‘Good start, but some way to go’ – Labour and Lib Dems give qualified welcome to Reform UK suspending Chris Parry
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Reform UK has confirmed that that it has suspended Chris Parry as its Hampshire mayoral candidate after he described members of a Jewish neighbourhood watch group as “cosplayers” and likened them to “Islamists on horseback”. (See 1.53pm.)
A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Chris Parry has been suspended by Reform UK pending investigation.” His candidacy has also been suspended by the party.
When contacted by the Guardian earlier after Hampshire Live quoted a Reform UK spokesman as saying he was no longer the party’s candidate, Parry said that he was “mid-Atlantic.”
The Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson had called on Farage earlier in the day to drop Parry. He later said : “This is a good start, but Farage has some way to go. There are serious questions to answer as to how this candidate got approved in the first place.”
Calvin Bailey, a Labour MP who wrote to Nigel Farage about previous comments attributed to Parry, including calling female MPs “harpies”, said: “It should not take repeated incidents for basic standards of decency to be upheld.”
Key events
Reform UK calls on Football Association to drop its diversity strategy, calling it ‘inherently racist’
Regulator welcomes plan to make it easier for doctors to be struck off for racist behaviour
‘Good start, but some way to go’ – Labour and Lib Dems give qualified welcome to Reform UK suspending Chris Parry
Chris Bryant says ‘complexities’ in paperwork explain why Andrew trade envoy documents have not yet been published
Resolution Foundation welcomes confirmation energy support package to be targeted
Labour-run Wandsworth council warned of ‘potential to mislead’ by statistics watchdog over frozen tax claim
Plaid Cymru says energy support package just targeted to help poorer families won’t be fair to Wales
Reeves asks officials to review whether some tariffs could be reduced to cut costs of food
Scottish voters more likely to have noticed SNP scandals than the policies they like, poll suggests
Polanski urges Reeves to freeze rents, as proposed in Spain, in response to rising energy costs
Reform UK reportedly drops Chris Parry as mayoral candidate after ‘Islamists on horseback’ comment about Jewish group
Reeves says richest third of families got more than third of money under Tories’ energy support scheme
Reeves claims she will have data available to run targeted support scheme, unlike Tories who had not prepared for that
Tories accuse Labour of ‘no consistency’, saying Starmer backed universal energy support packge when in opposition
Reeves confirms contingency planning for energy support package under way, and insists it would be fairer than Tories’ version
Reeves says government will ensure CMA has powers it needs to crack down on price gouging
Reeves announces indemnities for critical energy security projects, to reduce planning delays
Rachel Reeves makes statement to MPs about economic impact of Iran war
Ed Davey launches Lib Dems’ local elections campaign
Farage urged to sack Reform UK mayoral candidate who likened Jewish community group to ‘Islamists on horseback’
Farage says Reform UK would repeal law intended to ban younger generations from ever being able to buy cigarettes
Labour was wrong to block Burnham from being candidate in Gorton and Denton, Lisa Nandy says
Ed Davey attacks Reform UK for wanting to copy ‘Trump’s nasty politics’
Targeted energy support package ‘most efficient use of public money’, minister says
Ministers rebuff trade body’s call to boost North Sea oil and gas production
No fuel shortage in Britain, says minister, as Reeves prepares to set out economic response to Iran war
Reform UK calls on Football Association to drop its diversity strategy, calling it ‘inherently racist’
Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary who is now Reform UK’s education and equalities spokesperson, has written to the Football Association urging it to abandon its diversity strategy. In an open letter, she claims that white working class boys are being disadvantaged because the FA has set a target for 25% of coaching staff to be black, Asian or from a minority background by 2028. She says this policy is “fundamentally flawed” and “inherently racist”.
She says:
The @FA Football Association wants to mandate that 1 in 4 football coaches come from a Black, Asian or other minority background.
As the saying in football goes, this is utter woke nonsense. The game’s gone.
