PMQs live: Starmer to face Badenoch for first time since local elections | Politics
Published: 2025-05-07 11:55:38 | Views: 23
Key events
Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs
PMQs is starting very soon.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Starmer defends proposed legal change to stop protesters climbing on Churchill statue in Parliament Square
At one point when he was opposition leader, Keir Starmer criticised the then Conservative government for being more interested in protecting statues than women.
Labour is prioritising protecting women, and Starmer has pledged to halve violence against women and girls. But he is not ignoring statues either. According to a report by Jack Elsom in the Sun, the government is going to reclassify Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square as war memorial so that anyone who climbs on it is committing an offence punishable by up to three months in jail under measures in the crime and policing bill.
Starmer told the Sun for the story:
Sir Winston Churchill stands at the summit of our country’s greatest heroes, and has been an inspiration to every prime minister that has followed him.
The justifiable fury that is provoked when people use his statue as a platform for their protests speaks to the deep and enduring love that all decent British people have for Sir Winston.
It is the least we owe him, and the rest of the greatest generation, to make those acts criminal.
Minister confirms government considering UK-EU youth mobility scheme - less than 2 weeks after telling MPs it wasn't
And, on the subject of trade deals, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of post-Brexit relations with the EU, has confirmed that the government is considering a youth mobilty deal with Brussels.
As George Parker reports in the Financial Times, Thomas-Symonds said that, provided the UK government’s red lines were respected, “a smart, controlled youth mobility scheme would of course have benefits for our young people”.
He added: “We will consider sensible EU proposals in this space.”
This will, of course, come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading the news for the last few weeks.
But it will come as a surprise anyone naive enough to take what government ministers have said on this at face value. Less than two weeks ago, during Cabinet Office questions in the Commons, Thomas-Symonds was asked by the Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney, if the government would support a UK-EU youth mobility scheme. Thomas-Symonds replied:
A youth mobility scheme is not part of our plans. We have always said that we will listen to sensible EU proposals, but we will not go back to freedom of movement.
Reynolds declines to deny report saying UK-US trade deal set to be signed this week
According to the Financial Times splash, the UK and the US has all but agreed a trade deal which is “set to be signed this week”. Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, would not confirm this when he gave interviews this morning. But he did not deny the reports either. He told the Today programme that he could not give a running commentary, but that he was “working extremely hard” to get the deal.
In their story, Jim Pickard, Peter Foster and Aime Williams say:
The UK and the US are close to agreeing a trade pact that would cushion the impact of Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs by granting lower-tariff quotas for British car and steel exports, according to officials in London and Washington.
The deal — set to be signed this week — is due to include quotas that spare some UK exports from the full brunt of the additional 25 per cent tariffs that Trump levied on steel and car imports in February and March …
As well as offering quotas for UK exports, Britain is also hoping to secure reductions in the sector-specific 25 per cent tariffs that Trump has levied on cars and steel.
The UK’s “offers” include concessions to Washington on Britain’s digital services tax levied on international technology companies, cuts on tariffs imposed on US car exports, and a reduction of tariffs on American agricultural products.
Labour heading for third place in next year's Senedd elections, poll suggests, with Plaid Cymru set to come first
YouGov has two new polls out this morning – and both of them are good for Reform UK.
Here are the GB voting intention figures, from the regular polling that YouGov does for the Times.
Reform: 29% (+3 from last week)
Labour: 22% (-1)
Conservatives: 17% (-3)
Liberal Democrats: 16% (+1)
Greens: 10% (+1)
According to YouGov, these are the lowest figures for the Tories since June 2019, when they were also on 17%, and the lowest figures for Labour since October 2019.
And this is the highest figure YouGov has ever recorded for Reform UK.
YouGov has also published a poll for ITV Cymru of voting intentions for the Senedd elections next year. It shows Plaid Cymru coming first, with Reform UK in second place and the Labour party, which has been the most powerful party in Wales most of the last century, coming third.
Labour has been in power in the Senedd since devolution but, commenting on what these figures would mean for Senedd seats in 2026, Jac Larner, from Cardiff University’s Welsh Governance Centre told ITV:
Modelling indicates Plaid Cymru would emerge as the largest party with approximately 35 seats, followed closely by Reform UK with 30 seats.
If these polling figures were replicated in an actual election, Labour would secure 19 seats, while the Conservatives would hold nine seats and the Liberal Democrats three seats. However, it’s important to note that 10 of these projected seats fall within a very narrow margin of error (less than 2%), meaning even minor shifts in vote intention could produce a substantially different Senedd composition.
The electoral system for the Senedd has changed, and next year there will be 96 MSs (members of the Senedd) elected, meaning a party or coalition will need 49 seats to have a majority.
Senior Tory MPs and peers break ranks to call for recognition of Palestine
More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so, Kiran Stacey reports.
