Keir Starmer averts row with union leaders as Labour reiterates ‘full commitment’ to new deal for working people – as it happened

Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, is taking questions in the Commons this morning. After he finishes there are two urgent questions (UQs). At 12.30pm a Home Office minister will respond to one from Gavin Robinson, the DUP leader, about yesterday’s court judgment saying asylum seekers in Northern Ireland are protected under the Good Friday agreement from the risk of deportation to Rwanda.

And at around 1.15pm a health minister will respond to a UQ from the Tory Danny Kruger about the proposed World Health Organisation pandemic agreement.

Anne Keast-Butler, head of GCHQ, the UK’s electronic surveillance centre, has said that responding to the “coercive and destabilising actions” of China is her “top priority”.

In a speech at the Cyber UK conference in Birmingham, she said the scale of the challenge from Beijing meant GCHQ devotes “more resource to China than any other single mission”. She explained:

Through their coercive and destabilising actions, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] poses a significant risk to international norms and values.

In cyberspace, we believe that the PRC’s irresponsible actions weaken the security of the internet for all.

China has built an advanced set of cyber capabilities, and is taking advantage of a growing commercial ecosystem of hacking outfits and data brokers at its disposal.

China poses a genuine and increasing cyber risk to the UK.

Keast-Butler said China wanted to shape global technology standards and assert its dominance in the field within the next 10 to 15 years, she said.

We have repeatedly called out Chinese cyber adversaries for activities that threaten the security of the UK or target the institutions important to our society, such as the compromise of the UK Electoral Commission.

As PA Media reports, Keast-Butler also said that there were growing links between Russia’s intelligence services and proxy groups conducting “cyber-attacks, as well as suspected physical surveillance and sabotage operations”.

Previously, Russia “simply created the right environment” for these groups, but it was now “nurturing and inspiring these non-state cyber actors, in some cases seemingly coordinating physical attacks against the west”, she said.

View image in fullscreen

A controversial farming payment scheme which sparked mass protests has been delayed as Welsh government ministers accept “changes will be needed”, PA Media reports. PA says:

The Welsh rural affairs secretary Huw Irranca-Davies has announced changes to the sustainable farming scheme (SFS) – a Welsh government subsidy plan which is set to require farmers to set aside more land for environmental schemes.

Concerns about its impact, alongside measures to control TB and regulations aimed at preventing nitrates from seeping into rivers, have led farmers to mobilise in protest, with around 3,000 people demonstrating outside the Senedd in February.

Speaking at a press conference at Sealands Farm in Bridgend this morning, the cabinet secretary said that a change of timings was part of his “commitment to meaningful engagement with the farming sector”.

The SFS had been due to come in from January 2025 but a transition period will now start in 2026.

He confirmed that the basic payment scheme – the existing payment structure – would continue to be available next year.

Under the current SFS proposal, Welsh farmers are meant to set aside 10% of their land for trees and a further 10% for wildlife habitat. Farming leaders said that could lead to 5,500 job losses.

Irranca-Davies said: “My commitment to meaningful engagement with the farming sector and other stakeholders on the changes needed will necessitate a change in the implementation timetable. We have always said the scheme would not be introduced until it is ready and I stand by that.”

The Foreign Office has delivered a reprimand to the Chinese ambassador in the UK, Zheng Zeguang, over China’s interference in affairs in Britain.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said Zheng was summoned to a meeting on the orders of David Cameron, the foreign secretary. A Foreign Office spokesperson said:

Today, on instruction from the foreign secretary, the Chinese ambassador was summoned to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The FCDO was unequivocal in setting out that the recent pattern of behaviour directed by China against the UK including cyber-attacks, reports of espionage links and the issuing of bounties is not acceptable.

The summons followed Monday’s announcement that three people have been charged with offences under the National Security Act as part of an investigation led by officers from the Met Police’s counter-terrorism command.

The foreign intelligence service to which the charges relate is that of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, is giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in Belfast today. And she has said she is “truly sorry” for the harm caused by her decision to attend the funeral of Bobby Storey, a leading IRA figure. Around 1,800 mourners lined the streets to mark the event, even though at the time Covid rules said the maximum number of people allowed at a funeral was 30.

Asked about the event, O’Neill said:

I know that my actions also angered the families and for that I’m truly sorry. I am sorry for going and I’m sorry for the harm that’s been caused after [it].

Asked if she realised the anger that going to the funeral would cause, she said:

I didn’t but I ought to have.

I’ve said it publicly on a number of occasions about how sorry I am and I am absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, sorry.

I do accept wholeheartedly that I in some way damaged our executive relations with colleagues who had been working very hard with me the whole way through, and I also accept wholeheartedly that I damaged the public health messaging and I had work to do to regain that.

View image in fullscreen

There is no evidence of widespread abuse of the UK’s graduate visa route, the government’s immigration advisers have concluded, despite repeated claims from senior Conservatives that it is being exploited to enter the jobs market. The Migration Advisory Committee has said this in a report out today. Rajeev Syal and Richard Adams have the story here.

In interviews this morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, also insisted that the government was fully behind Ukraine and that it would not put pressure on it at any point to accept a compromise peace deal with Russia.

