Early evening summary
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
This is from the former Tory MP Miriam Cates, criticising the party for calling for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over her rental licence error.
If most Brits seriously think that inadvertently failing to obtain an obscure housing rental licence makes someone unfit to serve as Chancellor, then quite frankly we richly deserve to be governed by uninspiring technocrats.
The former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has posted a message on social media saying he agrees.
In the last parliament Cates co-chaired the New Conservatives group with Danny Kruger, who has defected to Reform UK. Reform UK hasn’t been calling for Reeves’s resignation today. And, in general, the Reform leader Nigel Farage is reluctant to call for ministerial resignations over misconduct allegations – perhaps in part because he is regularly criticised on standards grounds himself.
Tories refuse to accept Reeves wasn't to blame for rental licence error - and demand 'proper investigation'
The Conservatives started the day calling for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over the rental licence error. (See 8.42am.) In the light of the apology from the letting agency (see 5.35pm), most reasonable observers will conclude that the blame lies largely, or wholly, elsewhere.
But CCHQ is in less forgiving mood. It has just issued this statement from a Tory spokesperson.
Last night Rachel Reeves said “she had not been made aware of the licensing requirement”. Today, we find out that Reeves was alerted to the need for a licence in writing by the estate agents. Having been caught out, the chancellor is now trying to make the estate agents take the blame, but Reeves never followed up with them to ensure that the licence had been applied for, or checked if the licence had been granted.
Regardless, under the law, Reeves and her husband are responsible for ensuring the licence is granted.
With more information coming to light every few hours, the prime minister needs to grow a backbone and start a proper investigation.
But the spokesperson has, though, not repeated the call for Reeves to resign; instead that seems to have been downgraded into a call for a full investigation.
(The Tories may instead be saving their ‘Reeves must resign’ effort until after the budget –see 9.26am.)
Updated
No 10 releases redacted email exchange between Reeves's husband and letting agency
Here is part of the email exchange between Nick Joicey, Rachel Reeves’s husband, and the letting agency, Harvey Wheeler. It includes the email where the agency employee says they will sort out the licence.
Updated
Reeves says she was let down by letting agency, but she says she should have checked they obtained rental licence
Downing Street has now released the new material.
Here is the letter from Rachel Reeves to the PM explaining what happened.
She says the letting agency had told the family that they would sort out the licence, and failed to do so. But she accepts that it should have been her responsibility to check that this had happened.
DfE proposes 6.5% pay rise for teachers in England, spread over three years
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, wants to offer teachers in England an unusual pay rise of 6.5% spread over the next three academic years, according to proposals published today.
The Department for Education has asked the School Teachers Review Body (STRB), the independent group that makes pay recommendations, to back a settlement running from 2026-27 to 2028-29 that would amount to a 6.5% increase.
The DfE’s evidence to the STRB said “the department’s view is that a 6.5% pay award over 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29 would be appropriate, with the level of awards weighted towards the latter part of the remit,” by allowing schools to draw up long-term budgets.
The evidence claims that based on forecasts for inflation, the pay deal “would be a real terms increase of almost 4.5% over the five years” after accounting for previous pay rises.
But the offer had drawn the ire of education unions. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
This Labour government is failing to deliver on its promises. Instead of 6,500 more teachers, we have botched Ofsted reforms, declining school funding, and now a pay recommendation that will do nothing to address the continued crisis in retention.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the proposals were “extremely disappointing”. He said:
The proposed pay award over three years doesn’t address historic pay erosion and is dangerously close to being a real-terms pay cut as it relies on inflation being low across the period.
We urge the pay review body to assert its independence once again and recommend a pay award at the level needed to attract people into teaching and keep them in the profession.
Letting agency used by Reeves apologises, saying it's to blame for rental licence error
The lettings agency involved in Rachel Reeves’ rental arrangements said it had apologised to her for an “oversight” that led to a failure to obtain a licence.
Gareth Martin, owner of Harvey Wheeler, said:
We alert all our clients to the need for a licence. In an effort to be helpful our previous property manager offered to apply for a licence on these clients’ behalf, as shown in the correspondence. That property manager suddenly resigned on the Friday before the tenancy began on the following Monday.
Unfortunately, the lack of application was not picked up by us as we do not normally apply for licences on behalf of our clients; the onus is on them to apply. We have apologised to the owners for this oversight.
At the time the tenancy began, all the relevant certificates were in place and if the licence had been applied for, we have no doubt it would have been granted.
Our clients would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for. Although it is not our responsibility to apply, we did offer to help with this.
We deeply regret the issue caused to our clients as they would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for.
Presumably the emails Downing Street plans to publish later (see 4.13pm) relate to this.
