Closing summaries
And that’s all from us for the evening as well. We’re closing this live blog down now – you can read a summary of the prime minister’s speech on Scotland and the union here and a summary of the day’s earlier developments here.
And, if you’d like to read a comprehensive take on this evening’s Tory leadership hustings, my colleague Peter Walker has duly obliged:
Updated
Hunt is asked whether the mandatory foreign aid target should be abolished and that money spent within the UK by a member of the audience who notes that some military veterans are in need. “Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re not going to like the answer I’m going to give now,” Hunt says.
While he says he wants to help veterans, he points out that some countries are “much, much worse off than us” and says he wants to reform the way the money’s spent, rather than scrap foreign aid.
And that’s all from Jeremy Hunt.
Updated
Here’s a little more detail on Hunt’s proposals on social care. He said:
I do think that councils need more money to discharge their responsibilities on social care. I also think we need to take more responsibilities ourselves. Just as we save for a pension throughout our lives, I think we need to create incentives for people to save for their social care costs as well.
He said the government should also consider incentives to encourage people to look after elderly relatives in the family home.
There are 420,000 households in our country that are three-generation households where granny, mum and dad and the kids all live under the same roof. I think that is a good thing.
I am not saying we all want to live with our mother-in-law. But I think that three-generation families are a wonderful thing.
If you look at Spain and Italy, where they spend less on social care than us but they don’t have a social care crisis, is because they are societies that hold families together.
As the party of the family, I think we should look to see if we could introduce incentives for that as well.
Speaking with his wife Lucia in the front row, Mr Hunt said: "I am not saying that we all want to live with our mother-in-law... I would love to live with my mother in law darling - she doesn't speak that great English so we can't have an argument."
— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) July 4, 2019
Updated
Hunt signals that he would keep the help to buy policy and says he will “go further”, with a scheme called “right to own”. Under that, he says, young people would be gifted land and would have to pay the cost of building a house on it themselves.
Hunt tells the audience says Brexit is the “ultimate test” of British democracy, indicating that many foreign nations are looking to see whether or not the UK government will enact the referendum result.
He says it’s important to “understand the fears of the 48%” and says Brexit will not be a case of saying “foreigners are not welcome” in the UK. It will not be, he says, a “Ukip Brexit”.
He had been asked by a member of the audience it was acceptable for MPs to ignore their constituents’ votes in the referendum. “No. It’s not,” he responded, before acknowledging that a majority of his own constituents voted to remain (as he did himself), while he now advocates leaving.
There are lots of constituencies where more people voted Remain, my constituency is one of them. But we didn’t say we were going to take this decision constituency by constituency, we said we were going to take this decision as a country and 52% voted to leave.
Updated
Hunt says he’s in favour of greater devolution of powers in England, saying it would help the north of the nation in particular.
Hunt is asked what are the “serious consequences” with which he has threatened China if freedoms are watered down in Hong Kong. He says it’s an “important question to ask” but one that no foreign secretary would ever answer.
He says he expects China to abide by the one country, two systems programme and says consequences would follow if it does not.
Updated
The foreign secretary says he is a supporter of encouraging three generations of families to live together in a bid to cut social care costs – with one generation looking after the other.
Hunt is asked straight away about repealing the hunting ban. He says he would vote for it but that pursuing repeal wouldn’t be his priority as prime minister.
He’s asked why, then, he decided to make what is a fairly unpopular position public. Hunt tells the audience he gave a “straight answer to a straight question” when asked about the issue and – in what sounds like another dig at Johnson over his character – Hunt says he’s not one of the politicians who gives different answers to different audiences.
Hunt opens with a joke about confusing China and Japan, then moves swiftly to Brexit. He says there’s very little distance between him and Johnson on the issue and then repeats his claim that the question is who’s best placed and most trusted to get a deal.
That line about trust has been widely interpreted at a thinly veiled dig at his opponent, who has faced serious questions about his character.
That’s it from Boris Johnson – Jeremy Hunt is about to take the stage.
Asked about privatising the rail industry, Johnson says the way to improve the system is to “find the right arse to kick”. He says there’s no accountability currently and says transport bosses should “pay the political price for failing to deliver”.
On the environment, Johnson says the commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is “ambitious but it can be done”.
He says the UK is a leader in “battery technology” and says he would back offshore wind turbines and solar technology to produce a greater share of the UK’s energy in order to meet the target.
Johnson backs cutting corporation tax and business rates, which he claims will boost the UK economy. But he refuses to say whether he will match Jeremy Hunt’s plan to push corporation tax as low as 12.5%.
Asked whether such cuts are prudent, Johnson says he believes that cutting some taxes can bring in greater revenues because the cuts give an incentive to increase production.
Johnson also picked a fight with large online firms – such as Google, Amazon and Facebook – who he says must be forced to pay more tax.
The former foreign secretary signals that he supports the rights of demonstrators in Hong Kong to protest and calls on China to adhere to the one country, two systems principle. China has accused the UK of meddling in internal affairs over the latter’s support for the demonstrators.
