First minister says SNP MP who defected to Tories ‘probably never believed’ in Scottish independence – UK politics live

Plaid Cymru says the overcrowding and chaos in the prison system shows why responsibility for justice should be devolved to the Welsh government.

Prisons, and law and order generally, in Wales are the responsibility of the Westminster government, and Wales will be affected by judges being told to delay the sentencing of convicted criminals because jails in England and Wales are full.

Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader at Westminster, said Wales would be better under an alternative system. In a statement she said:

The people of Wales are being let down by the current system. Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe, but the Tories continue to fill our prisons with low-risk offenders serving short-term sentences, rather than prioritising spaces for violent offenders.

Moving toward properly-resourced community-based solutions for low-risk and non-violent crimes would help free up space in prisons for those who have committed serious offenses and pose a higher risk to our communities. Instead, Westminster politicians continue a hard-line rhetoric on crime, while refusing to provide the resources that the justice system so desperately needs.

Given that health, housing, and social policy have been devolved for 25 years, it’s high time Wales is given powers over justice, so that we can create a justice system that genuinely seeks to rehabilitate offenders and create a safer society, rather than being a cynical tool for weak Westminster politicians to use for political ends.

Last year Keir Starmer welcomed the findings of a report from Gordon Brown’s Commission on the UK’s Future which recommended that Wales should get responsibility for youth justice and probation. But the Welsh government wants a future Labour government to go further and full responsibility for justice and policing to be devolved to Wales.

Stuart Hoddinott, an NHS specialist at the Institute for Government thinktank, has a good thread on X looking at why hospital waiting lists are still going up. It starts here.

New data out today shows the elective waiting list grew to 7.75m in August, up from 7.68m in July

Another record high, and 531k higher than in January when Sunak pledged to bring down waiting lists

What’s driving the increase? And what’s happening to other parts of the list?

He says this is the first time since this data started being collected that the number of people waiting more than 52, 65 and 78 weeks all increased.

Concerningly for the NHS, the number of people waiting more than 52, 65, and 78 weeks all increased in August – something that has only happened once in this time series

78 weeks grew from 7,289 to 8,998 despite the target to eliminate all by the end of March this year

The NHS data is here. And here is Andrew Gregory’s story about the figures.

The Ministry of Justice has issued an updated response to the Times story staying judges are being told to delay sentencing hearings because prisons are full. (See 8.56am.) An MoJ spokesperson said:

We are categorical that the most serious offenders should be sent to prison and that anyone deemed a risk to public safety is remanded in custody while awaiting trial. Reports to the contrary are false …

The lord chancellor [Alex Chalk, the justice secretary] will be meeting criminal justice partners later today and setting out a programme of reform in the coming days to ensure that we can continue to strengthen public protection by locking up the most dangerous criminals.

This does not really contradict the Times story, which says that as a result of overcrowding judges are being asked to delay sentencing hearings for criminals who are on bail. People deemed “the most serious offenders” tend not to get bail anyway. And the Times did not say that the courts would stop remanding dangerous suspects in custody while they are awaiting trial; it just said they might have to be held in cells in magistrates’ courts.

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister and the SNP leader, has said that he was not surprised that Lisa Cameron has defected.

He also said that she should resign, and that if she was joining the Conservatives, she probably never believed in Scottish independence in the first place. He told PA Media:

It’s the least surprising news I’ve had as leader of the SNP, I must confess.

Lisa Cameron should do the honourable thing, she should resign her seat.

She should do the honourable thing by her constituents, who voted for an SNP MP, did not vote for a Conservative MP.

Yousaf claimed he was confident that the SNP would win a byelection in her East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow constituency. And he went on:

To see somebody who claims to have supported Scottish independence cross the floor to the Conservative and Unionist party betrays the fact that she probably never believed in the cause in the first place.

Scientists suffered abuse during Covid because government let people get ‘unbalanced’ view of their influence, inquiry told

Amelia Hill

Sage scientists suffered alarming levels of public abuse during the pandemic because the government mishandled the sharing of information, the Covid inquiry heard this morning.

Dr Stuart Wainwright, the director of the Government Office for Science, criticised the government’s decision to publish minutes from Sage meetings but not the advice they received on economic and operational policy advice.

The abuse scientists received “as a direct result” of that decision was so bad that GO Science, the organisation supporting the chief scientific adviser, had to provide extensive support to scientists. “We had to provide communication support, well-being support, counselling, security advice and security support to scientists as a direct result of the government’s decision,” he told the inquiry.

All Sage scientists gave their time to the government for free during the pandemic, some of them taking leave from their jobs to do so. But the abuse received was so extensive that, Wainwright said: “I worry it may have put off other academics to come forward to help government in future crises.”

He also said that the policy of only publishing the scientific advice could have led to an “unbalanced understanding in parliament and in the media” about the role science took in the creation of pandemic policies.

Wainwright also criticised the government’s decision-making processes during the crisis: “Objectives remained unclear after mid-March [2020],” he said.

There were not enough people in the cabinet with scientific skills, meaning that advisers’ ability to provide useful answers were severely hampered by poorly formulated questions.