Fans don’t care what the coach looks like. They just want the best person for the job, based on merit alone. That’s what gets results.
Not tokenism.
I’ve written to the FA urging a rethink. I’m happy to help them draw up a fairer policy.
Let’s kick racism out of football, including anti-white racism.
Regulator welcomes plan to make it easier for doctors to be struck off for racist behaviour
Chris Osuh
Chris Osuh is a community affairs correspondent for the Guardian.
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has welcomed plans that promise to make it easier to strike off doctors for racist and antisemitic behaviour.
Ministers say there have been too many recent examples of doctors using racist and antisemitic language, particularly on social media, without swift action.
The Department of Health and Social Care has now published a consultation on a draft order which would reform how the General Medical Council (GMC) regulates doctors, anaesthesia associates and physician associates across the UK.
The overhaul would give Professional Standards Authority, the body that oversees all health regulators, greater powers to scrutinise and challenge decisions.
Responding to the launch of the consultation on reforming the GMC’s legislative framework, Alan Clamp, PSA chief executive said:
We are pleased to see the launch of this consultation which is a significant step towards modernising the regulatory framework for the General Medical Council, with other healthcare professional regulators due to follow.
We support the direction of travel with these reforms which, by giving the regulators greater autonomy, can allow them to undertake their regulatory duties more effectively and efficiently.
The Labour party has issued an official response to Reform UK suspending Chris Parry. (See 4.17pm.) A Labour spokesperson said:
Nigel Farage should have booted Chris Parry out of his party months ago. The fact he didn’t shows what a weak leader he is and just how far he’s willing to drag politics into the gutter.
Parry has made numerous appalling and racist comments that showed he was unfit for office – the fact it took Farage this long speaks volumes.
Reform are insulting the public with their litany of toxic candidates. Labour stands against Reform’s division and is the only party with a plan to cut the cost of living and restore pride in Britain.
‘Good start, but some way to go’ – Labour and Lib Dems give qualified welcome to Reform UK suspending Chris Parry
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Reform UK has confirmed that that it has suspended Chris Parry as its Hampshire mayoral candidate after he described members of a Jewish neighbourhood watch group as “cosplayers” and likened them to “Islamists on horseback”. (See 1.53pm.)
A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Chris Parry has been suspended by Reform UK pending investigation.” His candidacy has also been suspended by the party.
When contacted by the Guardian earlier after Hampshire Live quoted a Reform UK spokesman as saying he was no longer the party’s candidate, Parry said that he was “mid-Atlantic.”
The Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson had called on Farage earlier in the day to drop Parry. He later said : “This is a good start, but Farage has some way to go. There are serious questions to answer as to how this candidate got approved in the first place.”
Calvin Bailey, a Labour MP who wrote to Nigel Farage about previous comments attributed to Parry, including calling female MPs “harpies”, said: “It should not take repeated incidents for basic standards of decency to be upheld.”
Chris Bryant says ‘complexities’ in paperwork explain why Andrew trade envoy documents have not yet been published
Chris Bryant, the trade minister, has said that “complexities” in the paperwork explain why the government has not yet been able to publish the documents it has relating to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being appointed a trade envoy.
A month ago the Commons approved without a division a Lib Dem humble address motion saying all papers relating to the then prince’s appointment as trade envoy in 2001 should be publishing, including documents relating to vetting and to his suitability.
Today, in a written ministerial statement, Bryant said that finding all the files was taking time. He said:
Mr Mountbatten‑Windsor took up his role as special representative for trade and investment in October 2001. At that time, government work on exports and investment was led by British Trade International, reporting jointly to the Department for Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The records from this period are largely paper‑based. Subsequent machinery‑of‑government changes — including the formation of UK Trade & Investment in 2003, its merger into the Department for International Trade in 2016, and the creation of the Department for Business and Trade in 2023 — mean that relevant records span multiple legacy bodies and formats. We are working through these complexities in order to comply with the humble address.
