Jess Phillips has full confidence of PM, says minister, after grooming gang survivors say inquiry will fail if she stays – UK politics live | Politics
Key events
Renewable energy investment should come from defence budgets, say retired military leaders
Investment in renewable energy should be counted under defence expenditure, says a group of retired senior military personnel, because the climate crisis represents a threat to national security, Fiona Harvey reports.
Rachel Reeves has announced a £500m investment package for new homes and stronger transport links between Oxford and Cambridge as part of a bid to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” in southern England, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Cowley Branch railway line in Oxford will reopen with new stations in Littlemore and Cowley, which the Treasury said would support up to 10,000 new jobs.
The investment will also go towards the development of affordable homes in Cambridge, with plans to launch a consultation on forming a new centrally led development corporation to support the growth of the city.
The Cambridge Growth Company, which was established by the government and brings together local leaders, communities and industry, will begin recruiting for a new chief executive.
Its aim is to develop proposals for housing, transport, water and other infrastructure in the Greater Cambridge region.
Tom Tugendhat, the Tory former security minister, asked why one of the witness statements provided by the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, included comments from the Labour manifesto about Labour’s China policy. He asked what that was the case when the case was meant to relate to the policy in place when the alleged offences were committed, when the Conservatives were in office.
Reeves said the most important witness statement was the one that was submitted when the Tories were in office.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, tabled the urgent question on the China spy case. Responding to Reeves, he said the attorney general reportedly heard the CPS were about to drop the case a few days before that was announced. He asked what steps the attorney general, Lord Hermer, took to ensure the CPS got the extra evidence it needed to ensure the prosecution could go ahead.
Reeves did not address this point in her reply. Instead she accused the Tories of “baseless smears”, and said that the attorney general will be giving evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy next week.
Solicitor general Ellie Reeves says disinformation’ from Tories on China spy case is distracting from anti-espionage work
In the Commons Ellie Reeves, the solicitor general, is responding to a Tory urgent question about the China spy case, and the role of the attorney general in the case.
Reeves says in this country the Crown Prosecution Service is independent.
It is a bedrock constitutional principle that prosecutions in this country are free from political influence. This means that prosecutors, not politicians who decide which cases to prosecute. It is prosecutors, not politicians, who decide what evidence will be used at criminal trials, and it is prosecutors, not politicians, who decide when cases should be dropped.
Reeves says although individual CPS decisions are protected from political interference, it is “superintended” by the attorney general. Details of how this works are set out in a framework agreement signed by the attorney general under the last govenrment.
Reeves says, in some cases, including Official Secrets Act cases, the attorney general has to approve prosection decisions. She goes on:
In doing so, the law officer acts in a quasi-judicial capacity independently of government and applies the same two-stage test [as the CPS applies].
Reeves says the attorney general approved the prosecution in this case on 3 April 2024. She goes on:
Following that date, no law officer intervened in the case at any stage. It would have been wholly inappropriate for the law officers to do so.
Once consent is given, then the law officer plays no on-going role.
If the prosecutor contemplates dropping the case because of evidential reasons, then the requirement is that the prosecutor informs the attorney general of the decision as soon as it has been taken. That is what happened in this case.
She ends by saying “ongoing disinformation around the collapse of this case” is distracting the government as it attempts to deal with Chinese espion are now distracting from the most important issue we should all be focused on how the government can dea with Chinese espionage.
Lindsay Hoyle suggests government, not parliamentary rules, to blame for MPs not getting chance to debate Prince Andrew
Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has insisted that parliamentary rules do not prevent MPs debating the conduct of members of the royal family.
There are rules that limit the ability of MPs to discuss the royals in general debates. But, in a statement to MPs at the start of parliamentary business today, Hoyle insisted that these do not ban any reference to the king or his relatives.
The issue has come to the fore because some MPs want to debate Prince Andrew, either legislating to remove his titles, or to consider his lease arrangements at Royal Lodge.
Hoyle said:
I know there has been some commentary on what members of this house may or may not discuss in the chamber in relation to Prince Andrew, some of which is inaccurate.
There is understandably great interest from members and from the public on this matter. For the benefit of the house, I would like to be clear that there are ways for the house to properly consider this matter.
Any discussions about the conduct or reflections on members of the royal family can be properly discussed on the substantive motions. And I know some members have already tabled such a motion. I am not able to allocate time for a debate on such a motion, but others are able to do so, if wishing to do that.
But on questions, the long-standing practice of the house, as set out in Erskine May, is that criticism of members of the royal family cannot be made as part of questions. I hope this is helpful clarification, as there is lots of online speculation.
Hoyle was, in effect, trying to ensure that the government, not parliament, gets the blame for MPs not debating Andrew. When Hoyle said “others” are able to allocate time for debate on a sustantive motion, he was referring to the government, which controls most of what gets debated in the Commons.
While ministers have not ruled out allowing MPs to debate legislation relating to Andrew, they have said they will be guided by the wishes of the king, and they have suggested that MPs have more important issues to focus on.
Some 220 migrants arrived in the UK on Wednesday after crossing the Channel, bringing the cumulative number so far in 2025 to 36,954 – more than the 36,816 arrivals in the whole of 2024, PA Media reports. PA says:
It is too early to tell whether this year will see a record number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel.
The cumulative total for 2025 so far, 36,954, is 30% higher than at this point in 2024 and 41% higher than in 2023, but 2% lower than at this stage in 2022.
The record for the most arrivals in a calendar year is 45,774 in 2022.
Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell make their final arguments ahead of ballot closing in Labour’s deputy leadership contest
Jessica Elgot
Jessica Elgot is the Guardian’s deputy political editor.
At noon today voting will close in the Labour’s deputy leadership election. It has been a tight race between education secretary Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, the recently ousted cabinet minister.
Powell has been calling for Labour to change direction and to champion more loudly progressive values, so as to take on both Nigel Farage and leftwing parties.
And Phillipson has told supporters that she needs a “mandate to smash child poverty” so that in cabinet she can get agreeement to end the two-child benefit cap.
Powell has led comfortably in polls of Labour members, but Phillipson has endorsements of three of the largest unions whose members have not been polled and who also get a vote if they pay into the party.
Powell wrote to supporters last night:
The politics of division and hate are on the rise, and it is up to us, the Labour party, to stand firm against it, and show that progressive, mainstream politics can make the change people have voted for again and again.
I want to help Keir and our government to succeed. But we all know that we must change how we are doing things to turn things around.
Phillipson has said she does not believe changes comes from criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership. “We all know Reform are a clear and present danger which we can’t ignore – so are the Greens peddling their false hope,” she said in a final statement last night.
But we’re not going to beat them by having spats in public. We’re not going to beat them by throwing rocks at the leadership just as we’re not going to beat them by straying from our values. We’re going to beat them by coming together.
Powell has routinely been dubbed as the divisive candidate by her rival, in a contest that has left both camps feeling bruised, though there is particular anger from allies of Powell.
In her letter, Powell said:
[It is] not divisive to be honest about where we are, it’s the only way we can collectively face up to it and change course. Blindly following along is not unity, it’s a dereliction of our duty to defeat the politics of hate and division.
There will be two urgent questions in the Commons after 10.30am. First, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, is asking for a statement about the role of the attorney general in the collapse of the China spy trial. And then the SNP’s Seamus Logan is asking for a statement on the fishing and coastal growth fund.
Badenoch criticised for using grooming gangs inquiry for ‘point scoring’
Yesterday Jim Gamble, a former deputy chief constable and a former head the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command centre, said he was no longer interested in being chair of the grooming gangs inquiry. He was the only known candidate left, because the other candidate known to have been shortlisted pulled out earlier in the week.
In an interview with Times Radio, Gamble said that he was “disappointed” with the with Kemi Badenoch has approached this issue. He said:
She’s a forthright and direct individual. But I was disappointed at the manner of the engagement because actually it would be much better to say, look, I’ve been speaking to some of the victims and survivors, you know, let’s get together and discuss this because not all victims and survivors want the same thing.
At PMQs yesterday Badenoch devoted all her questions to the grooming gangs inquiry, using the topic to attack Keir Starmer’s leadership.
In a separate interview with GB News, Gamble said the atmosphere around the inquiry had become “toxic”. He explained:
And my goodness, if politicians can’t come together cross-party on this, when are they ever going to come together?
I think the toxic environment; there needs to be a pause now. There needs to be a calming. Those people in positions of responsibility need to think about the victims and survivors rather than their own political point scoring.
Jess Phillips has full confidence of PM, says minister, after grooming gang survivors say inquiry will fail if she stays
Good morning. Kemi Badenoch is entitled to take a bit of the credit for persuading Keir Starmer to change his mind and agree to a national grooming gangs inquiry. (GB News and Elon Musk probably played a rule too – although Starmer says the voice that mattered was Louise Casey’s.) When opposition parties influence policy, they always look a bit more serious. But – intentionally or not – by getting the inquiry off the ground, Badenoch has also plunged the government into process turmoil that guarantees endless negative headlines and unwanted distraction.
The government is now on day four of the grooming gangs inquiry “crisis” and it is not getting any better. After the resignation of four survivors on the inquiry’s oversight panel, and the withdrawal of both lead candidates to be chair, Starmer is now under fresh pressure to sack Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, over claims that she falsely accused survivors of lying about the process in an urgent question in the Commons on Tuesday.
Last night the four survivors who have resigned from the oversight panel released a joint statement saying Phillips’s comment took them “right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again”.
The survivors said that Phillips was unfit to oversee the inquiry process and that they would not rejoin the inquiry panel unless she went.
It is important to remember that most of the survivors on the oversight panel have not quit, and that there are plenty of victims who do not agree with these criticisms. Still, it is far from ideal.
In the Commons yesterday Starmer defended Phillips. Josh MacAlister, the children’s minister, has been doing a media round this morning and he said Phillips has the “full backing of the prime minister and the home secretary” and that he would “stay in post”.
He went on:
I know Jess, she’s been a lifelong advocate and champion for young girls who’ve been abused, and she has already shown that she’s properly engaging with the survivor community.
MacAlister said the scope of the inquiry would not be broadened (one of the concerns of survivors).
He added:
The government’s intent on this is incredibly solid. We want to get this right. We’re taking action and we’ll set the inquiry up.
I would just urge other political parties to turn the volume down a little bit, or turn the heat down a little bit on, on their attacks.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The ONS publishes crime figures for England and Wales for the year ending June 2025.
9.30am: David Lammy, the deputy PM, gives a speech in London.
10.15am: The Lords committee considering the assisted dying bill takes evidence from medical and legal experts.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Morning: John Healey, the defence secretary, and his German counterpart Boris Pistorious visit RAF Lossiemouth in north-east Scotland.
Noon: The ballot for the deputy Labour leadership closes. The result will be announced on Saturday.
Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in north-west London.
And in Caerphilly voters are going to the polls for a Senedd byelection that may herald a fundamental realignment in Welsh politics. Steven Morris has a very good preview here.
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