Jaywick in Farage's Clacton constituency named as most deprived neighbourhood in England
A seaside neighbourhood in Essex, part of the parliamentary constituency represented by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, has once again been named the most deprived in England, PA Media reports. PA says:
The latest official data shows that an area of the coastal village of Jaywick, close to the town of Clacton-on-Sea in the local authority of Tendring, has been classed the most deprived neighbourhood for the fourth time in a row.
Areas of Blackpool again make up most of the rest of the top 10, along with new appearances for neighbourhoods in Hastings and Rotherham.
Thursday’s data, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), presented relative levels of deprivation in areas or neighbourhoods of England in 2025.
Jaywick had previously topped the list in the 2019, 2015 and 2010 publications.
Farage was elected MP for Clacton in July 2024.
Jaywick received international coverage in 2018 after it was used in a US election campaign advert, with a bleak picture of the area, showing unpaved roads and dilapidated homes, to warn voters about the consequences of not backing Donald Trump ahead of midterm elections in the US.
Farage told PA Media that he was “obviously sad that things aren’t improving more quickly” and while he felt he had helped with investment and tourism for the area, “there’s a limit to what one person can do”.
This chart from the report gives the most granular depiction of where deprived areas are in the UK. It shows deprivation by LSOAs (lower-layer super output areas, areas containing about 1,500 people).
Scottish government heading for £5bn gap between its income and its spending, auditor general warns
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Scotland’s auditor general has warned the government in Edinburgh it is failing to manage a “stark” gap between its income and spending, which is forecast to reach £4.7bn in four years’ time.
Doubling down on previous criticisms of its spending controls, Stephen Boyle said today the Scottish government was making only short-term and temporary cuts in its spending, and had failed to address fundamental problems with its overspending. That damaged the fiscal sustainability of the public sector.
Boyle said this year the SNP government recorded a £1bn surplus only because of an extra £2.2bn in grant funding from the Labour government in London, which also meant it could cancel plans to use £460m in offshore wind leasing revenues to prop up its day to day spending.
He said:
A forecast gap of nearly £5bn remains between what ministers want to spend on public services and the funding available to them.
The Scottish government needs to prepare more detailed plans setting out how it will close that gap by the end of the decade.
Audit Scotland added that the £4.7bn gap was “due to policy choices and higher workforce costs. However, the government’s plan to make savings over the next five years lacks detail on how they will be delivered.”
It said the government’s 2025 medium-term financial strategy paper showed a £2.6bn gap in day-to-day spending in 2029/30 and a £2.1bn gap in capital spending in 2029/30.
It added that “a lack of available data means that the Scottish government is not clearly demonstrating that public spending is delivering the intended outcomes.”
Kemi Badenoch says the revelation that No 10 intends to publish new information about the Rachel Reeves rental licence error (see 4.13pm) shows why a full inquiry is needed.
This whole thing stinks.
The Prime Minister needs to stop trying to cover this up, order a full investigation and, if Reeves has broken the law, grow a backbone and sack her!
Here is John Crace’s sketch of Kemi Badenoch’s speech this morning.
And here is his take on Badenoch’s call for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over two separate issues. (See 9.26am.)
Badenoch began with the overnight story of Rachel Reeves’s failure to obtain a licence before letting out her Dulwich house. Given that Reeves had campaigned for such a licence to be introduced, this must qualify as right up there with one of the most brain-dead blunders. Stand by for Reeves to be included on a register of dodgy landlords. Kemi couldn’t believe her luck. If the chancellor couldn’t be trusted to run her own affairs, how could she be trusted to run the economy? She had broken the ministerial code and should resign.
This presented a problem. Because within minutes of a very short stump speech, Kemi was also demanding that Rachel resign if she were – as Reeves has virtually already broadcast herself – to break a manifesto promise by increasing income tax. Now we were in two parallel worlds at the same time. One where Rachel resigned right now and another where she resigned in four weeks’ time. For Kemi, Mel and Priti Patel, both scenarios were not just desirable but totally possible. In an infinite number of universes, there could be an infinite number of Reeveses. Any number of resignations were thinkable.
This is from my colleague Peter Walker, about the Rachel Reeves emails.
Emails will be out later - between lettings agent and Reeves’ husband. The guidance is that this will be good news for Reeves’ case.
No 10 says ethics adviser now reviewing new information about Reeves's rental licence error - but PM still has confidence in her
No 10 has revealed that inquiries into Rachel Reeves’s rental licence error – which in effect wrapped up within hours last night – have been reopened.
At the afternoon lobby briefing, the No 10 spokesperson issued this statement.
Following a review of emails sent and received by the chancellor’s husband [Nick Joicey], new information has come to light. This has now been passed to the prime minister and his independent adviser. It would be inappropriate to comment further.