Updated
Johnson tells the audience he’s “not remotely attracted” to the possibility of proroguing Parliament in order to force through Brexit. There’s significant support among audience members, it must be said, for proroguing when the question is put to them. But he stays firm in his position.
An audience member asks Johnson what his plan is to address drug, gun and knife crime. Johnson says “key nominals” of county lines gangs need to be “rounded up” and that the nation needs to “be backing the police”.
Johnson repeats his line about reducing knife crime during his time as mayor – citing his backing for stop and search. He says “you cannot fudge the murder rate” and that it was reduced by 50% during his tenure.
Johnson is asked what he’d do as prime minister to ensure northern England gets a fairer share of funding. He says he’d back funding for transport and look at devolving some powers to smaller regions.
On Scottish independence, Johnson claims he puts the union before Brexit – but says no Scottish voter would be able to support a UK government that does not push through Brexit after being asked to in the referendum.
Therefore, he says, Brexit – which poses a serious potential existential threat to the union as it exists – has to happen in order to save the union.
Johnson is asked if he’s aware he’s canvassing people under investigation over allegations of Islamophobia.
Johnson, who has compared Muslim women in burqas to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” in the past, says the Tory party welcomes people from every ethnic group and faith. He adds:
Ages ago, when I was standing to be mayor, I was asked something like this and I said: ‘I ban all racists from voting for me’.
And he gets a round of applause for saying it’s also important to protect freedom of speech.
At Tory hustings, a long and woolly answer from Boris Johnson on Islamophobia is greeted with silence by the crowd. He says there should also be "a culture that allows people to speak frankly", which wins immediate applause. They're well into the right to offend.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) July 4, 2019
Updated
Boris Johnson is on the stage at the Tory hustings in York. He says his mission is to “protect” the UK from a Corbyn-led government.
To do that, he says, he’ll “get Brexit done” by 31 October. He repeats his lines about “creative ambiguity” on the £39bn the UK has agreed to pay as it withdraws and leaving the Irish border question until after Brexit has happened.
Johnson also claims he wants to do for transport in the north of England what he “did for Crossrail”. Crossrail was, of course, due to open in December 2018 and now looks likely to be delayed until 2021. The cost has also risen from £14.8bn to £17.6bn.
Jeremy Corbyn has been furious about a report in the Times last week that said some civil servants were speculating about his mental and physical capacity to be prime minister.
The Labour leader wrote to the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill, to demand an investigation – a request that was granted – and the two have since held a meeting. Asked today how that went, Corbyn said:
A very clear, very firm meeting. I said to him that we are proud to have a civil service that is independent, that respects democracy and doesn’t make public comment on its political views.
Somebody from the civil service or a group of people crossed the line and decided to make nonsensical claims about me.
It’s not about me, it’s about our political system and I said to Mark Sedwill we want an assurance that the civil service will be democratic, will abide by decisions of the people and will work for whoever is elected into government.
He assured me they would do that, he assured me there would be a very robust inquiry now into whoever made these comments to the relevant newspapers and that those people would face disciplinary action under the civil service code.
Theresa May's speech on Scotland and the union - Summary
Here are the main points from Theresa May’s speech in Scotland.
- May warned her success not to opt for an Irish border plan that would undermine the Good Friday agreement. (See 6.03pm.)
- She accused the SNP government of being unwilling to cooperate with the UK government to make devolution work because it prioritises its separatist agenda. She said:
It is telling that during the discussions over legislative consent for the EU withdrawal bill, after intense discussions and give and take on both sides, the Welsh government was willing to making a compromise, whereas the Scottish government was not.
Over the last three years I have learned that while other parties can be relied on to work with the UK government in good faith to make devolution a success, an SNP Scottish Government will only ever seek to further the agenda of separation.
That, I am afraid, is simply a fact of political life in the UK at the moment.
- She said today “the only threat to devolution comes from those parties who want to end it by breaking up the United Kingdom.”
- She said federalism would not work in the UK.
Many of those who advocate a federal UK are equally well-intentioned, but I believe are also in the wrong track.
England makes up over 80% of the UK population. There is no example of a federal state anywhere in the world where one of the units of the federation is so large.
The UK simply does not lend itself to federation as a sustainable constitutional model.
The only way it could realistically be achieved would be by breaking England up into artificial regional units – something I would never support and for which I detect no appetite.
- She announced a review into what the UK government could do to strengthen the union.
We need to work more cleverly, more creatively and more coherently as a UK government fully committed to a modern, 21st century union in the context of a stable and permanent devolution settlement to strengthen the glue that holds our union together.
There have been several reviews into how devolution works. But we have never thought deeply about how we make the union work – how we ensure that as we fully respect devolution, we do not forget the UK government’s fundamental duty to be a government for the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
That is why I have asked Andrew Dunlop to lead an independent review into the structures of the UK government to ensure that they are set up to realise fully all the benefits of being a United Kingdom.
