Dowden suggests firefighters" concerns over barge linked to their political views Oliver Dowden suggested concerns about the Bibby Stockholm barge by the Fire Brigades Union are politically motivated. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show about the FBU’s comments that the barge could be a floating “death trap” for asylum seekers, the deputy prime minister said: Of course, we’ll take into account those concerns and that’s exactly what we’re doing. I would just gently say the Fire Brigades Union has donated £850,000 to the Labour party since 2010. It is affiliated to the Labour party, and I’m afraid what we see with this is exactly what we saw with trying to pass the legislation earlier this year through parliament. There are many obstacles. We’re confident that we will be able to address all of the concerns. I’m absolutely certain about that and I’m absolutely certain we will be able to get people on this vessel in the coming weeks. End of day summary Here’s a roundup of the key developments of the day: Oliver Dowden suggested concerns about the Bibby Stockholm barge by the Fire Brigades Union are politically motivated. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show about the FBU’s comments that the barge could be a floating “death trap” for asylum seekers, the deputy prime minister said: “Of course, we’ll take into account those concerns and that’s exactly what we’re doing. I would just gently say the Fire Brigades Union has donated £850,000 to the Labour party since 2010. It is affiliated to the Labour party.” Greenpeace activists climbed on the roof of Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire mansion and draped it in oily-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences of a new drilling frenzy”. The campaigners were later arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and public nuisance after climbing down voluntarily. The Bank of England has raised interest rates by a quarter of a point to 5.25%, marking a fresh 15-year high as it battles to bring rampant UK inflation back down to its 2% target. The Bank of England is being criticised from both ends of the political spectrum and has been accused of overreacting. Rishi Sunak has insisted the government’s pay offer to doctors is “fair” and “final”. Writing in the Daily Express, Sunak said “there will be no more talks on this year’s pay” and he urged doctors to call off their strikes. Police are investigating a leaflet distributed by the Welsh secretary and Monmouth MP, David TC Davies, which was described as bordering on racism. In what was billed as an “important update to constituents”, the leaflet encouraged people to give their thoughts on the local Labour-controlled council’s plans “to establish a number of Gypsy Traveller sites in the county”. We are closing this liveblog now. Thanks so much for joining us and for all your comments and emails. Jeremy Hunt acknowledged the rise in interest rates would be a “worry” for families and businesses but insisted the government must stick to its plan to bring down inflation. Hunt said it was important not to “veer around like a shopping trolley” and to follow the government’s current path in order to meet its key goal of halving inflation. In a boost for the prime minister and chancellor, the Bank of England said earlier on Thursday it expects the government to meet that promise by the end of the year. Hunt told broadcasters: Any rise in interest rates is a worry for families with mortgages, for businesses with loans … What the Bank of England governor is saying is we have a plan that is bringing down inflation, solidly, robustly and consistently. So the plan is working, but what we have to do as a government is that we stick to that plan, we don’t veer around like a shopping trolley. Jeremy Hunt has raised concerns about the scale of debanking following the row around the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts account. The chancellor told broadcasters: I’m worried that it may exist more than we had thought. And the reason I’m worried is because free speech is a fundamental human right. And you can agree or disagree with Nigel Farage but everyone wants to be able to express their opinions. But in today’s society, you need a bank account to function and so a threat to be debanked, as the word is now widely used, is a threat to your right to express your opinions. So we have regulations, I think it’s regulation 18 of the payment accounts regulations, that ban this so-called debanking of people for their political views. I’ve written to the regulator, which is the Financial Conduct Authority. They have the right to fine banks very large sums of money if they find this practice is widespread. I want to know if it is and I want to know what they’re doing about it and they said they’ll get back to me by September. Experts have said action needs to be taken on the use of artificial intelligence-generated or -enhanced images in politics after a Labour MP apologised for sharing a manipulated image of Rishi Sunak serving a pint. Karl Turner, the MP for Hull East, shared an image on the rebranded Twitter platform, X, showing the prime minister pulling a sub-standard pint at the Great British beer festival while a woman looks on with a derisive expression. The image had been manipulated from an original photo in which Sunak appears to have pulled a pub-level pint while the person behind him has a neutral expression. The image brought criticism from the Conservatives, with the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, calling it “unacceptable”. Dowden told LBC: I think that the Labour leader should disown this and Labour MPs who have retweeted this or shared this should delete the image, it is clearly misleading. Experts said the row was an indication of what could happen during what is likely to be a bitterly fought election campaign next year. While it was not clear whether the image of Sunak had been manipulated using an AI tool, such programs have made it easier and quicker to produce convincing fake text, images and audio. Rachel Reeves has challenged Rishi Sunak to a chess game amid reported plans to install 100 sets in public parks – but noted “it doesn’t look like there are very many to go round”. The shadow chancellor, a former junior chess champion, said green spaces in her constituency would “love” to receive one of the boards, but questioned the number reportedly being made available. The prime minister, also a keen player, is to announce a funding boost of £500,000 for the English Chess Federation, with plans to expand the game in schools and parks, Bloomberg reported. Funding from Sport England cannot be accessed for the game as it is not officially recognised as a sport in