Starmer dodges questions on two-child benefit cap SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, began his PMQs contribution: “may I again warmly congratulate the prime minister on ending Tory rule”, to which a shout came from the Tory benches – “and yours”. The SNP MP for Aberdeen South said the Conservatives were now “too close for comfort” on the neighbouring opposition benches. Flynn continued: In his campaign to do so [Keir Starmer] was of course joined by Gordon Brown and just five days before the general election in Scotland on the front page of The Daily Record Gordon Brown instructed voters to vote Labour to end child poverty. Yet last night Labour MPs from Scotland were instructed to retain the two child cap which forces children into poverty. So prime minister, what changed? Keir Starmer replied: I’m glad he mentioned Gordon Brown because the last Labour government lifted millions of children out of poverty, something we’re very very proud of and this Government will approach the question with the same vigour with our new taskforce. Already we’ve taken steps, breakfast clubs, abolishing no fault evictions, decent homes.” Flynn was reprimanded by Speaker Lindsay Hoyle for holding a print out of the Daily Record headline he referred to, with Hoyle saying: “Props are not allowed to be used. Never mind put it down. We don’t need any more.” A summary of today"s developments This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading it, emailing in and commenting below the line. You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics reporting here. Here is a summary of today’s key developments: Keir Starmer took part in his first prime minister’s questions (PMQs) as prime minister on Wednesday amid backbench unease over a vote on the two-child benefit cap that saw him suspend seven Labour MPs. Starmer was accused of dodging questions about the rebellion as he sought to strike a consensual tone. Asked by two Scottish National party MPs about the revolt, Starmer instead talked about the SNP’s record on child poverty. Rishi Sunak faced Starmer for the first time as the leader of the opposition at PMQs on Wednesday, during which he pressed Starmer on the UK’s support for Ukraine. Conservative leader, Sunak said: “Can I ask that he continues to be responsive to Ukraine’s new requests so that they don’t just stand still, but can decisively win out against Russian aggression?” Eluned Morgan has been confirmed as the new leader of Welsh Labour and is to become the first female first minister of Wales. Lady Morgan, 57, the health secretary in the Labour-led Welsh government, was the only candidate to put herself forward to replace Vaughan Gething. Speaking to reporters after PMQs, Starmer’s political spokesperson defended the decision to suspend the rebels, saying the prime minister had been consulted on the move. “We’ve been very clear on our position on the two-child limit, and why we did not commit to removing it both during the campaign and since,” she said. Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey said during PMQs that the prime minister “has many messes that he has inherited”. One of these, said Davey, was the “scandal over the carer’s allowance repayments”. Starmer agreed and added: “I’m sorry to have to report to the House it’s not the only crisis that we’ve inherited. There’s a crisis and a failure absolutely everywhere.” Starmer said he will not apologise for his plans to impose VAT on private schools, after he was challenged on the proposal during his first PMQs in his new role. As he defended the policy, the prime minister argued that every parent has aspirations for their children no matter which school they go to. Jonathan Ashworth accused the seven Labour MPs suspended for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap of “gesture” politics. The former Labour MP, who played a prominent role in his party’s election media campaign but was unseated in the general election, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “They knew that this amendment was never going to pass because of the commanding majority Keir Starmer has.” Zarah Sultana has said she “slept well” after being suspended by the Labour party over a Commons rebellion on the two-child benefit cap – and suggested she was the victim of a “macho virility test”. Sultana, one of seven from the party’s left stripped of the whip on Tuesday night for backing an SNP motion to scrap the cap said: “I slept well knowing that I took a stand against child poverty that is affecting 4.3 million people in this country and it is the right thing to do and I am glad I did it.” One of Scottish Labour’s new MPs has insisted that the policy of Scottish and UK Labour on the two-child cap is “identical”, despite Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar previously called for an end to the measure. In the aftermath of the Labour rebellion on the SNP amendment to scrap the cap yesterday, Blair McDougall told BBC Radio Scotland this morning: “I think what ministers have said to me this week on the two-child cap is identical to what people in the Scottish Labour party are saying. The position is absolutely identical.” The EU and UK are expected to hold their first summit next spring, as contacts warm under the new Labour government. A summit between the leaders of the EU’s main institutions and Keir Starmer is “somewhere pencilled in mentally in the agenda” for next spring, a senior European official told the Guardian. The consumer finance expert Martin Lewis replied to a tweet by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Carla Lockhart, where she referred to voting to “lift the two-child cap on Child Benefit”. Lewis, posting on his X account, wrote on Wednesday morning: “There is NO two child cap on Child Benefit. The vote was on the two child limit for Universal Credit & Tax Credits. I hope this is just a poorly drafted tweet and not a misunderstanding of what was voted on.” James Cleverly has said he thinks the Conservative