Suella Braverman did breach ministerial code says former top civil servant
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is back from Japan, and this morning he is due to meet Sir Laurie Magnus, his ethics adviser, to discuss whether Magnus should launch an inquiry into claims that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, broke the ministerial code when she asked officials about arranging a private speed awareness course after she was caught speeding. These courses are meant to be group events, but Braverman did not want a bunch of strangers to know she was taking part.
Given the controversy this story has aroused, it will be surprising if Sunak does not order an inquiry. Here is Pippa Crerar’s overnight story.
On the BBC’s Westminster Hour last night Philip Rycroft, a former permanent secretary at the Brexit department, said he thought Braverman had broken the ministerial code. He told the programme:
This, on the face of it, I think, is a breach of the ministerial code. Obviously, there’s still investigations to be done and so on but the code is very clear. Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises or appears to arise between their public duties and their private interests.
Even asking a question of a civil servant as to how she might go on one of these courses puts them in an impossible position. And for somebody, you know, who wakes up in the morning and sees a future prime minister, this is a real lapse of judgment.
And this morning Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, the union that represents senior civil servants, said he thought Braverman has abused her position. He told Sky News:
Civil servants are publicly funded. They’re paid for by you and me. They’re not there to support the personal interests of a minister. They don’t do their shopping, they don’t look after their children and they don’t sort out their speeding fine.
In truth, as breaches of the ministerial code go, this seems to be at the mild end of what might count, and if this story were about a more anonymous member of the cabinet (Mel Stride, Gillian Keegan?), it would be attracting far less attention.
But Braverman is not an anonymous minister, which is why this issue is a problem for Sunak. She has already had to resign once for breaching the ministerial code, for sending an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP. She has set herself up as the de facto leader of a Tory faction pushing for a much harder stance on legal and illegal immigration, to the extent that she sometimes gives the impression that she wants to be sacked. But this has also given her a following, and her allies are briefing the media that she is the victim of a smear campaign.
This morning Keir Starmer said that if Braverman has broken the ministerial code, she should resign. Peter Walker has the story here.
“The ministerial code is pretty clear that if you break it, you’re supposed to go,” Starmer said.
In fact, Starmer is wrong about that. The code used to operate on that basis, but guidance from No 10 issued last year says that if a minister has broken the code, in some circumstances a public apology would be the appropriate sanction. It says:
As both Lord Geidt and the Committee on Standards in Public Life have recommended last year, it is disproportionate to expect that any breach, however minor, should lead automatically to resignation or dismissal. The sanction which the prime minister may decide to issue in a given case is for the prime minister to determine, but could include requiring some form of public apology, remedial action or removal of ministerial salary for a period. The ministerial code has been updated to reflect this.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.25am: Keir Starmer gives a speech on Labour’s health mission.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to make a Commons statement on the G7 summit.
After 4.30pm: MPs debate Labour amendments to the strikes (minimum service levels) bill.
5pm: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, gives a speech in Chile.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often 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 in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
Q: Are you ruling out a salt or sugar tax for good?
Starmer says his focus today is on limits on advertising unhealthy foods.
Q: Would you give nurses a further pay rise? And do you think consultants should get a higher pay rise?
Starmer says this government has lasted as long as the last Labour won. Under Labour, nurses were paid fairly, and nurses did not go on strike. Now no one quarrels with the idea that the NHS is on its knees. The only debate is whether it is on its knees or on its face.
Q: You have not said anything about social care. Is it no longer a priority?
Starmer says it still is a priority.
Labour has set out a plan for staff in the care sector. He says his sister works in this sector, so he knows it well. Labour would improve career progression options for careers, he says.
And it would encourage more people to be looked after at home.
Q: How much will these plans cost?
Starmer says specific proposals have been costed.
And he says technology can reduce costs. Earlier cancer diagnosis would cut costs. And merging waiting lists, so the people can be seen in different hospitals, would cut costs.
He says he understands why journalists are asking these questions about costs. But he says he has run a public service. He know it is not all about funding.
Q: You seem to be kicking the issue of money into the long grass. How can people trust you if you won’t say how will will pay for this? And why won’t you say if you will pay NHS staff more?
Starmer says, where Labour has proposed measures that would cost more, it has said how it would fund that. For example, it would fund training more doctors and nurses by abolishing non-dom status.
On NHS staff, he says his wife works for the NHS, so he knows what NHS staff think. They are worried about whether the NHS will continue to exist. That worry is fair, he says. They are very pleased about the plan to train more staff.
Starmer is now taking questions.
Q: Would the NHS get more money overall under Labour?
Starmer says it is not all about money. Money is part of the solution. But change is important too. The NHS needs to use technology more effectively, he says.
