Starmer forced to cut short visit to housing development after protest by farmers – UK politics live | Politics

This morning the BBC has published two lengthy articles on its website which are the result of a long investigation into what happened when Rachel Reeves was working for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) before she became an MP.

The investigation may have been prompted by the revelation that Reeves had overstated her role at HBOS in her profile at HBOS. She said that she had worked there as an economist, even though she was doing a management job. Given that she had worked as an economist at the Bank of England, and that she has a master’s degree in economics from the LSE, the controversy did not cause serious reputational damage because no one seriously argued that she was not qualified to be chancellor, or that she only got the job in the first place by over-stating her skills.

Reeves was also critcised for saying at various points that she had spent a decade working at the Bank of England when in fact it was more like six years, including almost a year studying.

The BBC has two new revelations.

It has written a news story saying that Reeves’ “online CV exaggerated how long she spent working at the Bank of England” because she had been there for even less time than previously acknowledged. The BBC says she left the bank in March 2006 not December 2006, as it said on her LinkedIn profile, meaning she only spent five and a half years at the bank, including almost a year at the LSE.

This is just a slightly stronger version of one of the criticisms made last year. Reeves said a member of her team had put the dates on her LinkedIn profile, and that they had made a mistake.

The second allegaton is potentially more serious. But it is also contested by Reeves, and it relies on information from sources who mostly have not gone on the record, and the BBC has written it up as an investigation feature.

It says that, when Reeves was working at HBOS, she and two other managers (one of whom was her immediate boss), were investigated over allegations of excessive expense claims.

At the time HBOS managers could use a “motivation card” to pay for items to reward people for good work. They were meant to pay for items like flowers, or wine. The allegation is that Reeves and her colleagues used them to pay for items like birthday and Christmas presents when they were not meant to, and that they paid for items worth more than £25, which was the limit for some expenses. But the BBC report also suggests there was some uncertainty at HBOS about what exactly was allowed.

According to the BBC, there definitely was an investigation.

We have learnt that there was an expenses investigation into Reeves and two other senior managers.

A detailed six-page whistleblowing complaint and dozens of pages of attached evidence, which we have seen, raised concerns that the three managers were using the bank’s money to “fund a lifestyle” with allegedly inappropriate spending on dinners, events, taxis and gifts, including for each other.

We have not been able to establish what the final outcome of the investigation was. Indeed it may not have concluded.

A spokesperson for Reeves told the BBC that the chancellor had no knowledge of the investigation when she was at HBOS, that she always complied with expenses rules and that she left the bank on good terms.

In one respect, the story just implies that Reeves was a generous manager who may have been a bit free-and-easy with the company’s money. We’d all like a boss like that, and that happened a lot in the corporate world pre-financial crash, especially in banking. If Reeves was found to have deliberately broken the rules, that would be different. But she denies that, and the BBC is not directly making that claim.

Kemi Badenoch has posted a message on social media within the last hour claiming the investigation “raises serious questions” for Reeves and that she needs to come clean about the circumstances in which she left HBOS. But in the message Badenoch does not directly accuses Reeves of any wrongdoing.

The BBC’s investigation raises serious questions for Rachel Reeves.

Keir Starmer said “restoring trust in politics is the great test of our era”.

Until she comes clean – not just about her CV but about the circumstances in which she left HBOS, no one will take him seriously

During the urgent question on Ukraine, Maria Eagle, the defence minister, said the UK remains committed to Ukraine joining Nato in the long term.

Yesterday Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said: “The United States does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.” President Trump said he agreed with Hegseth, adding:

[The Russians have] been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into Nato, and I’m OK with that.

In her reply to Johanna Baxter (see 11.40am), Eagle said:

We’ve always said that Ukraine’s rightful place is in Nato, and our position is that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to Nato membership. But we’ve also always been clear that this is a process which takes time.

During the Commons urgent question on Ukraine, President Trump was accused at least twice of adopting an appeasement-type policy towards Russia, by Conservative and Labour MPs.

Julian Lewis, a former chair of both the defence committee and the intelligence and security committee, said:

Will the government impress on President Trump at every possible opportunity that the reason why appeasement led to world war two was that it left a vacuum in Europe? Whereas the reason why the occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of that war did not lead to world war three was the United States filled any possible vacuum and contained further aggression.

So if he is going for a settlement against the wishes of the Ukrainian people, the least he can do is to guarantee directly the security of that part of Ukraine which remains unoccupied.

And the Labour MP Johanna Baxter said:

If reports of the call between President Trump and Moscow are to be believed, then this is less the Art of a Deal and more a charter for appeasement. So can the minister state whether we will be working with Nato allies to establish a clear roadmap with defined timeframes for Ukraine’s membership, ensuring long-term deterrence against further, inevitable Russian aggression.

Keir Starmer has been forced to cut short a visit to a housing development after a protest by farmers, PA Media reports. PA says:

A group of tractor-driving protesters staged a noisy demonstration as Keir Starmer visited a housing development in Buckinghamshire.

The vehicles could be heard sounding musical horns while the prime minister spoke to workers at the site.

Farmers have staged a series of protests following the inheritance tax changes in the budget.

Starmer was forced to cut short his visit to a housing development after the protest.

Around a dozen tractors and agricultural vehicles blocked the road near the Eastbrook development in Milton Keynes.

The prime minister abandoned planned media interviews due to the protest.

Rishi Sunak, the former PM, intervened during the urgent question. He has spoken very little in the Commons since the general election, but he used his question to ask Maria Eagle if she agreed that “in this new world” Britain and its European allies “must lead in providing Ukraine with military support and potentially military presence across land, air and sea, to give Ukraine confidence that any peace will endure”. And if the government did that, it would have his support, he said.