That lack of expertise at the heart of government particularly affected plans for non-pharmaceutical interventions, he said, including the provision of PPE.

The commissioning of advice did get quite chaotic and poorly formulated from March through into the summer. It got back on track in the autumn.

Wainwright also said that the government was too slow to seek advice from Sage when advanced, difficult policy issues had to be made. He highlighted an instance when Sage was commissioned to investigate the issue of students returning to university when it was “almost too late”.

Council spending on accommodating homeless families in England up 33% in past year, figures show

Robert Booth

English councils’ spending on bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families has soared to over £500m a year – a 33% annual rise, according to the latest official figures to expose England’s deepening housing crisis.

The soaring spending was branded “outrageous” and “illogical” by homelessness campaigners. It is enough to build around 5,000 homes.

“We simply can’t keep throwing money at grim B&Bs and hostels instead of focusing on helping families into a home,” said Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter.

Overall spending on temporary accommodation for homeless families is also up 9% to £1.7bn a year – a sum sufficient to fund the infrastructure for a 70,000-home new town, of the type proposed this week by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. Spending on temporary accommodation overall has more than doubled in seven years.

Shelter said the rise was because homelessness had reached such a scale that councils were struggling to procure self-contained temporary accomodation, let alone settled homes. Housing benefit rates have been frozen since 2020 while private rents have risen sharply.

“The number of people living in temporary accommodation or facing homelessness is becoming a growing humanitarian crisis in England, particularly for families living together in single room B&Bs,” said John Glenton, executive director of Riverside Care and Support, which provides homelessness services.

Sources working with homeless people said the number of people arriving as refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Hong Kong and from the small boats may be increasing pressure in the system that is already weak because of a shortage of social housing.

Keir Starmer’s BBC local radio interview round (see 12.36pm) was notably more successful than Rishi Sunak’s equivalent one just before the Conservative party conference. After one of them, a BBC journalist said that had come across “very measured, very relaxed” and that he did not keep interrupting, like Sunak, who had some very difficult encounters with the the local radio presenters. (See here, or here, or here.) Perhaps that was because they were a bit more deferential, although there was little evidence of that. (On Radio Kent Starmer was criticised for not mentioning Kent in his conference speech.) Mainly it was because Sunak has a much harder record to defend, while Starmer has been working on making his policy platform bombproof.

Starmer was also well briefed, and never sounded like one of those politicians on a media round who has forgotten who they’re addressing. On Radio Kent, when it was put to him that Labour was neglecting the county, he said that he had grown up on the Surrey/Kent border and that he had played in the Kent boys football league. And, on Radio WM (West Midlands), Starmer was able to recall one playing as a ringer for the Radio WM team in a match, because one of his best friends worked there. Amazingly, he was able to recall the match. He had a long shot from just over the half-way line that missed, he recalled.

Keir Starmer has said he would like the next Labour leader to be a woman.

However, despite also saying he would to see this happen “pretty soon”, he also hinted that he was hoping there would not be a vacancy until the 2030s.

Starmer made the comment in an interview with BBC Radio London, one of eight BBC local radio stations he spoke to this morning.

When the presenter Salma El-Wardany pointed out that Labour is the only non-fringe party in the UK that has never had a woman as leader, and asked if he agreed the next Labour leader should not be a man, Starmer replied:

Yes, I agree. We need a female leader. I want to ensure that I win the election and that as prime minister I’m able to deliver for the whole of the country. But the Labour party has been the champion of equality for years.

We’ve got very strong women, I should say. Look at Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, very, very powerful – an incredible story, Angela coming from very working class roots to becoming deputy leader of the Labour party and she will be deputy prime minister if we win the election.

Rachel Reeves – if we get into power, and I know we have to win every vote – will be the first ever female chancellor in 800 years of chancellors. So I think we can smash a few ceilings along the way.

But I’m not going to duck your question. The Labour party does need a female leader, erm, you know, pretty soon and obviously I need to win the election, we need to put in place our decade of national renewal, and move on from there.

Starmer was a bit hesitant when he said “pretty soon”. At the Labour conference he implied that he was hoping to be in power for a decade, and so any woman hoping to replace him may have a long wait.

During the media round, Starmer also said that he would have liked the extension of Ulez, the ultra-low emissions zone in London, to have been implemented in a “more proportionate” way that did not cost some drivers so much.

And he said that Labour would not support the building of new homes without the right infrastructure, such as transport and GP surgeries, going in too.

Rishi Sunak has offered support to try to keep the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza open for humanitarian reasons in a call with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Downing Street said. No 10 said:

The prime minister spoke to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi this morning, following the terrorist atrocity carried out by Hamas in Israel.

He expressed his condolences for the Egyptians who have lost their lives, along with so many others.

The prime minister said that terrorism is an evil which must be confronted, wherever we find it. It was also important that the conflict did not spread further. He noted the importance of Egypt’s historic role in the region, including in seeking de-escalation.

The prime minister acknowledged the challenging security situation at the Rafah border crossing [the only crossing between Egypt and Gaza]. He offered the UK’s support to try to manage this situation and keep the route open for humanitarian and consular reasons, including for British nationals.