Starmer says Labour would let patients visit nearby hospitals for treatment if faster treatment is available there than is available at their local one.
Starmer says Labour wants to reduce heart attacks and strokes by quarter within decade
Starmer says Labour would zone in on the biggest killers.
He says it would get heart attacks and strokes down by a quarter within a decade.
On cancer, Labour would ensure 75% of all cancer is diagnosed at stage one or two. He says the survival rate for cancer at stage one or two is 81%. But at stage three or four it is just 26%.
And, on suicide, he says Labour would reverse the number of deaths by suicide.
He says he has had three friends die this way. Suicide is the biggest killer of young lives in this country, he says. Labour would
Starmer says Labour would improve healthy life expectancy for all, and halve the health inequality gap between different regions of England.
He says this would restart a trend we should take for granted – that over time people live longer, and happier lives.
This would make Britain fairer too, he says.
Starmer is now giving details of his health missions.
He says Labour would ensure that ambulances arrive within seven minutes for cardiac arrests, that people do not have to wait for more than four hours at A&E, and that GP satisfaction ratings reach record levels.
Starmer thanks people working in the NHS.
Without them, there would be no light at the end of the tunnel, he says.
He says the reward for reform will be worth it.
And the Tories will never deliver this, he claims. They voted against it at the start. And, although they claim to support it now, he says in their heart of hearts they don’t. They see it as “a cost, not a cause”. It does not fit in with their vision of a small state Britain.
He says the Tories also underestimate the NHS, and the importance of the bond that it creates between people.
Starmer says NHS ‘not sustainable’ without serious, long-term change
Starmer says the NHS “not sustainable unless we make serious, deep, long-term changes”.
That is his plan, he says. He wants to make it fit for the future.
He says money is part of this. He will set out Labour’s plans before the election, based on economic circumstances at the time, he says.
But he says what is “more important” is to set out Labour’s recipe for reform.
Starmer claims NHS would not survive another five years of Tory government
Keir Starmer has just started giving his speech on his health missions. There is a live feed at the top of this blog.
He says he does not think the NHS could survive another five years of Tory government.
If people doubt that, they should listen to those who work in it.
At the next election, the NHS will be on the line, he says. The Tories would “put it in the ground”.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
I don’t think the NHS survives five more years of Tory government …
At the next election, the NHS is on the line. The Conservative Party that has brought it to its knees will put it in the ground.
Starmer says he would ‘expect’ net immigration to fall under Labour, but declines to say by how much
In his Today programme interview Keir Starmer was asked at length about his approach to net immigration, and whether he wanted overall numbers to fall. This issue has been a problem for the Conservative party ever since David Cameron rashly promised to get annual net immigration below 100,000, and Rishi Sunak was criticised at the end of last week for saying he is no longer aiming to get annual net immigration below 220,000, the pledge implied by the 2019 Tory manifesto, but just below 500,000, the level he inherited. Figures out on Thursday are expected to show the figure for 2022 running at 700,000 or more.
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Starmer said that he wanted and expected annual net immigration to fall during the first term of a Labour government, but he refused to set a target for how much that fall should be. Asked if he would expect the annual figure to fall below 500,000, he replied:
I would expect and want that figure to come down, and I’ll tell you for why. A driver of immigration into this country is our failure on the skills agenda. So many businesses across the country say to me, ‘Look we can’t get the skills we need from the UK therefore we’re more or less forced to recruit from abroad’. This is a problem that the government has failed to address for year after year after year.
Asked specifically if immigration would come down in the first term of a Labour government, Starmer said: “I would expect it to come down and I would want it to come down.” But, despite being pressed repeatedly what his target would be, Starmer refused to give even an approximate number. He said the Tories had repeatedly set a “hard target” that they had missed. He said he was more interested in indicating the “direction of travel” under Labour. He said:
I‘m not going to put a number on it. I think that that’s what the government did in the past. They never met the target. But I would like and want to see, and expect to see, the number coming down.
Asked if immigration would fall “significantly” during the first term of a Labour government, Starmer repeated the point about “direction of travel”. When it was put to him that that could mean a fall of just 2,000 or 3,000, he said: “I think it would be more than that.”
I want good students to come to the UK. We’ve got a fantastic story to tell in relation to students.
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But he said that if, as expected, the government this week announces new restrictions on foreign students bringing their dependents to the UK, Labour would not oppose that.
Hunt reprimanded over wrongly implying UK public debt forecast to fall
The official statistics watchdog has reprimanded the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, after he claimed public debt levels would fall in the coming years, when in fact they are simply forecast to rise less steeply than previously expected. Peter Walker has the story.
