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Sue Gray will become Starmer’s chief of staff no matter how long the delay, says Labour – UK politics live


Labour says Sue Gray will become Starmer’s chief of staff even if appointment subject to long delay

At the Labour party’s post-PMQs briefing Keir Starmer’s spokesperson indicated that Sue Gray would take up her job as Starmer’s chief of staff even if the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments recommended a long wait before she starts.

Acoba can say that ministers or officials should have to wait up to two years before taking up a job outside government (although a shorter period, such as three months or six months, is more common). Labour has said it will abide by the Acoba ruling, which is only advisory.

The spokesperson said:

The Labour party is fully supporting the Acoba process and the Acoba process is that Sue Gray submits her form with the information as requested of her by Acoba in the usual way.

Asked whether Gray will be hired no matter how long her appointment is delayed, the spokesman said:

Sue Gray is going to be Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

There is no interim chief of staff, and any plans to hire someone for that role temporarily would depend on what delay Acoba recommended, he said.

The spokesperson also accused the Tories of trying to “politicise” the process by introducing an “additional political process [the Cabinet Office inquiry into the appointment] which is not part of the standard process”.

The Economist’s Matthew Holehouse, who has been looking at precedents set by Acoba, thinks it is more likely anyway to impose restrictions on what Gray can do when she starts working for Starmer rather than a time-limited ban.

Struggling to see why ACOBA would impose an outright ban on Gray working for Labour on internal agenda for govt preparation rather than restrictions on activities. If you take those on former head of Uk armed forces working for a defence contractor as the uppermost benchmark… pic.twitter.com/Dz79CwoFrl

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

Is there a case for theoretical “dirt on ministers” being subject to a tougher regime than say the former Government Chief Security Officer working for a contractor? Hard to see it. pic.twitter.com/1wNvfoq1J3

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

It’s *almost as if* the former Director General, Propriety and Ethics has a good working knowledge of how the P&E regime operates (or indeed, doesn’t) pic.twitter.com/LbA11J9n2o

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

Key events

Humza Yousaf says he hopes fringe venue’s decision to cancel appearance by gender-critical SNP MP can be reversed

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has said that he hopes a decision to cancel an appearance by the SNP MP Joanna Cherry at the Edinburgh festival fringe because of her gender-critical views will be reviewed.

Cherry, who is opposed to self-identification for transgender people, was due to speak at an In Conversation With event at a fringe venue in August. But, as Libby Brooks reports, the Stand comedy club said it was cancelling the booking because key venue staff were not willing to work with Cherry.

Commenting on the row today, Yousaf, the SNP leader, said:

I really do hope that Joanna’s show can go ahead.

I hope there’s a way there can be a compromise found in terms of Joanna’s show going ahead.

Joanna and I have a difference on a number of issues, including for example the GRR [gender recognition bill] bill that was passed by the Scottish parliament.

I do think it’s important that those views are heard.

But Yousaf also said that it was not his job as first minister to “tell comedy clubs and other venues what shows they must and must not put on”.

According to a report by Jim Fitzpatrick for openDemocracy, John Pullinger, who chairs the Electoral Commission, wrote to Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, six months ago saying he should use the national security bill to tighten the rules in place to stop foreign governments funding British political parties.

In his letter Pullinger said:

We have recommended that existing controls on donations should be strengthened so that parties and campaigners can only accept donations from companies that have made enough money in the UK to fund the amount of their donation.

Currently, a company can donate to a UK political party or campaigner if it is registered at Companies House and ‘carrying on business’ in the UK. There is no requirement for the company to show that it has made enough money in the UK to give or lend to campaigners.

Six months on, the Electoral Commission has still not received a reply, Fitzpatrick reports.

Earlier this afternoon the government used its majority in the Commons to vote down a Lords amendment that would have addressed Pullinger’s concerns. (See 4pm.)

MPs vote down Lords amendment intended to tighten laws stopping foreign powers funding UK political parties

In the Commons MPs have been voting on Lords amendments to the national security bill. The government used its majority to vote down an amendment passed in the Lords that would require UK political parties to publish a policy statement to identify donations from foreign powers.