The initial reaction at lobby was that this could be career-ending for Reeves, particularly because initally the spokesperson declined to say that the PM has confidence in the chancellor. But the spokesperson swiftly corrected the impression he had given, and said that the PM does have “full confidence” in the chancellor.
Downing Street is expected to publish these emails later today.
The spokesperson would not elaborate on what the emails show, or what they imply for the chancellor’s career, but he repeated the point about the PM having full confidence in her.
Sir Laurie Magnus, the ethics adviser, is looking at the new material. But the fact that he is reviewing new material does not mean that he is opening a full, formal investigation. That decision will be a matter for him.
Asked if Reeves would still be chancellor at the time of the budget, the spokesperson indicated that she would.
Updated
Southwark council says it only acts against landlords who ignore licence warnings, implying Reeves should avoid fine
Rachel Reeves probably does not spend a lot of time reading the LandlordTODAY website. But if she did, she might have seen this article, written earlier this year, highlighting complaints about licensing schemes like the one that has got the chancellor into difficulties. It says:
Phil Turtle, a compliance consultant at Landlord Licensing & Defence, says it is increasingly the case that a missed renewal notice, a buried letter, or a forgotten deadline can cost landlords their financial stability – and even their properties.
And he believes that selective licensing schemes, enforced with increasing rigour by local councils, are catching landlords off guard with fines that can spiral into the hundreds of thousands.
“I’ve seen landlords lose everything because they didn’t have a system in place to track compliance. One missed deadline can cost you £105,000, and if you’re operating through a limited company, that fine could double to £210,000.”
He points to a recent case in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where a landlord faced a staggering £66,000 in fines for failing to license a single house converted into two flats. “The council hit the landlord’s limited company with £16,500 per flat and then fined him personally as the sole director another £16,500 per flat. That’s £66,000 for a simple oversight – and now he’s forced to sell the property to cover the cost.”
But my colleague Peter Walker says Reeves is not likely to be fined because Southwark council only fines landlords who ignore warning letters about not having landlord licences.
Some good news for Rachel Reeves - Southwark council say they only take enforcement action (eg fines) against landlords who don’t have a licence unless they don’t get a licence within three weeks of a warning or the property is unsafe. You’d assume Reeves is safe on both of those.
He quotes this statement from the council.
Updated
Labour is facing a continued local council backlash over disapproval with its approach to the war in Gaza, with one of its councillors in Bristol having joined the Green party, PA Media reports. PA says Alsayed Al-Maghrabi is the latest local Labour councillor to have left the party over Gaza and the “direction of the national leadership”, and has joined Bristol’s ruling Green party group.
Lib Dems call for Katie Lam to be sacked - as Lam wins Spectator award after calling for mass deportations on cultural grounds
While the Tories are calling for Rachel Reeves to be sacked, the Liberal Democrats are today saying that Katie Lam should be sacked from her post as a Conservative home affairs spokesperson.
The Lib Dems say Kemi Badencoch should get rid of her because, by speaking “imprecisely”, as Badenoch put it, Lam implied the party wanted to deport potentially millions of people.
Max Wilkinson, a Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said:
Katie Lam’s divisive comments will have caused angst for families worried about being broken apart. Kemi Badenoch should sack her from the Conservative front bench to send a clear signal that this was not her party’s policy and restore order to her ranks.
The problem with this line, as Sunder Katwala from the British Future thinktank and many others have pointed out, Lam was largely describing party policy (at least, party policy as set out in the Chris Philp bill – see 11.47am) when she gave her controversial interview to the Sunday Times recently.
But, to be fair to Badenoch, Lam did arguably go beyond party policy in one respect. She said that mass deportations were needed so that Britain could become “a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people”. When Badenoch and Philp have spoken about Tory immigration policy, they have focused on wanting to cut immigration numbers more for economic reasons than for cultural reasons.
Last night Lam was named newcomer of the year at the Spectator’s parliamentarian of the year award. On Bluesky some commentators are appalled.
This is from Adam Bienkov, political editor of Byline Times.
Nobody had even heard of Katie Lam outside of Westminster until about two weeks ago.
Literally all it takes to be considered “brilliant” and a “rising star” on the right of British politics now is just a willingness to say something slightly more racist than all of your competitors
This is from the historian Robert Saunders.
Ironically, Katie Lam was named “Parliamentary Newcomer of the Year” last night by the Spectator.
It’s an example of the “Boris Johnson” problem in British politics: that being loud, self-promoting and outrageous brings prizes and name-recognition. Learning your stuff & being thoughtful does not.
And this is from Philip Stephens, the former chief political commentator at the Financial Times.
Conservative MP Katie Lam preaches racism of “cultural coherence” and is rewarded with a gong from The Spectator. Then, what would you expect from editor Michael Gove after his Brexit fear-mongering about Turkish (Muslim) immigrants?