England, PA Media reports. Reeves told BBC Radio 2 on Thursday: I really hope we get one at a park in Leeds West ... all of them would love to have one of these chess sets. It doesn’t sound like there’s many to go around, but also if Rishi Sunak fancies a game of chess, I’m happy to take him on too. An announcement is expected later this month and the government is in talks with the federation about the best ways to invest in the game, Bloomberg reported. The plans would involve installing 100 chess sets in public parks and expanding instruction in schools, according to the outlet. Sunak expressed his desire to get more British children playing chess, describing it as a “great skill” during a visit to Washington in June. He said: You know, I’m actually doing a little bit of work now on how we can get more people in the United Kingdom to play chess, because it’s so good for you. It’s a great skill and it’s really good for helping you think and it’s a great hobby. Malcolm Pein, the English Chess Federation’s international director, said it would be the first time the government has supported chess in “any serious sense”. He told the PA Media news agency that some of the reasoning behind the funding push was a need to “upskill” and make “Britain smarter”, as well as chess being “enormously popular”. Pein said the “transferable skills” could be used in cyberdefence and computer programming jobs. The Bank of England is being criticised from both ends of the political spectrum over today’s interest rate rise. The IPPR, the progressive thinktank, says the Bank is “tightening the screws too much” by lifting interest rates to a 15-year high of 5.25% today. Carsten Jung, a senior economist at IPPR, suggests rates could be more than one percentage point too high. “The UK economy is weakening. The labour market is slowing down, and productivity is falling. Increasingly there is a realisation that the Bank of England is already overdoing it. “By raising interest rates to 5.25 per cent, the Bank is tightening the screws too much and causing excessive harm for households and businesses. Interest rates might well be more than a percentage point too high now. “Instead of further rate rises, we need a more balanced approach to tackling inflation, using more government support. Countries like Spain have kept energy prices lower, temporarily limited rent increases and tackled excessively high profits through taxation. Their inflation rate has recently fallen back to target. The UK should take inspiration from their example.” The pro-free market Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank is also concerned that the Bank is overreacting. Julian Jessop, an economics fellow at the IEA, says: “The Bank’s decision to raise rates again, albeit by just a quarter point, suggests that the MPC is still looking in the rear view mirror. “Money and credit growth have already slowed sharply and other leading indicators of inflation have weakened, including commodity prices and evidence from business surveys. “It would have made more sense to pause to assess the impact of the large increases in rates that have already taken place, as other central banks have done. “The UK economy is like a frog slowly being cooked by ever higher interest rates. By raising the temperature further now, the Bank risks doing too much and, once again, only realising its mistake when it is too late.” Four people arrested over protest at Sunak"s Yorkshire home North Yorkshire police said the four Greenpeace activists who scaled Rishi Sunak’s roof had been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and public nuisance. Elliot Foskett, assistant chief constable, said: Shortly after 8am this morning we responded swiftly to reports of protest activity at the prime minister’s North Yorkshire address. There was no threat to the wider public throughout this incident which has now been brought to a safe conclusion. The prime minister and his family were not at the address at the time of the incident. Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Philip Evans said the activists who scaled Rishi Sunak’s house had been taken into custody. Evans stressed that the action was peaceful and no one was harmed and no property was damaged. Our activists have come down, having delivered their message to the prime minister who’s holidaying 5,000 miles away. It’s time for Sunak to decide which side he is on – Big Oil’s profits or our future on a habitable planet? By ignoring the stark warnings of his own advisers, energy experts and the UN, and committing to a climate-wrecking drilling frenzy in the North Sea, the prime minister is pouring fuel on the wildfires, floods and unprecedented heat waves that are ruining lives and livelihoods right around the world. The buck stops with him, and he must take sole responsibility for the devastation he is unleashing. He added: Our action today was entirely peaceful and we were diligent in ensuring that no one was home and that no damage would be done to the property. We have cooperated fully with the police and the activists have been taken into custody. We felt it was important to take this message directly to the prime minister’s doorstep today, since it is Sunak himself that has signed off on the decision to grant these licences and it is Sunak who holds the power to reverse this decision. So we ask the prime minister once more – Rishi Sunak, whose side are you on – Big Oil’s profits or our future? Four Greenpeace protesters who scaled the prime minister’s Yorkshire constituency home have been arrested, a North Yorkshire police spokesperson at the scene said. A group of Greenpeace activists have ended their hours-long protest on the roof of Rishi Sunak’s mansion as they criticised his new fossil fuel drilling “frenzy”. The four campaigners draped the prime minister’s grade II listed manor house in North Yorkshire with an oil-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences” on Thursday morning. Police were “managing the situation” after being called to the family home in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, at around 8am after the activists climbed the roof while Sunak, his wife and children were on holiday in California. The group returned to the ground at around 1.15pm and were seen being driven off in a police van. Oliver Dowden, who is standing in for Sunak during his holiday, told the protesters to “stop the stupid stunts”. A former deputy chief constable of North Yorkshire police said it was a “major breach of security”, as he called for an “investigation into how this has been allowed to happen”. The four Greenpeace protesters are now climbing down from the roof of Rishi Sunak’s house. The activists started coming down at around 12.30pm and