Lord Dunlop has a wealth of experience from his time in Government as an advisor and minister and I look forward to reading his report.
Of course it will be for my successor to respond to his recommendations, and I am delighted that both candidates are supportive of the review.
That’s all from me for today.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.
May warns her successor not to opt for Irish border plan that would undermine Good Friday agreement
This is what Theresa May said in her speech about the need for her successor not to undermine the Good Friday agreement. (See 5.25pm.) She said:
At the heart of the Belfast agreement, which enabled the people of Northern Ireland to move beyond that past into a shared future, was a compromise.
That people who identify as Irish can live in Northern Ireland but, to all intents and purposes, operate across the whole of Ireland in their day to day lives and in their business activities without any semblance of a border.
That compromise was enabled by having a seamless border.
The backstop insurance policy we agreed with the EU, which would have been activated only if we were unable to agree our new relationship within the implementation period, respected that compromise.
And the future relationship will need to respect it.
It will be for my successor to resolve that issue and I will not today seek to provide any advice on the matter.
I will simply say this.
There can and must be no false choice between honouring the solemn commitments of the Belfast agreement and delivering on the decision of the British people in the EU referendum.
We must do both.
May’s decision to speak out on this point may have been prompted by hints that Boris Johnson, her likely successor, will propose an alternative to the backstop that will involve some extra checks for traders in Ireland and Northern Ireland, only not at the border. This was the implication of the recent report from the Alternative Arrangements Commission (pdf). The Telegraph’s Peter Foster explored this idea in a recent article, and here is an extract.
Mr Johnson chose his own words in Belfast very carefully. He stated that the withdrawal agreement was dead “as it stands” and promised that there “will be no physical checks or infrastructure at the border in Northern Ireland”.
A great deal rides on that small word ‘at’ - note that Mr Johnson does not promise the absence of “checks or infrastructure”, only that they would not be ‘at’ the border.
It is clear where this is heading from a report last week proposing ‘Alternative Arrangements’ for the border co-authored by Shanker Singham, a pro-Brexit trade specialist who is likely to feature in Mr Johnson’s team of top advisers.
It calls for a raft of measures - from digital customs forms, geo-tracking vehicles and mobile veterinary inspections - that will, as Mr Singham admits, require checks and controls, just not at the border. The EU has already expressed scepticism ...
[The Irish government] argues that checks are absolutely the issue in a borderland which would actively resist the imposition of any such checks in the name of an ‘English’ Brexit that they never voted for.
May challenges a journalist who asks about increased support for independence. She says the SNP actually lost support at the 2017 election.
And that’s it. The speech and Q&A are over.
I will post a summary soon.
Q: What advice would you give to your successor about dealing with Nicola Sturgeon?
May criticises Sturgeon for dismissing her speech before it was even delivered. Sturgeon should focus on day to day issues that matter to people in Scotland, she says.
Q: Which of your successors will be best for the Tories in Scotland?
May refuses to answer.
Q: You accept Gordon Brown’s analysis about the state of the union. So when will there be another independence referendum?
May says the the SNP government should stop obsessing about independence and focus on governing.
Q: Is there an explicit threat to the union from no-deal?
May says she has always stressed the need to maintain the union. She thinks her successor will want to do the same.
May's Q&A
Q: Will no-deal end the union? And is that a risk worth taking?
May says she thinks the government can deliver Brexit and strengthen the union.
May says not enough thought has gone into how the UK government supports the union.
She says she has asked Lord Dunlop, a government minister, to review what more the UK government can do to ensure that it works in a way that strengthens the union.
It will be for her successor to take this work forward, she says. But she says both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt support the idea.
May accuses SNP government of refusing to cooperate with Westminster because it's obsessed with independence
May says the SNP accused her of using Brexit to claw back powers from Holyrood. She says that claim was “absurd”. But it also showed how complicated implementing Brexit would be.
She says the Welsh government was willing to compromise with the UK government over how powers being repatriated from Brussels would be distributed. But the Scottish government was not, she says.
She says that is because, while others are willing to work with Westminster, the SNP government is not.
An SNP Scottish government will only ever seek to further the agenda of separation. That is a fact of political life in the UK at the moment.
May says the Irish border, and the need to protect it, was a major obstacle to getting a Brexit deal agreeing.
She defends the “backstop insurance policy”, saying it respected the compromise in Ireland agreed by the Good Friday agreement.
She says it will be for her successor to find a solution. But she says there must be no “false choice” between respecting the Belfast agreement (her term for the Good Friday agreement - the unionst term) and delivering Brexit. Any solution must do both, she says.
- May says her successor must not advocate an Irish border policy that would put the Good Friday agreement at risk.
Updated
May says delivering a Brexit that protects all parts of the UK has been a priority for her. She says her failure to achieve this is a source of regret.
May says safeguarding the union will take longterm work.
Two things are essential, she says.
First, the government has to deliver Brexit.
And, second, the government must do more to bind together the different countries of the UK.
May says she attended the D-day commemorations. She says there is no better example of the nations of the United Kingdom achieving something by working together.
And she says the bail-out of the banking system after the 2008 crash was only possible because of the size of the UK economy.
May says the Scottish independence referendum was meant to settle the matter for a generation.
But Nicola Sturgeon asked for another vote just three years later. May says she said no because she thought that was wrong. It will be for her successor to decide what to do next, she says.
BBC News are giving up on their live coverage of the May speech after about 10 minutes.
But there is a live feed at the top of the blog.
Theresa May is speaking now.
She says that when Gordon Brown spoke recently about the United Kingdom union being more at risk than at any time in the last 300 years, he spoke for many people.
The stage is ready for Theresa May's speech in Stirling pic.twitter.com/RAjf5RlTBz
— Holyrood magazine (@HolyroodDaily) July 4, 2019
Theresa May claims strengthening UK union has been an 'explicit priority' for her
Theresa May will be giving her speech on devolution in Scotland soon.
According to an extract released in advance, she will say:
I am confident that whoever succeeds me in 10 Downing Street will make the nnion their priority.
He will be building on work done over the last three years, during which time strengthening the union has become an explicit priority of government.
The job of prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland brings with it privileges and responsibilities which you only really feel once the black door closes behind you.
One of the first and greatest is the duty you owe to strengthen the Union.
To govern on behalf of the whole United Kingdom.
To respect the identities of every citizen of the UK – English and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish.
And to ensure that we can go on facing the future together, overcoming obstacles together, and achieving more together than we ever could apart –a union of nations and people.
Boris Johnson says he wants to help 'Oppidan Britain'
Election strategists are forever coining new terms to describe the electoral demographic they are targeting: Mondeo man, Worcester woman, hardworking families, the JAMs (‘just about managing’) etc. They are not always exactly the same people, but they are roughly, and it is easier just to call them floating voters.
But now, in an interview with the Spectator, Boris Johnson has coined a new term for this constituency: Oppidan Britain. It’s a university term for townie, but, as James Forsyth and Katy Balls explain in their interview, it is more specifically an Eton term. Here’s the key extract from their article.
The salvation of the Tory party, [Johnson] says, will be focusing on the wider problems exposed by Brexit. ‘Loads of people in parts of rural Britain or urban, Oppidan Britain found a sense that their lives and their futures weren’t as important,’ he says. ‘That is totally wrong. There is a big, big opportunity to bring the country together.’ So he’s pitching himself as the candidate for the disenfranchised rural folk and city dwellers of Britain.
The word ‘Oppidan’ of course has resonance among Etonians. Boris was a King’s Scholar there (the non-scholars are called Oppidans) and a pitch for the ‘left-behind’ Oppidans of the Tory party might literally mean reaching out to David Cameron, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin (all Oppidans).
Dominic Raab spent more than £50,000 on Facebook advertising during his failed bid for the Tory leadership, more than all his rivals combined, PoliticsHome reports.
EXCL Dominic Raab massively outspent his rivals on Facebook ads during failed Tory leadership bidhttps://t.co/L774lZ6zGF
— PoliticsHome (@politicshome) July 4, 2019
Here’s a question from below the line that it would be helpful to answer up here.
This was listed on the agenda yesterday, but I did not see any reporting of the judgment, and so I did not post on it.
But you can read the full judgment here.
Administrative Court written judgment handed down today following the hearing and decision on 7 June: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson -v- Westminster Magistrates Court & Others https://t.co/R8Sj811QYX
— Judicial Office (@JudiciaryUK) July 3, 2019
And the New European has got a summary here.
It’s ‘pose with an animal’ day on the Tory campaign trail.
Boris Johnson has been visiting a farm in Yorkshire.
Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
And Jeremy Hunt is in Surrey.
At Tory leadership election hustings Boris Johnson is fond of saying he reduced knife crime in the capital when he was mayor of London, and that it is now rising again under his successor, Sadiq Khan. In an interview on LBC this morning Khan, the Labour mayor, was asked to defend his record. He said that knife crime has been going up across the whole country, not just in London. And he said that during Johnson’s first term in office, from 2008 to 2012, he was getting extra money, first from the Labour government and then from the coalition anxious not to cut police numbers before the London Olympics. Khan went on:
So the cuts to London’s police numbers really began in earnest in 2012, and it takes some time for the cuts in preventative services to see the light of day. You don’t overnight, when you close youth centres, see crime going up. ... The point is this: violent crime did start going up in 2014 onwards and one of the reasons is the cuts started biting then, not just in London but across the country.
LGA offers to host cross-party talks on finding solution to adult social care crisis
The Local Government Association, the cross-party body which represents councils in England and Wales, has challenged the government to publish its green paper on adult social care within the next 10 weeks. Responding to the report from the Lords economic affairs committee report for an NHS-style system of free personal care, funded by the taxpayer, the LGA also offered to host cross-party talks on finding a solution to the funding crisis.
