Keir Starmer should tell Saudi Arabia human rights ‘part and parcel of UK doing business abroad’, says charity – UK politics live

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, will make a statement in the Commons later about Syria. It will start around 4.15pm.

Before that, there will be an urgent question at 3.30pm about plans announced today changing the way councils in England deal with planning inquiries. David Simmonds, the shadow housing minister has been granted an urgent question because the government was not planning to have a statement.

This is how the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government describes the proposals in its news release.

As set out in the Plan for Change, the government is fully focused on unlocking economic growth across the country. To support this, the deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has set out plans to speed up the planning process and support better decision making in the system.

Under new plans to modernise the planning approval process, applications that comply with local development plans could bypass planning committees entirely to tackle chronic uncertainty, unacceptable delays and unnecessary waste of time and resources.

The measures would see a national scheme of delegation introduced, the creation of streamlined committees for strategic development and mandatory training for planning committee members.

Under the new plans, local planning officers will also have an enhanced decision-making role to implement agreed planning policy.

The changes will mean greater certainty to housebuilders that good-quality schemes aligned with already-agreed local development plans will be approved in a timely manner to get spades in the ground. With it, kickstarting economic growth and raising living standards in every part of the country, putting money back in the pockets of working people.

Amnesty International UK has said Keir Starmer should make it clear that respect of human rights is “part and parcel of the UK doing business abroad” when he meets Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman today.

In a statement, the charity’s foreign policy adviser, Polly Truscott, said:

The PM needs to making it completely clear to his counterparts in Saudi Arabia that respect for human rights and the rule of law is part and parcel of the UK doing business abroad.

Mr Starmer needs to challenge the authorities’ draconian repression of human rights defenders, rampant use of the death penalty and institutionalised discrimination against women.

This year alone, the Saudi authorities have executed more than 280 people, the highest figure in decades, many after grossly unfair trials.

The plight of women who dare to speak out about the need for their rights to be respected in Saudi Arabia is especially grave.

Earlier this year, the 30-year-old fitness instructor Manahel al-Otaibi was sentenced to 11 years for tweeting in support of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and posting photos of herself without an abaya.

For too long these business trips have treated human rights as an optional extra, usually meriting only a terse comment to the media that ‘human rights were raised’.

We need to see UK business visits completely overhauled, with human rights experts made part of trade delegations and proper impact assessments conducted into prospective agreements to ensure they don’t further undermine human rights.

Rachel Reeves has said the UK will face greater barriers to future trade with the European Union unless there is an improvement in the trading relationship.

Since Brexit the EU has developed new regulations that will impose more costs and red tape on companies outside the bloc, such as carbon tariffs on imports known as a carbon-border adjustment mechanism, to new rules on recycling plastic packaging.

Speaking to journalists ahead of a meeting with eurozone finance ministers this afternoon, the first of its kind since Brexit, the chancellor said:

I am not denying that there are barriers [to trade with the EU], and there will be greater barriers in the future, unless we improve our trading relationship with the European Union, which is exactly why I’m here.

She said reopening the debate about joining the EU’s single market and customs union would not be good for the country or the economy.

Reeves said the deal secured by Boris Johnson was not the best and that she wanted to do “practical things” to improve the trading relationship.

But do we want to reopen a national conversation about our membership of the EU, single market and customs union? Do I think that would be good for us as a country, or indeed good for the economy? I don’t think so. I think those years of uncertainty [during the Brexit negotiations] were bad for the UK, both politically and indeed economically.

At the meeting with the 20 finance ministers of the eurozone, she was expected to discuss the war in Ukraine, global trade and competitiveness. She rejected suggestions that greater closeness to the EU would risk the UK’s relationship with the US under incoming President Donald Trump.

To try and pick a side I think would be very damaging to the UK economy, and we’re not going to do that.

Margaret Hodge, a former Labour minister and former chair of the Commons public accounts committee, has been appointed as the government’s anti-corruption champion, the Foreign Office has announced. Patrick Wintour has the story here.

Severin Carrell

The Scottish Labour party appears to be in the doldrums after a spate of dire polling results and a fresh crisis over a police investigation into Labour’s leader in Edinburgh.

The party has been rattled by a surge in support for the Scottish National party in a spate of recent opinion polls, mirroring Labour’s steep decline at UK level. The latest for the Sunday Times Scotland by Norstat puts Scottish Labour on 21% – its lowest figure for three years – and the SNP on 37%.

Those numbers appear to vindicate John Swinney’s decision in last week’s Scottish budget to reintroduce a universal winter fuel payment for pensioners, and to promise scrapping the two child cap next year – policies Keir Starmer has refused to endorse.

Sunday’s papers also included the revelation that Cammy Day, the leader of Edinburgh city council, was under police investigation for allegedly sexting Ukrainian women refugees. Day denies any wrongdoing.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, suspended Day on Saturday night but the controversy threatens the party’s control over Edinburgh.

Despite leading the city’s third largest party, Day had run a minority administration with support from the Liberal Democrats in a unionist alliance to lock out the SNP, which has the most councillors overall.

Cllr Simita Kumar, the SNP group leader, has urged Day to resign as leader. That raises the prospect that the SNP could resume control of Scotland’s capital.

Pressed about the polling figures and the SNP’s welfare proposals on BBC Scotland on Sunday, Sarwar said recent council byelections suggested the opinion polls were wrong: the SNP had only won one out of 20 contests.

He insisted Labour had been forced to make unpopular spending decisions, but confirmed he disagreed with Starmer’s stance on the winter fuel payment and the two child cap. Even so, he defended the prime minister’s stewardship.

