Defence spending in UK to be put ‘on war footing’, Rishi Sunak says – as it happened

Rishi Sunak is going to announce that the government will raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, Deborah Haynes from Sky News reports.

Many Tory MPs have been pushing for higher defence spending and a survey of Conservative party members for the ConservativeHome website earlier this month found that three quarters of them said higher defence spending should take precedence over tax cuts. In the budget and the autumn statement last year, Jeremy Hunt, the chanellor, did the opposite, prioritising tax cuts.

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But a spending commitment linked to a target date six years in the future, from a prime minister almost certain to lose an election, may not carry great sway.

After the Conservatives recently sought to open up a dividing line with Labour over defence spending, Keir Starmer said he was committing to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP “as soon as resources allow”.

Rishi Sunak has refused to rule out a calling a general election in July.

Asked about the timing of the election by reporters on his flight to Poland, Sunak said:

All I’m going to say is the same thing I say every time. As I said, I think it was in the first week of January, my working assumption is an election in the second half of the year.

Asked if he would commit to a deportation flight to Rwanda taking off before general election, Sunak said:

As I said on flights yesterday, 10-12 weeks, that’s what we’re working towards for all the reasons that I outlined yesterday.

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John Glen, the Cabinet Office minister, told MPs that he was working “as quickly as possible” to get a body set up able to pay compensation to the victims of the infected blood scandal.

Speaking in response to a Commons urgent question tabled by Labour’s Diana Johnson, he confirmed that the government has tabled an amendment to the victims and prisoners bill to set up an infected blood compensation authority. He said:

I have also put into legislation, with the consent of both houses, the need to set up that arms-length body and make it operational as soon as possible.

My concern is to get that arms-length body up and running as quickly as possible so there’s a legal obligation to do so when royal assent is gained.

The government says it will wait until the infected blood inquiry produces its final report before deciding full details of its compensation scheme. But Johnson said that government should start paying compensation before the final report is out, as Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry chair, recommended last year. She said:

We know that over 3,000 people have already died in the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, another 680 have died since the public inquiry started in 2018 and with two people dying on average every week 100 people have died since Sir Brian made his final recommendations on paying compensation in April 2023.

He said wrongs have been done on an individual, collective and systemic level. He also said in all conscience he could not wait until his final report was published to tell the government to start to pay compensation … The time to act is now.

A reader asks:

While Labour has said it would abandon the Rwanda policy [see 11.17am], is it still going to be stuck with the costs of the treaty? If and when Labour comes to power, will they still have to make payments to Rwanda?

Labour say, on the basis of what was revealed in the recent NAO report into the funding of the Rwanda scheme, it would not be liable for future costs. But it would not be able to recover money already spent.

The chair of the Fabian Society, a Labour thinktank, has apologised after a report found there was a “culture of misogyny and marginalisation” in the Young Fabians, its youth wing, LabourList reports.

Sara Hyde, the Fabian Society’s chair, told LabourList that the thinktank was “deeply sorry that this Young Fabian culture developed”. She said reforms were being implemented.

For the first few months of this year Labour politicians spent a lot of time telling anyone who would listen that it was an open secret at Westminster that Rishi Sunak would call the general election in May. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, even bet money on this live on TV. It was largely nonsense (many political journalists booked holiday for April, assuming the election would be in the autumn), but the ruse allowed Labour to claim that Rishi Sunak had “bottled it” when the May election never materialised.

Now Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, is trying the same trick again. During health questions today

Westminster is awash with rumours that the prime minister is going to call a July general election, presumably to avoid giving his Rwanda gimmick the time to fail.

So I have a very simple question for the minister: will he repeat the pledge the prime minister made last year and promise that NHS waiting lists will be lower at the time of the general election than when the prime minister came to office?

According to the betting company Betfair, some people have been betting on a July election over the past 24 hours. The odds on July have gone from 16/1 to 3/1, implying there is a 25% chance of a July election. But November remains the overwhelming favourite, with the odds of an election that month at 5/4.

Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s lead psephologist, told Times Radio this morning that he thinks the election will be in the autumn. (See 10.41am.)

Replying to Streeting, the health minister Andrew Stephenson said:

The prime minister has been very clear that getting waiting lists down is one of his top priorities, but he has also been clear that performance has been disappointing.

Stephenson said NHS strikes were partly to blame, and he said Labour should condemn them.

Rishi Sunak staged a St George’s day fightback (see 11.48am) on his flight to Poland, presenting reporters travelling with him with cupcakes to celebrate.

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The FDA, the union which represents senior civil servants, is threatening the Home Office with legal action over new guidance for civil servants which says that, if a minister decides to ignore an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) saying a deportation flight to Rwanda must not go ahead, officials have to do what the minister says and facilitate the flight – even though ignoring an ECHR injunction is in breach of international law.

Speaking to reporters on his flight to Poland, Rishi Sunak made it clear that he did not agree with the FDA. Officials must obey ministers if they’re ordered to ignore an ECHR injunction, he said.

I’m clearly and firmly of the view that civil servants know that what they’re there to do is support the government, the elected government of the day, and that’s what I’m confident they will do in this instance.

That’s why we specifically changed the civil service code, which is one of the steps that we made a little while ago, to make it crystal clear that when it comes to rule 39 decisions [ECHR injunctions], as you know, the bill gives ministers the discretion to decide what to do about those.

I wouldn’t have put that power in there if I wasn’t prepared to use it, but our changes to the code make it crystal clear that civil servants will be expected to follow ministerial guidance on that point when we get there or if we get there.

In 2022 a flight taking asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda was cancelled as a result of an ECHR injunction. But Sunak believes there is less chance of that happening again, partly because of reforms to the Rwandan asylum system being implemented under the UK-Rwanda treaty and partly because the ECHR tightened its rules, making injunctions harder to obtain.

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