Keir Starmer will be questioned by parliament’s Liaison Committee this afternoon about his work as prime minister so far. It comes on the final day before the Commons rises for its Christmas break.
Thursday 19 December 2024 12:37, UK
Throughout the year, government ministers face a grilling from the parliamentary committees set up to hold each department to account.
You get the foreign secretary in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the home secretary in front of the… well, Home Affairs Committee.
All the chairs of these powerful groups of MPs then team up in a naff Avengers-style “super committee” to take on the prime minister.
The Liaison Committee subjects Britain’s leader of the day to an almost feature film-length interrogation about their main policies, as our deputy political editor Sam Coates and Politico’s Jack Blanchard explain on today’s episode of Politics With Jack And Sam’s.
What’s on the agenda?
The grilling will be split into three main sections
Those are growth and the economy, public services and the PM’s “plan for change”, and global affairs and security.
Who’s doing the grilling?
It’s a “super committee”, explains Jack, “because all its members are select committee chairs in their own right”.
Among them are Emily Thornberry, Alistair Carmichael, Liam Byrne, Dame Caroline Dinenage, and Dame Karen Bradley.
“There are only eight or nine Tories in the 30-odd people on the liaison committee,” Jack notes (another reminder of their election hammering) which rather makes you think how much of a grilling Sir Keir Starmer is going to get anyway.”
The hunt for a viral clip
But these MPs do “like to make a name for themselves, to show off the fact they’ve been charged with this important task of holding the PM to account and don’t want to be seen to be going easy on him”.
“You might still see a fair bit of showboating as they all try to grab that viral clip that makes the news bulletins.”
We’ve just had reaction from the chancellor to the news that the Bank of England has decided to hold interest rates at 4.75% (see previous post).
Rachel Reeves said in a statement: “I know families are still struggling with high costs.
“We want to put more money in the pockets of working people, but that is only possible if inflation is stable and I fully back the Bank of England to achieve that.”
She added that “improving living standards across the country is our number one focus”.
Budget ‘has caused uncertainty’
But Richard Fuller, the Tories’ shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, noted the Bank has previously warned Labour’s budget “will increase inflation and could cause ‘uncertainty’ in the economy”, making rate cuts “difficult”.
“On Labour’s watch, inflation is ticking back up – meaning higher prices, higher mortgage rates and less money in people’s pockets,” he added.
The Bank of England has elected to hold interest rates at 4.75%, it has announced.
Six members of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to hold the base rate, while three voted for a cut.
The next change to interest rates could be made at the next meeting in February.
The decision comes after the latest inflation data showed it had moved further above its 2% target rate to 2.6%.
Interest rates, which influence how much banks charge for loans and mortgages, are used as a tool by the central bank to keep inflation at its target level.
By Faye Brown, political reporter
Only 7% of social housing buildings with life critical fire safety risks have been remediated since Grenfell, according to the latest figures.
There are around 17,500 of these tower blocks over 11m high in England – of which 2009 have life-threatening defects relating to the external wall system.
Landlords report that work is complete on 144 (7.2%) of the affected buildings – an increase from 108 buildings in September.
According to the Regulator for Social Housing, 69% of the dangerous buildings are expected to be made safe in the next five years – but the timeline for the rest is not clear.
The data comes after the government published its Remediation Acceleration Plan earlier this month.
This stated that building owners could face prison if they have not removed unsafe cladding by 2029.
The issue has been in the spotlight ever since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which killed 72 people. The rapid spread of the blaze was blamed on the highly flammable external cladding.
Commons leader Lucy Powell has sung a little Christmas song in the chamber to sign-off for 2024.
Well, she didn’t quite sing, but she did read out her own re-write of the classic Christmas song The Twelve Days Of Christmas as what she said is the Conservative Party’s legacy.
She said: “12-hour A&E wait times,
“11% inflation,
“10 Lords defeats on Rwanda,
“Nine million inactive workers,
“Eight thousand bus routes cancelled,
“Seven million on waiting lists,
“Six councils bankrupt,
“Five prime ministers toppled,
“Four million children in poverty,
“Three broken pledges,
“Two nurses’ strikes,
“And a prime minister at a lockdown party.”
