Starmer and Macron agree that ‘new deterrent’ needed to stop small boats, No 10 says – as it happened | Politics
Starmer and Macron agree that ‘new deterrent’ needed to stop small boats, No 10 says
Downing Street has issued a statement about Keir Starmer’s talks with Emmanuel Macron over lunch today. It says the PM and the president agreed that “a new deterrent” was needed to stop the small boat crossings.
This seems to be a reference to the idea of a “one in, one out” returns scheme, which would involve migrants arriving illegally in the UK being swiftly returned to France, but with the UK also agreeing to take in an equivalent number of migratns based in France who are claiming asylum in the UK. Starmer is said to be urging Macron to accept a deal of this sort, but Macron has reportedly been resisting, and the idea is unpopular with some other European countries. Last month Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta wrote to the European commission complaining that such a scheme could incentivise even more irregular migration into southern Europe.
Starmer and Macron are attending a more formal summit tomorrow, and further details on what has (or has not) been agreed should emerge when they speak to reporters tomorrow afternoon.
The No 10 statement said:
[Starmer and Macron] reflected on the state visit of the president so far, agreeing that it had been an important representation of the deep ties between our two countries.
Moving on to discuss joint working, they shared their desire to deepen our partnership further – from joint leadership in support of Ukraine to strengthening our defence collaboration and increasing bilateral trade and investment.
The prime minister welcomed the news that EDF would take a 12.5% stake in Sizewell C leading to lower bills, more jobs and better energy security for the UK.
The leaders agreed tackling the threat of irregular migration and small boat crossings is a shared priority that requires shared solutions.
The prime minister spoke of his government’s toughening of the system in the past year to ensure rules are respected and enforced, including a massive surge in illegal working arrests to end the false promise of jobs that are used to sell spaces on boats.
This paragraph seems to amount to an acknowlegement that Macron was seeking assurances on this issue, as the Telegraph reported this morning. See 9.31am.
The statement goes on:
The two leaders agreed on the need to go further and make progress on new and innovative solutions, including a new deterrent to break the business model of these gangs.
Finally, they looked ahead to the 37th UK-France summit taking place tomorrow and agreed to aim for concrete progress on these areas.
Key events
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Afternoon summary
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DWP minister Stephen Timms claims people with fluctuating conditions protected from risk of having health UC benefit cut
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Starmer and Macron agree that ‘new deterrent’ needed to stop small boats, No 10 says
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King Charles was instrumental in persuading France to lend Bayeux Tapestry to UK, Macron suggests
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Northern Ireland politicians condemn migrants effigy on loyalist bonfire
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Dale Vince backs growing calls for ‘wealth tax’ – and what this term might actually mean
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Starmer tells Macron Anglo-French relationship ‘as strong as it’s ever been’ as they meet in No 10
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No 10 says PM wants further crack down on illegal working, as Macron said to see UK black economy as migrant pull factor
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Tories claim Starmer’s answers at PMQs show ‘toxic cocktail of Labour tax rises’ coming in autumn budget
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PMQs – snap verdict
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Starmer says UK ‘can’t just tax our way to growth’, as he brushes off Green party’s call for wealth tax
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Starmer claims Reform UK just wants to ‘milk and exploit’ small boat problem, not fix it
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Ed Davey says his MPs will back Labour’s plans for Send reform if they pass 5 tests set by Lib Dems
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Starmer declines to rule out income tax or national insurance thresholds being frozen in budget
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Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs
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Streeting offers to hold talks with BMA to avert resident doctors’ strike, saying walk-out would put NHS recovery at risk
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Streeting says public ‘will not forgive’ strike action by resident doctors
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Resident doctors announce five-day strike in England from 25 July
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Ministers should think ‘very carefully’ before altering jury system, says Labour chair of Commons justice committee
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Preventing some offenders opting for jury trials would be ‘big, backward step’, say Tories
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Jury-free trials proposed to save criminal justice system from collapse
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Ministers ‘not dragging our heels’ over compensation for infected blood scandal victims, Thomas-Symonds says
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Minister rejects claims UK not doing enough to deter small boat crossings ahead of Starmer-Macron talks
Afternoon summary
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Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, have agreed that “a new deterrent” is needed to stop the small boat crossings. (See 4.57pm.)
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
DWP minister Stephen Timms claims people with fluctuating conditions protected from risk of having health UC benefit cut
In the Commons MPs have been debating amendments to what is still called the universal credit (UC) and personal independence payment (Pip) bill – even though all the Pip elements of the bill were removed last week, when No 10 realised that without a massive concession the government might lose the vote.