Eagle said the govenrment was committed to putting Ukraine in the strongest position to negotiate. That would involve giving them the arms they needed to fight, she said.

She said most support for Ukraine is now coming from European nations.

James Cartlidge says all MPs want to see peace.

He says President Trump wants to see an end to the war.

But Cartlidge says his party, like the government, stands by Ukraine.

We remain 100% steadfast in our support for Ukraine, in our backing for the government, in delivering that as they did when in opposition.

And we agree in principle with them that, as we also stressed repeatedly in government, it is for the Ukrainians to decide the timing and terms of any negotiations on any war.

Cartlidge says Trump is right to say Europe needs to spend more on defence.

He says that, if President Putin is seen to win, “that may bring a temporary end to the conflict, but it will not make the world a safer place”.

And he says the case for higher defence spending is stronger than ever.

In response, Eagle welcomes the fact that the Tories are backing the government and that support for Ukraine remains a cross-party position.

(In some aspects of policy, the Conservatives are saying the UK should align with the US and not Europe. But, on Ukraine, that does not seem to be happening.)

In the Commons James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, is asking his urgent question about Ukraine.

Maria Eagle, a defence minister, is responding.

In her opening statement, she says the UK will “step up” its support for Ukraine. It wil spend £4.5bn on military support for Ukraine – more than every before.

And only yesterday new firepower was announced, she says.

She says Ukraine’s security matters for all countries, because if one country’s borders can be redrawn by force, everyone will be affected.

UPDATE: Eagle said:

We all agree that 2025 will be the critical year for Ukraine. At this crucial moment we will not step back but step up our support to Ukraine. President Trump and President Zelensky have both spoken of their desire to achieve peace through strength. The commitments made yesterday provide the collective strength we need to achieve peace.

Ukraine’s security matters to global security. It’s why the vital UDCG coalition of 50 nations and partners stretches from the Indo-Pacific to South America because this war was never about the fate of just one nation.

When the border of one country is redrawn by force it undermines the security of all nations. The US is serious about stability in the Indo-Pacific, as are we – that’s why the Prime Minister announced that the carrier strike group will go there next year. If aggression goes unchecked on one continent, it emboldens regimes on another.

So on stepping up for Ukraine, we are and we will. On stepping up for European security, we are and we will.

The NHS England hospital waiting list has fallen for the fourth month in a row, PA Media reports. PA says:

An estimated 7.46m treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of December, relating to 6.24m patients – down from 7.48m treatments and 6.28m patients at the end of November.

These are the lowest figures since April 2023.

The list hit a record high in September 2023, with 7.77m treatments and 6.5m patients.

This chart, from an NHS England news release, shows the trend over the past decade.

John Healey, the defence secretary, won’t be responding to the urgent question on Ukraine because he is in Brussels for the meeting of Nato defence ministers. As Jakub Krupa reports on his Europe live blog, Healey told reporters this morning that there must be “no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine”. He said:

[Ukraine] are the frontline of freedom, and our job is … to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for any talks.

We will be continuing these discussions as Nato allies, and you will see new announcements of support for Ukraine through Nato.

We have seen the calls from president Trump overnight. We all want to see a durable peace and no return to conflict and aggression, and let’s not forget. Russia remains a threat well beyond Ukraine.

My message will be there can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine, and Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks.

Britain’s economy unexpectedly picked up in the final three months of 2024, official figures have shown, easing pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, after flatlining during the summer. Richard Partington has the story.

Good morning. At PMQs yesterday Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said that 80 years ago “British, Canadian and American soldiers were fighting shoulder to shoulder to defeat fascists” but that President Trump “seems to have forgotten all that” as he takes foreign policy decision.

It turns out that Davey was wrong. Trump has a very strong sense of who was on America’s side during world war two. “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering, that Russia lost tens of millions of people,” Trump said yesterday, in his readout of his call with President Putin.

That was the call with ominious implications for Ukraine, as America in effect called time on the era when it used to guarantee the security of western Europe. Keir Starmer is doing a visit this morning and, as is normal at these events, he is expected to take brief questions from broadcasters on the main stories of the day. Stories don’t get any more “main” than this one.

We will be covering the Starmer interviews here, but this is primarily an international story and Jakub Krupa is leading the coverage of it on his Europe live blog.

Starmer may also be asked about the economy, and the growth figures out this morning, showing that the economy grew by a modest 0.1% in the final quarter of 2024. That’s not gangbusters territory, but it is an improvement on the previous quarter, when the economy was flat. There were fears they economy might even shrink in the final three months of the year.

Graeme Wearden is leading on this on his business live blog.

There is a slight chance that Starmer may even be asked a question about the government’s plans for new towns, which is ostensibly the reason for the visit. As Pippar Crerar reports, the government is announcing that up to 12 new towns will be under construction in England by the next election after 100 potential locations were identified for them.

Full details of the announcement are here. Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has been giving interviews about the plans this morning, and he told Sky News that some of the new towns will be build on greenfield sites.

Asked whether some of the construction would be on greenfield land, Pennycook replied:

There will be some, I’m sure, recommended standalone greenfield sites.

There will be a number of other, what are called urban extensions, but big expansions of existing towns and cities where that is appropriate.

There’s got to be sustainable places, as I say, they’ve got to be well-connected, well-designed.

We’ll see what the taskforce recommend in its final report in the summer … ministers will then take the final decision on which ones go forward.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.

9.30am: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are on a visit in the south-east England to promote the government’s plans for new towns.

Morning: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has a meeting in London with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Also, Nato defence ministers are meeting in Brussels today. John Healey is there for the UK and he is due to speak to reporters this afternoon.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.

If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.

I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.