Updated
Boris Johnson tells Tories they won't win next election by 'bashing green agenda'
Boris Johnson has warned the Conservatives they will not win the next election by “bashing the green agenda”, Aletha Adu reports.
Badenoch says ministers who break the law should have to resign
Kemi Badenoch has told Sky News that ministers who break the law should have to resign. But, in an interview with Sam Coates, she said that her own law-breaking when she hacked into Harriet Harman’s website in 2008 did not count because she was in her 20s at the time, and not a lawmaker.
As the Tories call for Rachel Reeves to quit for breaching tenancy laws, I ask Kemi Badenoch: “Have you ever broken the law”? pic.twitter.com/lcimuWn33d
— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) October 30, 2025
Badenoch owned up herself to the Harman hack. It was not the most sophisticated example of cybercrime. According to the biography of Badenoch published by Lord Ashcroft, Badenoch got into the website by guessing, for username, “harriet”, and for password, “harman”.
DWP appoints two welfare experts to co-chair review of Pip disability benefit with Stephen Timms
Two disability experts will help to lead the government’s review of a major benefit aimed at helping disabled people with living costs, PA Media reports. PA says:
Stephen Timms, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), suggested disabled people would be placed “at the heart” of the review he is undertaking into personal independent payments (Pip).
Dr Clenton Farquharson and Sharon Brennan have been appointed co-chairs of the Timms Review, which was launched after elements of the government’s flagship welfare Bill which would restrict eligibility to Pip were scrapped in the summer.
Any changes to Pip have been postponed until after the review takes place, ministers have promised.
Farquharson has more than 25 years’ experience as a national advocate for disability rights, and social justice, according to the DWP.
Brennan meanwhile has expertise as a director of policy and external affairs at National Voices, a coalition of health and care charities, and has advised the Department for Transport on accessibility as a member of the disabled person’s transport advisory committee.
Timms has confirmed the appointments in a written ministerial statement.
He has also published updated terms of reference for the review. Mostly they are the same as when terms of reference for the review were first published in the summer. The original document said:
The purpose of the review is to ensure the assessment is fair and fit for the future rather than to generate proposals for further savings.
This sentence is still in the new version. But the update includes a new passage saying the review must take into account the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projections for future Pip spending. It says:
It is critical that the public and most importantly disabled people themselves, can trust in the fairness and fitness of Pip. The government is committed to making sure the system is sustainable and so the work of the review will operate within the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) projections for future Pip expenditure, to ensure it is there to support generations to come. We want to ensure public money is spent as effectively as possible in supporting disabled people to live independent and fulfilling lives.
Updated
No 10 won't say if PM's ethics adviser obtained proof that Reeves was wrongly advised over rental licence
At the Downing Street lobby briefing (or any other briefing, for that matter), it is not a good sign if the reporters end up laughing. But there was a bit of that today as the No 10 spokesperson faced questions about Rachel Reeves’ rental licence error. To be fair to the spokesperson, it was not his fault; he is expected to stick to “lines to take” agreed by the prime mininster and his most senior aides in No 10, and the spokesperson did that perfectly calmly and professionally. It is just that there were a lot of questions he would not address.
Here are some of the things that No 10 did say.
The No 10 spokesperson rejected the claim that Reeves had got off “scot-free” to avoid spooking the markets. When it was put to him that Starmer had done a quick “stitch-up” to avoid upsetting the markets and “the chancellor has got away scot-free”, the spokesperson replied: “I don’t accept the framing of that at all.”
The spokesperson said Starmer still stands by his previous assertion that lawmakers cannot be lawbreakers.
But there were a lot more questions that the spokesperson would not answer.
The No 10 spokesperson declined to explicitly confirm that Reeves had not broken the ministerial code. Asked repeatedly whether or not Reeves broke the ministerial code, the spokesperson avoided answering one way or the other. But he did say that the ministerial code did say that an apology can be “an appropriate sanction” – implying the code was broken. The spokesperson repeatedly referred to section 2.7 of the code, which says:
Where the prime minister determines that a breach of the expected standards has occurred, they may ask the independent adviser for confidential advice on the appropriate sanction. The final decision rests with the prime minister. Where the prime minister retains their confidence in the minister, available sanctions include requiring some form of public apology, remedial action, or removal of ministerial salary for a period.
The spokesperson would not say whether or not Sir Laurie Magnus, the PM’s ethics adviser, asked for proof that Reeves had been told that she did not need a rental licence, or whether he just took Reeves at her word when she said that was the case. The spokesperson just said that Starmer spoke to Magnus, who “advised that in the light of the chancellor’s prompt action to rectify the position, including her apology, further investigation is not necessary”. Reporters were left with the impression that Magnus had not asked for evidence to back up what Reeves said.
