Government loses all seven Lords votes on Rwanda bill – as it happened

Yesterday I covered quite a lot of comment on the Rachel Reeves’ Mais lecture based on a three-page press release sent out by Labour with advance extracts. The full speech runs to 8,000 words and it is certainly worth a read. Here is some commentary published after the full text was made public.

• Paul Mason, the former economics journalist who is now an active Labour supporter, says in a blog for the Spectator that Reeves is proposing an approach that should make it easier for the government to justify capital investment. He explains:

Reeves effectively offered markets a trade-off. She set out the same broad fiscal rule as the government: debt falling at the end of five years and a deficit moving towards primary balance. She will make it law that any fiscal decision by government will be subject to an independent forecast of its effects by the OBR. But, she said: “I will also ask the OBR to report on the long-term impact of capital spending decisions. And as Chancellor I will report on wider measures of public sector assets and liabilities at fiscal events, showing how the health of the public balance sheet is bolstered by good investment decisions.”

Why is this so big? Because the OBR does not currently model the ‘long-term impact of capital spending decisions’. It believes that £1 billion of new capital investment produces £1 billion of growth in the first year, tapering to nothing by year five. Furthermore, since 2019 it has repeatedly expressed scepticism that a sustained programme of public investment can produce a permanent uplift in the UK’s output potential.

Since that is precisely what Reeves plans to do, she is telling the OBR to adopt a new, or at least more analytically diverse, approach to fiscal modelling. And she is signalling that the Treasury will start weighing the assets created by borrowing, alongside the liabilities.

As I say, this is not just a message to the OBR, the Treasury and the Bank. It is a message to investors: if Labour can demonstrate, through professional analysis by these institutions, that investment can drive growth, it can win the argument with fund managers for investment here and meet its own fiscal rules more easily.

• George Eaton at the New Statesman says the Reeves speech contained Reeves’ “most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments”. He says:

In her 8,000-word Mais Lecture, delivered last night at City University, the shadow chancellor offered her most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments. Though she praised New Labour’s record on public service investment and poverty reduction, Reeves warned that the project failed to recognise that “globalisation and new technologies could widen as well as diminish inequality, disempower people as much as liberate them, displace as well as create good work”.

She added that the labour market “remained characterised by too much insecurity” and that “key weaknesses on productivity and regional inequality” persisted. This is not merely an abstract critique – it leads Reeves and Keir Starmer to embrace radically different economic prescriptions.

This is from Gavin Kelly, chair of the Resolution Foundation.

Mais lecture is the most intellectually wide-ranging speech Rachel Reeves has given. Worth reading for takes on Lawson, austerity, New Labour, link between dynamism & worker-security, and how geo-politics changes our national growth story (& more besides)

And this is from the broadcaster and writer Steve Richards.

A substantial and in some respects radical Mais Lecture from Rachel Reeves..a shame it was briefed in advance as channelling Margaret Thatcher when it was partly a repudiation of Thatcher/ Lawson..such shallow game playing wont fool Daily Telegraph readers while ensuring others read the speech through a misleading prism..The speech is worth reading as a thoughtful guide to what might happen next rather than what happened in the 1980s

After PMQs, at about 12.30pm, a Treasury minister will be in the Commons to answer an urgent question tabled by Labour about the decision announced by HM Revenue and Customs yesterday to close its tax self-assessment helpline for six months a year.

The decision caused an outcry. But the minister responding to the UQ should have an easy time because this morning HMRC has announced that it has changed its mind.

In a letter to the Commons Treasury committee, Jim Harra, the HMRC chief executive, said:

Following feedback from concerned stakeholders, the changes to the self-assessment, VAT and PAYE helplines that were announced will be halted while HMRC engages with stakeholders about how to ensure all taxpayers’ needs are met as HMRC shifts more people to online self-service in the longer term.

Our helpline and webchat advisers will always be there for those taxpayers who need support because they are vulnerable, digitally excluded or have complex affairs.

Over the weekend there were various reports suggesting that Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, was being lined up by some Tories as a possible replacement for Rishi Sunak. Mordaunt did not comment publicly, but her allies said the stories were based on a hostile briefing from her rivals, and, if there ever was a Mordaunt bandwagon, it does not seem to be going anywhere.

Today it is Tom Tugendhat’s turn to be identified as a possible alternative leader. In a Telegraph story, Robert Mendick reports:

The Telegraph has been told that at one meeting held in the past few days, Ms Mordaunt remained the preferred candidate for the party to rally around but Mr Tugendhat ‘s name has also been floated.

Mr Tugendhat, who sits in the cabinet as security minister, did better than expected in the Tory leadership race following Boris Johnson’s resignation in 2022, running an energetic campaign before being knocked out in the third round.

One Tory said: “Colleagues in recent days have openly discussed the merits and demerits of removing the prime minister and if there was a unity candidate who that might be. At a meeting of about a dozen Tory MPs, they spoke openly about how to remove Rishi. Penny remains the most likely unity candidate but Tom Tugendhat is also openly being talked about.”

In response, the Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis told GB News this morning that colleague who thought replacing the leader was a good idea were “idiots”. He said:

The Conservative party, if it changes leader for the fourth time within two years, the British public will go, ‘What on earth is going on with you? You are clowns,’ and we will be booted out of office, not just politely, to an extent that we will have less than 100 MPs …

I like Tom [Tugendhat], I like all my colleagues, apart from the idiots who say some of the things like that [that there should be a leadership contest].

Ed Davey has launched the Liberal Democrats’ local election campaign with photocall which saw him upturning a large hourglass to reveal the words “Time’s running out Rishi!”. Davey claimed even lifelong Tory supporters were fed up with Sunak’s party. He said:

When I speak to lifelong Conservative voters, they tell me that the party no longer speaks for them. Time and time again, they are being failed by this appalling Conservative government.

This government has plunged our NHS into crisis. Left vulnerable people waiting hours for an ambulance, weeks to see a GP or a dentist, and months to start treatment for cancer.

They’ve made the cost-of-living crisis so much worse.

Sending mortgage rates soaring.

Hitting families with unfair tax rises.

And leaving out pensioners altogether in their Budget this month.

They’ve trashed our precious natural environment, letting water companies get away scot-free, as they dump millions of tonnes of raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches.

Rishi Sunak’s government is running out of road because people know it is time for change.

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Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, has defended the corporation’s decision to remove a line in a report describing Reform UK as “far-right”.

Speaking at the Commons culture committee this morning, Davie said: “I don’t think far-right is the right label, full stop.”

But he insisted that the BBC had not caved in to pressure from Reform UK. He said the report published at the weekend using that description did attract “a few complaints”, but he said the BBC decided for itself whether the wording was fair, and decided to remove it.

Davie was responding to a question from Labour’s Rupa Huq, who asked about a report yesterday saying that the BBC had apologised to Reform UK for using the term.

Davie said:

My personal view is you’ve got to be a bit careful with far-left, far-right, with parties that carry quite a lot of support.

When Huq said some of the statements from Reform UK candidates were “quite alarming”, and asked Davie where he would place them on the spectrum, Davie replied:

With respect, if we judged our labels by individual quotes from members, I think that would be an interesting strategy in itself.

They are clearly a party on the right of politics. I just think, if you get into far-left or far-right descriptors, and you behave fairly in this, you end up in the wrong territory.

Asked later how he would describe Reform UK, represented by Lee Anderson in the Commons, and the Workers Party of Britain, represented by George Galloway, Davie said he would just say they were respectively they were on the right and the left of politics.

Yesterday Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, said it was defamatory to call his party far-right and he suggested he might take legal action to stop other news organisations using the labels. But in fact, under English defamation law, political parties cannot sue for libel.

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Businesses are implementing equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives without an evidence base, a new report says. As PA Media reports, the independent Inclusion at Work Panel, appointed by business secretary Kemi Badenoch, spoke to more than 100 people in 55 organisations and reviewed the latest research into how employers make decisions about EDI policies and practices in the UK. PA says:

In a report published today, the panel said many employers want “do to the right thing”, but are introducing measures without the support of evidence.

It said that some of those they spoke to cited examples of what “good” practices might look like, but the collection of robust data was “rare” and measurable impact was “scarce”.

“The evidence suggests that many organisations’ D&I approaches are driven by pre-existing notions, assumptions, and pressures rather than empirical evidence,” the report noted.

