Key events
I have beefed up some of the earlier posts with direct quotes from the exchanges between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. You may need to refresh the page to get the updates to appear.
Blair McDougall (Lab) asks if the PM agrees with the comments from the White House about the need for the Israeli government to stop blocking aid to Gaza.
Starmer says he does agree with those comments. The UK is convening a meeting of the security council on this, he says.
And that’s the end of PMQs.
Ben Maguire (Lib Dem) asks if the PM will meet all Cornish MPs to discuss devolution for Cornwall, and the case for giving it an assembly.
Starmer says he does believe in devolving power to local authorities. He wants deeper and wider devolution to local government.
Kit Malthouse (Con) says during the election Starmer made an unequivocal promise to rebuild Basingstoke hospital. Does that promise still apply?
Starmer says the government is reviewing the programme of the last government. But it is flawed, he says. There were not 40 hospitals, they were not all new, and they were not all funded. He says it is important that voters know who is to blame if what the last government promised does not happen.
Shaun Davies (Lab) asks what the government is doing to reduce suicide rates amongst men.
Starmer says the figures for male suicide are “truly shocking”. He recalls going to an event where men were asked if they knew someone who had died from suicide, and he says he reflected on his own experience (implying this has happened to someone he knows).
Ann Davies (Plaid Cymru) asks if the government will introduce a social tariff to help pensioners with energy bills.
Starmer takes that as a question about winter fuel payments, and says pensioners will be better off because of the triple lock.
Starmer says the Tories want to get rid of maternity pay, but keep hereditary peers.
The budget will drive economic growth, improve the lives of working people, fix public service and provide the basis for national renewal, he says.
Adrian Ramsay, the Green party’s co-leader, asks when the government will start negotiations on dental contract reform, to improve access to NHS dentistry.
Starmer says dentistry was left in a shocking state. Under the Tories, tooth decay became the most common reason for children to be admitted to hospital, he says.
Starmer says he is happy to work on a cross-party basis to see what can be done to improve provision for families with children with special educational needs and disabilities. But he does not accept that both parties are equally at fault in allowing services to deterioriate.
Starmer says government considering imposing sanctions on two Israeli ministers over ‘abhorrent’ comments
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, starts by welcoming the news that the government will review the way carer’s allowance operates, and how people have been aggressively penalised over over-payments.
We have the story here.
Starmer says he hopes the review will resolve these problems.
Davey asks if the UK will sanction two Israeli ministers – the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir – who have made extremist comments backing Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have attacked Palestinians. Yesterday David Cameron said the last government was considering this.
Starmer says the government is “looking at that” because the comments made were “abhorrent”.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
We are looking at that because they’re obviously abhorrent comments … along with other really concerning activity in the West Bank but also across the region.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is dire, the death toll has surpassed 42,000 and access to basic services is becoming much harder,
Israel must take all possible steps to avoid civilian casualties, to allow aid into Gaza in much greater volumes and provide the UN humanitarian partners the ability to operate effectively.
Starmer says the last government let councils down. Local services were destroyed over 14 years, he says. He says the government will get councils back on their feet.
And he says he was surprised Sunak did not mention the £63bn investment coming to the UK.
Sunak says the Tories are concerned that the government has halted or slowed measures introduced by his government that would protect the UK.
He asks if the foreign secretary will tell the Chinese they should lift the sanctions imposed on British MPs.
“Yes,” says Starmer, implying he will.
But then he attacks the record of the last government, saying it did not offer stability. He says his government will fix the foundations and provide better government.
Sunak says he thinks the foreign agents scheme has been blocked.
But he moves on, and claims that the government has dropped provisions to limit Chinese influence in universities.
Starmer says Sunak should not be trying to make party political points out of a national security issue.
Sunak says the PM has halted the implementation of the foreign agents registration scheme, a provision included in the national security legislation passed by the last government.
The last government also established a new system of registration and monitoring to protect the UK from interference from foreign states, including China, Russia and Iran.
It’s called the foreign influence registration scheme, it was described as essential by MI5 in the fight to help keep Britain safe. But since the prime minister took office, he has halted its implementation. Why?
Starmer replies simply: “That is not correct.”
Sunak says the foreign secretary should unequivocally condemn the Chinese aggression.
Given what the prime minister said, and I agree, of course, we must engage when we should use that engagement for our national interests, I hope that the Foreign Secretary will unequivocally condemn this military escalation and stand up for democracy in Taiwan.
Now, the whole house will be concerned about the fate of the democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai. He is a British citizen who has been wrongly imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years.
The previous government pressured China for his release. Does the prime minister agree that this is a politically motivated prosecution and that it is a breach of China’s legal obligations to Hong Kong under the Sino-British [Joint] Declaration?
Starmer says the government does agree with that. He says it has made diplomatic representations to that effect.
Yes, and this case, as he will understand, is a priority for the government. We do call on the Hong Kong authorities to release immediately our British national and the Foreign Secretary raised this case, in his first meeting with China’s foreign minister, and we will continue to do so.
UPDATE: In another question Sunak said:
China, as [Starmer] knows, has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine, supplying the vast majority now of Russia’s imported military microelectronics and components, worsening the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
So can the prime minister confirm that he is prepared to sanction any Chinese business or individual involved in aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including secondary sanctions on financial institutions?
And Starmer replied:
Yes, and we’ve called for that in the past. We continue to do so, and I hope this is an issue where we can have unity across the house.