Labour say Tories have had 14 year to amend Equalities Act and Badenoch announcement is ‘a distraction from election campaign’
Labour has this morning dismissed the announcement by the Conservatives, saying there was no need to amend the Equalities Act.
Speaking on Times Radio, PA Media reports shadow defence secretary John Healey said:
We will not want to amend the Act, it’s not needed. It already provides a definition of a woman, and sex and gender are different.
What is needed is clearer guidance for service providers, from the NHS to sports bodies, and in prisons, on what single-sex exemptions need to be, and the best way to be able to do that is in guidance, not primary legislation.
The government has had 14 years to do that and it hasn’t. This, to be honest, is a distraction from the election campaign
Key events
Starmer: ‘postwar era is over’ and ‘new age of insecurity has begun’
Keir Starmer, speaking about defence and national security, has said that “the postwar era is over” and a “new age of insecurity has begun”.
He said he had never expected in his lifetime to see the “rumble of war” in Europe as Russian tanks rolled into a European country.
Starmer said the threat was not just conventional warfare, “We must face down malign actors who tried to attack and weaken our nation. And not just through traditional warfare over air, land and sea but with hybrid threats to our energy supply, cybersecurity information warfare.”
He also spoke of his family’s own experience of service, describing an anxious wait for news during the Falklands War, after his mother’s brother’s ship was bombed.
Keir Starmer has started talking, he opened by paying tribute to soldiers who took part in D-day, which has its 80th anniversary this week.
John Healey, shadow defence secretary spoke next. He promised “Britain will be better defended with Labour.”
He told the audience:
What does it say to our adversaries when the ex-defence secretary, Ben Wallace, admits to me in the House of Commons that over 14 years the Conservatives have hollowed out and underfunded our forces?
What does it say when they’ve cut the size of the British army to the smallest since the Napoleonic wars. When they’ve wasted at least £15bn on bad defence procurement. When they’ve missed recruitment targets every year. When morale has fallen to record lows and when service families have to live in damp, mouldy housing, and increasingly draw on universal credit and food banks to get by. This is the shameful record of the Conservatives on defence for the last 14 years.
This has not been the most convincing performance of the campaign so far, to be honest. He stumbled over the delivery a couple of times and it was a rather downbeat tone for a rallying speech.
Louise Jones, Labour’s candidate in North East Derbyshire, has opened this Labour event. She said she is hoping to become Labour’s first female military veteran MP.
She said that the Tory government has made the bond between the country and its armed forces “increasingly fragile” and that it was eroding the offer to the military.
She said:
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the deteriorating state of the accommodation for our armed forces, whether it’s dodgy electrics, failed boilers, or mouldy walls. Too many of our military personnel had been let down.
We also now have the smallest armed forces since the Napoleonic Wars, but their workload has not decreased. We’re continually asking them to do more with less.
In the military, you’re taught to get involved. To not stay on the sidelines. We say the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Well, I’m not going to simply walk past while our national security is threatened. That’s why I’m standing to be Labour’s first female veteran MP.
Keir Starmer will be speaking shortly on defence and security. The Labour leader is expected to reaffirm his commitment to a “triple lock” for the UK’s nuclear deterrent, and his aim to raise defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product “as soon as resources allow”.
Labour’s nuclear deterrent triple lock includes a commitment to construct four new nuclear submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, maintaining Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent, and the delivery of all future upgrades needed for the submarines to patrol the waters.
We’ll bring you the key lines when he speaks.
Labour’s shadow armed forces minister Luke Pollard, speaking on GB News, has said that while Labour would not seek to rejoin a customs union with the EU, it would seek to change aspects of the current Brexit deal.
He told viewers:
It’s certainly true that since the botched Brexit deal was put in place, many of our businesses – exporters of food, fish, agricultural products in particular – have really struggled with the additional paperwork.
What Labour has set out is our ambition to have a veterinary agreement with the EU. That’s an agreement that New Zealand has with the EU, that removes the paperwork on food and drink exports. That would make a substantial difference to fishers and farmers right across the UK
Rishi Sunak has chosen not to offer and not to negotiate a veterinary agreement. He chose to not argue for one when Boris Johnson put through that botched Brexit deal. And I don’t think honestly anyone who voted leave was doing so to do over our fishers and farmers, quite the opposite. I think they wanted better support.
That’s why at this general election, Labour are saying we won’t be joining the single market. We won’t re-join the customs union. But we will seek to renegotiate a deal on veterinary agreements that removes paperwork. This is a sensible change to improve what was a pretty rubbish deal.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has published a video compilation of some clips of her on the Labour battlebus tour, which she claims has a real “carnival atmosphere”.
In the clip Rayner says:
The main thing from the road trip, for me, is getting out there and meeting ordinary people, and I love it. Each area is different. But everyone is saying exactly the same thing – that’s that they desperate for that change.
You get a feel of how difficult it’s been. You know, Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives really seem out of touch. They’re saying that everything’s fine now, but actually, people have seen that their cost of living has increased, and people are just tired. They really want a stable government.
Lib Dems: Tories waging ‘phoney culture war’ over gender recognition
Liberal Democrat Deputy leader Daisy Cooper has accused the Conservatives of trying to wage a “phoney culture war” with their announcement on gender recognition changes this morning.
