Rishi Sunak has acknowledged it has become harder for people to own their first home under the Conservatives.
Speaking to the BBC as part of its Panorama interviews with Nick Robinson, Sunak said:
It has got harder and I want to make sure that it’s easier and what we will do is not just build homes in the right places and do that in a way that is sensitive to local communities, but make sure that we support young people in to great jobs so they can save for that deposit. I’m going to go back to tax, because it is important…
Robinson intervened to say most young people are not worried about the deposit or stamp duty, adding they cannot afford to leave their parents’ home.
The prime minister replied:
No, actually when I speak to people it is the deposit that is the biggest challenge because many people earn enough to cover a mortgage payment, but the struggle is saving up for a deposit.
That has always over the last few years been the number one challenge.
The full interview is due to air this evening at 8pm and we’ll bring you more lines from it as we get them.
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Key events (30)Rishi Sunak (21)Ed Davey (15)Nigel Farage (10)Nick Robinson (7)Keir Starmer (6)
Conservative rightwingers are planning to present Rishi Sunak with demands for tougher action on immigration and human rights law ahead of the election if the prime minister’s manifesto promises on Tuesday fall flat. Prominent party figures including Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick are said by Tory insiders to be among those waiting to see how their manifesto is received by the public before they act. In the event Sunak’s launch fails to shift the dial on Tories floundering election campaign, one option under discussion is a press conference next week to set out a series of alternative pledges.
Rishi Sunak has repeated his apology for his “mistake” of returning early from last week’s D-Day commemorations in Normandy. Speaking to the BBC as part of its Panorama interviews with Nick Robinson, Sunak said: “Well, the last thing that I wanted to do was cause anyone any hurt or offence or upset, which is why I apologised unreservedly for the mistake that I made.”
Sunak was also challenged about criticism from Nigel Farage and whether the Reform UK leader is more Conservative than him. The prime minister replied to BBC Panorama: “So the choice for everybody, there’s only going to be one of two people who’s prime minister, Keir Starmer or myself. A vote for anyone who’s not a Conservative candidate is just making it more likely that Keir Starmer is that person.”
Labour has been accused of leaving a gap in its childcare plans after the party confirmed its promise to offer 100,000 new childcare places would not involve extra funding to recruit more staff. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, appeared at a primary school in Nuneaton on Monday alongside the shadow education secretary to publicise the party’s pledge to expand childcare places through primary schools.
Rishi Sunak has acknowledged it has become harder for people to own their first home under the Conservatives. Speaking to the BBC as part of its Panorama interviews with Nick Robinson, Sunak said: “It has got harder and I want to make sure that it’s easier and what we will do is not just build homes in the right places and do that in a way that is sensitive to local communities, but make sure that we support young people in to great jobs so they can save for that deposit. I’m going to go back to tax, because it is important…”
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has responsed to Rishi Sunak’s admission that under a Conservative government it has “got harder” to own your own home. Rayner, who is also her party’s shadow housing secretary, said Sunak’s admission (see post 6.29pm) is a “damning indictment of 14 years of housing failure” and called home ownership a “pipedream” for young people.
The Liberal Democrats have become the first of the big parties to launch their election manifesto, with a pitch to voters based on boosting the NHS and social care. They also said that – unlike those of Labour and the Tories – their plans were fully costed. Speaking at a glitzy launch event in north London, the party’s leader, Ed Davey, told voters that electing enough Lib Dem MPs would bring “a strong liberal voice pushing for these policies” and could make a notable difference even with an expected Labour majority.
Reform UK has defended one of its candidates who said Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, saying the comments were “probably true”. The row prompted the Conservatives to directly criticise Ian Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, who was reported to have written on a website’s comment section: “Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
Reform UK has moved to head off its first split since Nigel Farage returned as leader, insisting he was “giving a personal view” when he backed two Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidates in a move that angered a smaller unionist party his party has officially allied with. The comments by Farage on Monday that he was backing Ian Paisley Junior and Sammy Wilson provoked a critical response from the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader, Jim Allister. “TUV entered an electoral arrangement with Reform UK in good faith. We have kept faith with that agreement. The comments by Mr Farage today are, of course, disappointing and not compatible with the content of a conversation I had with him last week,” said Allister.
Three Conservative candidates in key seats have previously backed other parties, it can be revealed, including criticising the Conservatives’ “inaction, delay and bluster” and posting the hashtag #NeverTrustATory. Two are former candidates for the Brexit party standing in seats previously held by the Conservatives – against the Reform defector Lee Anderson in Ashfield and in North West Leicestershire, where the former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was suspended from the party. The third candidate in Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley is contesting Labour’s Yvette Cooper’s seat, where the Conservatives came within 1,276 votes.