The spokesperson would not say whether Starmer still believes that any breach of the ministerial code should lead to a resignation, as he proposed when he was in opposition. The spokesperson said that what Starmer did when he was opposition leader was not a matter for him. But he said as PM Starmer had strengthened the code.
The spokesperson would not say why, if the ethics adviser is genuinely independent, why he rushed out a decision on this last night instead of taking time to establish what the full facts were. When asked this, the spokesperson said the chancellor had acted “with urgency”. But he did not explain why Magnus did not take longer to look at the matter.
The spokesperson would not say whether or not Reeves’s mistake meant she had broken the law. The spokesperson just repeated the line about how Reeves had apologised for an inadvertent mistake. Asked if Reeves would have to resign if she gets fined over this, the spokesperson again referred to the PM’s letter to Reeves last night. He said he would not comment on a hypothetical question. But he said that Starmer has “set out the standards he expects in public life” in the past.
Updated
A raft of leading economists and thinkers from around the world are supporting a Green Planning Commission being launched today by the Common Wealth thinktank.
The commission will explore the need for “a new progressive climate consensus … which takes the break with market coordination as its premise, but which absorbs the political and policy innovations and limitations that have taken place over the past decade and comprehensively advocates for a more robust green planning policy framework”.
In a statement about their work, the commissioners say:
We are in a moment of peril for progressive climate action. In Washington, a revanchist carbon coalition is brutally dismantling the turn towards green investment and planning initiated by the Biden Administration. A Labour government in Britain, meanwhile, is at a crossroads; its ambitious transition targets threatened by rising costs and a stagnant economy. Across Europe, uneven but real progress is threatened by a populist right that promises to row back on decarbonisation efforts as an illusory solution to the cost of living crisis. Globally, despite the world-historic productive force of China’s green state developmentalism, the green transition remains dangerously off course.
It is, however, also a time of renewal, well suited to the rethinking of dominant political and policy paradigms. We have an opportunity and responsibility to develop a programme that can defeat forces of reaction, deliver a just transition, traverse a fraught geopolitical context, rebuild state capacity, and ensure economic security and affordability for working people.
There are more details of what the commission hopes to achieve here.
Updated
Nearly 40,000 prisoners let out under government's early release scheme, MoJ says
Nearly 40,000 prisoners in England and Wales have been let out of jail under the government’s early release scheme to tackle overcrowding in prisons, PA Media reports. PA says:
Some 38,042 inmates had been freed as of the end of June this year, according to Ministry of Justice figures [pdf].
The scheme was launched as an emergency measure on 10 September last year, just days after the prison population reached a record high of 88,521.
It allows eligible prisoners to be released after serving only 40% of their fixed-term sentence, rather than the usual 50%.
It comes as part of efforts to curb overcrowding in jails. Officials warned in May that male prisons were on track to hit zero capacity by November this year.
Some 10,879 of the 38,042 early releases (28.6%) were serving sentences of six months or under, with a further 5,241 (13.8%) serving sentences of between six and 12 months.
The age group that made up the greatest proportion of early releases was 30 to 39-year-olds (37.6% of the overall total), followed by 40 to 49-year-olds (23.4%).
Meanwhile 34,332 (90.2%) were British nationals, 3,644 (9.6%) were foreign nationals and 66 (0.2%) had no nationality recorded.
HMP Humber in Brough, near Hull, has released the highest number of inmates so far under the scheme (1,126), followed by Berwyn in Wrexham (1,064); Fosse Way in Leicester (1,037); and Parc B in Bridgend (830).
The current scheme for the early release of prisoners replaced a separate scheme introduced by the previous Conservative government.
Under this separate process, 13,325 prisoners in England and Wales were freed early between October 17 2023 and September 9 2024.
Updated
UK rule change allows Palestinian scholars to bring families from Gaza
Palestinian students taking up scholarships at UK universities will be allowed to bring their families from Gaza with them after the government said it would consider case-by-case exemptions, Richard Adams reports.
Badenoch says Tories have ruled out retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain from migrants living in UK
Kemi Badenoch has ruled out removing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) retrospectively from millions of people who have been told they can remain in the UK for as long as they want.
Speaking to reporters this morning, she finally killed off the most extreme elements of a policy that was set out by Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, in a private member’s bill published in May.
But the Tories remain committed to proposals that would make it much harder for migrants currently living in the UK to get ILR in the future.
Badenoch blamed the controvery on Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister, for speaking “imprecisely” – although Lam was mostly just explaining the policy drafted by Philp.
In February the Conservatives announced plans to make migrants wait 10 years until they can apply for ILR, instead of the current five years, and for applications to be refused if people have claimed benefits. And the time people would have to wait before being allowed to apply for citizenship would also be extended, the party said.
