UK politics: Labour puts Tories’ ‘freedom of speech’ law for universities on hold – as it happened | Politics

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Here is a summary of today’s key developments:

• Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said. Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.

• The healthcare regulator is so badly run that patients in England cannot trust the safety ratings it issues for hospitals, care homes or GP practices, the health secretary has said. Wes Streeting said the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was in such deep crisis it was not able to do its basic job reliably. His warning came after an interim report by the public care doctor Penny Dash found the CQC was plagued by low levels of physical inspections, a lack of consistency in assessments and problems with a faltering IT system.

• The government will not be “passing the buck” on building renewable energy infrastructure to future generations, the energy minister Michael Shanks said on Friday. Shanks also told MPs that some areas will have to host “nationally significant” power infrastructure such as solar farms in response to concerns expressed about the “detrimental impacts” on communities.

• Rachel Reeves is expected to reveal a £20bn hole in government spending for essential public services on Monday, paving the way for potential tax rises in the autumn budget. Labour sources said the blame lay with the Tory government, describing it as a “shocking inheritance” and accusing the former chancellor of “presiding over a black hole and still campaigning for tax cuts”.

• Mel Stride has become the fourth Conservative MP to announce they are joining the race for the party’s leadership. The former work and pensions secretary told BBC Breakfast on Friday he has been “fully nominated” as a candidate, joining Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader. Stride, the MP for Central Devon, said he believed he was the right person to “unite the party”.

• The prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has said that the government will not proceed with efforts to question whether the international criminal court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant. “On the ICC submission … I can confirm the government will not be pursuing (the proposal) in line with our longstanding position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” the spokesperson told reporters on Friday.

• The assisted dying bill has officially been introduced in the House of Lords as the health secretary said it is “a debate whose time has come”. Lord Falconer’s private member’s bill – the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill – was read out at the start of business in the House of Lords on Friday, and is expected to be debated in mid-November.

• Powers introduced by the Conservatives to protect freedom of speech in universities have been halted by the new government in a dramatic about-turn, paving the way for ministers to scrap the legislation. Only days before it was due to come into force, the education secretary said she had decided to “stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal”. In response, the shadow education secretary, Damian Hinds, accused the government of being willing to “sacrifice the next generation on the altar of their own ideological dogma”.

• Kemi Badenoch has accused one of her Conservative leadership rivals of a dirty tricks campaign against her as she continues to consider a bid for the top job. The shadow business secretary attacked her critics after a dossier was circulated claiming she was behind anonymous blog comments written 17 years ago in which the author celebrated being rude and made abusive remarks.

• Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay called on MPs to “move beyond some of the comments made” about his stance on a string of pylons along England’s east coast. Making his maiden speech in the House of Commons on Friday, the Waveney Valley MP said he welcomes the government’s plan to scale-up renewable energy generation but added Whitehall must turn its attention towards adapting and mitigating “climate breakdown”. At Wednesday’s PMQs, Keir Starmer said Ramsay had opposed “vital clean energy in his own constituency” and added: “He talks about leadership, and I’d ask him to show some.”

• People who lost relatives from the infected blood scandal will be able to apply for interim compensation payments from the autumn, a minister told the Commons on Friday. Nick Thomas-Symonds, who as paymaster general is a senior minister in the Cabinet Offic, also reiterated the government’s commitment to enacting the findings of the report into what happened.

• Prime minister Keir Starmer changed his travel plans to get to the Olympics on Friday after Eurostar trains were disrupted due to sabotage attacks against French rail networks, Downing Street said. Starmer was meant to be travelling on the cross-Channel rail service from London to Paris for the Olympics opening ceremony, in his first visit to France since being elected earlier this month. But a spokesperson said he flew instead due to the delays and cancellations.

• David Lammy has urged China to prevent its companies from supporting Russia’s war effort, the Foreign Office has said after the minister held his first meeting with his Beijing counterpart since Labour entered government.

• GCSE exams “dominate” the education system and should be scrapped by the new government, the Tory architect of the qualification said on Friday. Kenneth Baker oversaw the introduction of GCSEs while serving as education secretary in the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. But Baker described the level of testing on students as “absolutely absurd” and said GCSEs should become a “victim” of the curriculum and assessment review announced by the new Labour administration.

• Former Conservative party chairman Richard Holden said energy ministers have “refused to repeat this claim” that Labour’s clean energy plans will knock £300 off bills. Holden told the Commons on Friday that “Downing Street have been saying one thing, [energy minister Michael Shanks’] department have been saying another”. Shanks, replied: “I think it does take a bit of a brass neck to come here and talk about bringing down bills when the government that he supported for a long time saw those skyrocket.”

• The SNP is heading towards the opposition benches at Holyrood if it does not address the internal “culture of hate”, Joanna Cherry has said. The former SNP MP, who lost her Edinburgh South West seat to Labour at the general election, said she will be stepping away from frontline politics to “reflect” on the future of her party.

• The cost of England’s four biggest killer diseases could rise to £86bn a year by 2050, prompting calls for a crackdown on alcohol, junk food and smoking. The ageing population means the annual cost of cancer, heart disease, dementia and stroke combined will go from the £51.9bn recorded in 2018 to £85.6bn in 2050 – a rise of 61%.

