Gove defends landlords after criticism of proposals to water down renters’ bill – UK politics live | Politics

• Keir Starmer has attacked extremism in the Conservative party, telling Rishi Sunak at PMQS that he had allowed the Conservative party to become “the political wing of the flat earth society”. Starmer also said that Liz Truss, the former PM, should not be allowed to stand as a Tory candidate again after she spent last week at a conference in the US with far-right Republicans denouncing the “deep state”. (See 1.39pm.)

• Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has defended his decision to listen to the concerns of Tory MPs who want to water down the bill banning no-fault evictions. (See 5.06pm.)

• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has rejected a suggestion from James Cleverly, the home secretary, that it should halt its regular demonstrations about the war in Gaza. (See 1.50pm.) Cleverly has also suggested that protest laws could be tightened, requirig groups to increase the amount of notice they give to police before large demonstrations.

Labour said Keir Starmer has “full confidence” in his deputy, Angela Rayner, following questions over an ex-council house sale she made after benefiting from former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme, PA Media reports. PA says:

The Labour leader’s spokesperson batted away questions about the transaction during a briefing with reporters after PMQs.

Asked whether Starmer had full confidence in Rayner, the spokesman replied: “Correct. We have full confidence in all of the answers that she has given on this.”

Rayner, who is also the shadow housing secretary, has rejected claims in a book by Lord Ashcroft, a former Conservative party deputy chairman, due to be published in March.

She has called the reports a “constant stream of smears” and denied she was liable for capital gains tax on the property sale, which was finalised before she was elected in 2015.

Lord Ashcroft’s book alleges that the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne bought her former council house, in Stockport, Greater Manchester, with a 25% discount in 2007 under right-to-buy, a scheme introduced by former Tory PM Mrs Thatcher in 1980.

Rayner, who has committed to reforming the scheme, which she says has “helped fuel the housing crisis” by depleting publicly-owned housing stock, is said to have made a £48,500 profit when selling the house eight years later.

Those selling a right-to-buy home must wait five years before they can sell, or the seller has to pay back some or all of the discount they received.

Tory MP Jacob Young has accused Ms Rayner of staggering “hypocrisy” for wanting to reform Thatcher’s flagship policy after “personally benefiting from the right-to-buy discount”.

Rayner has said her proposed reforms, which she said will “review the unfair additional market discounts of up to 60% the Tories introduced in 2012”, are the “right thing to do”.

There are also questions about whether the property she sold was her main residence.

Government guidance says that a tenant can apply to buy their council home through the right-to-buy scheme if it is their “only or main home”.

According to an article by the Mail On Sunday (MoS), which is serialising Lord Ashcroft’s book, documents indicate that Rayner was registered on the electoral roll at her former council house for five years after she married Mark Rayner in 2010.

Her husband was listed at another address about a mile away, which had also been bought under the right-to-buy scheme.

In the same year as her wedding, Rayner is said to have re-registered the births of her two youngest children, giving her address as where her husband resided.

Under electoral rules, voters are expected to register at their permanent home address. There are penalties for providing false information when registering to vote.

Rayner tweeted on Monday: “I bought my council house back in 2007.

“I owned my own home, lived there, paid the bills there and was registered to vote there, prior to selling the house in 2015. All before I was an MP…

“I’ve never been a ‘landlady’, owned a property portfolio or been a non-dom.

“As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.

“My husband already owned his own home independently and I had an older child from a previous relationship.”

She added: “For all the unhealthy interest taken in my family by Lord Ashcroft and his friends, there is no suggestion any rules have been broken.

“Just a constant stream of smears from the usual suspects.”

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has defended his decision to listen to the concerns of Tory MPs who want to water down the bill banning no-fault evictions.

In a response to the BBC report saying the government has drafted amendments to address their concerns, he dismissed complaints that he was appeasing “landlord backbenchers”. (See 9.47am and 10.46am.)

