Starmer to ‘fire starting gun’ on new post-Brexit relationship – latest news

Wales should not have to beg for adequate funding from Westminster, Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts said.

Speaking in the Commons after the King’s Speech, the party’s Westminster leader said: “I was disappointed not to hear legislation addressing the inadequate present funding framework that leaves us short-changed in Wales. When we’re talking about fairness, it isn’t a matter of begging for money from Westminster,

“This is, on the one hand, demanding the money rightly owed to Wales, and if people are arguing for the strength of the union – and that’s not something that my party does – but if you are, I would be looking that the strength of the union does give the nation of Wales fair funding, from the other side of the House quite possibly.

“But equally significant to me and my party is that we have the necessary levers, the tools that we need to drive up our own economic development in Wales. We don’t want to be with our hands out for the begging bowl, we want the means to grow our own economy.”

Ms Saville Roberts pushed the government to devolve justice and policing to Wales, and argued there should be “legal safeguards in place to protect devolved powers”.

The Liberal Democrats are “not quite so grossly over-represented” in the House of Lords, the Conservatives’ leader in the upper chamber, Lord True said, as he congratulated the party on its election successes.

He joked that Lib Dem peers might be able to “leave the strain of making quite so many speeches to their eager new colleagues in the Commons”.

Lib Dem leader in the Lords Lord Newby said it is the Conservatives who are over-represented, with 281 peers to the Liberal Democrats’ 80.

He said: “Noble lords will recall that, after the previous three general elections, Conservative peers argued that we were grossly over-represented, because of our weak position in the Commons.

“I hope therefore that they will now agree that, to follow their own logic, the Liberal Democrats should get another 87 peers to align us with our two parties’ representation in the Commons, or that they should voluntarily reduce their numbers to 134 to bring them into line with our 80.”

Mistreatment of gang-associated girls is “just one example of why our streets need to be safer”, a Labour MP has warned.

Backing the King’s Speech, Florence Eshalomi told the Commons she supported ministers’ ambitions to halve rates of violence against women and girls and to ban ninja swords through a new Crime and Policing Bill.

Ms Eshalomi represents Vauxhall and Camberwell Green in London, where police recorded 165 knife or sharp object offences per 100,000 people throughout 2023. It came second in national league tables to West Midlands Police across Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, where figures show 180 such offences per 100,000.

“Now as an MP, one of the hardest conversations any of us will have are with the victims of violent crime,” Ms Eshalomi said. “I’ve sat in many front rooms holding grieving mothers and fathers, and they tell me about their loved ones who’ve been taken too soon, and with every hug and tear wiped away, I can feel their pain and the impacts that this has on the wider siblings and other family members.

“Crime rips communities apart leaving too many people vulnerable and open to exploitation, and one of the areas I’m proud of working on is on preventing abuse of gang-associated girls whose mistreatment is sadly just one example of why our streets need to be safer.

“The home secretary’s commitment to halving rates of violence against women and improving support for victims should be welcomed across the House.”

The Met Police has arrested several youth campaigners after a protest group stated it intended to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.

The ceremony takes place at the Houses of Parliament and sees King Charles deliver a speech, written by the new Labour government, that will lay out policies and proposed legislation for the upcoming parliamentary session.

Last week the group Youth Demand revealed it planned to disrupt the ceremony over prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

Scotland Yard said officers arrested 10 of the campaign group members in Westminster on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance at 10.25am on Wednesday.

Alex Ross has the full report:

The government laid out its plans for transport, housing, and defence, but there was one key thing missing: scrapping the two-child benefit limit, writes our political commentator Andrew Grice:

The last time a sitting prime minister stayed on as leader of the opposition was in 1997 when John Major briefly led the Conservatives in opposing Tony Blair’s juggernaut. The other change of government since then was in 2010, when Gordon Brown left the scene and Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, served as leader of the opposition until the leadership election was held.

Rishi Sunak seems to take an old-fashioned view that, as party leader, it is his responsibility to hold the fort until a successor is chosen, and so he set out in his response to the King’s Speech the beginnings of a strategy for the Tory fightback.

The first stage of that strategy is to deploy the weapon of cross-party reasonableness. After a lecture by Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, on the importance of MPs treating each other with respect, and after everyone agreed that the temperature of politics should be reduced in response to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Sunak modelled courtesy and bipartisanship.

He started his response to the King’s Speech by supporting two of the measures in it that were left over from his government: the gradual ban on smoking and Martyn’s Law, which requires venues to draw up a plan for a terrorist attack. And he welcomed the Labour government’s steadfast support for Ukraine against Putin’s aggression.

Having established common ground, only then did Sunak try to lay some traps for Labour. Our chief political commentator John Rentoul has the full analysis:

Donald Trump’s choice for vice-president has provoked fury by describing the UK under Labour as an “Islamist country” with nuclear weapons.

Politicians from across the spectrum have condemned Mr Vance’s comments, with former Tory co-chair Sayeeda Warsi suggesting the special relationship between the UK and the US has “become no more than a racist joke”. Writing for The Independent, she added: “It bodes for really dangerous times ahead.”

Sir Keir Starmer has been warned his new pensions bill will fail to tackle the crisis facing retirees, with the prime minister having ducked an increase in automatic enrolment.

In his first King’s Speech, the PM unveiled plans to support more than 15m people with private pensions and ensure they get better outcomes.

The government estimates that the measures will lead to pension pots being around 9 per cent higher by the time a person retires, while allowing more productive investment of funds in British infrastructure and companies to boost growth.

But Tom Selby of investment platform AJ Bell warned that claims the measures in the bill will lead to bigger pensions upon retirement “need to be taken with a pinch of salt” due to risks in how funds are invested, and warned: “One key thing missing from this Bill is any mention of scaling up automatic enrolment.”

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell has more:

King Charles gave his King’s Speech today, marking the opening of parliament as the first Labour government in 14 years is ushered in.

However, the speech left some disappointed as measures they expected – or hoped – would be offered didn’t make the cut. My colleague Albert Toth has an overview of what was missing in the King’s Speech: