Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch take part in the final PMQs of 2024 as backlash over the government’s decision not to compensate women hit by changes to the state pension age continues. Follow for live updates.
Wednesday 18 December 2024 11:50, UK
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It may be Christmas in Downing Street, but the PM is unlikely to find much merriment in the House of Commons.
He is on his way to parliament to face questions from MPs, who seem collectively furious about a number of government decisions – most recently to not compensate Waspi women, who were hit by changes to the state pension age.
He’ll be up from 12pm – do follow along live with us here at Sky News.
This should be a PMQs with an obvious choice of attack line for the Tory leader.
The announcement that the government won’t be compensating Waspi women affected by pension changes opens a clear opportunity for Kemi Badenoch to go after the prime minister on the grounds of honesty and transparency.
The Tories have already been stitching this decision together with previous arguments over farm inheritance tax, winter fuel payments and national insurance to try and paint a picture of an administration repeatedly going back on its pre-election promises.
Such an exchange would undoubtedly push Mrs Badenoch into the news bulletins and out around the realms of social media.
All that said, the Tory leader has picked curveballs for PMQs before.
Yesterday evening, she was posting about the government’s decision to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands – linking it to “culture war” issues by saying Sir Keir Starmer will “always take the knee”.
Last Wednesday, she pursued this curveball path, ignoring the farmers massing outside parliament for a series of question on immigration and human rights.
Could she do this again?
If she does, it will be seen by many as a mistake and another example of the new opposition leader failing to put the political ball in the back of the net.
The final PMQs before Christmas kicks off at 12pm – what topic will Kemi Badenoch pull out of her stocking today?
She has no shortage of options – winter fuel, farmers’ protests, Waspi women, national insurance rise, immigration… As they say themselves, ministers have made “tough decisions” since entering office.
The new Tory leader will get the usual six questions, Sir Ed Davey will get his two, after which MPs from across the House will get their chance to put their constituents’ concerns to the PM.
Here is the list of backbenchers guaranteed to get a question…
High street retailer Shoe Zone has announced it will close stores, in a move it claims is due to the impact of the Autumn budget.
In its latest trading update, the discount footwear company said it had experienced “very challenging” conditions recently, due to weakened consumer confidence and bad weather.
On top of that, it said it would incur “significant additional costs” due to the increases in employer national insurance contributions and the national living wage set out by the chancellor in the budget.
“These additional costs have resulted in the planned closure of a number of stores that have now become unviable,” the company said.
“The combination of the above will have a significant impact on our full-year figures.”
It expects its profit before tax for the financial year ending in September 2025 to be “not less than” £5m, down from previous expectations of £10m, and it also cancelled its final shareholder dividend payout for 2023-24.
It has 297 stores nationwide and employs around 2,250 staff.
As migration to the UK remains a major topic of conversation, the government’s independent migration advisers have been looking at the contributions of various types of workers to the public finances.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) found that the average person coming to the UK on a skilled worker visa in 2022-23 made a net contribution of about £16,300 to the UK public finances in their first year here.
That’s more than 13% more than the average UK working adult, who generated around £14,400 for the public finances.
Meanwhile, the average Briton contributed an average of around £800 to the public coffers – and that figure includes those in full-time education, in employment, retired, or otherwise not economically active.
That is around 20 times less than someone coming to the UK on a skilled worked visa.
More broadly, the MAC found that a household of people in the UK through the skilled worker route contributed around £12,000 to the Treasury in their first year.
Excluding health and care workers, that net fiscal contribution was £26,800.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has told Sky News Breakfast that he is “very disappointed” that the government has chosen not to compensate the Waspi women.
“I thought the government was going to do the right thing. I hope they change their minds,” he said.
He also noted that the Ombudsman, that recommended compensation, took five years to come to that conclusion.
The government in the 1990s was “under a duty to inform [women] properly [about the pension age change], to write them letters”.
“And they failed to do that properly. And that’s why the independent ombudsman made the rulings, and why I think it’s incumbent that the state compensates people when we’ve had this special report,” he said.
The Conservatives’ shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, was asked on Sky News Breakfast why the Conservatives did not help the Waspi women during their 14 years in government.
He told is: “We received the report, and sadly, we weren’t in office long enough to consider the consequences of that.
“The big issue about Waspi is the betrayal of voters.
“I didn’t queue up as so many Labour cabinet ministers did, talking about how they were going to right the injustice, pledging to support the Waspi women, get elected on a false prospectus and then come in and do something different.”
He went on to say that there is a “pattern of them saying one thing to get into office and then doing something different”, which is “very corrosive for trust in democracy”.
Sky’s Kay Burley pointed out that compensating the Waspi women wasn’t in the Labour manifesto, but Mr Griffith replied: “I think every Waspi woman and campaigner genuinely believed that this government, the Labour government, had they got elected, would do something.
“They’d all talked about it: Keir Starmer had talked about it, Angela Rayner talked about it, even Liz Kendall, who yesterday said they weren’t going to do a single thing about it, had talked about it.”
He added that he is not saying the Tories would have done something either, but said the government gave the public one impression, and did something else.
The Tories’ shadow business secretary has told us that he is “not surprised” that inflation has risen once again, and he said data also shows that businesses are not hiring again.
Andrew Griffith continued: “My real worry is that every day, the contours of the damage being done to our economy are being revealed.
“If this were a plane and there were so many dials in the red, you’d be looking for a parachute.”
Sky’s Kay Burley put to him that the Tories drove the economy “over a cliff”, and he replied that in the wake of the pandemic and the breakout of war in Ukraine, they got inflation back down.
“I’m not saying we got everything right, Kay. But what are we going to do now? And what we are here to do is represent people in Britain who are worried about their bills.”
He went on to say that he is “genuinely really worried for the economy, and I’m worried about the economy that we might one day inherit”.
Asked for his take on warnings of a recession, Mr Griffith said: “I feel we may already be in recession, actually.”
He went on to say that a lot of capital is flowing into the US due to their “optimistic agenda and their desire to reform government”, but “we don’t see any of that here”.
He added: “I honestly think Rachel Reeves is leading the economy in the wrong direction. We’re not going to have another election anytime soon, so it’s really important that they change course.”
We’ve just been speaking to the Conservatives’ shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, and we started by asking if Reform UK should be taking money from Elon Musk.
He replied that Mr Musk has businesses in the UK, so for that he reason, he said he “suspects” that a donation is “probably legitimate”.
But he went on to say that if he cares about freedom of speech, he should “look at the Conservative Party”, and Kemi Badenoch’s record on “the gender agenda” and “protecting children”, as well as stopping Nigel Farage being “de-banked”.
“So there’s only one real official opposition policy in the UK. There’s only one party that’s daily taking the fight to this socialist government, and that’s the Conservatives.”
Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates and Politico’s Jack Blanchard share their daily guide to the day ahead in politics in under 20 minutes.
Today is the last PMQs before Christmas, and Jack and Sam discuss how Sir Keir Starmer is leaving things in Westminster, including an RMT strike by staff working for Avanti West Coast, planned for the end of the month and into next year.
The pair discuss the current state of Britain’s rail network and how essential it is for the prime minister to follow through on his promise to fix the country’s trains.
Plus, could one of the biggest donations in Britain’s politics be on the way to Reform after Nigel Farage met Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion?
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