In May Philp followed this up by publishing a private member’s bill that would implement this policy. But the bill went further, saying people who have ILR now should have that status revoked in certain circumstances, including if they had claimed benefits, or were earning less than £38,700.
The bill received little attention at the time, but it was widely read after Lam gave an interview recently saying the Tories would like to deport large numbers of people who are in the UK legally. The Financial Times said the Philp policy could lead to 5% of the UK’s population being deported.
Yesterday a Conservative spokesperson said the Philp bill was no longer policy. The spokesperson said new plans would be published in due course. But he would not say whether these would involve ILR being removed retrospectively.
After the briefing yesterday, Philp posed a message on social media stressing that the February plans were still policy, and confirming that the party would stop people who do get ILR claiming benefits. But he did not repeat the proposal in his bill for those ILR benefit claimants to be deported.
Today, asked whether the Tories would remove ILR retrospectively from people who already have that status, Badenoch replied:
No, we’re not. We’re not being retrospective when we put, when we put that amendment through. It was for a live bill, so it wouldn’t have been retrospective. It was applied to a specific cohort. But that bill has now gone.
Referring to Lam’s interview, Badenoch said “she just stated it [the policy] imprecisely”.
Badenoch said, under current rules, ILR can be revoked retrospectively in some circumstances. But the Tories would not extend that, she implied.
There’s already some retrospective parts, already with ILR, if you commit crimes, you lose it, and so on. But we have a principle – we don’t believe in making things retrospective.
There are exceptions in the law already. We will look at that. But the principle that we are talking about is making sure that foreigners cannot come here and claim benefits.
Updated
Priti Patel calls for Reeves to be prosecuted over rental licence error
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, has called for Rachel Reeves to be prosecuted over her rental licence error. She has posted this on social media.
Labour run Southwark Council boasts of “cracking down on” and having a “zero tolerance approach to rogue landlords” and have prosecuted landlords for renting unlicensed properties.
Rachel Reeves has made thousands from renting without following the licensing laws.
Southwark Council must now take action on Rachel Reeves and prosecute her.
Patel has also posted links (here and here) to stories on Southwark’s website about landlords being fined for not having a rental licence – although both these cases involved landlords ignoring warnings from the council about the need for a licence, which is not what Reeves did.
Patel has not always been so zealous about seeing people punished for breaking rules. As home secretary, she was found to have broken the ministerial code because she had bullied officials. But, with the support of Boris Johnson, PM at the time, she did not resign and remained in post.
Updated
John Swinney and Rhun ap Iorwerth discuss SNP/Plaid Cymru 'progressive alliance' to challenge Labour
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
John Swinney, Scotland’s nationalist first minister, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, who hopes to become the nationalist first minister of Wales, have proposed forging a “progressive alliance” to challenge Labour at Westminster.
The pair met at Swinney’s official residence in Edinburgh this morning to pledge a close working relationship if Plaid Cymru wins next May’s Welsh parliamentary elections and ap Iorwerth becomes first minister, in what is a marked change in strategy for the Scottish National party.
Ap Iorwerth’s visit follows Plaid’s historic victory in the Senedd byelection in Caerphilly last week, beating Reform UK and consigning Labour, which had held the contiguous Westminster seat for a century, to a very distant third.
It signals a very deliberate realignment by the SNP: during Nicola Sturgeon’s time as first minister, she forged a very close bond with Mark Drakeford, the Labour first minister of Wales, jointly agreeing strategies to attack the then Conservative government in London.
The SNP’s ties then with Plaid were fraternal rather than strategic. But Labour’s crises and plunging polling support, and the interconnected rise of Reform UK since last year’s general election, has upended that dynamic.
Opinion polls in Wales show Plaid and Reform are vying for victory in next May’s elections, while in Scotland Labour’s efforts to unseat the SNP remain in deep trouble. Polling puts the SNP on course for a comfortable victory; Swinney believes it could win an overall majority at Holyrood.
In statements issued before their meeting – which did not include a joint press conference – ap Iorwerth said a Plaid administration in Cardiff would try to replicate the Scottish child payment, a £25 per child per week benefit funded from devolved budgets.
He said:
The Scottish child payment is a radical and exciting policy which we are committed to introducing as a Welsh pilot should Plaid Cymru form the next government in May. Thanks to measures like this, Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty rates are set to drop in the coming years. I want that to be the case in Wales too.
We have a genuine opportunity to show the power of progressive politics through close and continued cooperation between Scotland and Wales.
For Swinney, Plaid’s surge in popularity has the additional benefit of boosting his efforts to make independence central to next year’s Holyrood campaign: a buoyant Welsh nationalist party will strengthen the SNP’s attempts to appeal to yes voters who have recently stopped voting SNP. The polls show a gap of 10% or more between the SNP vote and support for independence; winning back those voters will bring Swinney closer to an overall majority.