Sir Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, said he welcomed the Lords amendment, which would “increase the transparency and accountability of our political system”.

He said that in the past the UK had “clearly welcomed Russian money, including in the political sphere”, and he went on:

The amendment is eminently reasonable. It shouldn’t be controversial for political parties to want to ensure the transparency of their foreign political donations.

We must protect against covert, foreign-state-backed financial donations if we are to defend our democratic institutions from harmful interference and influence.

But Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said the government was going to vote down the amendment because it was not needed. He explained:

The law already makes robust provision in relation to donations to political parties. Foreign donations are banned, it is an offence to accept them and there are strong rules safeguarding against impermissible donations via the back door.

The Lords amendment was voted down by 254 votes to 134 – a majority of 120. Lewis was the only Conservative MP voting with the government to keep the amendment in.

Spotlight on Corruption, which campaigns against corruption, claimed the vote left “the forthcoming UK general election desperately vulnerable to interference by hostile states, kleptocrats and oligarchs”.

It pointed out that Lord Evans, the former head of MI5, was among the peers backing the amendment in the Lords.

Artificial intelligence could have as big an impact on jobs as Industrial Revolution, Patrick Vallance tells MPs

Artificial intelligence (AI) could have as big an impact on jobs as the Industrial Revolution, Sir Patrick Vallance has told MPs.

In a session with the Commons science committee to mark the end of his term as the government’s chief scientific adviser, he said that AI would bring “a lot of benefits” and that it was a mistake to view it as “all risk”.

But he did highlight three concerns with the technology. He told the MPs:

The first is, with the large models and the potential, how do you determine what’s true and what’s not? As you can get replication of all sorts of things.

And the second is there will be a big impact on jobs. And that impact could be as big as the Industrial Revolution was. How are we going to think about that, over a slightly longer timeframe?

And the third, of course, is what happens with these things when they start to do things you really didn’t expect and what are the risks associated with that? That may be a slightly longer-term question.

Commenting more on the employment implications of AI, Vallance said it would “make life easier in all sorts of aspects of everyday work, in the legal profession, in all sorts of other areas as well”.

He went on:

On the jobs aspect, I think in the Industrial Revolution, the initial effect was actually a decrease in economic output as people sort of realigned in terms of what jobs were, and then a benefit.

And I think we need to get ahead of that actually. Which are the jobs, the sectors that will be most affected? And what are the plans to retrain and give people their time back to do a job differently, because there will be jobs that can be done by AI, which can either mean lots of people don’t have a job, or it can mean actually lots of people have a job that only humans can do.

And in the area I know most about in this – in medicine – that could be that you actually get more time with your doctor rather than being pressurised. So that could be a good outcome.

How Sunak and Starmer traded jibes about their parties’ respective economic records

This is from Greg Hands, the Conservative party chair, responding to what Keir Starmer said at PMQs after Rishi Sunak mentioned the notorious “no money left” note left in the Treasury at the end of the last Labour government.

Sunak said:

Our memories aren’t that short. We all know what happened last time when they were in power, there was no money left for the country.

And Starmer replied:

Debt doubled since 2010, growth down, tax up, the economy crashed. They’re going to need a bigger note.

The Conservative MP Philip Davies lobbied the government on behalf of a casino to introduce a measure that was then included in last week’s gambling white paper, Rob Davies reports.

Labour says Sue Gray will become Starmer’s chief of staff even if appointment subject to long delay

At the Labour party’s post-PMQs briefing Keir Starmer’s spokesperson indicated that Sue Gray would take up her job as Starmer’s chief of staff even if the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments recommended a long wait before she starts.

Acoba can say that ministers or officials should have to wait up to two years before taking up a job outside government (although a shorter period, such as three months or six months, is more common). Labour has said it will abide by the Acoba ruling, which is only advisory.

The spokesperson said:

The Labour party is fully supporting the Acoba process and the Acoba process is that Sue Gray submits her form with the information as requested of her by Acoba in the usual way.

