Adrian Ramsay and Nigel Farage take part in Question Time special – UK election live | General election 2024

Green Party want wealthiest to contribute ‘modestly more’

Immigration ‘needs to come down’ but Lib Dems favour capped system, Ed Davey tells Nick Robinson

Ed Davey has admitted that he isn’t “proud of every decision” he made during his time in coalition government.

The Lib Dem leader has responded to claims that his party spent their period in coalition with the Conservatives aiming “to deliver austerity” as a joint enterprise.

In response to Nick Robinson’s assertion that his party was part of a Cabinet that cut the welfare budget by £27bn and introduced the bedroom tax, Davey insisted efforts were made to keep the Conservatives in check.

I, as many other colleagues did, we rolled up our sleeves and tried to fight for the things we fought for. And we stopped the Conservatives doing some things, the clearest example is on welfare, the budget after we left office and the Conservatives running by themselves, George Osborne cut the welfare bill by £12 billion, and we clearly stopped that.

‘Winning the argument’ with significant MP numbers will help Lib Dems achieve NHS plans, Ed Davey tells Nick Robinson

Voter concern puts health and care “right at the centre” of the Lib Dem manifesto.

Leader Ed Davey told the BBC’s Nick Robinson that “the voters are saying that’s one of their biggest concerns, if not the biggest”.

“They worry about the health service, getting a GP, finding an NHS dentist. They’re worried also about care for their loved ones.”

Ed Davey’s personal experience as a carer for his son John, who has an “undiagnosed brain condition’ has captured hearts across the country. The leader says this background has shaped his political career.

“I’ve been a carer much of my life, and that has informed me. And because I know there are millions of people who have stories, caring stories, like mine, I think it’s been really important to talk about that too.”

A snapshot of the manifesto pledges on social care.

The Lib Dems have pledged to introduce free personal care based on the model introduced by Scottish colleagues in 2002 alongside a higher Carer’s Minimum Wage.

Labour have vowed to establish a Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care which will set fair pay, terms and conditions.

The Conservatives have promised to give local authorities a multi-year funding settlement to support social care at the next Spending Review.

Ed Davey has added archery to his extensive list of adventurous election trail activities, according to these images captured by PA Media.

The billions needed for the UK to reach net zero by 2050 are part of a target put into law by the Conservative government five years ago, it has been confirmed.

During last night’s final TV debate, Rishi Sunak claimed he had a recording which confirmed that Labour’s net zero climate plans would cost “hundreds of billions of pounds”.

However, while the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) has estimated net investment needs of £321bn for the UK to reach net zero by 2050, it was a Conservative government that put this target into law in 2019. The Conservative election manifesto continues to back the 2050 target.

Former Labour leader warns party not to sleep on threat of Reform

Keir Starmer has confirmed that, if elected, Labour will resume processing asylum applications for those who have previously arrived in the UK illegally.

The Illegal Migration Act passed last July effectively blocks these individuals, which includes those who arrive on small boats, from gaining refugee status.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak has consistently vowed to ‘stop the boats’ and wants to be able to send those who arrive illegally to Rwanda where their asylum claims will be processed.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, the Labour leader promised a change in approach and said the Rwanda policy has proven to be the “absolute opposite of a deterrent”.

For years, the system in this country has operated on the basis that if someone claims asylum, they are processed.

Does anybody seriously think that not processing the claims, when now record numbers are coming across the Channel, is operating as a deterrent?

According to the latest Home Office and Border Force figures, a total of 150 migrants arrived on four small boats on 26 June. Over the last week a combined total of 882 migrants have arrived on 16 boats.

Rishi Sunak has been buying fish and chips in Redcar for officials and journalists travelling with him, PA Media reports.

This morning, on his Radio 5 Live phone-in, Keir Starmer was accused of talking “absolute twaddle” by a woman who did not think he was doing or saying enough to protect single-sex spaces. (See 9.56am.)

Starmer said he was committed to protecting women’s spaces. But the caller was not happy with this, because she wanted an assurance that spaces would be safeguarded for biological women and she suggested that she wanted trans women excluded from women’s toilets, changing rooms and refuges. Starmer would not give that assurance, and he spoke about the need for trans people to be treated with respect.

