Angela Rayner defends own expenses after criticism of government’s ‘lavish spending’ culture – UK politics live

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Labour's Angela Rayner defends own spending after criticising government's 'lavish' culture

Good morning. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has denied that her decision to expense hundreds of pounds on Apple electronics is the same as Whitehall’s use of government procurement cards on luxury items.

Labour claimed that a “lavish spending” culture in the civil service has seen taxpayer’s money wasted on fine art and fine dining.

Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly £150m on government procurement cards in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.

Rayner said yesterday:

Today’s shocking revelations lift the lid on a scandalous catalogue of waste, with taxpayers’ money frittered away across every part of government, while in the rest of the country, families are sick with worry about whether their pay cheque will cover their next weekly shop or the next tranche of bills.

However, she was asked on Times Radio this morning about her own spending habits, including using £249 of taxpayer’s money on AirPods.

“I’m actually using the equipment right now as I’m speaking to you on the iPad”, the deputy Labour leader said. “This is what I’m using to do my job - in fact I think it’s three years old now – to do my work as an MP and it’s totally transparent.”

She added:

I don’t think the £1,600 on that is the same as millions of pounds that is being used on these credit cards in an inappropriate way. You know, we need to make sure there’s transparency and that the public are getting value for money.

I can absolutely justify my use of using electronic equipment to do my job, especially when I’m not – during the pandemic – when I wasn’t in the office in Westminster. And as I say, now I’m speaking to you on that very iPad that was purchased.

The Commons is still in recess. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be covering the UK politics live blog today and for the rest of this week while my colleague Andrew Sparrow is away.

Key events

Labour would not pay bonuses to the bosses of water companies that pump raw sewage into the UK’s rivers and seas, Angela Rayner has said.

This comes following reports that environment secretary Thérèse Coffey is backing away from plans to hit water companies with fines of up to £250m for spilling sewage.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Labour’s deputy leader said:

We would enforce the current laws which they’re breaching, the current situation where they know they shouldn’t be doing it and they are doing it, we would enforce and make sure they’re not doing it.

And no, we wouldn’t be paying them bonuses when they’re carrying out activities that they know they shouldn’t be doing. We would be enforcing the current regulations and the law that governs them.

Meanwhile, a transport minister, asked about the offer made to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in a bid to break the strikes impasse, has said he thought “a lot” of railways workers would “like to see this settlement happen”.

Speaking to Sky News, Richard Holden said:

The RMT has been offered a backdated pay rise of 5% for last year, compounded with a 4% rise for this year. That I think is a pretty generous offer, around 9% for the average rail worker and higher for those on the lowest incomes. I think that’s a good deal.

The unions, I think they need to have the confidence, if they are still rejecting our offer, to go to the membership and say that’s what they want and they want a fresh ballot. They have not done that, they won’t ask their members for their views.

The truth is, I think a lot of people who are working in the rail industry now would like to see this settlement happen, they’d like to see the pay rises in their pay packets – that would be a big boost to a lot of those lower paid railway workers.

In an earlier interview with Times Radio, he said:

This is the final offer from the government. We have done everything we can to facilitate talks.

The government’s “hostile” attitude towards nurses has led to them going on strike, Angela Rayner has said.

Asked on Sky News this morning if she supported the idea of the RCN extending its strike action to A&E and cancer wards, Labour’s deputy leader said:

Well, first of all, the RCN and the nurses have never taken industrial action ever before. So I think that context is really important.

And the leader of the RCN has made it clear the government have just absolutely point blank refused to negotiate with them. And I think that we’re in this situation because the government are acting in a hostile way towards these workers that kept us going through the pandemic.

And they really urgently need to get around the table. No nurse wants to take industrial action and cause disruption to the care that they provide.

But of course, we’ve seen record numbers of vacancies in nursing care. And therefore their jobs are becoming increasingly difficult because of staff shortages, and because of the conditions in which those nurses are trying to do their job.

So without this intervention, without the government getting around the table, these issues are ongoing, regardless of the strike, because we can’t carry on as things are.

David Frost urges UK to ‘embrace’ Brexit and warns of plot to unravel deal

Kevin Rawlinson

The UK’s former chief Brexit negotiator has urged ministers to “fully and enthusiastically embrace the advantages of Brexit”, portraying a private meeting of prominent former leave and remain campaigners to discuss how to move on from Brexit in the national interest as a plot to undermine the deal he struck with the EU.

The two-day summit, revealed by the Observer on Sunday, was attended by the government minister Michael Gove, who is a former co-leader of the official Brexit campaign, and senior members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet.

They were joined by diplomats, defence experts and the heads of some of the biggest businesses for a discussion under the title: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

On Monday, David Frost referred to it as “a further piece of evidence that many in our political and business establishment want to unravel the deals we did to exit the EU in 2020 and to stay shadowing the EU instead”.

Attempting to explain the presence of prominent Brexit backers at the meeting alongside former remain supporters, he told the Daily Mail:

That’s why so many of those responsible for Theresa May’s failed backstop deal were there, while I and those who actually delivered the Brexit agreements were not.

The Observer revealed that a confidential introductory statement acknowledged there was now a view among “some at least, that so far the UK has not yet found its way forward outside the EU” with Brexit “acting as a drag on our growth and inhibiting the UK’s potential”.

A source who was there told the paper it was a “constructive meeting” that addressed the problems and opportunities of Brexit but which dwelt heavily on the economic downside to the UK economy at a time of global instability and rising energy prices.

But Lord Frost said:

Brexit doesn’t need ‘fixing’. It needs this Conservative government, elected with a huge mandate on a Brexit programme, to fully and enthusiastically embrace its advantages instead of leaving the field to those who never wanted it in the first place.

I and millions of others want the government to get on with that instead of raising taxes, deterring investment and pushing public spending to its highest level for 70 years.

Transport minister Richard Holden said a Labour investigation into government procurement cards (GPCs) had “wasted” civil servant time as the information was “already publicly available”.

It comes after Labour compiled a dossier on the use of the cards – with the party using parliamentary questions to secure some of the data – showing that across 2021 for 14 major Whitehall departments, a total of at least £145.5m was spent using GPCs.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Holden said:

In the big picture, what we’ve seen since 2010, is an 85% reduction in this. All of this data is publicly available online, it has been since 2012 – something which didn’t happen under the last Labour government.

We publish it on a monthly basis. The Labour party has spent half-a-million pounds asking parliamentary questions, 2,500 of them, wasting my civil servants time for information that is already publicly available and that they hid when they were last in office.

Holden also told Times Radio:

I don’t think any government minister would have been involved in that decision.