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor who now co-hosts the Political Currency podcast with Ed Balls, has claimed the Conservative party is short of money. Speaking on the latest edition of the podcast, he said: “The truth is they are short of money, shorter than they thought. They’re behind their targets, a couple of million pounds behind where they thought they would be. And that’s partly, of course, the early election caught the treasurer’s department by surprise as well.”
Rishi Sunak’s plans to make 18-year-olds take part in a form of national service will cost double the £2.5bn price tag, Labour have claimed, citing military experts. The party launched a pre-emptive strike on the eve of the release of the Conservative manifesto (see 4.21pm), claiming that the Tories’ expected tax and spending promises cannot deliver the savings linked to them.
The home secretary has told Times Radio that he wouldn’t “embrace” Nigel Farage joining the Conservatives. Asked about Nigel Farage saying Rishi Sunak “doesn’t understand our culture” by leaving D-Day commemorations early, James Cleverly said: “I disregard much of what Nigel says. He’s a showman. He likes getting attention. He does things and says things. So broadcasters like you ask serious politicians like me questions like this and the bottom line is I’m not going to play Nigel’s game. He does these things to get attention. And just like a spoiled child, I don’t think he should be rewarded for doing so.”
That’s all from the UK politics live blog today. Thanks for following along.
Conservative rightwingers are planning to present Rishi Sunak with demands for tougher action on immigration and human rights law ahead of the election if the prime minister’s manifesto promises on Tuesday fall flat.
Prominent party figures including Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick are said by Tory insiders to be among those waiting to see how their manifesto is received by the public before they act.
In the event Sunak’s launch fails to shift the dial on Tories floundering election campaign, one option under discussion is a press conference next week to set out a series of alternative pledges.
They are hoping to capitalise on an already weakened Sunak who was forced to vow to fight on until the last day of the campaign after a torrid weekend in which he was criticised for missing part of the D-day commemorations.
On the campaign trail in West Sussex on Monday, the prime minister said he believed he could still win back voters and he did not accept that the election result was a foregone conclusion.
Asked if he had considered quitting, Sunak said “of course not” and said he was energised by the campaign, after ministers were forced to insist that he would not be replaced as leader during the course of the campaign.
In the run-up to the publication of the Tory manifesto, MPs on the right of the party launched a last-ditch attempt to toughen up the position on the UK’s membership in the European convention of human rights.
Rishi Sunak was the first party leader to sit down with the BBC’s Nick Robinson for the broadcasters’s series of long-form election interviews.
Here are the key points from the PM’s grilling.
Rishi Sunak, asked to be honest with people and say many government departments will have to cut spending given the Conservatives’ pledges, told BBC Panorama:
No, that’s not what our plans show, and indeed, public spending will continue to grow, it will continue to be at record levels, it will continue to grow ahead of inflation.
Told he will have to cut in certain areas, Sunak replied: “No.”
He added:
Because day-to-day public spending, you said overall government spending, actually, day-to-day spending on government services, under a future Conservative government, will continue to increase ahead of inflation.
Now, of course, all governments prioritise within that, but what we’d also want to focus on is productivity. Right now, the government is spending more of everyone else’s money than it has in a very, very long time, productivity in the public sector has fallen considerably since Covid.
And if we recover just the pre-Covid levels of productivity, so nothing heroic, just as productive as we were before the pandemic hit, you mentioned a figure, that productivity gain is worth £20 billion.
So yes, I’m not going to apologise for finding more efficiencies in the public sector, which, by the way, they were performing at just a few years ago, so that we don’t have to raise people’s taxes and we can continue to cut them. And that figure is also something that the independent controllers have pointed to as an opportunity for efficiency savings.
Rishi Sunak defended the Conservatives’ record on tax by noting the country had been “hit by a once in a century pandemic and then an energy crisis”, saying the government “rightly stepped in” to provide support.
He told BBC Panorama:
I’m not going to shy away from what happened, I did make those difficult decisions because that’s right for the financial security of our country. But now, taxes are being cut. The average tax rate faced by a typical person in work is the lowest it has been in over half a century.
There was a back and forth between Nick Robinson and Sunak about the methodology behind the disputed Tory claim that Labour’s election policies would cost families some £2,000 in tax.
Rishi Sunak has said the Conservative party manifesto will “continue to cut people’s taxes”.
Figures provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has previously showed the UK’s current level of tax burden is the highest on record.
Sunak told BBC Panorama:
We will have a manifesto tomorrow that builds on all the things that you’ve just gone through, that we’ve already announced in this campaign, that, yes, does continue to cut people’s taxes, because I believe in a country where people’s hard work is rewarded.
And there’s a clear choice in contrast at this election, our party, the Conservatives, are promising, and will deliver tax cuts, building on the tax cuts that we have already started to deliver, and have ruled out tax rises, that’s not what the Labour party are doing.