are waiting for each other on the roof and extension on the house. Responding to Greenpeace scaling the roof of Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire manor house, Alicia Kearns, the senior Tory who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, told the Yorkshire Post the action was “unacceptable”. She said: Politicians live in the public eye and rightly receive intense scrutiny, but their family homes should not be under assault. Before long police will need to be stationed outside the home of every MP. Brexit checks on fresh farm produce coming to the UK from the EU have been delayed for the fifth time, according to reports. The decision to suspend plans to enforce the controls, which have been applied in the other direction – on British exports to the EU – since January 2021, is due to be announced imminently, according to the Financial Times. The delay is intended to give the government and exporters in the EU more time to prepare for the checks, setting Rishi Sunak on a collision course with domestic UK food producers who have long argued that it gives a free pass to continental rivals while they have to endure checks on all fresh food exports to the bloc. According to reports, there are concerns the extra red tape would increase the cost of food imports to consumers and fuel further inflation. The decision comes just days after the government abandoned plans to force manufacturers to label their products with an alternative to the EU’s CE (Conformité Européenne) safety mark. Industry representatives welcomed the delay. Shane Brennan, the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation: The government has made the right decision to postpone. UK food retailers, hospitality businesses and consumers were in line for major disruption because many EU food-producing businesses supplying into the UK are not ready for the new requirements. Responding to the news that the Bank of England has raised interest rates to 5.25%, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said: This latest rise in interest rates will be incredibly worrying for households across Britain already struggling to make ends meet. The Tory mortgage bombshell is hitting families hard, with a typical mortgage holder now paying an extra £220 a month when they go to re-mortgage. Responsibility for this crisis lies at the door of the Conservatives that crashed the economy and left working people worse off, with higher mortgages, higher food bills and higher taxes. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: If we stick to the plan, the bank forecasts inflation will be below 3% in a year’s time without the economy falling into a recession. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for families facing higher mortgage bills so we will continue to do what we can to help households. The Bank of England has raised interest rates by a quarter of a point to 5.25%, marking a fresh 15-year high as it battles to bring rampant UK inflation back down to its 2% target. In a move that matched City analysts’ forecasts, the central bank agreed on the rise – its 14th in a row – to tackle a cost of living crisis that has pushed many families into financial hardship. Some economists had feared the Bank would increase the likelihood of a recession by raising rates by 0.5 percentage points, but policymakers opted for a more modest increase after a drop in the UK annual inflation rate. The consumer prices index fell in June to 7.9% from 8.7% in the previous month. However, it remains ahead of the comparable figure in France, Germany and the US, and nearly four times the 2% level the Bank aims to achieve. The British economy has also begun to weaken in recent months. Property prices have already begun to fall in response to higher borrowing costs while business surveys indicate much of the industrial sector is in recession. Oliver Dowden has told protesters to “stop the stupid stunts” after Greenpeace activists scaled Rishi Sunak’s house to demonstrate against his announcement on North Sea drilling. Speaking on a visit to Able Seaton Port, in Hartlepool, the deputy prime minister said: I think what most people would say is: ‘Can you stop the stupid stunts’. Actually, what they want to see from government is action. That’s what you’re seeing here today – the world’s largest offshore wind farm being built right here, creating jobs. But at the same time we’re going to need in the coming decades oil and gas as part of our energy mix. The question is do we produce it here, where we get more tax, we create more jobs, or do we do what Labour and others say which is: ‘No more investment in our North Sea oil and gas’? Full story: Bibby Stockholm will be housing people within weeks, says Oliver Dowden Checks are still taking place on a barge designed to house asylum seekers, with the first group due to be housed there within “weeks”, the UK’s deputy prime minister has suggested. Oliver Dowden said he was confident the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, would become operational soon and that the government would “take into account those concerns” when pressed over fears raised about fire safety. Despite the plan to start moving people on to the 500-capacity boat being repeatedly pushed back, Dowden was resolute it remained necessary to reduce the cost to taxpayers as part of a wider drive to “stop the boats”. Explaining the delay, Dowden said: “We have to undertake a number of inspections and other measures to make sure that these vessels – and this vessel in particular – is suitable and ready.” Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he added: “I’m confident that in the coming weeks, we will have people on those barges.” Dowden said the government was already taking into account concerns raised by the Fire Brigades Union, which has called the boat a “potential deathtrap” given concerns about overcrowding and access to fire exits. He began to argue that the FBU was a significant donor to the Labour party, until it was put to him that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had also made a late intervention. “Well, we are confident that we will be able to address all of these concerns,” Dowden told the BBC. He pointed to what he described as some successes, as part of the government’s drive to “stop the boats”. He said the number of Albanians arriving on the English south coast had dropped by 90%, and that, after cooperation with France, there was a 40% rise in the number of people being intercepted in the Channel. In relation to Rishi Sunak’s vow to clear an asylum backlog of 92,000 applications by the end of the year, Dowden said “we remain committed to that pledge” and added that the number of caseworkers had been increased to help.