When Starmer is asked about this issue, he tends to talk about protecting women’s spaces, rather than single-sex spaces or spaces for biologicial women, because he does not want to exclude all trans women. This is in line with what the Equality Act says (although the Tories want to change it in a way that would make it easier for trans women with a gender recognition certificate to be excluded from these spaces.)

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was also asked about this today, and he adopted a similar position to Starmer’s. He said:

I believe in the Equality Act, which gives single-sex spaces and rights for women as a way of balancing rights. I think that is exactly right.

And what the Equality Act does in providing single-sex spaces where trans women are excluded, is it enables people providing services to make those decisions, and that’s quite right.

I strongly support the Equality Act and its provision for single-sex spaces.

But Davey was less evasive than Starmer on the topic of trans women using ladies’ toilets. Asked what toilet a trans woman with a penis should use, Davey replied:

It would all depend on what they want to use.

I’m not sure if we’re going to have people standing outside toilets and deciding what identity they have, I think that would be quite an odd society.

As long as the polls are not utterly, totally, catastrophically wrong, Keir Starmer will be prime minister a week today. One of his five missions is to decarbonise electricity supply by 2030, and today the Institute for Government thinktank has published a report saying that what he does in the first few days and weeks will determine whether or not he can succeed. The IfG says:

Major barriers include lack of grid capacity (with generators paid £1.38bn in 2022 to reduce the supply of cheap renewable energy when supply was high), stretched supply chains, shortages of workers with the necessary skills, insufficient public engagement, and a need to make the planning system work much faster if energy targets are going to be hit. Average waits to get consent for nationally significant infrastructure increased from 2.6 to 4.2 years between 2012 and 2023.

But historical successes – such as the 4,000 miles of transmission lines built in 12 years from the 1950s, the switch over of 13.5m buildings and 40 million appliances from coal or oil to natural gas between 1967-77, or the 40 gas power stations built in 10 years during the 1990s ‘dash for gas’ – show that the UK can deliver large scale projects …

If elected on 5 July Labour will have under six years to meet its goal of delivering clean power by 2030. The next two or three years will be critical to whether this is achievable. The UK has shown previously that it is able to deliver ambitious projects quickly under the right circumstances. It will need to do so again.

The Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has joined those condemning the Reform UK activists recorded secretly by Channel 4 News. on a campaign visit to Little Paxton, Cambridgeshire, he said:

I heard the comments on the television, and they were clearly racist, homophobic and abhorrent, and I hope the party deals with these and any other people who speak like this.

The Guardian has published its leader on who we want to win the election. It’s Labour, of course. Here is an excerpt.

The party’s poll lead has induced a rush to place Sir Keir in historical perspective before he actually makes history. That may be because people are yearning for the “change” of Labour’s campaign rhetoric. It is what the country needs. The greater the inequality, insecurity and sense of injustice, the more vulnerable democracies are to capture by ­rightwing demagogues. Imagine the dread of waking up to Rishi Sunak winning. Labour’s vision is calming rather than exciting. Sir Keir may not be inspiring, but he does inspire confidence. He offers compassion, where a lack of it has become a matter of principle for the Tories.

Lurking in Labour’s manifesto is a plan to give ordinary people opportunity, security and dignity. Bliss in this dawn to be alive? Maybe not quite, but viewed amid the debris of the last decade, Labour’s putative parliamentary majority seems an almost unimaginably hopeful starting point. To create a more equitable society, power must be in the hands of politicians prepared to shape the country that we want to see. That is why the Guardian would vote, with hope and enthusiasm, for Labour to lead Britain to a better future.

And you can read the article in full here.

Rishi Sunak has been visiting a school in Stockton West, where Matt Vickers is seeking re-election. He had a majority of 5,260 in 2019 in Stockton South, the predecessor constituency.

Essex police says it is reviewing comments in Reform UK exposé to assess if offences may have been committed

Labour cabinet could be ‘most working class of all time’, Jonathan Ashworth claims