They are being open that some taxes are going to go up, but what they’re not telling everyone is that there is a £2,000 tax bill waiting for working families across our country if they are elected.
On immigration, Rishi Sunak said the “numbers are too high” but told BBC Panorama:
I’ve been very clear about that, but people can judge me as well on what I’ve done as prime minister, where I’ve put in place the biggest, strictest reforms to bring down immigration that we’ve seen.
What the forecasts now show is that the levels of net migration are due to halve over the next 12 months or so.
The number of visas that we issued at the beginning of this year is down already by a quarter, so that shows we’re now on the right track and if I’m re-elected, what we will introduce is a legal cap on migration that parliamentarians will vote on every year, so that not just will we halve the levels of net migration, we will continue to reduce them year on year.
Sunak argued he has a “clear plan”, adding in response to Nick Robinson noting that small boat crossings are increasing this year:
If we stick to our plan, we will continue to bring them down.
Why? Because if I’m re-elected as prime minister, we will get flights off to Rwanda and establish a deterrent. So very simply, my view that illegal migration is unfair and the only way to fully solve this problem is for people to know that if they come to our country illegally, they won’t be able to stay and that means we have to have somewhere safe to return them and if I’m prime minister, the flights will go. The deterrent will be built.
Rishi Sunak was challenged about criticism from Nigel Farage and whether the Reform UK leader is more Conservative than him.
The prime minister replied to BBC Panorama:
So the choice for everybody, there’s only going to be one of two people who’s prime minister, Keir Starmer or myself. A vote for anyone who’s not a Conservative candidate is just making it more likely that Keir Starmer is that person.
So if you ask someone, you say, you know, what makes a Conservative, if you are someone who wants lower taxes, if you want your pension protected, if you want migration reduced, if you want a sensible approach to net zero that prioritises our security and reducing people’s bills, that’s what I will offer you in this election.
Sunak said he did not want to talk about personalities when challenged further on Farage, adding:
I’m willing to talk about everything here, but the simple issue here is a vote for anyone else, including Nigel Farage’s party – and I would make the same point about anyone’s party – is ultimately a vote that makes it more likely that Keir Starmer is in power.
Rishi Sunak has repeated his apology for his “mistake” of returning early from last week’s D-Day commemorations in Normandy.
Speaking to the BBC as part of its Panorama interviews with Nick Robinson, Sunak said:
Well, the last thing that I wanted to do was cause anyone any hurt or offence or upset, which is why I apologised unreservedly for the mistake that I made.
And I can only ask that I hope people can find it within their hearts to forgive me and also look at my actions as prime minister to increase investment in our armed forces, to support our armed forces, but also to ensure that veterans have a minister sitting around the cabinet table with unprecedented support to make this the best country in the world to be a veteran as a demonstration of how deeply I care about this community and what they’ve done for our country.
Labour has been accused of leaving a gap in its childcare plans after the party confirmed its promise to offer 100,000 new childcare places would not involve extra funding to recruit more staff.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, appeared at a primary school in Nuneaton on Monday alongside the shadow education secretary to publicise the party’s pledge to expand childcare places through primary schools.
The proposals involve paying about £140m to refurbish school classrooms, funded by Labour’s plans to levy VAT on private school fees, but nothing extra to increase staffing levels.
Starmer confirmed on Monday that Labour would sign up to the government’s policy to offer 30 hours of free childcare a week to parents of children aged nine months and over, starting next year.
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians, so the saying goes.
This may be why a businessman in the south of England is proposing a novel solution: – putting himself forward as a candidate in the UK general election as the first “AI MP”.
AI Steve is a nominee on the list of candidates for the 4 July general election in Brighton Pavilion, last held by the Green party’s Caroline Lucas, who is stepping down.
The man behind AI Steve is Steve Endacott, a self-described entrepreneur who lives in Rochdale, but “maintains a house in Brighton”.
Endacott, who is the chair of an artificial intellgience company called Neural Voice but “made his fortune” in the travel sector, claims he will attend parliament to vote on policies as guided by AI Steve’s feedback from his constituents.
He claims the AI representative would answer constituents’ concerns and questions using a rendition of Endacott’s voice and an avatar.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has responsed to Rishi Sunak’s admission that under a Conservative government it has “got harder” to own your own home.
Rayner, who is also her party’s shadow housing secretary, said Sunak’s admission (see post 6.29pm) is a “damning indictment of 14 years of housing failure” and called home ownership a “pipedream” for young people.
She added:
Never once in 14 years have the Tories met their 300,000 a year housing target, and their recent decision to appease the Tory MPs on their backbenches and abolish mandatory housing targets has seen housebuilding take a nosedive.
