Key events
Teenagers who dodge Tories’ proposed national service could be harming their job prospects, ministers suggest
The Conservatives have said they want to make participation in their proposed national service compuslory for 18-year-olds, but they have not said how they would do this. Yesterday James Cleverly, the home secretary, ruled out imposing criminal sanctions on people who did not join in.
This morning Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Foreign Office minister, told ITV that teenagers who did dodge national service might be harming their job prospects.
She said she wanted participation to be seen as “part of the norms”. She went on:
Importantly, of course, when you then as a young person apply for a job, there will be a question that employers will want to know how you got involved – either because were able to achieve one of the 30,000 places (in the armed forces) or because you were volunteering in one or other part of your community.
As the Financial Times reports, yesterday Rishi Sunak said that people who have done national service could get preference when applying for university or for an apprenticeship, or in interviews for the civil service’s fast-track programme. He said:
We want to make sure Britain’s future generations can get the most out of national service. That’s why we’re looking into ways it can open doors they wouldn’t otherwise get in work or education.
This morning, asked if the parents of teenagers who refused to sign up for national service could face prosectution, Trevelyan said she could not give details now, and that this was the sort of issue the proposed royal commission would look at.
Libby Brooks
A sleepy bank holiday listener to BBC Radio Scotland would be forgiven for getting their party leaders mixed up this morning.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was speaking to Good Morning Scotland ahead of launching the party’s Scotland campaign later today – but it was curious to hear him borrowing from both Labour – “we are part of the change” – and the SNP – “vote Lib Dem to send a message to Westminster”.
With four seats on Scotland, the Lib Dems are eyeing up the weakness of the SNP and targeting others, in particular the seats of former leaders Jo Swinson and Charles Kennedy.
It was clear from the interview just how desperate the Lib Dems are to return to third place in the Commons behind Labour and the Tories – not surprising given the profile it has brought the SNP since 2015 – and this will be one of the key battles in this election campaign.
We don’t have comments open yet, but we plan to open them at 10am. Because it’s a bank holiday, we don’t have as many moderators working as usual.
Starmer and Sunak on campaign trail as Labour says Tory national service pledge ‘unravelling by the minute’
Good morning. We had the first big policy surprise of the election campaign at the weekend, and the Conservative plan to bring back a form of compulsory national service has had a mixed reception, to put it politely. As Eleni Courea and Aletha Adu report, a former head of the navy has described it as bonkers.
The propoal gets an enthusiastic write-up on the front page of the Tory loyalist Daily Express.
But the Daily Mail is notably more equivocal in its coverage.
Last night, in a sign they think the Conservatives are vulnerable on this issue, Labour issued a lengthy briefing note highlighting 22 “unanswered questions” about the policy. Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Foreign Office minister, was doing a media round this morning, and when some of these were put to her on the Today programme, her answers were not particularly compelling.
Labour says:
The MoD could have to supply a 50% increase in Army accommodation, which based on the cost for new bed spaces could cost £4.8bn just on accommodation. Does the Conservatives’ costs take this into account?
When Justin Webb asked the minister a version of this question, saying she must have “some idea” where the new recruits would live, Trevelyan just said that a royal commission would consider the details, and that the Tories were not planning to implement this in full until the end of the next parliament.
And Labour says:
The National Citizen Service had its funding slashed by two-thirds by the government in 2022, when Rishi Sunak was chancellor. What were the flaws in that model of youth service which made it a bad use of money, that have been corrected in the new plan proposed this week?
Webb suggested that proposing to spend £2.5bn a year on national service, having just slashed the budget for the National Citizen Service programme (the voluntary programme launched by David Cameron when he was PM), implied “incoherence”. Asked to explain why the budget for the National Citizen Service had been cut so much, Trevelyan blamed Covid and other shocks to the economy that had led to spending being cut back in some areas.
In addition to highlighting criticisms of the plan from Michael Portillo, a former Tory defence secretary, Labour pointed out that Thin Pinstriped Line, a defence policy blog, has published a withering assessment of the plan. It said: “It’s hard to see how this policy could be delivered for the stated cost of £2.5bn per year given that even rough calculations are showing that it would cost billions more to deliver both short and long term.” Ben Wallace, another former Tory defence secretary, recently said this blog was “the voice of reason” which could not be bettered for defence analysis.
Labour said the policy was clearly unravelling. A party spokesperson said:
The Tories’ National Service promise is unravelling by the minute, with the full scale of the scheme’s unfunded costs growing ever larger, and the list of unanswered questions about how it will work growing ever longer.
Here are some of the main campaign events of the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer gives a speech, and takes questions from journalists.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a campaign event, and he is also due to record an interview with the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason. But his main campaign event will be in Chesham and Amersham at 5pm.
The Liberal Democrats are launching their battlebus, which they are calling Yellow Hammer 1.
And the SNP leader and Scottish first minister John Swinney is campaigning in Dumfries.
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