I understand and share colleagues’ desire for relevant information to be provided to parliament as quickly as possible. I will continue to keep the house updated on progress.
In response, Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson, said:
The government’s refusal to come clean on what work they’re doing to compile the Andrew files is fooling no one. I’m worried ministers are rolling the pitch for a dog-ate-my-homework excuse for delivering far less than they promised.
Resolution Foundation welcomes confirmation energy support package to be targeted
Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank focusing on the cost of living and the needs of low-income families, has welcomed the chancellor’s declaration that any energy support package will be targeted. She said:
The chancellor is right to say that the government will look to target support with energy bills at families that need it the most, rather than repeat the blank cheque approach of the last crisis. It’s essential we avoid schemes with uncapped costs that can lead to a doom loop of higher interest rates and higher borrowing.
The government should use the coming months to develop the ability to target both on income and energy need, so that support is ready for when temperatures start to drop.
The thinktank recently published a paper suggesting the best option for a support package would be a social tariff. It said that, for £3.75bn, the government could pay for a 21% discount for electricity and gas unit prices to those with households with gross incomes below £38,000. That would help 42% of households.
This chart from the RF report shows how this might work. The RF says a social tariff approach would be fairer than cutting costs for all users (blue line in the chart, ‘policy costs”) because it would be targeted, and that it would also be fairer to poorer people with high energy costs unlike increasing the warm homes discount (purple line in the chart) or increasing univeral credit (red line in the chart).
Labour-run Wandsworth council warned of ‘potential to mislead’ by statistics watchdog over frozen tax claim
A Labour-run council has been warned its claim to have frozen council tax for four years in a row has “the potential to mislead” taxpayers, by the nation’s statistics authority, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) has written to Wandsworth council about the claim, made in promotional materials released over the last few months.
In videos, leaflets and press releases, the Labour-run south London council said it is freezing council tax for the fourth consecutive year.
But in a letter to the council, the UKSA’s interim chairwoman Penny Young warned that the claim did not meet with the Standard For The Public Use of Statistics, Data And Wider Analysis, which is part of a wider code of practice maintained by the authority.
Since Labour won power in the London borough in 2022, Wandsworth has frozen council tax rates for general services.
But in the latest financial year it has increased a precept to fund social care by 2%, while the Greater London Authority (GLA) has also increased tax intake in the borough.
Two senior Conservative politicians, Lord Udny-Lister and Paul Beresford, the former MP for Mole Valley, argued in a letter to the UKSA that the borough could not make the claim to have frozen tax for four years running because of these tax increases.
Young said in her letter: “We find it is likely that people would understand the term ‘frozen’ to relate to an increase in their total council tax bill.
“While some of Wandsworth council’s communications do refer to ‘the main element’ of council tax being frozen, they are unclear that residents’ council tax bills will still rise by a significant amount due to other local authority charges.”
Plaid Cymru says energy support package just targeted to help poorer families won’t be fair to Wales
Plaid Cymru has warned that, even if Rachel Reeves makes a future energy support scheme targeted to help the poor, Wales could still lose out because of the nature of its housing stock. It says 26% of Welsh homes were built before 1919 – which is higher than the equivalent figures for England, Scotland and Wales.
In a response to the chancellor’s statement earlier, Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid leader at Westminster, said:
Any targeted scheme designed around UK averages risks missing the reality of Welsh households, where incomes are lower, homes are older, and energy efficiency is poorer. If support is restricted without recognising Wales’ specific circumstances, households will lose out.
Too many UK schemes are designed with the gas grid in mind, yet large parts of rural Wales rely on oil or alternative fuels. Without proper recognition of this, many families will be overlooked entirely. The support already announced for off-grid homes will simply not meet the level of need.
You cannot design a fair system without accounting for the fact that many Welsh homes are harder and more expensive to heat. A one-size-fits-all approach will not deliver fairness.