I do actually think Keir Starmer is doing a good job. [He] has come into a situation where the Tories wrecked our public finances, wrecked the public services, and had a flat lining economy. And sometimes governments come in and they’ve got to confront one of those issues. This Labour government has come in and had to confront all three.

Downing Street has implied that economic growth will be Keir Starmer’s “number one priority” when he holds talks with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson did not rule out Starmer raising human rights issues in his meeting with the crown prince. But he did not say Starmer definitely intended to raise the topic.

Human rights groups want Starmer to protest about the number of executions taking place in Saudi Arabia. (See 9.51am.) Starmer is also being urged to confront the crown prince over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Asked about the meeting, the PM’s spokesperson said:

Promoting economic growth is the prime minister’s number one priority, he has been very clear about that.

You saw the prime minister’s plan for change last week, you can see the government’s clear priorities for the British people as part of that.

But no aspect of the relationships that we’re building internationally … stop us from raising issues around human rights and protecting our values globally.

In his foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last week, Keir Starmer said that he refused to accept that the UK had to choose between aligning with Europe and aligning with America. He said:

I want to be clear at the outset. Against the backdrop of these dangerous times. The idea that we must choose between our allies. That somehow we’re with either America or Europe is plain wrong. I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both.

The Conservative party is now saying that Starmer is wrong, and that the UK should choose the US. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, issued this statement overnight, in response to the Treasury briefing ahead of Rachel Reeves’ meeting with EU finance ministers this afternoon. He said:

The chancellor should be spending all her energy working out how to reverse her devastating budget measures that have crashed confidence and will see fewer jobs, lower salaries, and higher taxes.

If she is interested in growth, she should tell the prime minister to jump on a plane to the US and talk to Trump about getting a US-UK trade deal done, not trying to take Britain backwards into the slow growth EU.

Griffith’s statement came after Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, visited Washington and Toronto last week, where she delivered a major speech at the International Democracy Union dinner and had meetings with, among others, JD Vance, the US vice president-elect, and Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Canadian Conservative party.

She also posted a clip on social media of some exchanges during her meeting with Poilievre, during which he argued that liberals, social democrats and communists are all essentially the same people. Badenoch seemed to agree. In her speech to the IDU, she said:

There’s a great movie from the 1990s – I’m sure many of you have seen called the usual suspects. And in it, there is a fantastic quote, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”

That is the trick that our opponents on the left, whatever you want to call them -communists, socialists, in this country they call them liberals- I don’t know why, there’s nothing liberal about them.

Suella Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary, has said she is not defecting to Reform UK.

She issued a statement after the Mail on Sunday reported that her husband, Rael Braverman, is joining Nigel Farage’s party.

Suella Braverman told the Independent:

It’s not true. I am not defecting.

My husband and I have a healthy respect for each other’s independence – he doesn’t tell me how to do my job, and I don’t tell him how to pick a political party.

The wording of this statement does not rule out a defection later this parliament.

Matt Vickers, a shadow Home Office minister, told Sky News this morning that the defection of Braverman’s husband was “small fry in the grand scheme of things”.

Vickers said that “nobody was really surprised” when the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns joined Reform UK. He went on:

I think the thought that this is a mass exodus to reform is slightly overblown, really.

Pat McFadden also confirmed that ministers will be told they need to find more efficiency savings in their departments in the spending review starting this week.

In his speech he said:

At the recent budget, the chancellor demanded efficiency and productivity savings of 2% across departments, and there’ll be more to come.

As we launch the next phase of the spending review, at its heart must be reform of the state in order to do a better job for the public.

According to a story by Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times yesterday, ministers will be told they need to find 5% efficiency savings. Shipman said:

On Tuesday a letter will land on the desk of every cabinet minister from Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, announcing the start of the public spending review, which will decide precisely how the government spends taxpayers’ money for the next two years.

It will demand three things: first, that ministers spend money on things the public actually cares about to demonstrate they are on the side of voters. Second, that they tackle waste. Every department will be told they need to find 5% savings from waste and inefficiencies. Third, that they reform public services to make them more productive and get better value for money for the taxpayer. “We cannot keep paying more for poor performance,” Jones writes.

In his speech this morning Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, channelled Dominic Cummings when he said he wanted to see “innovators and disrupters” working for the civil service.

He said:

You might remember a few years ago, there was a call for weirdos and misfits in the system.

Well, whatever term you want to use, we do want innovators and disrupters and original thinkers.

My message to creative thinkers is this is your chance to serve your country, use your brain power, your technological talents, to fix some of the biggest problems we face today.

Britain needs you, and if you choose to serve I want government to empower you to help us deliver, to move fast and build things.

There are more details of the speech in the Cabinet Office news release here. It includes details of how the “test and learn culture” approach McFadden is proposing will be be tried first with two projects, operating in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool and covering family support and temporary accommodation.

Q: [From Alex Wickham from Bloomberg] Do you think you will be able to learn from Elon Musk and the Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) review he is doing for Donald Trump? And has there been any outreach to him from the government?

McFadden said:

Let’s see how he gets on.

I was around in the government last time, and we brought in various people from the business world to help out. Some of them were an enormous success, made great ministers, did great things. Some others less so. Let us see what he can do.

One thing that’s clear is, in the technological world and in the industrial world, he’s been an incredible innovator, and he’s managed to do things in new ways. So let us see how that works out.

In terms of specific outreach to them, not that I’m aware of. But I think it will be interesting to follow what happens.

This was relatively positive, given what Musk has been saying about Keir Starmer, and Britain under Labour, on his X platform in recent months.