Asked whether Gray will be hired no matter how long her appointment is delayed, the spokesman said:

Sue Gray is going to be Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

There is no interim chief of staff, and any plans to hire someone for that role temporarily would depend on what delay Acoba recommended, he said.

The spokesperson also accused the Tories of trying to “politicise” the process by introducing an “additional political process [the Cabinet Office inquiry into the appointment] which is not part of the standard process”.

The Economist’s Matthew Holehouse, who has been looking at precedents set by Acoba, thinks it is more likely anyway to impose restrictions on what Gray can do when she starts working for Starmer rather than a time-limited ban.

Struggling to see why ACOBA would impose an outright ban on Gray working for Labour on internal agenda for govt preparation rather than restrictions on activities. If you take those on former head of Uk armed forces working for a defence contractor as the uppermost benchmark… pic.twitter.com/Dz79CwoFrl

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

Is there a case for theoretical “dirt on ministers” being subject to a tougher regime than say the former Government Chief Security Officer working for a contractor? Hard to see it. pic.twitter.com/1wNvfoq1J3

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

It’s *almost as if* the former Director General, Propriety and Ethics has a good working knowledge of how the P&E regime operates (or indeed, doesn’t) pic.twitter.com/LbA11J9n2o

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) May 2, 2023

Q: Why did you say Dominic Raab should be proud of what he achieved when he stepped down? He had been found to be a bully.

Sunak said that Raab stepped in when Boris Johnson was ill, and did a good job. And he introduced reforms to the justice system, Sunak said.

That was it.

Jeremy Vine put it to Rishi Sunak that people feel the country is “falling apart”.

Sunak said the cost of living was a problem for people. He has set out his five priorities, he said.

Q: After 13 years, do you think the Tories need a period out of power?

Sunak said he had been PM for six months. He said he wanted people to judge him by his values and what he was doing.

Q: Are you confident you would get an ambulance quickly if you called one, and did not mention Downing Street?

Sunak said ambulance response times have more than halved since December. A range of measures were in place. They were working, he said.

Q: People are going to A&E because they can’t get a GP appointment.

Sunak said he comes from an NHS family. His dad was a doctor, his mum a pharmacist. He wanted to reform the NHS to improve access. He mentioned initiatives such as community diagnostic scanning, and more use of the private sector for operations.

Q: What can you do about fraud calls from Russia?

Sunak said his plan would allow the government to block spoof calls from abroad. Currently fraudsters calling from abroad can make it look like they are calling from the UK. The government will make that much harder, he said.

Q: Lord Agnew resigned as a Treasury minister when you were chancellor saying you were not interested in tackling fraud.

Sunak said that was about fraud in relation to Covid schemes. He said he did not agree with Agnew at the time. And now the estimate of the amount lost to fraud and error in these schemes is down to 2 or 3%, he said.

Rishi Sunak interviewed by Jeremy Vine

Rishi Sunak has given an interview to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 ahead of tomorrow’s local elections.

He started by summarising the anti-fraud strategy announced today.

No 10 says it is ‘disappointing’ that Sue Gray did not cooperate with Cabinet Office probe into her taking Labour job

Downing Street has said it is “disappointing” that Sue Gray did not cooperate with the Cabinet Office inquiry into her departure from the civil service to take up a job with Keir Starmer.

Asked about the statement issued yesterday on this topic, Rishi Sunak’s press secretary told journalists at the post-PMQs briefing:

The prime minister is not obviously involved in this process. But it is obviously disappointing that Sue Gray was offered [the chance] to co-operate and has chosen not to do so.

I think what is more disappointing is that Keir Starmer is in a position where he could clear up very quickly when contact was made by his office or by him to Sue Gray to uphold the integrity of the civil service and ensure that it is transparent and open.

PMQs – snap verdict

The next election will be a contest between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. But what we learned from today’s exchanges was that Starmer would rather be fighting Liz Truss, and Sunak wants to campaign against Gordon Brown. This says something about the respective strength of both leaders, and their parties.