• The “writing is on the wall for greyhound racing”, an MSP has said as a bill aiming to ban the sport in Scotland gained enough support to proceed at Holyrood. Mid Scotland and Fife Green MSP Mark Ruskell said his member’s bill had won the backing of enough colleagues at the Scottish parliament to allow it to be introduced.

• A justice minister has volunteered to wear an alcohol monitoring tag used to help cut re-offending rates for prison leavers. James Timpson said he expects to gain “first-hand insight” from wearing the device, which he said gives people a chance to “rewrite their behaviour”.

The government will not be “passing the buck” on building renewable energy infrastructure to future generations, the energy minister Michael Shanks said on Friday.

Shanks also told MPs that some areas will have to host “nationally significant” power infrastructure such as solar farms in response to concerns expressed about the “detrimental impacts” on communities.

The PA news agency reports that MPs had a general debate on Friday on making Britain a “clean energy superpower”, with the Great British Energy bill due to receive its second reading after the summer recess.

Conservative MP for Huntingdon Ben Obese-Jecty raised the East Park Energy solar farm, a proposed project in his constituency, which he said would be “larger than Gatwick airport”.

He said local residents have “grave concerns” over the scale of the development and asked the minister if he would commit to rural communities having a say on the government allowing large solar farms to be built in their local areas “given the detrimental impacts”.

Shanks replied:

We’re not in any way going to remove the ability of communities to be part of, of course, a consultation process in the planning system.”

He added:

But at some point, we have to have this national recognition that there is infrastructure that we need that is nationally significant.

Some communities will have to host that infrastructure and there should be benefits for those communities in doing it.

But that doesn’t mean that we should stop doing it and I’m afraid the days of government passing the buck to a future generation to fix these issues are gone.

We need to tackle this crisis and that means we will be building and there will be projects in communities, with consultation of course, but nationally significant projects will have to go ahead if we want to reach the targets by 2030.”

Elsewhere in the debate, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for climate change Wera Hobhouse said the race to net zero is the “major economic opportunity of the century”.

She said:

The green economy must sit at the heart of economic growth, and the government has work to do to reverse the damaging narrative of the previous government, that this is about green versus growth.

And also to reverse the unforgivable failures of the last Conservative government, which delayed, blocked or even reversed urgent action on climate change. Now is the time to move forward.”

Winding up, Tory shadow energy minister Joy Morrissey pointed to plans for a government-backed company called Great British Energy to “accelerate Britain’s pathway to energy independence”.

Morrissey said the plan “is simply the government subsidising high-risk projects for the private sector on the one hand, whilst decimating our oil and gas industry on the other”.

Hobhouse intervened and said:

Is the shadow minister not aware that exactly this negative narrative from her party has held us back in the way to net zero?”

In his winding up speech, Shanks said:

The rhetoric that we’re now hearing from this Conservative party is a million miles from that David Cameron conservatism that said we should take the environment seriously.”

He added:

The reason that we’re on this journey is not because of some sort of ideological commitment to net zero, but because we know it is the only way to deliver the energy security that we need to reduce our dependence on volatile gas prices and to deliver the cheaper energy that we know will bring down bills.”

Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has called on MPs to “move beyond some of the comments made” about his stance on a string of pylons along England’s east coast, reports the PA news agency.

Making his maiden speech on Friday, the Waveney Valley MP said he welcomes the government’s plan to scale-up renewable energy generation but added Whitehall must turn its attention towards adapting and mitigating “climate breakdown”.

Ramsay leads the Greens in England and Wales with Carla Denyer, the MP for Bristol Central who made her maiden speech on 18 July, and is one of four from his party newly elected to the Commons at the general election earlier this month.

At Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, Keir Starmer said Ramsay had opposed “vital clean energy in his own constituency” and added: “He talks about leadership, and I’d ask him to show some.”

Ramsay said in his maiden speech:

If we are to scale up renewable energy at pace – the pace required to tackle the climate emergency – we do need to take communities with us and make infrastructure decisions that are right for the long term.

So what I’ve called for in relation to the infrastructure proposals that are currently on the table for East Anglia is a proper options assessment of the different ways in which the energy generated by new windfarms in East Anglia is connected to the grid.”

The National Grid has plans for a 112-mile power line between Norwich in Norfolk and Tilbury in Essex, through Ramsay’s constituency which straddles the Norfolk and Suffolk boundary, to help connect offshore windfarms with the grid.

Referring to the prime minister’s wish to “reset” the tone of political debate, Ramsay said:

I’d ask that we move beyond some of the comments that have been made in this chamber to date on the particular infrastructure proposal that I referred to, and that the government commits to working with communities to ensure that infrastructure decisions are made in a way that properly accounts for the issues raised by wildlife organisations and local communities.”

The Green party co-leader also said “far more public policy attention needs to be given to how we adapt to a changing climate, as well as mitigating against the worst excesses of climate breakdown”, and he raised dentistry when he told the Commons he “had examples in Suffolk of people telling me they’ve resorted to pulling out their own teeth”.