In a statement Ian Hudspeth, the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire council council and chair of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, said:
Councils are having to make incredibly difficult decisions within tightening budgets and cannot be expected to continue relying on one-off funding injections to keep services going. What is needed is funding certainty for both the immediate and long-term.
That is why the government needs to commit to meeting our 10-week deadline, before the party conferences start, to finally publish its much-delayed and long-awaited green paper outlining what the future funding options and possible solutions to this crisis are.
Local government stands ready to host cross-party talks to kick-start this process and make sure we get the answers and certainty we need, so that people can continue to receive essential care and support.
Jeremy Corbyn has joined those criticising the prospect of George Osborne replacing Christine Lagarde as head of the International Monetary Fund.
George Osborne, architect of UK austerity, and the IMF, leading global enforcer of austerity, would be a dangerous combination.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 4, 2019
We need to build a new global economic order for the many, not continue imposing destructive policies on behalf of the few.https://t.co/Li4nuPNiV8
Lidington says UK union under threat from English 'indifference' as well as Scottish nationalism
David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister and Theresa May’s de facto deputy, has told the World at One that a no-deal Brexit would make the break-up of the United Kingdom more likely. Asked if the UK could survive as one country in the event of no-deal, he replied:
I think the UK would be under much greater strain in the event of a no-deal.
Lidington also said the union was under greater strain than at any point in his lifetime. He went on:
The threat to the union, in my view, comes not just from Scottish nationalism, or pressure for Irish unification, it comes from indifference amongst English opinion to the value of the union.
I think there is a sense in which we take the union for granted.
And sometimes I think there are too many people in England, including in my party, who assume that you can be dismissive of the contribution that Scotland or Northern Ireland makes.
Lidington was speaking ahead of May’s speech in Scotland on devolution, which is due at about 5pm.
Lunchtime summary
- Ann Widdecombe, the Brexit party MEP and former Tory minister, has been branded “offensive” and a “clown” after likening EU membership to slavery.
- Jeremy Hunt, the underdog in the Tory leadership contest, has said the ban on foxhunting will not be repealed. He had to clarify his position after he provoked anger with an interview implying the ban might by lifted under his premiership if the Tories won a majority at the next election. (See 9.08am.)
- Hunt’s plan to end the funding crisis in adult social care has been described as unworkable by Michael Forsyth, the Tory peer who chairs a Lords committee that has just published a report on the topic. (See 12.05pm.)
And here is the Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan on Ann Widdecombe.
It is disgusting that Ann Widdecombe would reference slavery and colonisation to describe our relationship with the EU. Her and Farage are bankrolled by elites - she's part of the establishment which has created such a divide in this country. https://t.co/UoncdzeDXA
— Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (@DrRosena) July 4, 2019
This is from Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP now sitting as an independent, who says some of those praising Boris Johnson in the media have been scathing about him in private.
If I was paid a quid for each of the scathing things said to me about Boris Johnson by people now promoting him in the media, I’d be a very wealthy man. I just wonder how they can live with themselves.
— Nick Boles MP (@NickBoles) July 4, 2019
Here is Labour’s David Lammy on the Ann Widdecombe speech.
Anne Widdecombe just compared Britain leaving the EU to "slaves" rising up "against their owners".
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) July 4, 2019
It is impossible to explain how offensive and ahistorical it is for you to equate my ancestors tearing off their chains with your small-minded nationalist project. Shame on you. https://t.co/wZVCziXWVM
Widdecombe branded 'clown' after speech to MEPs likening EU membership to slavery
Here is video of the Ann Widdecombe speech. (See 1.19pm.)
Ann Widdecombe MEP: Britain was right to vote to leave, we're off!
— The Brexit Party (@brexitparty_uk) July 4, 2019
Widdecombe is on fire! pic.twitter.com/6bI01YHWAc
Here is a transcript.
And here’s the full transcript from Anne #Widdecombe’s theatrical debut, comparing British membership to the EU, to #slavery
— Gavin Lee (@GavinLeeBBC) July 4, 2019
“Nous allons, wir gehen, we’re off” she says. #annewiddecombe #Brexit pic.twitter.com/PLrvbEQKAk
Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian MEP and former prime minister who is the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman, has described Widdecombe as a “clown”.
Nigel Farage facing some stiff competition as chief clown of the Brexit Party in the @Europarl_EN. By the way, when Widdecombe talks about “colonies liberating themselves from their empires”, is she really referring to the American Revolution of 1776? https://t.co/KNtQ7GjaY3
— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) July 4, 2019
Ann Widdecombe likens Brexit to emancipation of slaves
The former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe likened the UK’s departure from the EU to the emancipation of slaves, as she became the first Brexit party MEP to speak in the new European parliament, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
Johnson's plan to hire 20,000 extra officers may not be best use of money, says police watchdog
Sir Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of policing, has suggested that Boris Johnson’s plan to hire an extra 20,000 police officers may not be the most efficient use of money. Johnson is proposing to spend an extra £1.1bn funding the pledge, which would see 20,000 extra officer in place by 2022. Presenting his annual state of policing report, Winsor welcomed the proposal, but suggested the money could be better spent. Asked if he welcomed the proposal, he replied:
Yes. High-risk, high-harm crimes are on the increase. Street violence is a very significant problem. Police are having to cope with new patterns of crime and complexity.