Swinney said:
The Westminster status quo is not working – bills are going up, people are struggling and the UK Labour government’s answer is racing further and further to the right to keep up with Nigel Farage.
That is not a status quo I am willing to accept – and I will be delighted to work with my friends in Plaid Cymru to show the people of Scotland and Wales that there is a positive alternative to Westminster’s despair and decline.
Home Office welcomes figures showing almost 60,000 knives taken off streets
Tens of thousands of knives have been seized by police and handed in through surrender schemes, the Home Office has said. PA Media reports:
Nearly 60,000 blades have been taken away in England and Wales as part of government efforts to halve knife crime within a decade, as latest data shows knife murders have dropped in the last year.
Some 7,512 weapons were removed through the month-long ninja sword surrender scheme before the blades were banned from August under Ronan’s Law.
Some 47,795 zombie knives and machetes were also surrendered last year, the Home Office said, while 3,334 knives were retrieved by Border Force and 618 through operations to tackle county lines drug dealing.
There were no national knife surrender schemes in 2023/2024.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said: “Too many young lives are lost each year to knife crime. This government is determined to halve knife crime. We are making progress, but we won’t stop until we meet that goal.”
Latest crime figures for England and Wales show 196 knife-enabled homicides were recorded in the year to June, down by 18% from 239 in the previous 12 months.
Badenoch says Reeves has more questions to answer about rental licence error
Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.
Kemi Badenoch has said she thinks Rachel Reeves has more questions to answer about her rental licence mistake.
Speaking to reporters after her rally this morning, the Tory leader said:
I think that the more I hear about the story, the more questions there are to answer. This is a 2004 statute that was brought in by Labour. She has tweeted about how it should be extended, and yet she wasn’t following it herself.
And it’s all very well blaming someone else, the lettings agent didn’t do this or that, she is the chancellor. She needs to be on top of her paperwork. She was aware of this legislation. I think there should be an investigation.
But the bottom line is that Keir Starmer said again and again, that lawbreakers shouldn’t be lawmakers. So if she’s broken the law, then he should apply his own rules to her.
Badenoch declines to commit to reversing any tax rises in budget
Kemi Badenoch did speak to reporters in a “huddle” after her speech at the Tory rally this morning. (A “huddle” is mediaspeak for a mini press conference, normally standing up, and off camera.)
Asked if she would commit to reversing any tax increases in the budget, she declined to say she would.
Well, this is one of those things where we have to see where we are in four years’ time.
We talked about the things which we are going to reverse, the family farms, tax, family business taxes, taxes on education.
We want to abolish stamp duty. We want to scrap business rates for high streets.
But we don’t know what kind of mess Labour is going to be leaving in four years’ time.
All we know is that they’re going to be leaving one hell of a mess, and we’ve got to clear it up, and we will do that through applying our golden economic rule, making sure that we’re paying down the deficit as well as making investments.
This is the answer that you would expect an opposition leader to give at this stage in the budget process and the electoral cycle.
Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says he thinks it is a mistake for the Conservatives to be saying Rachel Reeves should have to resign over the rental licence error. He explains why in a post on social media. Here is an extract.
Kemi Badenoch’s call for Starmer to sack Reeves, for failing to register her family home when she rented it on moving to Downing Street, lowers the bar quite significantly for sackable offences by ministers. I am not certain all her shadow cabinet colleagues will thank her.
The point is that there is a clear distinction between Rayner’s failure to take stamp duty advice and Reeves’s failure to register her home with the council for rent.
In the case of Rayner, there was the potential for very large personal material gain. Her dismissal was inevitable …
Badenoch is apparently saying that almost all cock ups in a minister’s personal life should disqualify them from holding public office.
Would that stipulation really give the British people the public servants they deserve, or perhaps simply deter anyone with common sense from going into politics?
Here are more pictures from the Conservative party rally this morning.
In the Commons there will be an urgent question at 10.30am on the massacre at the El Fasher in Sudan.
Alan Campbell, the leader of the Commons, will take business questions at about 11am, and at about 12pm a Cabinet Office minister will give a statement with an update on the infected blood compensation scheme.
Badenoch says Reeves should have to resign if she puts up taxes in budget
Badenoch ends by addressing this to Reeves:
I know you’ve got a lot of problems now with the new issues, with being a landlord and messing up your lettings. But no one is interested in your problems. We need you to solve our problems.
If she puts up the tax, give Reeves the axe.
Again, this is odd messaging. “No one is interested in your problems.” The Tories definitely were; Badenoch herself has posted about it twice on social media, and CCHQ has put out a press release.
After her speech, Badenoch does not immediately take questions, so reporters do not get the chance to ask whether the Tories are most keen on getting Reeves to resign now, or getting her to resign when taxes go up in the budget.