Gove told the Sun he knew landlords who were “thoughtful and serious people”. He went on:

The overwhelming majority of landlords do a great job. They they want to have a relationship with their tenant that goes beyond just cash.

They wants to make sure that they’re providing a service that the tenant appreciates.

So, of course I listen to landlords.

We just want to make sure that this bill works for them as well because you need a healthy private rented sector.

A reader asks:

Any word on predictions for the Rochdale byelection tomorrow? I’ve seen Reform touring the constituency (I live here) in an open top bus, while Galloway has also stepped up his campaigning. We’re drowning in mailshots from the pair of them.

If you live in Rochdale you probably know better than I do, but my assumption (and the assumption of colleagues at Westminster) is that George Galloway will win quite easily. I don’t have any great insight into the contest, because I have not covered the campaign. But I have done a lot of byelection reporting in the past and I know that it helps a lot if you can turn a byelection into a referendum on a particular issue; if you are angry about X, vote Y. Galloway has done that; he has a message. He also seems to have an organisation campaigning on his behalf (an active bunch of supporters). He has got a track record of having won a byelection like this before. And, like him or loath him, he is a brilliant campaigner.

Simon Danczuk is standing for Reform UK, but if he has a message, I haven’t picked it up. Reform UK has never come close to winning a byelection, and I have not seen any evidence to suggest that in Rochdale their campaigning machine has suddenly got a lot better. As the incumbent party candidate, even without Keir Starmer’s endorsement, Azhar Ali ought to be in with a chance. But all the reporting I’ve read suggests his campaign has collapsed, and low turn-out byelections depend a lot on who can motivate their supporters. On this measure, Galloway seems miles ahead.

The bookies think the same. This is what Coral bookmakers sent me earlier today.

Leading bookmaker Coral makes the Workers Party (George Galloway) odds-on at 1-2 to win the Rochdale by-election, which takes place tomorrow.

Labour, who currently hold the seat, are second best in the betting at 6-4, while the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK are 33-1.

John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, promised to extend the maximum tenure of the head of the armed forces and other military chiefs from three years to four on Wednesday but he avoided making any commitments on defence spending in the run up to the election.

The Labour politician said in a speech he wanted to start “appointing service chiefs for four years, reviewed for performance after two” if his party won the election, although aides declined to clarify whether that would apply to current chief of defence staff Adm Sir Tony Radakin.

Radakin became head of the military in November 2021, meaning a normal three year term would end around the time when prime minister Rishi Sunak is expected to call a general election, although it is possible he would remain in post longer to allow a new government to appoint his successor.

Healey was also pressed to see if Labour would commit to increasing defence spending in the light of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and greater uncertainty in the Middle East, but gave no firm commitment to go beyond the existing Nato target of exceeding 2% of GDP.

“Firm commitments on funding can’t simply be made in opposition. That’s the job for government,” Healey said. A Conservative pledge to lift defence spending to 2.5% when circumstances allow was first made by Boris Johnson in June 2022 “when interest rates were 1.25%” Healey said. Rates are now “5.25%, four times higher” and so the interest paid out by the Treasury was higher, impacting affordability, he added.

Legislation that gives conditional amnesties to soldiers and paramilitaries for Troubles-era crimes in Northern Ireland breaches human rights legislation, a high court in Belfast has ruled. Rory Carroll has the story here.

Labour announces plan for ‘Raneem’s law’ to get police to offer more help to victims of domestic abuse

Alexandra Topping

Police forces will be forced to provide more protection to victims of domestic abuse under a new Labour government, the party has said.

‘Raneem’s law’, named after Raneem Oudeh, killed by her ex-partner alongside her mother Khaola in 2018, will force police to respond to reports of domestic violence more quickly and consider immediate use of orders to protect women.

In a move widely welcomed by campaigners in the violence against women and girls sector, the new law would also see a dedicated police officer installed in every force to have oversight over all civil orders designed to protect women and girls against violence.

The law will put domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms to make sure victims are responded to urgently, a policy already announced by the party following a successful pilot in Northumbria.