But when asked if it was too simplistic proposal Winsor said:
It’s certainly simple but it may not be the most effective way of spending on policing.
I’m not for a moment saying we don’t need more cops and police staff.
I’m sure Boris Johnson doesn’t expect people to believe there will be 20,000 police officers on the streets by Christmas. That just would be the case.
A good rule of polling is that, if a poll result looks sufficiently unusual to be newsworthy, it is probably wrong. That’s why today’s YouGov poll, which puts Labour in fourth place, on 18%, behind the Tories, the Brexit party and the Lib Dems, might not be quite as disastrous for the party as it looks. The Times, which has splashed on the figures, says since the 1940s Labour has only one before sunk this low, in May 2009, at the height of the banking crisis.
But another rule of polling is that it is, if you look at trends over a series of polls, they are a reliable guide to shifts in opinion. This confirms what almost all polling has implied since the European election, that Britain is becoming a four-way marginal. As YouGov explains in its write-up:
Broadly speaking, this is a continuation of the trend we have seen over the past few months of a movement away from two-party politics and towards a fairly even four-way split between Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems and the Brexit Party.
In the most recent poll 57% of Labour 2017 voters now say they would vote for another party, with 28% going to the Lib Dems, 15% moving to the Greens and 10% moving to the Brexit party.
Meanwhile 47% of Conservative 2017 voters also now say they will vote for another party, with most of that (38%) going to the Brexit party and a further 6% moving to the Lib Dems.
In a statement released by the People’s Vote campaign, which wants a second referendum on Brexit, the Labour MP Phil Wilson said:
Day after day, poll after poll shows the dismay among voters over Labour’s failure to offer a clear and principled position backing a final say referendum.
So long as the doubt and confusion continues over whether it will support a final say on any Brexit outcome - and on whether it will campaign to stay in the EU - Labour will continue to shed votes to parties like the Liberal Democrats.
Health minister Caroline Dinenage tells Liz Truss her anti sugar tax stance is 'bollocks'
This is refreshing. In normal circumstances government ministers don’t criticise each other in public. But discipline was breaking down anyway during the Brexit crisis, the Tory leadership contest created even more discord - it is impossible to have an election without disagreement - and this morning Caroline Dinenage, a health minister, has raided the Lib Dem lexicon to let us know what she thinks of Liz Truss, chief secretary to the Treasury.
Bollocks https://t.co/OG75MahMLn
— Caroline Dinenage (@cj_dinenage) July 4, 2019
Dinenage was responding to this tweet from Truss, a libertarian ultra who is supporting Boris Johnson.
If Boris wants to help Britain's poorest, scrapping the sugar tax is the place to start https://t.co/dHAkQOw8tb via @Telegraph
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) July 3, 2019
Dinenage explained her thinking her.
To clarify, sugar tax so far has raised 1/3 of predicted tax revenue ‘cos it’s prompted drink co’s to ⬇️ sugar in products, good news. To me this isn’t about ‘choice’, tiny kids have no choice over what they’re fed, it’s about incentivising food/drink co’s to use less sugar. https://t.co/Wsx3EyqzoJ
— Caroline Dinenage (@cj_dinenage) July 4, 2019
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has stepped up its criticism of the two Tory leadership candidate over their failure to provide proper costings for their spending plans. Paul Johnson, the IFS director, told the Press Association:
While the two candidates have put forward tens of billions of pounds worth of proposals to increase spending and cut taxes, they have provided no sense at all of what their overall fiscal strategy would be, what level of deficit and debt they would be happy with, or how they would deal with the problems of long term fiscal sustainability as set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
This is not currently a grown up discussion or strategy, it is a little more than a random throwing of sweeties at the children.
Hunt's plan to raise extra funds for adult social care 'doesn't work', says Tory peer who chaired expert committee
Jeremy Hunt’s plan for tackling the adult social care crisis won’t work, according to the Tory peer who chairs a Lords committee that has just published a major report on the topic (pdf).
Michael Forsyth - or Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, to use his full title - was speaking on the Today programme this morning not long after Hunt spoke about social care in his own interview. But his criticism applied not just to Hunt, but to a proposal that could also be adopted by Boris Johnson, the favourite in the Tory leadership contest.
The government was meant to publish a green paper on adult social care last year, but it has been endlessly delayed and now the key decisions will be taken by the next prime minister. Johnson has said very little about how he would tackle the adult social care crisis, but Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who is one of his leading backers, has previously floated the idea of getting more money into the system through an opt-out insurance model, where people would automatically save for social care insurance, unless they chose to opt out.