It highlighted cases where D&I initiatives were found to be counterproductive or unlawful, such as a Ministry of Defence review finding that pressure on the Royal Air Force (RAF) to meet targets for women and ethnic minorities led to unlawful positive discrimination against white men.

It also found that employers face barriers such as a lack of accessible data on EDI measures as well as broad or subjective definitions of terms like “inclusion”.

In a statement on the report, Badenoch said:

Discussions around diversity and inclusion at work are often bogged down by performative gestures. This government wants to ensure employers are doing EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] in a way that doesn’t undermine meritocracy and aligns with our equality laws.

This report by the Inclusion at Work Panel is a powerful new tool for organisations. It lays out the evidence for good and bad EDI practice and can empower employers to make fairer, more effective EDI decisions that represent proper value for money.

I sincerely hope that businesses will take time to read this report so that it becomes an important step in helping them achieve more inclusive and productive workplaces.

The Telegraph has splashed on the story.

The government has brought adult social care in England “to its knees” with years of uneven funding and a “woefully insufficient plan” to fill thousands of staff vacancies, MPs have said in a damning report on a system that provides long-term care for 835,000 people. Robert Booth and Emily Dugan have the story here.

And here is the report from the public accounts committee.

Boris Johnson did not seek permission from the post-ministerial jobs watchdog before taking a role as a consultant to a hedge fund, on whose behalf he met the Venezuelan president, Henry Dyer reports.

The Savanta polling in the Telegraph has Labour on 44% and the Conservative party on 26%. But it also has Reform UK on 11%, ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

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Good morning. Hands up who’s heard of John Robert Clynes? He was leader of the Labour party at the time of the 1922 general election and, according to a new history of Labour in opposition, he is the only leader of the party ever to be defeated in a leadership challenge. That is extraordinary when you consider that, at least since the 1970s, Conservative leaders normally haven’t resigned at a time of their own choosing and, even if they have not all been forced out after a leadership contest, at least the last three quit because they knew defeat after a leadership challenge was otherwise inevitable.

(Why the difference? Short answer, Labour doesn’t have a 1922 Committee, and its leadership rules are different.)

All of this helps to explain why today is a tricky day for Rishi Sunak; as Conservative party leader, you are permanently on probation, and today he has a tricky “performance appraisal” with his employer – the aforementioned 1922 Committee. He has also got PMQs, another form of performance review.

Last week Lee Anderson defected, and No 10 did not handle the Frank Hester controversy well, leading to leadership challenge chatter reaching perhaps the 7 out of 10 point on the crisis index. But it is not all bad news; today inflation has hit a two and a half year low.

Ahead of his meeting with the 1922 Committee, Sunak has published an article in the Daily Mail restating his commitment to abolish employees’ national insurance. He says:

We are well and truly on the path to sustainably lower taxes.

We started that journey in the autumn with a 2p cut to national insurance worth £450 for the average worker on £35,400 a year. And the Chancellor cut taxes again in this month’s budget which now means that 27 million employees will get an average tax cut of around £900 a year.

We did this because I believe in the fundamental dignity of work. When people work hard, they should be rewarded, not taxed more. It’s not right that income from work is taxed twice, while all other income is only taxed once. This is why I have cut national insurance, the second tax on work, by a third in the last six months. And it is why my long-term plan, ultimately, is to cut it to zero.

But there is bad news for Sunak in the Daily Telegraph. It has published polling from Savanta suggesting more than a third of Conservative voters (37%) want someone else to lead the party into the next election. Only 45% say Sunak should stay in post until polling day.

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The book about Labour in opposition is Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922 by Mark Garnett, Gavin Hyman, and Richard Johnson. It’s out next month and, on the basis of what I’ve read so far, it’s a very good read if you’re interested in Labour history.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.40am: Ed Davey launches the Lib Dems’ local election campaign.

10am: Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

Afternoon: Vaughan Gething is due to be nominated in the Senedd at Wales’s next first minister.

Afternoon: Peers vote on amendments to the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill that would reintroduce safeguards originally passsed by the House of Lords, but removed from the bill by MPs on Monday.

5pm: Sunak addresses Conservative MPs at the 1922 Committee.

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