Trade policy Twitter is furious about the crassness of the Tory/Reform UK attacks on the double contribution convention aspect of the UK-India trade deal. These are from Allie Renison, a trade expert who has advised government.
Under a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in 2012, the UK and Chile signed an agreement exempting temporary workers from social security contributions for *five* years
Not undercutting then, not undercutting now with India
Do better, people
People cannot come unless their company has sent them to do specific work overseas for a time limited period
Not looking for work to apply to in the first place
If only people would read rather than thinking everything is a grand conspiracy
This is from Sam Lowe, another trade specialist, on Bluesky.
The UK already has reciprocal agreements for social security contributions with quite a few countries, btw …
This is from Brendan Chilton, director of the Institute for Prosperity thintank.
Extraordinary to see so called Brexiteers attacking a free trade deal between the UK and the biggest economy in the Commonwealth.
The NIC [national insurance contributions] thing is reciprocal. What we are seeing is Reform stirring up racism against Indian workers here in the UK and it is disgusting.
And this is from Paul Kelso, business correspondent at Sky News.
If you want a tax break on National Insurance you don’t need to be an Indian multinational to get it. British companies get three year’s relief if they move into Freeport zones, established in Jeremy Hunt’s last Budget. Tax reliefs = routine incentive to encourage investment
Critics of UK-India trade deal ‘confused’, says Jonathan Reynolds, as he denies British workers being undercut
Good morning. Yesterday the government was able to announce some good news – a major trade deal with India.
There is cross-party consensus that trade deals are a good thing, the last Conservative government was working on a trade deal with India too, and at least some Tories were happy to welcome the deal. Oliver Dowden, the former deputy PM, posted this on social media.
Welcome progress with conclusion of UK-India FTA. I remember firsthand Jonathan Reynolds’s commitment to the relationship from our cross-party delegation to India!
Builds on significant progress made by previous Conservative government.
Free trade is a win-win for both nations
And Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary who is on the opposite wing of the party to Dowden, posted this.
Cheaper food and drink including rice and tea, footwear and clothing thanks to a welcome trade deal with India. Exactly what Brexit promised.
But Dowden and Rees-Mogg did not get the memo about the official opposition line. As reported on the blog yesterday afternoon, Kemi Badenoch decided to attack the deal on the grounds that it includes a double contribution convention, which means that Indian workers temporarily living in the UK will not have to pay national insurance contributions for three years – with British workers in India benefiting in the same way. Crucially, Badenoch found an effective means of putting a negative spin on this relatively niche feature of the deal – she described it as “two-tier” taxation, involving “tax refunds for Indians not available to us”. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, was quickly making the same argument too, claiming the government was making it 20% cheaper to employ an Indian worker than a British worker. In a video he said the deal was “appalling”, and claimed it showed Labour had “in a big, big way betrayed working Britain”.
Badenoch has certainly been successful at landing her message with the rightwing papers. Here are some of today’s front pages.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been giving interviews this morning. His main task was to counter the Tory/Reform UK claims and he insisted that double contribution conventions were a routine feature of trade deals, applying to just a sub-category of workers (employees from firms with operations in both the UK and India, seconded temporarily from one country to another), and that the British workers were not being undercut. The Tories and Reform UK were “confused”, he said.
He told the Today programme:
There is no situation where I would ever tolerate British workers being undercut through any trade agreement we would sign. That is not part of this deal.
What the Conservatives are confused about, and Reform as well, is a situation where a business in India seconds someone for a short period of time to the UK, or a UK business seconds a worker to India for a short period of time, where you don’t pay in simultaneously now to both social security systems …
This is exactly the sort of deal we have with 50 countries already, with the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand.
The Conservatives recently, well a few years ago when they were in government, signed one with Chile for five years. So no, British workers are not being undercut.
Asked whether the agreement meant Indian workers paying less tax than British counterparts doing the same job, Reynolds told the programme: “No.”
In an interview with Sky News, Reynolds said that the trade deal would generate more than £1bn in extra tax revenues for the Treasury. He said the double contribution convention would cost “less than a tenth of that”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, gives a speech in Cardiff marking one year to go until the next Senedd elections.
9.45am: Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, gives a speech to the CyberUK conference in Manchester.
10.30am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech in Edinburgh on SNP strategy running into next year’s Holyrood elections. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is also giving a speech this morning, at 10.45am, as is the Scottish Consevative leader, Russel Findley, at 12.30pm.
10.55am: Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, attends a ‘Turning of the Page Ceremony’ in the Commons, with the book of remembrance naming MPs killed in both world wars, as part of the VE Day 80th anniversary celebrations.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Lunchtime: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor is visiting a Scotch whisky distillery near Edinburgh to promote the UK-India trade deal (which cuts tariffs on whisky exports to India).
2.30pm: Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to an infected blood inquiry hearing about compensation payment arrangements.
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