In his Today interview Hunt said he also favoured a system that would involve people saving to fund their own social care. Accepting that councils needed more money for adult social care, Hunt said:
But we also need a system where people are encouraged and incentivised to save for their social care costs for when they got older, when they are much younger, as happens with pensions. We need a system where almost automatically people are saving up for their social care costs. And that’s a long-term change that I would like to make.
But Forsyth told the programme later that this approach would not work. He explained:
We’ve looked at insurance, and we’ve looked at having an opt-in system, as we have with pensions, which Jeremy Hunt mentioned earlier. And it simply doesn’t work. Fortunately most of us are not going to require crisis care at the end of our lives, or during our working lives. And therefore, as the insurance industry [said in evidence to us] - our report is entirely based on the evidence received - it’s a very hard sell to persuade people to put aside money for something that they think may not happen to them.
And there’s huge ignorance. Local Government Association research which was given to us shows that as much as 48% of the country don’t actually know what social care means, and more than a quarter think that it’s provided free on the NHS.
What is particularly significant about this is that Forsyth is no centrist or leftie. When he was Scottish secretary in the 1990s Forsyth was perceived as a hardline rightwinger and he told my colleague Patrick Butler this week that he still saw himself as a Thatcherite Tory.
But, on social care at least, Forsyth seems to have discovered socialism. The report from the Lords economic affairs committee (pdf) that he chairs calls for adult social care to get an extra £15bn - an immediate £8bn to address the current shortfall, followed by an extra £7bn a year to extend NHS-style free personal care to all by 2025 - with the money coming from general taxation. Forsyth told the Guardian:
I support reducing tax and controlling public expenditure. But this is the minimum requirement to provide a decent standard of care in our country.
The committee’s report also explains in more detail why the insurance modelled favoured by leading Tories like Hunt would not work. It says:
No country relies primarily on private insurance to fund adult social care costs. In the current system, establishing a market for long term social care insurance in England would be difficult, even with a cap on lifetime social care costs or accommodation costs or an auto-enrolment scheme. Private insurance cannot provide the amount of funding required by the social care system, not least because roughly half of public social care funding is currently spent on people who are working-age.
Updated
In the light of Jeremy Hunt’s comments about foxhunting, Jeremy Corbyn is urging people to sign a Labour petition saying the ban should be maintained. It is a good example of how foxhunting works for Labour as a campaigning issue, because petitions allow parties to harvest email addresses that can be used in the future.
This Tory leadership race is going from bad to worse to barbaric.https://t.co/wronMx4xyb
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 4, 2019
Germany will stand fully in “solidarity” with Ireland over Brexit, the country’s president has said, and will look to “underpin rather than undermine” the peace process that has kept the border with Northern Ireland invisible in the last 20 years. Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Ireland’s president Michael Higgins, who is on a state visit to Germany, that Berlin “stands firmly by Ireland’s side”, raising questions about Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson’s optimism that the Irish border backstop can be revisited. Steinmeier said:
Politically and economically, Ireland is more directly affected by Brexit than any other EU member state, for this reason, too, your country has our full solidarity. We have reiterated this pledge in recent months: Germany stands firmly by Ireland’s side.
The European Union’s value and internal cohesion have rarely been so plain as during the withdrawal negotiations. Ireland is part of this union. And Ireland’s core interests are and will remain the EU’s core interests.
His remarks come just days after Conservative party leader contender Jeremy Hunt claimed he had assurances from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to “look at” his plan to strike a new Brexit deal if he won the keys to Number 10.
Boris Johnson receives £235,000 in new donations, register reveals
This is from my colleague Peter Walker.
Wow. Latest register of MPs' interests, out last night, shows Boris Johnson trousered *£235,500* in new donations between 28 May and 10 June. That's almost £17,000 a day. Everyone likes a (probable) winner.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) July 4, 2019
This is from the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, who does not seem to have been listening to the Today programme at 8.10. (See 9.08am.)
Could the era of prissy, finger-wagging petticoat government be coming to an end? Jeremy Hunt wants to end the hunting ban. Boris Johnson wants to stop bullying people who like sugar. Both want to cut taxes and free up the economy.
— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) July 4, 2019
Brexit secretary Steve Barclay admits no-deal could trigger recession
In an interview with Sky News Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, admitted that a no-deal Brexit could lead to a recession. Asked if he could rule it out, he replied:
Well, no. As a former Treasury minister no one can ever rule out what could happen in the future.
But Barclay stressed that that the government did not want a no-deal Brexit.
And he said that some claims about what might happen in the event of no-deal were exaggerated. As an example, he cited claims that food prices might rise by 10%. When it was put to him that this figure came from a leaked letter written by Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, Barclay replied:
Firstly, the figure that was initially put out from the Bank of England [about the impact on food prices] said 5 to 10% on some food. Only 30% of our food, it’s worth remembering comes from the EU; 70% doesn’t. [The figure] was put out before the trade flows improved. It was put out before we announced what our tariff schedules would be.
