Kurt Russell but hate The Madison
New Taylor Sheridan series The Madison isn't everyone's cup of tea — and this 80s classic movie on Prime Video might be a better alternative for Kurt Russell fans.
TechRadar
TechRadar
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play