The Commons’ Public Accounts Committee is questioning the most senior people in charge of HS2 today, and that includes the top civil servant in the Department for Transport.
Dame Bernadette Kelly was asked by the committee how much completing the remaining part of HS2 will cost, and she replied: “We do not currently have an agreed cost estimate now for phase one.”
HS2 Ltd has provided a cost estimate of £54-66bn, in 2019 prices, but Dame Bernadette said the department did not “regard it as a reliable and agreed cost estimate”.
“I say with great regret, sitting before the committee, that is the situation,” she said.
‘Construction started too early’
Dame Bernadette added coming up with an agreed cost estimate would be “extremely complex” and would not be done until “well into 2025”.
Meanwhile, the chief executive of HS2 Ltd, Mark Wild, admitted the company had “failed” to keep costs down, adding there were three “systemic” and “enduring” problems.
He said: “Construction started way too early. The rush to start before mature design consents was really, in retrospect, a mistake.”
MPs in the Commons have welcomed the government’s announcement of a £100m boost in funding for hospices.
But many of them raised the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions and the national living wage which, they fear, could make some hospices financially unviable.
Health minister Karin Smyth initially dodged questions, and then eventually told the House: “We have improved the settlement for the health sector this year.
“This is a welcome announcement that can be used by the sector to manage some of those pressures and deliver the sorts of services they want to for the future.”
The government has just announced that hospices will receive a £100m boost in funding – including £26m in revenue funding for 2025/26 through what until recently was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant.
The government describes this as “the biggest investment in a generation for hospices”, and it will “help hospices this year and next to provide the best end of life care to patients and their families”.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the funding will ensure hospices can “deliver the compassionate care everyone deserves as they come to the end of their life in the best possible environment”.
What’s the funding for?
The funding will help improve the hospices themselves, and will in particular improve the IT systems and deliver digital upgrades.
There are around 170 hospices that provide end of life care for adults, and around 40 provide hospice care for children and young people in England, with some hospices providing care to both.
Toby Porter, CEO of Hospice UK, said in a statement: “Today’s announcement will be hugely welcomed by hospices, and those who rely on their services.
“Hospices not only provide vital care for patients and families, but also relieve pressure on the NHS.”
A health minister is set to respond to an urgent question on hospice funding in the House of Commons in the next few moments. We’ll bring you their comments right here.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed has been taking questions from MPs in the House of Commons, and he was asked about the ongoing fury from farmers about the changes to inheritance tax that they say could force them to close down.
Mr Reed told the House: “The shadow secretary of state, as well as the former prime minister, keep telling farmers they’re not in it for the money.
“We know that they are. They’re businesses that need to make a profit, and our new deal for farmers, including increasing supply chain fairness is intended to make farms profitable and successful for the future, in a way that they were not under the previous government.”
‘A new deal for farming’
In response to a later question, the environment secretary insisted that the “vast majority” of farmers will “not pay anything”.
“This government, unlike the previous government that thought farmers were not in it for the money, wants them to succeed.
“So we’re embarking on a farming roadmap and a new deal for farming that will look at supply chain fairness, stopping farmers being undercut in trade deals like the one they agreed with Australia and New Zealand.
“Our intention is to make farming profitable for the future, their record is 12,000 farming businesses that went bust.”
We spoke a while ago to government minister Miatta Fahnbulleh, we asked about the decision not to compensate the Waspi women – women born in the 1950s who were hit by the rise in the state pension age.
The minister said many are “going to be angry” and “upset” about this, but added the PM and chancellor “have an absolutely impossible job against the financial context that we’re operating [in]”.
Investment is needed across the board in the public sector, she said, and so there are choices to be made about where the limited available money goes.
Ms Fahnbulleh also refuted that these women are less valuable than train drivers, for example, who were given pay rises by the government.
‘We can’t do everything’
She went on: “There are 101 things I would love us to do as a government. I would love us to do it today.
“And in the end, the reality of governing is it’s hard.”
The minister also rejected accusations of hypocrisy, with ministers including the chancellor having campaigned while in opposition for compensation for Waspi women.
“We can’t do everything straight away, but what we will do is deliver the mandate for change,” she said.
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