Dozens of Labour MPs are still unhappy about what’s left of the bill, which will raise the standard rate of universal credit by more than inflation, while reducing the health element of UC for people unable to work as a result of an illness or disability for new claimants. Ministers claim the current system incentives people to switch to the UC health element because it is a lot more generous than the standard rate.
Some government MPs are expected to rebel in votes later, but as a result of the concessions last week the government’s majority is now longer at risk.
Here are some of the key points from today’s debate.
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The Green party is calling for the bill to be amended to make the increase in the standard rate of UC more generous than currently planned. This plan is set out in amendment 39, tabled by Siân Berry from the Greens, which was selected as the lead amendment for today’s debate. All the amendments are here.
The halving of the universal credit health element is an especially cruel cut – targeting disabled people already assessed as too sick to be able to work.
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Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP who led the revolt against the bill last week, described the bill, even in its amended form, as “a stain on our great party, founded on values of equality and justice”.
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Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and the disabled, has claimed the bill will protect people with fluctuating conditions. In her speech Maskell said:
If someone has a fluctuating physical or mental health condition like multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis, or other recurring muscular-skeletal condition, if following a period of remission and work then relapse and returning to universal credit, unless unequivocally stated, they will return onto the pittance of £50-a-week for their health element.
But Timms intervened to say “the bill protects people in exactly the situation that she describes”. He said that if a pre-2026 claimant slips out of being eligible for universal credit but meets the eligibility criteria again within six months, the bill would demand that they be considered “continuously entitled to an award”. It would mean that they could go “straight back onto the position they are in at the start”, Timms said.
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Debbie Abrahams, Labour chair of the work and pensions committee, urged the government to delay its reform of health benefits until November 2026. She said:
This is to allow for the NHS capacity to ramp up and to ensure funding follows health need, so that people with newly required conditions or impairments can receive early treatment and a better aligned labour market that will enable them to return to work quickly.
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Zarah Sultana, the independent MP who last week said she was leaving Labour to set up a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, said the bill showed the government was “not out of touch, but also morally bankrupt”.
Starmer and Macron agree that ‘new deterrent’ needed to stop small boats, No 10 says
Downing Street has issued a statement about Keir Starmer’s talks with Emmanuel Macron over lunch today. It says the PM and the president agreed that “a new deterrent” was needed to stop the small boat crossings.
This seems to be a reference to the idea of a “one in, one out” returns scheme, which would involve migrants arriving illegally in the UK being swiftly returned to France, but with the UK also agreeing to take in an equivalent number of migratns based in France who are claiming asylum in the UK. Starmer is said to be urging Macron to accept a deal of this sort, but Macron has reportedly been resisting, and the idea is unpopular with some other European countries. Last month Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta wrote to the European commission complaining that such a scheme could incentivise even more irregular migration into southern Europe.
Starmer and Macron are attending a more formal summit tomorrow, and further details on what has (or has not) been agreed should emerge when they speak to reporters tomorrow afternoon.
The No 10 statement said:
[Starmer and Macron] reflected on the state visit of the president so far, agreeing that it had been an important representation of the deep ties between our two countries.
Moving on to discuss joint working, they shared their desire to deepen our partnership further – from joint leadership in support of Ukraine to strengthening our defence collaboration and increasing bilateral trade and investment.
The prime minister welcomed the news that EDF would take a 12.5% stake in Sizewell C leading to lower bills, more jobs and better energy security for the UK.
The leaders agreed tackling the threat of irregular migration and small boat crossings is a shared priority that requires shared solutions.
The prime minister spoke of his government’s toughening of the system in the past year to ensure rules are respected and enforced, including a massive surge in illegal working arrests to end the false promise of jobs that are used to sell spaces on boats.
This paragraph seems to amount to an acknowlegement that Macron was seeking assurances on this issue, as the Telegraph reported this morning. See 9.31am.
The statement goes on:
The two leaders agreed on the need to go further and make progress on new and innovative solutions, including a new deterrent to break the business model of these gangs.
Finally, they looked ahead to the 37th UK-France summit taking place tomorrow and agreed to aim for concrete progress on these areas.
King Charles was instrumental in persuading France to lend Bayeux Tapestry to UK, Macron suggests
President Macron has suggested that King Charles was instrumental in helping to persuade France to send the Bayeux Tapestry on loan to London. In his speech at the British Museum, he said that for decades the French used to come up with reasons why sending such a precious object abroad was not possible.
