Labour says Sunak’s £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan over Rwanda policy shows he’s ‘out of touch’ – UK politics live | Politics

• Rishi Sunak has been widely criticised for accepting a £1,000 bet with TalkTV presenter Piers Morgan relating to whether he will manage to get deportation flights off to Rwanda before the election. Morgan said he would bet £1,000 that the flights would not happen, with the money going to charity, and Sunak insisted he wanted to get people on the planes. Sunak, whose family has a fortune worth hundreds of millions of pounds, was accused of being not just out of touch with the experience of ordinary Britons, but “grotesque, callous and downright cruel”. (See 4.30pm.)

A Disability Action Plan published by the government today is aimed at “improving disabled people’s daily lives in the here and now”, Mims Davies, the minister for disabled people, told MPs today.

The plan includes 14 goals for this year, including support disabled people who want to be elected to public office, including disabled people’s needs in emergency and resilience planning and making playgrounds more accessible.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has told MPs that the UK will continue if necessary to launch air attacks against the Houthis to protect shipping in the Red Sea.

After the UK participated in raids against the Houthis with the US for the third time at the weekend, Shapps told MPs:

We would much rather the Houthis simply stopped attacking international shipping, stopped damaging global trade and stop harming the prospects of their own people.

At the same time, appeasing the Houthis today will not lead to a more stable Red Sea, indeed a more stable region.

We are not seeking confrontation and we urge the Houthis and all those who enable them to stop these illegal and unacceptable attacks.

But, if necessary, the UK will not hesitate to respond again in self-defence.

The campaign group Hope Not Hate has written to the House of Commons speaker to ask that he block a meeting which independent MP Andrew Bridgen is hosting this evening in Parliament which is due to be addressed by an MEP from Germany’s far right Alternative für Deutschland party.

MPs have condemned plans by the former Tory backbencher to host the event weeks after members of the AfD party were caught in discussion with neo-Nazis about carrying out mass deportations.

There was also concern that parliament could be used as a platform for the dissemination of conspiracy theories after Bridgen said the event, billed as a meeting of the Save Our Sovereignty campaign group, would discuss issues including “vaccine harms”, 15-minute cities and a “power grab” by the World Health Organization.

Georgie Laming, Director of Campaigns at Hope not hate said:

We can see a clear pattern of radicalisation from Andrew Bridgen. He is using his platform as an MP to invite and promote some of the most controversial and hateful politicians and ideas.

When the German government is actively considering banning the AfD for undermining democracy, it is not right to be hosting its members in our seat of government.

The SNP has gone further than Labour (see 4.03pm) and is arguing that Rishi Sunak’s £1,000 Rwanda bet with Piers Morgan was in breach of the ministerial code and the Nolan principles for standards in public life.

Kirsty Blackman, the SNP’s spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, said:

Placing a bet on the lives of vulnerable refugees fleeing war and persecution is grotesque, callous and downright cruel – and shows just how out of touch Westminster is with the values of people in Scotland.

It’s particularly shameful that Rishi Sunak, one of the richest men in the UK, thinks it’s appropriate to accept a £1,000 wager – and will remind ordinary working families that near billionaire Sunak doesn’t have a clue what life is like for the rest of us in a cost of living crisis.

In an open letter calling for an inquiry, addressed to Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Laurie Magnus, the PM’s independent adviser on ministerial interests (aka the “ethics adviser”), Blackman explains she thinks Sunak has broken the code. She says:

It also appears to be a clear breach of the ministerial code and the Nolan Principles of Public Life.

Section 1.3 of the ministerial code is clear that:

f. Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or appears to arise, between their public duties and their private interests;

g. Ministers should not accept any gift or hospitality which might, or might reasonably appear to, compromise their judgement or place them under an improper obligation;

Point 1.2 and 1.3 of the Seven Principles of Public Life state that:

1.2 Integrity – Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.

1.3 Objectivity – Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.

The bet falls below the high standards people should expect of those in public life – not least the most powerful person in the Westminster government.

In his interview with Rishi Sunak on TalkTV Piers Morgan said he was willing to bet the PM £1,000, with the money going to a refugee charity, that no deportation planes to Rwanda will take off before the general election. Sunak said he was working “incredibly hard” to get the flights going and he accepted the bet (although a bit reluctantly, judging by the clip).

Labour says this shows Sunak is out of touch. Responding to the inteview, Jonathan Ashworth, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, said:

Not a lot of people facing rising mortgages, bills and food prices are casually dropping £1,000 bets

It just shows that Rishi Sunak is totally out of touch with working people.

(Presumably one reason why Sunak did shake on the bet was because, if he hadn’t, he might have been accused of not having confidence in his own policy.)

Rail services in the north of England have got worse over the past decade, Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor has said.

Speaking at the Transport for the North annual conference in Liverpool, Burnham said:

It’s 10 years this year since George Osborne came to Manchester and promised a Northern Powerhouse. That was going to mean HS2, HS3, as it was then called, now Northern Powerhouse Rail, better everyday services on the existing network.

You name it, we were going to be promised all of this.

Barely any of it has happened. In fact, new analysis that TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) has done says that rail services are poorer now than they were in 2016.

Speaking to the media after his speech, Burnham said:

This general election year, I think, lands at an uncomfortable moment for a government that promised to level up because we have proof that railways have gone backwards in the decade since George Osborne made that speech. It’s almost unbelievable.

Rishi Sunak has said that David Cameron’s recent comments about the UK bringing forward the point at which it might recognise a Palestinian state have been “over-interepreted”.

Last week, speaking to the Conservative Middle East Council, Cameron, the foreign secretary, said it was important to give the Palestinian people “a political horizon so that they can see that there is going to be irreversible progress to a two-state solution and crucially the establishment of a Palestinian state”.

He restated the argument on a visit to Lebanon, saying recognition could come before the end of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Antony Blinken, Cameron’s US counterpart, has been exploring the same idea.

But at PMQs last week Sunak seemed less keen and, in his interview with Piers Morgan for TalkTV, Sunak said the UK’s position had not changed.

Asked if Cameron’s comments represented a shift in UK policy, Sunak replied:

No. Look, our position is the same, and as David was saying, we are committed to a two state solution, we are absolutely committed …

The government’s long-standing position has been that we will recognize a Palestinian state at the time that it is most conducive to the peace process.

Asked if that meant the UK could recognise a Palestinian state before the conclusion of peace talks, Sunak said it was “hard to speculate”. But he did not accept policy had changed. He went on:

I think it [the Cameron intervention] has been over-interpreted. What we are absolutely committed to is a two state solution, the recognition of Palestine should come at a point where it is most conducive to the overall process. But at the moment? No. At the moment what we are looking to do is build the conditions to get hostages out, aid in, a sustainable ceasefire that looks forward to the future that the foreign secretary talked about, where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side, both with dignity, with peace, with security and opportunity.

Michelle O’Neill, the first minister, and Emma Little-Pengelly, the deputy first minister, have been holding a press briefing.

O’Neill said the financial settlement for Northern Ireland “sounds good on the face of it”. But she said the executive needed more, because for many years it had been under-funded. She said the executive was working together on this. And “we are not going to give up on day one,” she said.

Little-Pengelly said Northern Ireland needed money for investment. And Rishi Sunak, as a former chancellor, understood that investment was needed if the public services were going to reform, she said.

Asked about her comment about a border poll taking place within 10 years, O’Neill said she did not want to talk about that today. Today she and Little-Pengelly were showing a united front, and focusing on public services.

Little-Pengelly says the executive will only find solutions by working together. That is what the public expect, she said.