party is the most successful political movement in human history but that it has recently given the impression of being more focused on internal rows than serving the public. The shadow home secretary, who was the first to declare he is running for the Tory leadership, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ve also got to recognise that at this general election those things we have achieved were overshadowed by a number of negatives, so we didn’t get the cut-through for our successes and the criticisms really, really landed.” Plans to tackle misogyny in schools could take up to 20 years to have an impact on society, the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, has said as she outlined measures to protect women and girls. Phillips spoke the day after the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”. Rachel Reeves must overhaul the allowance that has resulted in thousands of unpaid carers being saddled with life-changing debt, and in some cases threatened with criminal prosecution, the consumer finance expert Martin Lewis has said. Lewis has written to the chancellor, identifying four measures that he says are possible to enact without great cost to the taxpayer that would remedy financial injustices, including changes to the child benefit charge and removing withdrawal penalties from lifetime Isas. The government is to pause imminent funding cuts to BTecs and other applied general qualifications while it reviews planned reforms to post-16 qualifications, the education secretary has announced. Funding for scores of courses was due to be withdrawn as early as next week as part of the last government’s plans to simplify the system of vocational qualifications and expand its T-level programme of technical qualifications. Cabinet secretary, Simon Case, is reportedly being advised to step down permanently from his role for health reasons at the end of this year, writes Politico. The outlet reported that “Case is currently working at full capacity, but the condition is affecting his mobility and he now walks with the aid of a stick”. Responding to the latest crime statistics, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, said: “Years of Conservative neglect and failure to give the police the resources they need and put bobbies on the beat mean that now victims do not know if they will ever see justice after facing these invasive crimes. The former home secretary now wants to run for Conservative party leader, yet he couldn’t even get the basics of his last job right. Cleverly’s crime catastrophe shows how utterly unfit the Conservatives were for government and why the country voted so decisively for change with a record number of Liberal Democrat MPs elected. The new Labour government must now address these Conservative failures, put more police on the streets, make communities feel safe again and ensure victims get the justice they deserve.” One of Labour’s rising stars has said the party will have failed in government if it does not reduce inequality, even as the prime minister faces a bitter internal battle over a key poverty-reduction measure. Torsten Bell, the former head of the Resolution Foundation turned Labour MP, said Britain’s longstanding economic problems could not be solved by economic growth alone. His comments come amid a row over whether Labour should end the two-child benefit cap immediately, with seven MPs losing the whip on Tuesday night after voting for a Scottish National party amendment to do so. Bell was not one of those to rebel, despite having criticised the cap both as an independent economist and as a Labour candidate. Speaking to the Guardian about his book Great Britain?, Bell said: “Everybody in the labour movement thinks that a world where half of children in larger households are growing up in poverty isn’t what success looks like.” But he defended his decision not to vote for the SNP amendment on Tuesday night, saying: “What matters, and has always been my focus, is actually reducing child poverty – not parliamentary game-playing.” He added that his broader economic message was that the government needed to focus both on boosting growth and cutting relative poverty. “You won’t be able to claim success if you haven’t both got wages up and leaned against inequality and poverty,” he said. He added: “My view is that everybody should care about growth and the inequality … If you’re not seeing wages growing, that’s a very, very significant problem. And the old world of politics saying. ‘We just assumed that wages are growing, we’ll just worry about other stuff,’ is like long gone. Both are important. Shadow education secretary, Damian Hinds, urged the Labour government to continue with the rollout of the Tories’ T-levels. During a debate on education, the Tory former minister said: I hope they will see through T-levels and the reform of technical and vocational education, on the blueprint – and we always did this in government with a cross-party approach – on the blue print of Lord Sainsbury.” The two-year courses, which are broadly equivalent to three A-levels, were introduced after Lord David Sainsbury published an independent review into technical education in 2016. Earlier in his contribution, Hinds told the Commons: My ask of the Government is that while we absolutely acknowledge that they have just won the election and they have a big majority, nevertheless we ask them to be mindful and to be careful, and don’t change things just because you can.” A headteacher broke down when she described how difficult it was to balance special educational needs provision with funding challenges, an MP has told the Commons, reports the PA news agency. Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, Helen Hayes, said: In a context of the decimation of local authority funding since 2010 and with increasing presentation of additional needs across the country, local councils and schools are simply buckling under the pressure of resources they do not have and needs they cannot meet, while families are suffering the consequences. At a recent visit to an ‘outstanding’ school in my constituency, the headteacher broke down as she described the conflict of seeking to be an inclusive school with the reality of simply not having the funding that she needed to deliver for children with additional needs, while increasingly local authorities are being driven to the edge of financial viability by the costs of Send (special educational needs and disabilities) support and Send transport.” Turning to children’s social care, Hayes told MPs: Care-experienced people are so overrepresented in both the criminal justice system and the homeless population because they are being so badly failed, that if the government is serious about tackling these challenges, it must turn its attention to delivering better support and better outcomes for care-experienced people.” Hayes called for a “care experience covenant” in law to compel authorities to take corporate parenting responsibilities seriously. The EU and UK are expected to hold their first summit next spring, as contacts warm under the new Labour government. A summit between the leaders of the EU’s main institutions and Keir Starmer is “somewhere pencilled in mentally in the agenda” for next spring, a senior European official told the Guardian. The prime minister, it is expected, would be invited to meet the heads of the European Commission and the European Council, rather than attend a regular EU summit with 27 national leaders. While the EU has regular summits with Canada, China and Japan, there have been no equivalent high-level gatherings with the UK. The head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen – elected last week for a second five-year term – is due to meet the prime minister in late August or early September, a meeting that is likely to pave the way to talks on improving the EU-UK relationship. A spring summit would be a bigger event likely to be focused on achieving an outcome, which is yet to be defined. The UK has said it wants a security pact with the EU, but also hopes to improve the economic relationship by signing a veterinary agreement to reduce border checks, secure mutual recognition of professional qualifications and make it easier for touring musicians to work in Europe. The EU institutions are in a state of transition. Von der Leyen, who is busy choosing her new team of commissioners, will not begin her second mandate until 1 November or 1 December, depending on a European parliament vote. An EU-UK summit would also include the incoming European Council president, António Costa, not due to take office until the end of the year. Prime minister Keir Starmer has welcomed Eluned Morgan as Welsh Labour leader. He said: Eluned’s election as Welsh Labour leader and candidacy for first minister is fantastic news for Wales and for the Labour party. Eluned brings with her a wealth of experience and a track record of delivery, and as the first woman to lead Welsh Labour, she is already making history. Just three weeks ago, people across Wales voted overwhelmingly for a changed Labour party to lead a government in Westminster. We have a been given a strong mandate to deliver change for working people, and I look forward to working hand-in-hand with Eluned to deliver on our promises to Wales and Britain.” Eluned Morgan confirmed as new Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan has been confirmed as the new leader of Welsh Labour and is to become the first female first minister of Wales. Lady Morgan, 57, the health secretary in the Labour-led Welsh government, was the only candidate to put herself forward to replace Vaughan Gething. The Senedd, the Welsh parliament, is expected to be recalled from recess for Morgan to be appointed as first minister. If appointed she will be Labour’s first female head of state in the UK. Morgan has promised to unify the party after a torrid four months during which Gething was fatally wounded bycaught up in a scandal over donations he received for his leadership campaign. Morgan has said she will make Huw Irranca-Davies, who supported Gething’s only rival for the job of Welsh leader, Jeremy Miles, as her deputy first minister. Plaid Cymru has called for a snap Senedd election with i. Its leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, claiminged Morgan’s leadership iwas aimed at stabilising Labour in Wales rather than being in the best interests of the country. He said: Eluned Morgan will today become the third Labour leader in Wales in three months. She knows that for Welsh government to have legitimacy in such circumstances, a fresh election is needed. Labour fixers have been more concerned with party management than offering a change of direction for Wales.” Morgan was granted a peerage in 2011 and has sat in the House of Lords and the European parliament as well as the Senedd. The Welsh Conservative leader, Andrew RT Davies, described her appointment as a “baroness picking up a crown”. The government is to pause imminent funding cuts to BTecs and other applied general qualifications while it reviews planned reforms to post-16 qualifications, the education secretary has announced. Funding for scores of courses was due to be withdrawn as early as next week as part of the last government’s plans to simplify the system of vocational qualifications and expand its T-level programme of technical qualifications. Following widespread expressions of concern from the sector, Bridget Phillipson told MPs in the Commons on Wednesday: I want to make an announcement here and now because our mission is urgent. Today, I am pleased to announce that the department will undertake a short pause and review of post-16 qualification reform at level three and below, concluding before the end of the year. This means that the defunding scheduled for next week will be paused. The coming year will also see further developments in the rollout of new T-levels, which will ensure that young people continue to benefit from high quality technical qualifications that help them to thrive.” There had been speculation about Labour’s plans once in power for T-levels, which were launched in 2020 and are two-year courses taken after GCSEs, equivalent to three A-levels. While there have been problems with the design and implementation of some of the T-level qualifications, college leaders welcomed confirmation that they will remain and be expanded. David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: This was an important decision needing urgent attention in the best interests of students and the colleges wanting to meet their needs. Our position was always that T-levels are here to stay and will increasingly become vital qualifications alongside others, but the implementation plans had gone awry. So it is great to hear the clear and unambiguous support for the future of T-levels as well. Pausing defunding and undertaking a rapid review of the implementation is exactly what we asked for and this announcement will come as a great relief to college staff up and down the country.” The consumer finance expert Martin Lewis has replied to a tweet by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Carla Lockhart, where she referred to voting to “lift the two-child cap on Child Benefit”. Lewis, posting on his X account, wrote on Wednesday morning: I find it somewhat concerning that an MP who voted on the issue refers to it as a “two child cap on Child Benefit” even capitalising Child Benefit as a proper name. There is NO two child cap on Child Benefit. The vote was on the two child limit for Universal Credit & Tax Credits. I hope this is just a poorly drafted tweet and not a misunderstanding of what was voted on. This is an important debate and a crucial policy matter impacting many children. We need to ensure people (via the media) and MPs understand it.” In her post, Lockhart had written: Tonight, I voted to lift the two-child cap on Child Benefit, this has plunged countless children into poverty and disadvantages families. Disappointing Labour did not support this crucial change. In Govt they need to deal with real issues.” At the time of this live blog post, Lockhart had not responded to Lewis’s public message. Keir Starmer says he will not apologise for private schools VAT plans, after being challenged at PMQs Keir Starmer said he will not apologise for his plans to impose VAT on private schools, after he was challenged on the proposal during his first prime minister’s questions (PMQs). As he defended the policy, the prime minister argued that every parent has aspirations for their children no matter which school they go to. It came in response to Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine, who claimed state schools in her constituency of Edinburgh West would be put under pressure by the proposal. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Jardine said: I’m sure he will want to reassure the many parents and teachers in Edinburgh West who have expressed concerns about the implication for our state education system in Scotland of the VAT increase in independent fees, which he proposes. Edinburgh city council, led by the Labour party, have produced five-year projections which show we do not have capacity in the city to accommodate pupils who may leave the independent sector. Moreover, how will he ensure that the VAT raised in Scotland from those fees can be reinvested in already hard-pressed Scottish education?” Starmer replied: I do obviously understand the aspiration that parents who work hard and save hard have for their children that they send to private school. But every parent has that aspiration, whichever school they go to. And I am determined that we will have the right teachers in place in our state secondary schools to ensure that every child, wherever they come from, whatever their background, has the same opportunity, and I do not apologise for that.” It came after Conservative MP Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) also claimed during the king’s speech debate on Tuesday that the “awful policy” would put pressure on state education. Spencer, who has chosen to send his children to private school, said: Most parents who send their kids to independent schools aren’t these sort of mega-rich magnates which are characterised by the government, they’re people – as with all parents – who make difficult budgeting decisions in terms of how they want to spend their money. The policy to tax education, which we have never done before and never should, is only going to put more pressure on the state sector.” Here are some images from Keir Starmer’s first PMQs as prime minister: At PMQs, Sir Roger Gale (Conservative MP for Herne Bay and Sandwich) asked about planning reforms “which will smother fields in East Kent currently yielding bread and making wheat with houses”. Starmer said: We have to get economic growth in this country. We’ve had failure over the last 14 years, and the failure of economic growth has been central to it. There’s been failure to build the infrastructure we need, the houses we need, the prisons we need, and I think the whole House can see the consequence of that. At PMQs, Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols described violence against women and girls as a “scourge in our society”. Starmer replied: It is such a serious issue and we have made a commitment, a mission, to halve violence against women and girls. I know from my own experience dealing with these cases as a prosecutor and subsequently just how hard that will be to achieve. It does mean that we’ll have to deliver in a different way. We’ll have to roll up our sleeves and do difficult things which haven’t been done in the past. Sir Keir Starmer is “focused on delivering the change” the public voted for, Downing Street said. Asked what the prime minister’s mood was following the rebellion over the two-child benefit cap, his political spokeswoman said: He’s been focused, like the whole party, on delivering the change that the country voted for.