Starmer says NHS needs reform as well as more cash, but insists it’s ‘always better funded under Labour’
Keir Starmer will give a speech this morning providing details about Labour’s “mission” on health. Health is one of the five “missions” – overall strategic aims – he has set for a Labour government, but each mission comes with its own set of targets (sub-missions?), and, as Matthew Weaver and Pippa Crerar report, the health one will include reducing deaths from suicide.
Starmer gave more details of his thinking on health in an interview round this morning. Here are some of the points he made.
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Starmer claimed the NHS was “always better funded under Labour”. The overnight briefing from Labour about his speech suggests that he is not going to promise extra money for the NHS in what he announces this morning. But when asked about funding, he told the Today programme:
Money is part of the answer and the NHS is always better funded under Labour.
So far as the money is concerned, firstly, wherever we’ve made a specific commitment we’re setting out in terms today how we’ll pay for that.
I ran a public service for five years, I do know that if you put more money in the top you do get a better outcome, so money is, of course, part of the answer, but we’ve also got to change and reform.
If we go down the path of prevention, that actually will not only be a lot better for people’s lives and their health, but also, in the long run, actually cost a lot less.
We don’t want to go down the road of making food more expensive in the middle of a cost of living crisis, which is why today we’ll focus on advertising rather than increasing the cost to food, because I think for many families who are already struggling, the idea that food prices would go up again is something which simply wouldn’t be tolerable from their point of view.
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But he said his “very strong view” was that sugary food, and vaping, should not be advertised to children. He said:
In the speech, I’m going to deal with vaping and junk food and sugary foods, which should not be advertised to children in my very strong view. It’s so bad for their health, so bad for the NHS.
Suella Braverman did breach ministerial code says former top civil servant
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is back from Japan, and this morning he is due to meet Sir Laurie Magnus, his ethics adviser, to discuss whether Magnus should launch an inquiry into claims that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, broke the ministerial code when she asked officials about arranging a private speed awareness course after she was caught speeding. These courses are meant to be group events, but Braverman did not want a bunch of strangers to know she was taking part.
Given the controversy this story has aroused, it will be surprising if Sunak does not order an inquiry. Here is Pippa Crerar’s overnight story.
On the BBC’s Westminster Hour last night Philip Rycroft, a former permanent secretary at the Brexit department, said he thought Braverman had broken the ministerial code. He told the programme:
This, on the face of it, I think, is a breach of the ministerial code. Obviously, there’s still investigations to be done and so on but the code is very clear. Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises or appears to arise between their public duties and their private interests.
Even asking a question of a civil servant as to how she might go on one of these courses puts them in an impossible position. And for somebody, you know, who wakes up in the morning and sees a future prime minister, this is a real lapse of judgment.
And this morning Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, the union that represents senior civil servants, said he thought Braverman has abused her position. He told Sky News:
Civil servants are publicly funded. They’re paid for by you and me. They’re not there to support the personal interests of a minister. They don’t do their shopping, they don’t look after their children and they don’t sort out their speeding fine.
In truth, as breaches of the ministerial code go, this seems to be at the mild end of what might count, and if this story were about a more anonymous member of the cabinet (Mel Stride, Gillian Keegan?), it would be attracting far less attention.
But Braverman is not an anonymous minister, which is why this issue is a problem for Sunak. She has already had to resign once for breaching the ministerial code, for sending an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP. She has set herself up as the de facto leader of a Tory faction pushing for a much harder stance on legal and illegal immigration, to the extent that she sometimes gives the impression that she wants to be sacked. But this has also given her a following, and her allies are briefing the media that she is the victim of a smear campaign.
This morning Keir Starmer said that if Braverman has broken the ministerial code, she should resign. Peter Walker has the story here.
“The ministerial code is pretty clear that if you break it, you’re supposed to go,” Starmer said.
In fact, Starmer is wrong about that. The code used to operate on that basis, but guidance from No 10 issued last year says that if a minister has broken the code, in some circumstances a public apology would be the appropriate sanction. It says:
As both Lord Geidt and the Committee on Standards in Public Life have recommended last year, it is disproportionate to expect that any breach, however minor, should lead automatically to resignation or dismissal. The sanction which the prime minister may decide to issue in a given case is for the prime minister to determine, but could include requiring some form of public apology, remedial action or removal of ministerial salary for a period. The ministerial code has been updated to reflect this.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.25am: Keir Starmer gives a speech on Labour’s health mission.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to make a Commons statement on the G7 summit.
After 4.30pm: MPs debate Labour amendments to the strikes (minimum service levels) bill.
5pm: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, gives a speech in Chile.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often 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 in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