In an ideal world you would not need to attack the leader of the other party’s predecessor, because the current leader would provide a good target anyway, but Liz Truss’s brief premiership was such a disaster for the Conservative party that it would be foolish – even negligent – for Starmer to stop talking about it. Today he referenced her very directly with his first two questions, challenging Sunak to explain how many people were paying higher mortgages as a result of her mini-budget. Sunak did not answer directly, for reasons that were obvious when Starmer answered his own first question.

The question was how many people are paying more on their mortgages each month. The answer that the prime minister avoided giving is 850,000. Nearly a million people paying more on their mortgage each month because his party used their money as a casino chip.

Then, answering his second question, he said:

By the end of this year nearly 2 million homeowners counting the cost of the Tories’ economic vandalism with every mortgage payment they make.

Labour has been campaigning hard on housing over the last week and, as Starmer showed effectively, it is easy to rubbish the Tories’ record. Although focusing on Truss, Starmer also pinned it on Sunak, referencing his admission in a ConservativeHome interview recently that he abandoned plans for compulsory housebuilding targets because Conservative members and activists found them unacceptable. Sunak said he was in favour of localism, but south-east nimbies vote Tory anyway, and it was a weak retort.

By the time he was responding to question four, Sunak had to fall back on the “no money left” note left by the chief secretary to the Treasury at the end of the Gordon Brown government, which is currently being tweeted out, almost hourly, by Greg Hands, the Conservative chair. It is probably true that the “no money left” note revives the lingering concerns about Labour’s economic competence felt by some voters (mostly Tories). But if the Conservatives believe they can parry a Truss by playing a Brown they are in dire trouble.

First, Truss was in power just seven months ago; Brown hasn’t been in office for 13 years. Second, Sunak was in government with Truss, and they are both associated with an administration that has been in office, in one form or another, for 13 years; Starmer did not have anything do do with the Brown government. And, third, people are still experiencing the impact of the Truss administration; Brown is now part of political history.

(Also, Brown was not responsible for the financial crash of 2008-09 anyway, but we can save that argument for another day.)

In a reference to yesterday’s tuition fees story, Sunak referred at times to Starmer breaking promises. This will strike a chord with people who do think the Labour leader is shifty. But it sounded more like humouring the base than a compelling attack line, and probably less damaging to Starmer than going into an election with a £9bn spending promise he found hard to defend.

There was one other ex-leader referenced today. When Sunak became PM, one of his major advantages was that he was not Boris Johnson. But perhaps the Johnson gene is catching. At the last two PMQs Sunak was happy to indulge in personal attacks of the kind that his predecessor would have been happy with. And today he was pulled up for adopting a Johnson approach to truthfulness. In his first answer he said he had corrected the record after making a misleading statement last week. (See 12.04pm). More corrections may be needed. As PMQs ended, three separate opposition MPs raised points of order, saying Sunak had misled MPs about Sadiq Khan’s housebuilding record, the Scottish government’s performance on getting disadvantaged pupils into university and crime figures.

I can’t recall three separate points of order like this after a Johnson PMQs. “Less accurate than Boris Johnson” – that’s not a verdict any PM should welcome.

Munira Wilson (Lib Dem) asks about a constituent who was hospitalised after swimming in the Thames at Shepperton. Thames Water dumped sewage in the river just days before. Why does Sunak think it is OK for water companies to carry on polluting rivers?

Sunak says the government has a clear plan to tackle this. He criticises Labour for not even supporting these plans in the vote last week.

Rebecca Long-Bailey (Lab) asks if the government will pay any compensation recommended by the ombudsman for compensation to be paid to Waspi women.

Sunak says there is a process under way, and the government will respond.

Ian Levy (Con) asks about a rail restoration project in his Blyth Valley constituency. Sunak says this shows the Tory government is delivering for the area.

Catherine McKinnell (Lab) says police cuts have left the north-east shortchanged.

Sunak says there are a record number of police officers, and crime is 50% lower than in 2010.

John Whittingdale (Con) asks if the goverment is committed to protecting media freedom on press freedom day.

Sunak says the government is committed to this.

Holly Lynch (Lab) says schools have had to become “the fourth emergency service” for families struggling with heating costs.

Sunak says the government has offered a lot of help to families with the cost of living.





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