So my point is, you get a figure like that put out saying it would be 10% when it was some food, it was [5 to 10%], it was before a number of things changed and people worry about a 10% figure which is quite a misleading figure for what the expectation really is.
In his Today interview Jeremy Hunt, who is combining being a Tory leadership candidate at the moment with his day job of being foreign secretary, said there was “no reason” why Britain could not continue to have good relations with China despite the dispute over Hong Kong. He said:
We have good relations with China ... there’s no reason why that can’t continue. But, for us, it is very important that the ‘one country, two systems’ approach is honoured.
He also refused to say what he meant when he warned that there could be be “serious consequences” if China failed to honour the terms of the 1984 joint declaration signed with the UK on Hong Kong. Asked if these serious consequences could include sanctions, he replied:
I’m not saying anything about what those consequences might be - that would not be the right thing for me to do as foreign secretary, because, of course, you keep your options open. But I am making the point that the United Kingdom views this situation very, very seriously.
Updated
Labour says it's 'shocking' that Jeremy Hunt refuses to admit foxhunting is cruel
Sue Hayman, the shadow environment secretary, has criticised Jeremy Hunt for refusing to accept that foxhunting is cruel in his Today interview this morning. (See 9.08am.) She said:
It is incredible and shocking that Jeremy Hunt, who aspires to be the next prime minister, can not bring himself to even acknowledge the barbaric cruelty of fox hunting.
Once again it shows this Tory government’s lack of understanding and sincerity on issues of animal welfare.
There is overwhelming support in both rural and urban areas for keeping the ban on fox hunting that Labour was proud to bring in and will strengthen in government.
In the inteview Hunt was asked three times whether fox hunting is cruel, but he sidestepped the question each time. He said:
My view is a matter of public record ... I’m here to talk about the things I want to change as prime minister - that is not something that’s going to change.
Hunt had not been elected as an MP when the hunting bill was passed in 2004, but he has said he opposes the ban. But he also told the Today programme he had never hunted himself, adding: “It’s not my thing.”
Hunt backtracks on foxhunting and says ban will not be repealed
Jeremy Hunt has until now been running a better-than-expected campaign for the Tory leadership - if any party members are changing their mind after watching hustings, they seem more likely to be switching to Hunt than to Boris Johnson - but yesterday he made a rare error when he told the Daily Telegraph that he would support a free vote on repealing the ban on foxhunting and that he personally would vote to bring it back. Hunt included the caveat that this would only happen when there was a probable majority for repealing the ban in the Commons, but he implied that this might happen if the Conservatives were to win a majority. “As soon as there was a majority of parliament that would be likely to repeal the foxhunting ban, then I would support a vote in parliament,” he said.
Traditional Tories were horrified when Labour passed a foxhunting ban, and amongst party members repeal is almost certainly a popular cause. But amongst the public at large the prospect of the law being changed to legalise a sport that involves dogs tearing foxes to pieces is toxic. During the 2017 general election campaign the Conservatives were surprised when what they thought was a tame restatement of their 2015 election position (allowing a free vote on repeal) became a major issue of social media, mobilising many voters to support anti-Tory candidates. Hunt is pitching himself as the leadership candidate most able to win an election for the party by appealing to floating voters, and so having this around his neck was a problem. One Tory MP backing Hunt described it as “political suicide”.
And so this morning Hunt clarified his position. Without entirely retracting what he told the Telegraph, he said the law on foxhunting would not change because he could not envisage there ever being a majority in favour in the Commons. Asked about what he said to the Telegraph, he told the Today programme:
Well, I think this is just because I was giving a straight answer to a straight question. But the law is not going to change on fox hunting. There isn’t a majority in the House of Commons, and I don’t see there ever being one. I was just restating the position in our manifesto from 2017 that there should be a free vote if it ever looked like that majority would change. But it would not be my priority as prime minister.
Hunt’s analysis is probably correct. Almost all the MPs in the Commons who support foxhunting are Conservatives, but there are plenty of Tories who would vote against repeal of the ban and the working assumption amongst campaigners is that there would have to be a very large Conservative majority in the Commons for the restoration of foxhunting to have any chance of passing.
The Today interview was awkward for Hunt. He repeatedly dodged a question about whether he viewed foxhunting as cruel, and instead he tried to switch the conversation to other things he might do for rural communities, like extend broadband. But he probably succeeded in defusing the hunting row.
Here is the agenda for the day.
After 10.30am: Mel Stride, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement in the Commons on next week’s business.
Afternoon: Theresa May gives a speech in Scotland on the importance of strengthening the union.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web, although I will be focusing mostly on the Tory leadership contest and Theresa May’s speech. I plan to publish a summary at lunchtime and then another when I finish.
You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
Updated
ANDREW
The High Court Judgement on the prosecution of Mr. Johnson was supposed to have been handed down yesterday morning.
Do you have any information on this?