We found the best [reasons] to explain, in perfect detail, why it was totally impossible to make such a loan. And, believe me, we found them. And, believe me, we could have found them again.
But, Macron said, seeing Charles’s “attachmment, his willingess to assist the project” helped to persuade him to approve the loan.
(The normal story was that the tapestry was in too frail a condition to be moved.)
Northern Ireland politicians condemn migrants effigy on loyalist bonfire
A loyalist bonfire in Northern Ireland with an effigy of a migrant vessel and about a dozen lifesize mannequins with lifejackets has been condemned as sick and racist, Rory Carroll reports.
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, are now at the British Museum in London, at an event where they are marking the decision of the French to loan the Bayeux Tapestry to the museum, with the Sutton Hoo collection and the the Lewis Chessmen being loaned to the French in return.
Starmer opens his speech by pointing out that the British Museum is in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency.
A reader asks:
From what I recall the Post Office trials were in front of a judge no jury. Is this correct?
This is a reference, I think, to the main group action legal case led by Alan Bates. That was decided by a judge, without a jury. But that was a civil case, not a criminal case. Judges can, and do, decide these sorts of cases without a jury. But there were around 1,000 criminal prosecutions resulting from the Post Office Horizon scandal, and many of those will have been heard before a jury.
At PMQs Kemi Badenoch said that a former Labour first minister of Wales has backed a wealth tax. She was referring to Mark Drakeford, who is now finance secretary in the Welsh government, who told the BBC’s Walescast podcast the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, should “absolutely” look at a wealth tax. Drakeford said the “root of inequality is the way that wealth is distributed across the population”.
Badenoch also claimed that Reeves herself backed a wealth tax when she was in opposition. She was referring to this Telegraph story saying that Reeves supported “five forms of wealth tax” when she was a backbench MP in 2018. The Telegraph said:
In 2018, the chancellor backed a number of new levies in a pamphlet called The Everyday Economy. It was published by Ms Reeves when she was chairing the Commons business committee.
In it, she said the government could revise council tax bands, replace council tax with property tax, raise and reform inheritance tax, impose a land tax, and bring capital gains tax in line with income tax.
Reeves has not changed council tax, or introduced a land tax. But in her budget last year she did limit the extent to which farms are protected from inheritance tax, and she increased capital gains tax.
Dale Vince backs growing calls for ‘wealth tax’ – and what this term might actually mean
Dale Vince, the green entrepreneur and Labour party donor, has issued a statement saying that he favours higher taxes on the wealthy. Responding to the exchanges on this at PMQs (see 12.11pm and 12.26pm), Vince said:
We do need to cut welfare, welfare for the rich. Tax breaks, allowances, loopholes – there’s an abundance of them, and it results in people with money paying half the rate of tax of people with a job.
It’s right that those with the deepest pockets, who’ve taken the most from our economy, pay their fair share. It’s why calls are growing for a wealth tax.
It’s about fairness – we tax money made with money at half the rate of money made with a pair of hands – it’s just not right. Our tax code was written by people with money for people with money – it needs to serve us all.
While Starmer did not rule out a wealthy tax at PMQs, his answer to Adrian Ramsay, the Green party’s co-leader, made it clear that he is quite negative about the concept. (See 12.26pm.)
But a lot depends on what you mean by “wealth tax”. The Green party favour a purist version, a 1% tax on assets worth more than £10m, and a 2% tax on assets worth more than £1bn. This would fit the literal definition of a wealth tax. Starmer is very unlikely to embrace this version – not least because the experts say it would not work.
No 10 has been keen to point out that it is in favour of taxes on the wealthy – as it has made clear over the last 12 months by announcing policies that actually do raises taxes for the wealthy. Their briefing implies the UK already has a plethora of wealth taxes.
Vale’s position seems to be somewhere in between. In his statement, he is not explicitly backing the Green party version of a wealth tax. But he points out that taxes on capital gains are lower than taxes on income, and he is calling for significant reform of the tax system to address this. In this, he has the support of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, which yesterday proposed “reforming capital income taxes in order to properly tax high returns”.
Tonight Pippa Crerar, the Guardian’s political editor, is chairing a discussion at the Conway Hall in London on Labour’s first year in office. She will be joined by Guardian journalist Rafael Behr, former Conservative special adviser, Salma Shah, and Labour peer and the former general secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady. It starts at 7.30pm and there are details of how to get tickets – for the live event, or to watch online – here.