It also seeks to address technology and communication failings which leave women at risk. Forces will also have to provide data on police applications for civil orders to the NPCC and Home Office, while Labour said it would also push forward the national roll-out of an electronic link between the family court and police forces so civil orders and injunctions are widely shared.

Campaigners have long argued that orders designed to protect women from abuse – such domestic violence protection notices (DVPN) and domestic violence protection orders (DVPO) – are not used widely enough or are ineffective because breaches are not followed up.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the new law would mark a “step-change” in tackling violence against women and girls, which the party has pledged to halve within a decade. She said:

Missed opportunities cost lives and far too many have already been lost. We cannot stand by while more women, like Raneem and Khaola, are so badly failed by the system charged with keeping them safe.

Raneem Oudeh and her mother, Khaola Saleem, 49, were stabbed to death by Oudeh’s estranged husband, Janbaz Tarin, in August 2018, after he had subjected her to stalking, domestic violence and coercive control for more than a year.

In 2022 an inquest found that failings by West Midlands police “materially contributed” to the deaths of the 22-year-old woman and her mother. It heard that Oudeh had made at least seven calls to the emergency services in the run-up to her death. On the night she and her mother were killed, they called 999 four times, but despite the fact that Raneem had a non-molestation order against her former partner, no officers were sent to her home.

Humza Yousaf welcomes analysis saying Scottish government policies will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty

Libby Brooks

Humza Yousaf has published an analysis which estimates 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty in 2024-25 as a result of Scottish government policies.

The first minister insisted that tackling poverty remains the “driving mission” of his government, despite ferocious criticism by homelessness and child poverty groups of yesterday’s Holyrood budget, which passed by MSPs yesterday.

The SNP leader, who has faced growing criticism from council and opposition leaders over his surprise decision to freeze council tax rates after the party’s crushing defeat by Labour in October’s Rutherglen byelection, said he “understood (charities’) frustrations” but hoped that they appreciated the constraints on his budget.

He suggested charities should also apply pressure to the incoming UK government. He said:

We will continue to take the actions as necessary within the powers that we have, but I would say to those charities … to equally exert pressure on the current and the incoming UK government to make the changes necessary to lift children out of poverty.

He suggested that a new Labour government could “at the drop of a hat” decide to scrap the two child limit and introduce an essentials guarantee to reform universal credit provision.

Responding to the analysis, John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland, said the projection made clear that the government’s existing policy package is insufficient to reach its own legally binding target of less than one in ten children living in poverty by 2030. He said:

That’s why it was so disappointing that the budget passed yesterday did nothing to build on current progress. There is far more the first minister can be doing with devolved powers – starting with delivering the increase to a £30 Scottish child payment that he himself said he wanted to see during his leadership campaign.

More than half of Conservative party members believe Islam is a threat to the British way of life, according to a poll that sheds light on the hostility with which large parts of the party view the country’s second biggest religion. Kiran Stacey has the story.

Thousands of people have descended on the Senedd (Welsh parliament) in protest at a proposed overhaul of farming subsidies they say threaten their industry, PA reports. PA says:

Protesters, who had travelled from across the country to attend the event, cheered, waved Welsh flags and held placards in Welsh and English reading: “No Farmers, No Food”.

They are objecting to proposals by the Welsh Labour government to require more land to be set aside for environmental schemes.

A series of protests have already taken place across Wales but the event in Cardiff Bay on Wednesday was the largest by far, attended by thousands of farmers.

South Wales police had previously asked those attending not to bring tractors, meaning a line of the vehicles were parked along a road leading to Cardiff Bay.

The event saw speeches from Senedd politicians from the Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, as well as from former international rugby union referee Nigel Owens.

He told the cheering crowds: “In 2015, I was very privileged to referee the World Cup final in Twickenham – the proudest moment of my career. But today I’m even prouder to come and speak in front of good, decent people. An honour to be here to speak and to support you today as a fellow farmer.”