It is not unusual for the opposition to call for a minister to resign. But it is strange to be calling, on the same day, for someone to resign over two seperate matters, on two separate timescales.
Badenoch says, if Reeves can't handle her own paperwork, she can't manage the country's
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now.
She says they are there to talk about Rachel Reeves.
[Reeves] promised not to put a tax on working people. Apparently, farmers aren’t working people. Apparently, anyone who has a job isn’t a working person because they put up the jobs tax and look at what’s happened.
And she refers to the rental licence story.
Rachel Reeves apparently has broken a law. Just like Angela Rayner before her and Louise Haigh before her. All we see is the Labour cabinet making mistakes, breaking laws. If the chancellor can’t even get it on top of her own paperwork, how is she going to get on top of the country’s paperwork?
But Badenoch then reverts to her argument that, if Reeves puts up taxes in the budget, she should be sacked. (See 9.05am.)
Stride says the Tories have an alternative economic policy. He refers to the plans set out at party conference to slash spending, and use the savings to abolish stamp duty, among other things.
Badenoch and Mel Stride hold press event
Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride are speaking at an outdoor rally/press event on the south bank in London.
Stride, the shadow chancellor, is speaking now. He says Labour has broken its promises on tax and that’s “disgraceful”. He specifically refers to inheritance tax being extended to farms, which is something the party had previously ruled out.
Kemi Badenoch is about to deliver her speech shortly.
Within the last hour, she has posted a message on social media saying that, if Rachel Reeves puts up taxes in the budget, she will have to resign.
Rachel Reeves promised “no more tax increases”. That now looks like a lie.
If she puts up tax, Starmer must sack her.
This is confusing, given that the party is already saying Reeves should be sacked over the rental licence error. (See 8.42am.) If they think she is not fit to be chancellor now, it seems odd to be saying that she should also have to resign over a hypothetical decision happening in a month’s time.
Tories say Starmer should sack Reeves for breaking law and breaking ministerial code
The Conservatives have said Keir Starmer should sack Rachel Reeves. A Tory spokesperson said:
Rachel Reeves has broken the law and broken the ministerial code, but Keir Starmer is too weak to sack her.
While the chancellor is planning tax hikes for millions of families across the country at the budget, it’s one rule for the chancellor and another for everyone else.
Keir Starmer pledged to restore integrity to politics, but now he’s laughing in the face of the British public.
He should grow a backbone and sack the chancellor now. This is not over.
Updated
No 10 releases letters from Reeves and Starmer about chancellor inadvertently renting home with necessary licence
Good morning. Ministers often complain about Whitehall being slow and inefficient, but last night the government’s ethical standards machinery settled a misconduct allegation in record time. After the Daily Mail revealed that Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, had inadvertently rented out her south London home without requiring the specific licence required by the council, before midnight Downing Street had already released an exchange of letters on the issue between Reeves and Keir Starmer.
Reeves apologised for the mistake. Her spokesperson has said that the letting agency she used told her a licence was not needed.
And Starmer said that he had already consulted his ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, who had advised that, in the light of Reeves’s apology and her willingess to rectify the situation, no further action was needed.
So, from Downing Street’s perspective, the whole thing was sorted before the Mail’s final edition went to press.
In many European countries, this would not even come close to registering as a scandal and it would all be swifty forgotten. But, with a censorious media, and papers like the Mail actively hostile to Labour, Starmer and Reeves are unlikely to shut down the story quite that easily. Starmer is also open to the accusation of double standards. In other cases where ministers have been accused of breaching the ministerial code of conduct, he has taken a strict approach to enforcing the rules. Angela Rayner also inadvertently failed to comply with the relevant legislation in relation to a housing matter, and that led to her having to resign.
Kemi Badenoch is due to give a speech shortly and she is not letting up. Last night she said that, if Reeves broke the law (and Southwark council says not having the right licence is a criminal offence), she should resign.
The Prime Minister must launch a full investigation.
He once said “lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers”.
If, as it appears, the Chancellor has broken the law, then he will have to show he has the backbone to act.
And this morning, highlighting a recent tweet from Reeves in which the chancellor welcomed a selective licensing policy for landlords in Leeds, Badenoch said it was hard to believe she did not know she needed a licence for her London rental home.
Rachel Reeves was celebrating the renting law being expanded in her constituency, at the same time she was breaking that law with her own house
Claiming that she wasn’t aware of these laws is about as credible as her CV.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister and the SNP leader, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, are meeting in Edinburgh to discuss a joint approach to countering “Westminster’s despair and decline”.
9am: Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, speak at a Conservative press conference in London.
9.30am: Peter Kyle, the business secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly figures relating to prisons, including the number of assaults and deaths.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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