HS2 may end up as ‘total waste of money’, warns IFS thinktank – as it happened

• Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said HS2 could end up as a total waste of money. (See 2.45pm.) He was speaking as No 10 hinted that the phase two leg from Birmingham to Manchester might be postponed, rather than cancelled outright. (See 12.35pm.)

• Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem chief whip, has told her party conference this afternoon that the Lib Dems would stop ministers receiving a pay-off (worth almost £17,000 at the current rate) when they leave office if they have only served in government for a short period of time.

The four days of NHS strikes in England earlier this month impacted almost 130,000 inpatient and outpatient appointments, PA Media reports. PA says:

The latest data from NHS England means more than 1m appointments have been cancelled as a result of industrial action in the health service, which has been ongoing since December 2022.

Consultants took strike action on 19 and 20 September, and were joined by junior doctors on 20 September. The junior doctors’ strike then continued until 7am on 23 September.

As a result, 129,913 inpatient and outpatient hospital appointments were cancelled in England.

There were a further 3,581 cancellations in mental health, learning disability and community settings also recorded.

The total number of appointments impacted since industrial action began in the health service in December 2022 now stands at more than 1 million.

If community and mental health figures are included, the total rises to 1.1 million – though this will not reflect the overall number of actual cancellations, due to some duplication of data.

Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, has questioned the need for the review ordered by the Home Office of the rules governing when it is lawful for firearms officers to use their weapons. (See 1.45pm.)

In an interview with the World at One on Radio 4, Macdonald, who is now a peer, said that the law already protects police officers who are acting in self defence. He told the programme:

If it’s being suggested that there should be additional protections for police officers over and above the normal protections which are available to all citizens, that’s quite a quite a tricky suggestion. And it’s quite difficult to conceive what those additional protections would be.

Of course, the police are perfectly entitled to use force within the rules. They’re typically entitled to exercise force in respect of self defence, and the laws that apply to all of us apply to the police.

If you start to create special laws protecting police officers who were involved in the use of force, and sometimes lethal force, then that might begin to call into question public confidence in the activities of police officers.

Macdonald said the law of self defence says “if a person does no more than they instinctively believe is necessary to protect themselves or another person from harm, then that’s the strongest evidence a court has that they are acting in lawful self defence”. That was “a broad and generous defence”, he said.

Macdonald also said that when prosecutors consider whether to charge officers who have used guns while on duty, they consider they pressure firearms officers are under

[Prosecutors] have to factor in very, very carefully, as I always did, the stress the police are under, the danger they’re under, the fact that they’re putting themselves at risk for all of us, and their courage.

That’s precisely why it’s so rare, so vanishingly rare, for police officers to be charged in these circumstances. I don’t think I ever authorised a charge against a police officer in these circumstances for precisely those reasons.

Macdonald stressed that he was not commenting on the case of the officer charged with murder following the shooting of Chris Kaba. But he said that for an officer to be charged like that was “extremely unusual”.

However Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has welcomed the review. In an open letter to the home secretary released yesterday, he said he was glad the review was taking place.

He implied that he was particularly keen to see changes to the rules governing how inquests and misconduct hearings deal with officers accused of firing guns without justification, but he also said he wanted the inquiry to investigate “how CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] policy can strengthen the legal protection for officers who use force”.

All three amendments, including the “rebel” one committing the party to having an annual housing target of 380,000 new homes a year, have passed. (See 4.02pm.) And the motion as amended has passed too.

Here is the document with the motion on housing that Liberal Democrat members are currently debating, with the amendments.

Amendment one says: conference maintains its commitment to a national housing target of 380,000 new homes per year, to set a clear direction of travel and to indicate serious intent to address the housing crisis.

Conference believes that local housing targets need to exist as part of delivering an overall national target; local and central government share responsibility for delivering the housing we desperately need. Local planning authorities should cooperate at regional or sub-regional level to ensure that they deliver homes where they are needed.

The debate was opened by Helen Morgan, the MP for North Shropshire. According to PA Media, as she said the Lib Dems would “build 150,000 new homes for social rent every year”, there were shouts of “Where?”

There were also boos when she said:

National housing targets do not work. They didn’t work a decade ago … they won’t work in the future.

Moving amendment one, Janey Little, chair of the Young Liberals, said young people wanted national housing targets. She said:

We as young people feel ignored and let down by those at the top of our party. This is not the first time we have had to plead our case.

But Tim Farron, the former party leader, described the Young Liberals’ amendment as “Thatcherism”. He said:

If there was a credible amendment today to build 380,000 council houses a year, I would back it.

I reckon I can get away with being a rebel again now, I do not give a monkey’s, but amendment one does not do that. It is a vague and vacuous target, and we have had vague targets for years – they are not radical, they are not liberal, they are not new, they are not effective.

Vague targets let and empower developers to build the houses that they want but never … the homes that we desperately need, especially that young people actually need. The authors of amendment one do not mean it, but it is pure Thatcherism.

Farron was booed at this point. But he described the amendment as an “electoral gift to the Tories, including right now in Mid [Bedfordshire]”, adding:

I will take the hit to stand up against nimbyism, but I will not take an electoral hit to fight the corner of corporate investors.

In Bournemouth Lib Dem members are debating housing, and as Peter Walker reports, they’re having a proper policy argument about national targets.

Lib Dems are facing a conference-floor rebellion on their abolition of a national target for housebuilding. Top brass say such targets don’t work – lots of members, especially younger ones, disagree, amid fears they are pandering to nimbyism to court Tory voters.

This debate is getting very feisty. Tim Farron, ex-LD leader, just got booed by some delegates and had the mic cut for going over time with a passionate speech against an amendment to restore a national target to the housing policy.

It was, in fairness, a great speech by Farron. National targets, he said, do “naff all” to build houses. He called the amendment “the most right wing thing I’ve seen at Lib Dem conference since we sent Liz Truss off undercover.”