Labour will get Britain building with 1.5 million new homes and the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation. Labour will help families onto the housing ladder with first dibs for first-time buyers and a new Freedom to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme for those without access to the bank of mum and dad.
Labour is the party of home ownership and has a plan to turn the page on 14 years of Tory failure.
Reform UK has defended one of its candidates who said Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, saying the comments were “probably true”.
The row prompted the Conservatives to directly criticise Ian Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, who was reported to have written on a website’s comment section: “Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
The BBC said Gribbin had written that Britain needed to “exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognise that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal”. He is also reported to have said that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care”.
Reform’s spokesperson told the BBC the views on Hitler’s offer were not endorsements but were “shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true”.
He said they were written with “an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths. That doesn’t make them endorsements, just arguing points in long-distance debates.”
The spokesperson also told the Jewish Chronicle the party would not sack the candidate and he had “done nothing wrong.”
The BBC later said Gribbin had apologised for the “old comments and withdraw them unreservedly and the upset that they have caused”.
Reform UK has moved to head off its first split since Nigel Farage returned as leader, insisting he was “giving a personal view” when he backed two Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidates in a move that angered a smaller unionist party his party has officially allied with.
The comments by Farage on Monday that he was backing Ian Paisley Junior and Sammy Wilson provoked a critical response from the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader, Jim Allister.
“TUV entered an electoral arrangement with Reform UK in good faith. We have kept faith with that agreement. The comments by Mr Farage today are, of course, disappointing and not compatible with the content of a conversation I had with him last week,” said Allister.
Farage’s position stands in contrast to that of Reform UK’s deputy leader, Ben Habib, who has pledged financial support to TUV – which is hostile to the agreement which the DUP entered into in order to restore Northern Ireland’s power sharing administration.
Less than two hours after Allister’s comments, Reform said it remains committed to its alliance with the TUV and its candidates will be standing with a joint logo of the two parties.
“Nigel Farage was giving a personal view in respect of two DUP candidates with whom he has worked closely in the past but he has not changed the policy and does not intend to do so.”
Habib tweeted that Reform stands “shoulder to shoulder with TUV and supports all its candidates in Northern Ireland. ALL of them!!”
Three Conservative candidates in key seats have previously backed other parties, it can be revealed, including criticising the Conservatives’ “inaction, delay and bluster” and posting the hashtag #NeverTrustATory.
Two are former candidates for the Brexit party standing in seats previously held by the Conservatives – against the Reform defector Lee Anderson in Ashfield and in North West Leicestershire, where the former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was suspended from the party.
The third candidate in Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley is contesting Labour’s Yvette Cooper’s seat, where the Conservatives came within 1,276 votes.
The home secretary has told Times Radio that he wouldn’t “embrace” Nigel Farage joining the Conservatives.
Asked about Nigel Farage saying Rishi Sunak “doesn’t understand our culture” by leaving D-Day commemorations early, James Cleverly said:
I disregard much of what Nigel says. He’s a showman. He likes getting attention. He does things and says things. So broadcasters like you ask serious politicians like me questions like this and the bottom line is I’m not going to play Nigel’s game. He does these things to get attention. And just like a spoiled child, I don’t think he should be rewarded for doing so.
Asked about his predecessor, Suella Braverman, urging the party to embrace the Reform UK leader, he added:
Nigel’s made it clear he wants to destroy the Conservative party and I don’t embrace people that want to destroy my party and hurt the British people.
Rishi Sunak has acknowledged it has become harder for people to own their first home under the Conservatives.
Speaking to the BBC as part of its Panorama interviews with Nick Robinson, Sunak said:
It has got harder and I want to make sure that it’s easier and what we will do is not just build homes in the right places and do that in a way that is sensitive to local communities, but make sure that we support young people in to great jobs so they can save for that deposit. I’m going to go back to tax, because it is important…
Robinson intervened to say most young people are not worried about the deposit or stamp duty, adding they cannot afford to leave their parents’ home.
The prime minister replied:
No, actually when I speak to people it is the deposit that is the biggest challenge because many people earn enough to cover a mortgage payment, but the struggle is saving up for a deposit.
That has always over the last few years been the number one challenge.
The full interview is due to air this evening at 8pm and we’ll bring you more lines from it as we get them.
Reform UK is wrong to claim that it could raise £40bn for tax cuts by cutting interest on QE reserves (see 1.35pm), according to Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He says the government could raise some money this way, but that it would probably be less than half what Reform UK claims, and that the policy might have other disadvantages.
Reform UK propose large permanent personal tax cuts could be paid for by reducing the interest paid on Bank reserves.
It is a complex area but is unlikely to raise even half the £40bn annually that has been suggested, and only in the short term.
That is all from me for today. Tom Ambrose is taking over now.