PA Media reports she told LBC News radio:
I do think this is a cynical distraction form their failings on so many issues, like the economy, like the cost-of-living crisis, like the NHS, like social care, like protecting our local environment and tackling the issue of raw sewage discharge.
I think the Government is failing on so many counts – time and again we have seen how it tries to wage these phoney culture wars.
On the specifics of the proposal, Liberal Democrats have said that, of course, where there is confusion within service providers there could be better guidance, but I really don’t think there’s any demand to unpick, or any need to unpick, the Equality Act itself.
It’s been in place since 2010, it includes hard-won protections for women and for trans people and lots of other different groups with protected characteristics.
Just to mark your cards for what we are expecting later on, Keir Starmer is in the north west where he will meet veterans and talk about defence. Rishi Sunak is campaigning in the south east and is expected to continue pushing on gender recognition reform. Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper is going to be in Oxfordshire promoting their policies on clean water. It is unclear if we can expect her to fall into some, as Ed Davey did so notably last week. SNP leader John Swinney is due to be in Stirling and Strathallan, while his Scottish Tory counterpart Douglas Ross is in Glasgow.
We have reached the point in the election campaign cycle where the media are asking people if they would push the nuclear button. It was shadow defence secretary John Healey who was being asked today if Keir Starmer would do it.
He told listeners of the Radio 4 programme:
The first duty of any government is to protect the country and keep citizens safe, and the nuclear deterrent is, as Keir Starmer has said, the bedrock of our national security
Unless you have a secure nation, you can’t have a secure economy. You can’t have growth. You can’t have good jobs. You can’t you can’t rebuild, as we must do, our public services for the future.
The important thing about a deterrent is that there’s a deliberate ambiguity. And Keir Starmer has said “I will do what’s necessary to defend this country”. That’s an important message to any would-be adversaries.
No one should doubt Keir Starmer. As director of public prosecutions he put away some of the most dangerous terrorists this country has ever faced. He knows what needs to be done to protect this country. He will do what’s required, if it’s required.
Scotland’s first minister John Swinney has called for a “respectful” contest ahead of the Scottish leaders’ first television debate of the election campaign.
STV will host the debate in which SNP leader Swinney, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton will participate.
PA Media report Swinney said:
I am looking forward to tonight’s TV debate and I hope it is a respectful contest based on ideas to improve the lives of the people of Scotland.
I have been leader of the SNP for just a few weeks, and I have already united my party ahead of what is a very important election.
Scotland’s people and public services have suffered as a result of austerity, Brexit and the cost of living crisis, all of which were made in Westminster.
In tonight’s debate, and in the election campaign ahead, I and the SNP will set out a genuine alternative to the broken Westminster status quo.
The debate is on STV tonight at 9pm. Despite being the fourth largest party at Holyrood the Scottish Greens have been excluded from the debate, a decision that the party has described as outrageous.
Kemi Badenoch in terse media exchanges over gender recognition proposals
Peter Walker
Kemi Badenoch has been on the morning media round, explaining a Conservative proposal to change the Equalities Act as it relates to transgender women – but also, as can be her habit, getting into some slightly grumpy exchanges with interviewers.
Badenoch, who is both business secretary and minister for equalities, was setting out a plan detailed here by Jessica Elgot which would set out that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex, allowing organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What we are trying to do is reemphasise that sex in the law means biological sex. It always has done but there has been a lot of misinterpretation, and we are adding that clarification so that the law is clear.”
This was not, she said, a diktat saying that all such space should bar transgender women, just giving them legal protection if they did: “If a rape crisis centre decides that it wants to allow a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate, they will be able to do so. If they choose not to then they can’t be sued for that.”
Quizzed on R4 by Mishal Hussein about how this would work in practice, for example what documentation people might have to show to prove their gender, Badenoch became slightly impatient, accusing Hussein of “trying to trivialise what is a very serious issue”.
Things became even more testy when Hussein asked about then decision of Liz Truss to appear on a podcast co-run by Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber and controversialist who has previously made jokes about whether or not he would rape the Labour MP Jess Phillips.
Saying it was not up to her to have an opinion on this, Badenoch again complained about the line of questioning: ”I think it is trivial. It is unserious.”
Does such irascibility matter? Perhaps not. But it is the first time Badenoch has done a broadcast round this election campaign, and some of her colleagues worry she is too combustible to be considered as a future leader if the Conservatives lose the election.
Labour say Tories have had 14 year to amend Equalities Act and Badenoch announcement is ‘a distraction from election campaign’
Labour has this morning dismissed the announcement by the Conservatives, saying there was no need to amend the Equalities Act.
Speaking on Times Radio, PA Media reports shadow defence secretary John Healey said:
We will not want to amend the Act, it’s not needed. It already provides a definition of a woman, and sex and gender are different.
What is needed is clearer guidance for service providers, from the NHS to sports bodies, and in prisons, on what single-sex exemptions need to be, and the best way to be able to do that is in guidance, not primary legislation.
The government has had 14 years to do that and it hasn’t. This, to be honest, is a distraction from the election campaign
Good morning, and welcome to our continued coverage of the 2024 general election campaign. The Conservatives are campaigning today by trying to open a culture war wedge over gender recognition. Labour have today marked down as a day to discuss defence and national security. Here are your headlines …
It is Martin Belam with you again today. Email is the easiest way to reach me – at [email protected].