He said:

Whether it’s the growing use of food banks, whether it’s people suffering from flooding or the decline in our services, I want to see real action that genuinely accounts for the needs of our rural communities.”

In her speech last week, Denyer vowed to speak up in parliament “regardless of whether others might find it contentious, and regardless too of whether we are swimming against the popular tide”.

Ed Miliband: people must be persuaded of need for pylons near homes

Fiona Harvey

Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said.

Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.

“Communities have the right to see the benefits,” he said, though he stopped short of specifying what measures Labour could take. Allowing local people a share in the projects could be one way, he added. “This is not just about community benefits but community shares, community ownership.”

He said the government would seek to minimise the impacts of new infrastructure on nature and the landscape. “We can integrate concerns about nature right at the beginning of the planning process,” he said. “There is a way of doing this that is positive for nature.”

Labour launched Great British Energy earlier this week, a nationally owned organisation that will invest billions in energy projects around the UK, including offshore wind. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, is aiming for 20m homes to be powered by offshore wind by the end of the decade, but that will require large amounts of new infrastructure, in the form not just of windfarms but grid connections and pylons to transport the power to where it is consumed.

Local groups have raised concerns about pylons and other infrastructure, and in some areas called for a pause while plans are scrutinised. Miliband indicated he was aware of the concerns but said that in his view the infrastructure was sorely needed to revive the UK economy and move to a clean energy future.

“I’m in the persuasion business, not the telling business,” he told a conference on Friday morning of the Labour Climate and Environment Forum, a group for Labour MPs with green leanings that intends to push the government towards more environmental policies. “Persuasion is very important.”

You can read the full piece here:

Kemi Badenoch accuses Tory leadership rival of ‘dirty tricks’

Rowena Mason

Kemi Badenoch has accused one of her Conservative leadership rivals of a dirty tricks campaign against her as she continues to consider a bid for the top job.

The shadow business secretary attacked her critics after a dossier was circulated claiming she was behind anonymous blog comments written 17 years ago in which the author celebrated being rude and made abusive remarks.

Badenoch posted in response on social media that it was “amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to play dirty tricks”, claiming that “apparently, a leadership campaign has sent a ‘dirty dossier’ of ‘strong comments’ from 20 yrs ago to the Westminster lobby”.

She added: “We can do better than this, and I will be saying and writing more about how in due course.”

Badenoch also said much of the “discourse across the political spectrum is obsessed with the petty and the puerile”.

The claims within the dossier were first published in the Spectator, which asked: “Could these be the online comments of young Kemi Badenoch?” Some of the comments talked about stereotypes of Thai and Nigerian women, while another branded Diane Abbott a “hypocrite”.

Another said:

Most of the people who changed the world, for good were notoriously rude. It was the bad people, Idi Amin, Hitler etc who were charming and respectful. People like you would have been defending them that they were good people because they had good manners. Robert Mugabe was also once known for his good manners!!”

Friends of Badenoch said she had owned a user profile on the website but that much of the material in the dossier was from another poster calling themselves “kemi”. They said it was a common name and that there was a lot of impersonation happening on the website, and that Badenoch could not remember which, if any of the remarks were made by her.

You can read the full story here:

A controversial new law that could see universities and student unions fined for failing to uphold “freedom of speech” could be repealed under Labour, the education secretary has announced.

Bridget Phillipson said there were concerns the legislation would be “burdensome” on providers and the Office for Students (OfS) watchdog.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which was due to come into force next week, will be put on hold to allow for time to consider options “including its repeal”, she said.

In a written ministerial statement on Friday, the education secretary said:

I am aware of concerns that the act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long-term plans as soon as possible.

To enable students to thrive in higher education, I welcome the OfS’s plans to introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges.”

The act, introduced by the previous Tory government, sought to place a duty to “secure” and “promote the importance of” freedom of speech and academic expression.

Phillipson has signalled that Labour wants an end to so-called “culture wars” on campuses after a number of high-profile protests – including at Oxford before a talk by academic Kathleen Stock over her views on gender identity.

Higher education institutions will still have a legal duty to uphold freedom of speech under existing legislation.

When the new powers were introduced, the Conservatives said it would allow speakers to express views which others may disagree with as long as they did not cross a threshold into hate speech or incitement of violence. Critics argued the measures went too far and could lead to further disruption.

A review of the OfS by public servant David Behan warned there was a perception that the watchdog is “not sufficiently independent” and recommended its structure be revised.

In her statement, Phillipson said the regulator, which would have been allowed to fine or sanction institutions under the new law, should “more sharply focus” on key priorities such as the financial stability of universities.

“The government accepts the core analysis of the review and as set out in our manifesto, we recognise that strong regulation is a crucial element for a stable, world-leading higher education sector, that delivers for students and the economy,” she said.

She added:

I have written to colleagues separately about my decision to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal.”

The PA news agency reports that Downing Street rejected suggestions that the move amounted to a weakening of free speech. Asked by journalists whether the decision was a backslide, a Number 10 spokesperson said:

I disagree with that characterisation, but it is also right to listen to concerns and take stock, and that’s what the department is doing.”

You can read more on this story here: