Sunak refuses to deny he will announce HS2 decision tomorrow but says he is considering matter ‘thoughtfully’ – UK politics live | Politics

Duncan Smith accuses Treasury of undermining universal credit system

Phillip Inman

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has criticised the Treasury for blocking welfare reforms he designed when he was work and pensions minister in the coalition government.

Duncan Smith said the Treasury was denying the DWP the funds needed to transfer households that claim tax credits to the more generously funded universal credit, arguing that this move would help thousands of people back into work at a time when job vacancies remained high.

Speaking at a fringe event with Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, Duncan Smith said:

There are two things I blame the Treasury for.

Not all the tax credit group are in universal credit (UC). What is the point of having an all encompassing benefit system when you still leave a group of people outside. And that is only down to Treasury money. They should be moved across immediately into UC, because UC gives you an adviser the whole time. Tax credits: you never see anybody at all.

The second group that was supposed to be in UC is on employment support allowance (ESA). Again, nobody sees you unless you are on UC. So the point of UC is being (undermined).

Duncan Smith said there should also be support for people who are signed off on sickness benefits, who need access to mental health treatment or an occupational therapist to overcome problems that prevent them going back into the labour market. He said:

The Treasury has got to understand that if you invest in this and get people back to work, the savings are way more than the initial costs.

Stride said he has £3.5bn of extra funds from the Treasury and £2bn to fund the introduction of greater support for jobseekers.

Stride added:

If you cannot work and you are sick and you are disabled, we are here to support you. And that is why we are compassionate Conservatives. But at the end of the day, if you are not prepared to engage. If you are not prepared to put in that kind of effort (to find a job) then sanctions are an acceptable approach, subject to the usual appeals processes.

Susan Hall, the Tory candidate for London mayor, has refused to apologise for saying that Jewish people in particular were not safe with Sadiq Khan (who is a Muslim) as mayor. (See 10.57am.) In an interview with GB News, she defended what she said and claimed that figures for attacks on Jewish people in London justified it.

Asked what she meant when she said some in the Jewish community were frightened because of the divisive attitude of Khan, she replied:

Going back to policing, the way the policing is in London, so many Jewish people do not feel safe. That’s wrong, and I will never apologise for defending the Jewish community.

I’ve got so many friends that are literally talking of leaving the country because they don’t feel safe. That is unacceptable in London …

She also claimed that attacks on Jewish people in London have “doubled, literally doubled” since Khan became mayor. There had been 1,000 this year, she said.

Data from the Community Safety Trust, which records information about antisemitic attacks incidents, suggests this is wrong. According to the CST’s report on antisemitic incidents in 2022, the number of antisemitic incidents in Greater London last year was 920, down 27% on the number for the previous year (1,259).

The CST’s report for 2017 (the first full year Khan was mayor) says that 773 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater London that year.

And the CST report for the first six months of 2023 says there were 447 antisemitic incidents in London during the first half of the year, down 4% for the total over the same period last year.

Rishi Sunak has refused to say whether or not he will include an announcement about HS2 in his conference speech tomorrow. No 10 sources say he will (see 8.32am). In an interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason, he would not confirm that – but would not deny it either. He just said:

I know there’s a lot of speculation on this. But what I can say is I’m going to approach this the same way I approach everything: thoughtfully, carefully, across the detail and making what I believe is the right decision in the long term for our country.

Hunt claims no ‘formal decision’ has yet been taken about future of HS2

Ben Quinn

No “formal decision” has yet been taken on HS2, according to the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, who said that it was “unacceptable” that it cost so much to build high-speed rail in Britain in comparison with other countries.

Hunt was asked at a fringe event at the Conservative conference about concerns voiced by the Tory mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, and others that the delay in providing clarity on whether the project would be partially axed was creating uncertainty.

After paying tribute to Street, Hunt added:

But he is speculating on what he thinks a decision might be rather than talking about what the actual decision is. No formal decision has been made.

Hunt went on to say:

If we are going to be solving the big problems the country faces we have to have an answer as to why it costs ten time more to build high speed rule in this country than in France. That is unacceptable.

In a different environment where you have lots of money sloshing around maybe you can absorb that.

But went on to tell the event, organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, that the practical impact was that spending on other elements of rail infrastructure suffered.

The Conservative party has now released more details of what Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said in his speech this morning about new guidance intended to stop trans women being allowed on female-only wards in English hospitals. The party says it is “responding to concerns raised by patients and staff about biological men being allowed onto women’s hospital wards”.

In a news release it says:

Today, the health secretary announced a consultation will be launched this year to change the NHS Constitution for England to address growing concerns raised by both patients and staff about biological men being allowed onto women’s hospital wards.

The move will look to ensure that female- or male-only wards, are protected and that requests to have intimate care provided by someone of the same sex are respected.

The proposals will seek to enshrine rights and responsibilities in the key documents to better protect the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients, making clear that women’s concerns about where they receive care, and from who, must be respected.

In a further move to address patient concerns, the health secretary today confirmed sex-specific language has now been fully restored to online NHS advice pages about cervical and ovarian cancer and the menopause.

The Telegraph reported this initiative this morning as meaning trans women will definitely be banned from female-only wards. But Barclay was not as explicit as that in his speech, and he has just announced a consultation.

Jacob Rees-Mogg denounced as ‘morally bankrupt’ by NFU after backing hormone-injected beef imports

Helena Horton

Mark Spencer, the farming minister, has denounced Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg as an attention seeker whose views on imported beef are wrong.

Yesterday Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said he wanted to see hormone-injected beef imported from Australia.

Speaking at a Countryside Alliance event today, Spencer said:

So it helps Jacob’s profile doesn’t it. Jacob is the master of grabbing the headlines. But it doesn’t really add much to the debate and I think, it’s probably my job as a minister to explain to Jacob why that is wrong.

And actually backing UK farmers is better for the planet. It’s better for our economy. It’s actually better for our consumers as well, because we’re producing the top quality products here and we’re not going to allow the imports of hormone-fed beef from anywhere in the world.

Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, denounced the comments yesterday, saying Rees-Mogg was “morally bankrupt” because his policies would destroy British farming.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said that comments from her in a speech last week criticising multiculturalism were “mischaracterised”.

Many Tories, including Rishi Sunak, have strongly defended multiculturalism since Braverman delivered her speech last week, and implicitly rejected her claim that it has failed.

But on a visit this morning Braverman said she was not claiming it had gone wrong everywhere. She was making a point about the need for integration, and explaining that in some places it was not happening, she said.

She said:

It’s my job, first and foremost, to be honest and speak for the majority of the British people.

And my comments have been somewhat mischaracterised.

We have so much to be proud of. We have a great multi-ethnic society and in many parts of our country integration has worked.

But there are also many towns and cities around the United Kingdom where it hasn’t and communities are living parallel lives.

They are coming from abroad, they are not learning the language. They’re not embracing British values, and they’re not taking part in British life. And that needs to be identified, we must be fearless in calling that out and that’s my job.

In her speech last week, which was interpreted in part as a move to boost her standing in a possible future leadership contest, Braverman did not include any of these qualifications, and instead described multiculturalism as “misguided” and “failed”. She said:

Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.

I’m not the first to point this out. In 2010 Angela Merkel gave a speech in which she acknowledged that multi-culturalism “had utterly failed”.

The then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and British prime minister, David Cameron, echoed similar sentiments shortly thereafter.

Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.

And in extreme cases they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society.

This is not the first time Braverman has made far-reaching comments on race issues which have subsequently had to be qualified. After Braverman wrote an article for the Mail on Sunday claiming that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost all British-Pakistani”, the paper was ordered by the press regulator, Ipso, to publish a correction saying that was not true.

Ben Quinn

Miriam Cates, the backbench MP who has become a favourite of her party’s social conservative wing, has been serving up what many of the grassroots seem to want to hear. Speaking at a fringe event called “Restoring Prosperity, Restoring Conservatism” organised by the Legatum Institute, she said:

I’ve mentioned the F word, family, and now to ensure I get coverage in the Guardian I’m going to mention the M word, marriage.

Cates also hit out at some favourite targets, earning laughs when she said that the Church of England should “stop interfering in politics” and adding:

Perhaps we could ask the Church of England to return to their day job and marry people for free.

The MP, who has amassed a tight-knit group of supporters and found a new spotlight when she delivered a keynote address at the National Conservatism conference, said that the family should be restored “as a building block of conservatism” if the party wanted to cut taxes and shrink the size of the state and create a new generation of young people with “skills and virtues to be economically productive”.