Sir Keir Starmer is in Kyiv to sign a new 100-year agreement pledging the UK’s “steadfast support” to Ukraine. Russian drones attacked the city centre during the PM’s visit, to which Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “We’ll say hello to them too.”
Thursday 16 January 2025 15:40, UK
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Keir Starmer took some time during his trip to Kyiv earlier to call in to a classroom back in the UK.
He joined Ukrainian pupils on a video link to All Saints School in Anfield, Liverpool, where authors Michael Morpurgo and Frank Cottrell-Boyce were meeting youngsters.
It was to mark the launch of the UK-Ukraine School Partnerships scheme.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is responding in the House of Commons to the government’s announcements on child sexual exploitation.
He is broadly critical, saying what Yvette Cooper laid out is “wholly inadequate”.
Mr Philp also defends the Conservative record in office on the topic – having received criticism for implementing none of the recommendations made by the 2022 Independent Inquiry into Sexual Abuse.
However, the Conservative former Home Office minister says his party did introduce a task force to collect data about the ethnicity of perpetrators, although these have been found to be lacking.
On the scope of local inquiries, Mr Philp says his party believes there have grooming gang incidents in as many as 50 areas – but only five pilot schemes announced.
He asks what the more than 40 other areas should do.
Mr Philp also criticises the lack of statutory footing the inquiries will be held on.
In response, Ms Cooper lists steps in the new action – like mandatory reporting of child abuse for those with a duty of care – which her party was calling for 10 years ago, but the Conservatives did not do while in power.
The home secretary has announced a plan for government-backed local inquiries into grooming gangs.
Four new inquiries, in addition to an inquiry in Oldham, will be funded and assisted by central government.
They will be advised by Tom Crowther KC, who led the Telford grooming gang inquiry.
However, Sky News understands the inquiries will not have power to summon witnesses to give evidence, as Labour’s Rotherham MP Sarah Champion had pushed for.
The evidence gathered is also not expected to be fed back to the Home Office for a national response.
‘Rapid audit’
There will also be a short national report which will bring together data gathered so far on grooming gangs and consider lessons that should be learnt at a national level.
The “rapid audit” will be overseen Baroness Casey, who is also leading an independent commission into adult social care, and is due to only take three months.
As part of the plans the government will also encourage police forces to reopen cold cases, and victims to come forward with historic cases.
Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates is now asking Ms Badenoch about whether there is a danger that her approach is depressing.
He says: “You gave a long list of things that you think have intractable problems and a long list of things that you’re against.
“You haven’t given much sense of a solution. You’re quite up front about that. But isn’t this an issue?
“And also, isn’t it all just a bit joyless, which in political terms is a problem because it’s a contrast to Nigel Farage?”
Ms Badenoch says it’s a “great question” and she is “speaking based on where the Conservative Party is”.
She says the Tories have just suffered their greatest ever defeat at the ballot box and the public won’t trust them “if I turn up looking like I’m having a great time and everything is fantastic.”
“I want them to know that we understand why they asked for change, why they voted for pretty much every party they could do in order to kick us out,” she adds.
Farage ‘has had a head start’
She goes on to insist she did say positive things – saying she wants to improve intergenerational unfairness “to give young people hope and optimism”.
“We’ve got to give them sunlit uplands, and I will do that.
“Nigel Farage has been knocking around for 20 plus years.
“He’s been leading all sorts of different parties, so he’s had a head start. I’ve been leading the Conservative Party for ten weeks. Let’s see where we are in a few months, in a few years.”
Let’s cut away from Kemi Badenoch for a moment.
Later this afternoon in the House of Commons, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to give a statement on “child sexual exploitation and abuse”.
Sky News understands this will involve an announcement of government-backed local inquiries.
This is not the full-bore national inquiry that some people have been calling for.
The government’s position has been it is better to focus on recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse rather than start a new national probe.
It has previously said authorities wanting inquiries should do so at a local level.
We are expecting the statement from Ms Cooper to start around 3pm – however, times in the House of Commons can change.
Ms Badenoch is now taking questions from the media.
Asked if she could merge with Reform UK to beat Labour at the next election, she is clear she would not.
“Nigel Farage says he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. Why on Earth would we merge with that?” she said.
She rejects a suggestion she has no policies, saying policies without a plan is “just an announcement” and she won’t do it.
She says her policies include lowering taxes, but coming up with a plan to achieve this will take time.
Pressed on when she might start offering solutions rather than just explaining the problem, she suggests that’s not the job of the opposition.
“We are not the government now, we don’t do. We effectively hold the government to account.”
After opening her speech with attacks on Labour, Kemi Badenoch sets out how she plans to restore trust in her party.
She says that first, “we will fill the role the British people gave us, being an effective opposition”.
“Labour may have a supermajority, but they are losing legitimacy in the country”, she says.
She again calls Sir Keir a “lawyer not a leader” – perhaps a new attack line we will start to see more often.
Ms Badenoch’s plan to build trust also includes “saying what this country thinks”.
Third, she says the Tories “will back Starmer when he does the right thing” because “we don’t want our country to fail”.
She will also “tell people why Conservatism matters”, she adds.
Kemi Badenoch has opened her first speech of 2025 by repeating the mantra we often heard during the Tory leadership contest: that for too long, politicians have “not been telling the truth”.
She says that includes the Conservatives during their 14 years in office, and now Labour too.
She says the country is getting poorer and Britain has “lost its way”.
“From now on we will be telling the British public the truth.”
Starmer is ‘what’s wrong with politics’
She goes on to say it’s “hard not to feel sorry for Labour”, saying they fell into the trap of her previous government in deciding raising taxes was a solution.
But she stresses she’s “not that sorry”, pointing to the recent row over grooming gangs.
She says Sir Keir Starmer is “what is wrong with politics”, calling his style “legalism not leadership.”
“Labour are having even more problems than we did because they created policies without a plan,” she says.
Badenoch: I’ll stop making policies before plans
She adds the difference between her and Sir Keir is that he doesn’t acknowledge his mistakes, whereas she does.
She lists some of her party’s mistakes while in government, including that they left the EU without a post-Brexit plan for growth.
She added: “We announced year after year that we would lower immigration, but despite our efforts immigration kept going up.
“Those mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later. That is going to stop under my leadership.”
Sir Keir Starmer will be talking to our political editor Beth Rigby from Kyiv about the war in Ukraine and the UK’s long-term support.
It comes just days before Donald Trump returns to the White House, potentially marking a turning point in the conflict.
We’ll bring you Beth’s interview with the prime minister at 7pm.
We’re getting more from the news conference given by Sir Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The pair touched on Ukraine’s future as a potential member of NATO.
Russia has repeatedly stated its opposition to this happening.
Sir Keir reiterated his support for Ukraine’s accession to NATO – and noted the discussions last year that were had at the NATO summit in Washington, when allies put Kyiv on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership.
However, President Zelensky – perhaps with an eye on the incoming Trump administration – was more forthright in his response to the question of Western allies’ support for Ukraine’s membership.
He told reporters the US, Slovakia, Germany, and Hungary “cannot see us in NATO”.
President Zelenskyy also said he had also discussed the deployment of foreign troops with France, the UK, Poland and Baltic nations.
This follows reports UK and France were in talks to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.
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