Ministers have been under pressure to clarify this since a report in the Sunday Times said that David Cameron, the foreign secretary, persuaded Donald Trump to back the release of more US military aid to Ukraine by putting it to him that this would prolong the stalemate until the end of the year, allowing Trump to negotiate the peace settlement he claims he will be able to arrange if he becomes president in January.

According to the Sunday Times, Trump was intrigued by this argument. Less than two weeks later, the US Congress approved the military aid package after the speaker, Trump ally Mike Johnson, scheduled a vote that he had been resisting.

Yesterday Downing Street did not deny the Sunday Times account of the Cameron/Trump conversation, but it insisted that the UK would continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary.

The Sunday Times did not describe Cameron as being in favour of a peace deal with Russia, but it implied the government might be open to this scenario in the event of Trump winning the US presidency.

This morning Shapps said the UK would not put pressure on Ukraine to accept a deal with Russia. He told Times Radio:

There is no sense at all in which Britain would try to persuade, strong-arm or otherwise, Ukraine into accepting giving up some of their territory – that’s a decision entirely for Ukraine.

I don’t think it’s plausible at all for Putin to win this war.

If you give a bully like Putin an inch they’ll take a mile, and in this case they will take, probably would take quite a lot of not just Ukraine, but I’m not sure he would stop there either.

What Ukraine does and how it decides to bring this to an end is their business. What I can confirm is that the UK will back Ukraine all the way.

Asked about the Sunday Times report, Shapps said:

Obviously I wasn’t in the room. I know what the foreign secretary did say, which is that it’s very very important that the United States follows the UK’s lead and we just increased our money to Ukraine this year.

[Cameron] certainly would have said to Trump that it’s very important that the United States Senate sees that package go through Congress and that package did go through Congress, and thank goodness because it’s armaments and defensive weapons very much needed by our Ukrainian friends.

In his speech yesterday Rishi Sunak claimed that Labour would not be able to continue supplying Ukraine with the military aid it needs in the way that the Conservative government is doing. But as he was speaking David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, and John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, were in Kyiv for a meeting with Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister. Labour released details of the visit last night.

Lammy said he and Healey told their hosts that Labour’s commitment to Ukraine was “ironclad”. He said:

As Putin seeks to divide the West, we visited Kyiv together to send a clear message that a change in government in the UK would mean no change in our military, diplomatic, financial and political support to Ukraine.

Moscow’s deepened cooperation with Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang requires us to deepen our cooperation with Britain’s allies to demonstrate that our commitment to Ukraine will outlast Vladmir Putin’s imperial invasion.

The next Labour government’s commitment to Ukraine will be ironclad and European security will be our first foreign and defence priority. Labour’s action plan lays out a wide-ranging approach to stand with Ukraine, confront Russian aggression and pursue Putin for his war crimes. We will stand with Ukraine until it wins.

View image in fullscreen

Good morning. Normally foreign policy is not a central issue in an election year but yesterday Rishi Sunak embraced it; after months and years of trying to find a compelling reason why he thinks people should not trust Keir Starmer to form the next government, he focused on the argument that with Labour in power Britain would be less safe. Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and he has been doubling down on the message.

In truth, the gap between Labour and the Conservatives on defence spending is not enormous. Sunak has given a firm commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, which he plans to fund through civil service jobs cuts and efficiency savings, but he does not plan to reach the 2.5% target until 2030. Labour has said that it aims to increase defence spending to 2.5%, but only when resources allow (which means that it does have a costed plan to get there).

However, Shapps told Sky News this morning that he thought Starmer’s failure to have a plan to increase the defence budget was a significant problem.

You can’t wish your way to more defence spending. You have to set out the plans and do it and that is why our plans now are fundamentally different to Labour.

And I have to say as defence Secretary, with everything that I know in this role, that I think that the Labour position presents a danger to this country because it will send a signal to our adversaries that we are not serious about our defence if we won’t set out that timetable.

For a host of other reasons, the Conservative party is also vulnerable to the charge that it is not serious about governing and Sunak’s speech yesterday, which opened with a passage about how the UK was about to confront some of the most dangerous threats in its history, coincided with Esther McVey, the so-called “minister for common sense”, announcing that she is going to stop civil servants wearing rainbow lanyards. To her credit, she did not try to argue that this would minimise the risk of attack from Russia, but it did raise questions about whether the government has got its priorities right.

In an interview with Times Radio, Shapps came close to saying he thought McVey was wasting her time. Asked about his colleague’s rainbow lanyard crackdown, he replied:

Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. It doesn’t, you know, what lanyard somebody wears, doesn’t particularly concern me.

But I do think – and this is where I think Esther McVey has a point – that what we want is our civil servants to be getting on with the main job. And the main job is to serve the department they work for, in my case, defence, but across Whitehall.

I think she was getting at the idea that that should be the focus for civil servants.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry in Belfast.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Grant Shapps gives a speech at a sea power conference at Lancaster House.

Afternoon: Keir Starmer has a meeting with union leaders where they are expected to raise concerns that the new deal for working people plans are being watered down.

Also, Sunak is hosting a Farm to Fork summit at Downing Street.

And Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, are in Saudi Arabia for an investment summit.

For technical reasons we are not using the ‘send us a message’ feature any more, and if you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.