It is also worth noting that residents in North Wales and Mersey are subject to the highest standing charges across the entire UK. My constituents [in Dwyfor Meirionnydd] are having to pay almost £100 more a year than those living in London so I would urge the chancellor, once again, to look at and address unfair standing charges. People shouldn’t be paying more for their energy bills simply because of where they live.
Saville Roberts also called for a four-nations summit to agree a policy on energy support, so that conditions in all four nations of the UK are taken into account.
The TUC has said Rachel Reeves is right to be making plans now for a possible energy bills support package. In a statement responding to her Commons speech, Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said:
Working people must not carry the can for the economic damage of Trump’s illegal war.
While the priority must be to urgently deescalate the conflict, it is right that the government is planning now for how it can help households and businesses and how they ensure anyone making runaway profits pays their fair share.
Low income families will need the greatest protection.
Nowak also said the government should bring unions and employers together in an emergency taskforce, as happened during Covid, to help to prepare for this.
Reeves asks officials to review whether some tariffs could be reduced to cut costs of food
Rachel Reeves has asked officials to examine whether some import tariffs could be cut to reduce the cost of food.
In her statement to MPs, Reeves listed a series of measures already taken by the government to help people with the cost of living, including raising the national living wage and the state pension, and freezing prescription charges, train fares and fuel duty. She said the government’s decision to renegotiate a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU on agriproducts regulations could also lower food costs.
In this context, she also said she had asked officials to consider tariffs on some food imports could be cut.
In a news release, the Treasury says:
Targeted cuts to agri-food tariffs will be explored to help bring down food prices, focusing on the areas where consumers would benefit most.
Scottish voters more likely to have noticed SNP scandals than the policies they like, poll suggests
Libby Brooks
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
Some fascinating opinion research about what Scottish voters think of the SNP government is out today. It’s from More in Common and it’s rare to get such granular polling in Scotland and really useful ahead of the Scottish parliament elections in May.
I’m most struck by the range of issues that have landed badly with the public, as well as how popular policies haven’t the public awareness you’d expect.
Perhaps inevitably, the Police Scotland investigation into the SNP – which will see former chief exec Peter Murrell in court charged with embezzlement later this spring – is the single most widely-heard-of incident: 81% of Scottish people say they have heard a great deal or a bit about it and, by a margin of 57% to 20%, they say it reflects badly on the Scottish government.
Seven in ten Scots have heard about Scotland having the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe, with 70% saying this reflects badly on the government.
I’m also interested that “iPad-gate” – the controversy over a £11,000 roaming data bill on former health secretary Michael Matheson’s iPad that was later linked to family use – stands out as a key scandal, combining high awareness (63%) with a strongly negative public reaction: 68% of Scots say it reflects negatively.
Meanwhile, popular policies seem to have failed to cut through to the public – free personal and nursing care is the best-rated item on the list, with 70% saying it reflects well on the government, but only 41% say they have heard a great deal or a bit about it.
Similarly, free NHS dental care for under-26s and rent reforms are popular but not widely known.
The SNP’s more progressive income tax policy, which sees higher earners pay more than elsewhere in the UK, is relatively well-known, but divides public opinion. Around 59% have heard about the new advanced rate between £75,000 and £125,000, but Scots are only narrowly more likely to say it reflects well on the government than badly (34% to 24%).
Polanski urges Reeves to freeze rents, as proposed in Spain, in response to rising energy costs
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has dismissed Rachel Reeves’s Commons statement about the government’s response to energy prices rises as “unbelievably weak”.
In a statement he said:
This is an unbelievably weak response from the chancellor to the enormous bill hikes facing households in the UK. Monitoring the situation? Considering new powers? Reeves’s lukewarm words show that she and her government simply do not understand the scale of the cost of living crisis about to hit this country.
We need a guarantee that energy bills will not rise past June, funded by a strengthened windfall tax and higher taxes on extreme wealth. And the government should follow the example set by Spain in taking immediate action to reduce the burden on households by freezing rents.
