Senior Tory Peter Bottomley criticised after saying MPs should be paid more – as it happened

Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Conservative leader, has said that he is taking a complete break from work because he has been ill with flu and Covid and it has affected his mental wellbeing. In a statement, he says that as a leader it is important to set an example, and that it is important, particularly for men, to acknowledge when they are having problems of this kind.

Boris Johnson has selected the head of the navy for the first time in 20 years as the next chief of Britain’s armed forces, a choice intended to reinforce the UK’s post-Brexit switch in focus to the Indo-Pacific region, my colleague Dan Sabbagh reports.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has said that the transition to renewable energy will protect consumers from sudden price increases of the kind consumers are experiencing at the moment. He also claimed that eventually it would lead to lower prices.

Speaking at a conference organised by the trade body Energy UK, Kwarteng said:

The UK so far, as many of you know, has made great progress in diversifying our energy mix. But we are still very dependent, perhaps too dependent, on fossil fuels and their volatile prices.

Referring to the government’s commitment this week for all UK electricity to come from renewable sources by 2035, he said:

Our homes and businesses will be powered by affordable, clean and secure electricity generated here in the UK, for people in the UK.

Relying on homegrown power generation will protect consumers from gas price fluctuations.

And it will, in the long run, bring down bills. We will use the wealth of Britain’s natural resources to deliver cleaner, cheaper power.

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An estimated 405,000 people in private households in the UK have experienced self-reported long Covid that has lasted for at least a year, PA Media reports. PA says:

This is up slightly from 384,000 in a similar survey carried out a month earlier.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are based on responses collected in the four weeks to 5 September.

They also suggest a total of 1.1 million people in the UK experienced long Covid during the period of the survey, defined as symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after their first suspected coronavirus infection. This is up from 970,000 in the previous survey.

Here is more on the Opinium polling from last night suggesting that voters preferred Sir Keir Starmer’s conference speech to Boris Johnson’s.

Opinium released the figures for their poll on the Starmer speech last week. This is how they compare with the figures for Johnson.

Agreed with what he had to say

Starmer

Agreed: 63%

Disagreed: 29%

Net: +34

Johnson

Agreed: 51%

Disagreed: 41%

Net: +10

Came across as strong

Starmer

Strong: 57%

Weak: 26%

Net: +31

Johnson

Strong: 53%

Weak: 30%

Net: +23

Seemed to care about ordinary people

Starmer

Cares: 68%

Doesn’t care: 19%

Net: +49

Johnson

Cares: 46%

Doesn’t care: 42%

Net: +4

Seemed to be in touch with people’s concerns

Starmer

In touch: 60%

Out of touch: 29%

Net: +31

Johnson

In touch: 44%

Out of touch: 45%

Net: -1

Seemed interesting

Starmer

Interesting: 41%

Boring: 28%

Net: +13

Johnson

Interesting: 40%

Boring: 22%

Net: +18

The two surveys involved showing people a video with highlights from the speech, and then asking them questions based on what they had seen. Both surveys involved around 1,300 respondents, and the results were weighted to make them representative of the population.

In his morning interviews Nadhim Zahawi also answered questions relating to his job as education secretary. Here are the key points.

• Zahawi said pupils in England could be made to wear masks again if the Covid situation deteriorated significantly, under a government contingency plan.

• He said he wanted pupils to catch up on the learning they had missed during the pandemic by the end of this parliament. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

My pledge to your viewers and the country, as the prime minister pledged, is children will catch up by the end of this parliament.

• He said the 300,000 CO₂ monitors promised to schools to allow them to monitor ventilation would be delivered by the end of November. He said several thousand had already been delivered, and up to 90,000 would arrive by the end of this month. Asked why delivery of the monitors was taking so long, when they were promised in August, he said:

I think it’s – obviously I’ve only been in department for two weeks – but I think it’s a combination of supply and making sure we’ve got supply, and then working with schools to see how many they need in each school. But we are ramping up through this month and next month.

• He hinted that his spending review negotiations with the Treasury might produce more money for teachers’ pay. Asked about the current pay freeze, he said the government was still committed to raising starting salaries to £30,000 by 2023. He went on:

I’m in the middle of a spending review negotiation with the Treasury and we’ll say more about this in a couple of weeks time when that spending review is completed ...

There is a pay freeze at the moment. But I have a pay review body that looks at pay in the same way that the health service and the health secretary has a pay review body that looks at pay.

And when they make a recommendation, I will look at that recommendation. That’s what I’m saying to you.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, said he thought it was unfair to criticise Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, for singing Time of My Life at a conference party on Tuesday night, only hours before the £20 per week universal credit cut took effect.

He said that “parties and dance-offs and singing” were a feature of party conferences, and that Coffey had secured the extra £500m to help those affected by the cut that was announced last week. He said:

I think [it’s] slightly unfair to sort of link [Coffey’s singing] with what we’re trying to do to help the most needy with that half a billion that we announced just as we were getting to party conference.

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Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, was doing the morning interview round for No 10 today.

Asked if the government was “on a warpath” with business, Zahawi told Sky News he did not agree. He went on:

What I would say to everybody is look, let’s work together.

We have seen retailers who invested in technology and have done really well. Others like Topshop and Topman didn’t make that investment and haven’t done so well.

We’ve seen SMEs take advantage [of] £100bn of grants and loans to support SMEs. That is what this government is doing to help business.

Richard Walker, managing director of the supermarket chain Iceland, has become the latest business figure to criticise Boris Johnson’s approach to business. Walker, who voted for Brexit, is quoted in the Times today (paywall) accusing the government of treating the business sector like an “endless sponge” because it is expected to absorb rising taxes and other higher costs.

In an interview on the Today programme this morning he expanded on this, saying that it was not helpful for Johnson to blame business for driver shortages. Asked about Johnson’s stance, he said:

I don’t think it’s particularly helpful at the moment. I mean business is dealing with so much and so many different crises which has all compounded at once. So, pointing the finger and choosing us as the bogeymen for issues such as HGV driver shortages - which is multifaceted and systemic - is simply not helpful ...

I think at the moment, all of these cost pressures are coming just at a time where they’ll [the government] be withdrawing the £20 universal credit allowance, which some of our customers really rely on. So, yes, I think it’s kind of a double-ended problem, and it’s inevitable that we will see price rises.

The UK supermarket industry is one of the most competitive in the world. Our margins are very, very tight and we’re not an endless sponge that can just absorb all of these different cost increases.

Good morning. Boris Johnson’s conference address got a very warm reception at the Conservative party conference yesterday, but speeches don’t always age well and since then the doubts about it have been firming up. Even some of the rightwing papers have been expressing reservations.

And last night Opinium released polling suggesting that Sir Keir Starmer’s conference speech made a better impression. Here are the key charts.

Polling should always be treated with some caution, and these figures are particularly tentative because, according to Sky News, which commissioned the poll, respondents only saw excerpts from the speeches. Almost no one watches party conference speeches in full, and the impact they make is determined by what people read or hear about them via the media, and that is still unfolding.

Still, on this measure at last, Johnson has been beaten by the man he dubbed “the human weathervane, the Starmer chameleon”.

For good round-up of how the papers are reporting the speech, do read the summary in Politico’s London Playbook, which is particularly thorough.

Parliament is still in recess and it looks as if it will be a quiet day at Westminster. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, is speaking at an energy conference, Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator, is giving a speech on the Northern Ireland protocol, and ministers are expected to announce a change to the Covid travel red list this afternoon.

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