Reeves says it is “shameful” that Kwarteng says his mini-budget is not to blame for problems with public finances.
Labor has stepped up its criticism of former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to claim his mini-budget is not to blame for the poor state of public finances. (See 9.15am) Asked about her comments, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said:
It is truly shameful that Kwasi Kwarteng has the cheek to do this interview. He crashed the economy with his mini-budget just a few weeks ago. It has caused incalculable damage to people. Anyone coming from a mortgage deal will blame the Tories, including Kwasi Kwarteng, for these huge increases, up to £500 more a month in interest payments due to decisions by Tory chancellors over the last few months, including Kwasi Kwarteng .
Labor claims the mini-budget alone, or “even the Tory chancellors’ decisions over the last few months”, are responsible for mortgages rising by up to £500 a month are misleading. As fact-checking organization Full Fact explains here, Labor produced the figure by comparing the cost of an average mortgage after the mini-budget with the cost in August 2020. But interest rates had already risen significantly between August 2020 and summer 2022, before the election of Liz Truss as Conservative leader, it says.
Photograph by Rachel Reeves: BBC News
Updated at 13.27 GMT
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Michael Gove, the Home Secretary, is holding a press conference in Blackpool with Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), following the conclusion of the British-Irish Council summit.
Asked whether the UK government would halt progress on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords (see 12.39pm), Gove said it was not a decision for he This is from UTV’s Tracey Magee.
Updated at 13.25 GMT
Reeves says it is “shameful” that Kwarteng says his mini-budget is not to blame for problems with public finances.
Labor has stepped up its criticism of former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to claim his mini-budget is not to blame for the poor state of public finances. (See 9.15am) Asked about her comments, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said:
It is truly shameful that Kwasi Kwarteng has the cheek to do this interview. He crashed the economy with his mini-budget just a few weeks ago. It has caused incalculable damage to people. Anyone coming from a mortgage deal will blame the Tories, including Kwasi Kwarteng, for these huge increases, up to £500 more a month in interest payments due to decisions by Tory chancellors over the last few months, including Kwasi Kwarteng .
Labor claims the mini-budget alone, or “even the Tory chancellors’ decisions over the last few months”, are responsible for mortgages rising by up to £500 a month are misleading. As fact-checking organization Full Fact explains here, Labor produced the figure by comparing the cost of an average mortgage after the mini-budget with the cost in August 2020. But interest rates had already risen significantly between August 2020 and summer 2022, before the election of Liz Truss as Conservative leader, it says.
Photograph by Rachel Reeves: BBC News
Updated at 13.27 GMT
EU ambassador suggests EU deal on Northern Ireland will be much more difficult if NI protocol bill passes
João Vale de Almeida, the EU’s outgoing ambassador to the UK, has pointed out that if the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill becomes law, it will be more difficult to reach an agreement on the future of the protocol.
Vale de Almeida has been giving interviews ahead of his departure from London and, speaking to Times Radio, he echoed what he told the Financial Times about improving relations between London and Brussels now that Rishi Sunak is first minister
He told Times Radio that he thought it would be possible for the EU and the UK to reach an agreement on reforms to the protocol – the post-Brexit deal governing the import of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland – “with a certain degree of urgency. that we can find a way out”.
But he also said all that would change if the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would allow the UK government to ignore its international legal obligations under the protocol, became law. He said:
It’s an understatement to say that [the bill] it’s not helpful… We think it’s not legal. It is illegal in respect of an international treaty.
We agreed to talk even if the bill passes through parliament, but we must be very clear: if the bill becomes law, the situation changes considerably.
The bill had its second reading by MPs in June and has passed the House of Commons. It was debated in the Lords last month, but no date has yet been set for the final report stage and third reading debates, where crucial votes will be taken.
Vale de Almeida also said that while the EU was willing to be “pragmatic” about changes to the way the protocol works, it would still require some kind of minimum controls on goods going from Britain to Ireland from the North Explained:
There will always have to be some degree of control at the border, because we have to protect half a million people in the internal market to continue to allow Northern Ireland to have access to both markets.
We are ready to go to a minimum level. Some of them wouldn’t even be visible, they wouldn’t even have an impact on people’s lives, as long as we have the degree of assurance that everything we get from the British side is enough to assess the risk and limit the risk to the british part end of day
João Vale de Almeida. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 13.15 GMT
Sadiq Khan, the Labor mayor of London, has released a poll suggesting that half of Londoners are “struggling” (18%) or “just about managing” (32%).
According to the survey, 49% of Londoners also use less water, energy or fuel.
Khan says he wants Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to help people with the cost of living in next week’s Autumn Statement. Khan says:
This shocking new survey highlights the realities of the worst cost of living crisis in generations.
With spiraling inflation and rising interest rates leaving many Londoners struggling to make ends meet, a situation made worse by the government’s failed mini-budget, the chancellor has a duty to take decisive action on Thursday to support vulnerable Londoners.
Khan is urging Hunt to adopt several policies that he says would help, including: an additional tax on energy companies; increase profits in line with inflation; the extension of free school meals to all primary school children; a “lifetime tariff” which would allow the most vulnerable people a minimum amount of energy use before charges apply; and the City Council has the power to freeze private rents in London.
Updated at 12.29 GMT
NHS confident of paying up to £2,500 for single agency nursing shift, Labor says
NHS trusts are paying up to £2,500 for a single nursing shift, a Labor investigation has revealed.
The party produced the figures in a Freedom of Information request, and says the results show the need for major investment in NHS recruitment, which is what Labor is promising.
In a press release summarizing its findings, Labor says:
In total, the NHS paid more than £3 billion to agencies that provide doctors and nurses at short notice. The figure represents a 20% increase on last year, when the health service spent £2.4 billion. Trusts spent an extra £6bn on bank staff, when NHS staff are paid to do temporary shifts, bringing the total spend on extra staff to around £9.2bn.
One in three NHS trusts paid an agency more than £1,000 for a single shift last year, while one in six trusts paid more than £2,000, freedom requests reveal information.
The most expensive shift was £2,549, paid for by Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Swindon. Medway NHS Trust in Kent spent more than any other trust on agency staff, paying out £77 million last year alone.
A BBC investigation into the same issue found that although rates of pay for agency staff are supposedly capped, these limits are regularly ignored, because otherwise patient safety would be at risk.
Commenting on the issue, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said:
Taxpayers are picking up the bill for the Conservatives’ failure to train enough doctors and nurses over the past 12 years. That’s an outrageous amount of money paid to agencies, when patients are waiting longer than ever to receive treatment.
Workers will tackle this problem from the root. We will train the doctors and nurses the NHS needs, paid for by the abolition of non-national tax status.
Updated at 11.08 GMT
Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss used to be close friends, but after his decision to sack him as chancellor and his comments about her in his TalkTV interview last night (see 10.14pm), it’s difficult imagine that relations are still cordial.
Tom Newton Dunn asked Kwarteng in the interview if they were still friends and he said they were. They spoke “relatively recently,” Kwarteng said.
But then he said that he had called her a few days ago but he had missed the call. Would I call her again? “I’ll call her back,” he replied, implying that answering her hasn’t been a priority.
Kwarteng was also asked if he thought he would return to government one day. Kwarteng said he would not rule it out, but was not looking for a ministerial job anytime soon. Explained:
I think I just need to take stock… I just want to get back to the basics of being an MP.
Updated at 10.55 GMT
Kwarteng criticized for claiming that Truss was mainly to blame for the mini-budget disaster because he called for a slower approach.
Kwasi Kwarteng’s interview with…