Minister defends Liz Kendall’s handling of welfare reform brief despite major rebellion before vote – UK politics live

We are expecting two ministerial statements in the Commons today. At 12.30 there will be a statement from chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden on national security strategy. At 1.30 we will hear from foreign secretary David Lammy on the China audit. Prior to that it is questions for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development affairs ministers.

Senior Conservatives this morning have been backing a campaign by Neil O’Brien, MP for Harborough, Oadby & Wigston, to ban phones in secondary schools.

Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch shared a video he had posted on social media, saying “Every teacher and pupil I meet says the same: ban smartphones in classrooms. They’re disruptive, harm mental health, and damage learning. Keir Starmer says it’s not needed yet only one in ten secondary schools are phone-free. This is so important.”

Tom Tugendhat, who was a party leadership contender last year, has also backed the campaign today.

Frances Ryan reports for the Guardian:

Downing Street’s disability cuts will have a “devastating” impact on women’s health and dignity and could breach equality law, the government has been warned.

Charities and disabled people’s organisations including Scope, Spinal Injuries Association, Inclusion London, ME Association and WinVisible told the Guardian that tightening eligibility for personal independence payments (PIP) would mean disabled women being discriminated against, due to their higher personal care needs compared with men.

Under the new rules, to be voted on by MPs next week, a claimant must receive four points in a single daily living category to qualify for the payment.

Washing below the waist will score just two – half the number given to needing assistance between the shoulders and waist. It means the new four-point rule won’t take into account menstruation or some women’s extra toilet requirements, such as incontinence from pregnancy, unless they have additional needs.

More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a Commons bid to halt the cuts in their tracks, enough to threaten Keir Starmer’s majority. Some 108 MPs’ signatures appear on an amendment declining to give the welfare reform bill a second reading when it returns to the Commons on 1 July. The rebellion, the prime minister’s largest yet, would be enough to defeat the government’s plans if opposition MPs joined the Labour rebels.

Read more here: Labour’s benefit cuts may discriminate against disabled women, say charities

Jamie Grierson

Jamie Grierson has this write up of Pat McFadden’s appearance on the morning media round defending the government’s plans for welfare reform:

Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government would “keep talking to people” after more than 100 Labour MPs signed up to a Commons bid to stop reforms to Pip.

Pip was introduced by the coalition government in 2013 and is designed to help working-age people 16 and over with the extra costs of living with a health condition or a disability. It is available in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Labour government wants to tighten the eligibility for Pip as part of a wider package of changes aimed at saving £5bn a year.

An amendment put forward to the government’s welfare bill that declines to pass the government’s welfare changes and calls for a pause has been signed by more than 100 Labour MPs.

Rebel MPs aim to pass a so-called reasoned amendment, which halts the passage of a bill. It means the welfare bill would not pass its second reading, and says that provisions “have not been subject to a formal consultation with disabled people, or co-produced with them, or their carers”.

The amendment would need to be selected by the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and gain the support of opposition parties to pass, and there is no guarantee of either. But the symbolism of so many MPs signing the amendment would make taking the bill forward problematic for Keir Starmer.

Read more here: Minister defends welfare cuts, saying 1,000 people a day signing on to Pip

My colleague Jessica Elgot posts to social media to say that “There are a number of MPs who have significant unease at the cuts who are currently frontbenchers – some considering their positions in order to do so.”

Plaid Cymru have called for Wales to hold a national inquiry into maternity units, after health secretary Wes Streeting yesterday announced that England would hold one.

Plaid Cymru health spokesperson, Mabon ap Gwynfor, said:

Wales has had the highest stillbirth rates in the UK since 2014, and while both England and Scotland experienced a decline in neonatal mortality rates between 2010 and 2022, they increased in Wales over this period.

In light of significant and well-publicised issues over recent years at several Welsh health boards, we have similar concerns as to the quality of maternity care here in Wales. Indeed, across several metrics, there is reason to believe that maternity services in Wales are currently in a worse state than those in England.

As was shown by the latest Llais report into the Singleton hospital maternity unit, a lack of institutional accountability is compounding clinical failures. Undertaking an investigation of this nature would go a long way towards rebuilding the trust of the public after years of deteriorating standards.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel has criticised the government for being reluctant to give public support to US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

In an appearance on GB News, she told viewers “the British government did not even come out to give a view, to give a view as to whether or not they supported American strikes on that Iranian nuclear facility. And that is not right. It is wrong. The British people need to know that.”

Patel also claimed that the actions of Iran “are affecting us every single day in this country,” saying:

We have Iranian spies in our country. Iranian dissidents in our country. They’ve been active, and they’ve been undermining our national interests.

Yes, it is about the nuclear facilities in Iran. They must never have a nuclear weapon. Yes, it is about their ballistic missiles. Obviously, they’ve been stockpiling them. They’ve been hurting European countries on European soil, such as Ukraine, and they’ve been operating in our country.

That’s why we need a government that is going to invest in our defence and security and actually make sure that we are kept safe. Yes, abroad, when it comes to our bases and British nationals abroad, but also here in this country.

Yesterday several ministers declined to say whether they thought the US strikes were legal, with former foreign secretary James Cleverly describing current foreign secretary David Lammy’s interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme as “excrutiating”.

In 2017 Patel was forced to resign from Theresa May’s government after it emerged she had been holding about 14 unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a senior lobbyist.

The UK government earlier cautiously welcomed the announcement of a ceasefire betweeen Israel and Iran. Speaking on BBC radio, senior minister Pat McFadden said:

We are living in a very unpredictable world. If this ceasefire holds, I think everyone will welcome that. But I think given the exchange of missiles in various directions over the last ten days or so, people will welcome it with caution, because it is a fragile situation.

In a separate appearance on BBC Breakfast, McFadden said:

A number of people have been killed overnight in missile strikes, but I think the whole world will hope that the ceasefire will hold and that Iran will come forward with a credible plan that shows that it will not pursue the development of a nuclear weapon.

Yesterday an RAF flight evacuated “vulnerable” British nationals from Israel. Downing Street said “around 1,000” people had requested a seat on an evacuation flight – a quarter of the 4,000 who had registered their presence in Israel or Palestine with the Foreign Office.

A senior minister in the UK government has said the country is “not starting from zero” when it comes to raising defence spending to 5% of GDP.

Speaking on the BBC, Pat McFadden said one of the earliest actions of his party, which came to power of 2024, was to increase defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP over the next couple of years.

“It was not an easy decision,” he said, “but we said how we would pay for that, and similarly, as we increase beyond that over the next decade, in future spending reviews, will set out how it will be paid for.”

McFadden was keen to stress that the 5% figure of GDP was not just what he called “an out of date concept of defence and national security” that saw it “purely as the budget for the armed forces.”

He told listeners “Critical as that budget is and those capabilities are, you have to look after your broader security. Our cyber systems, for example, are under attack every day, sometimes by state actors, sometimes by non-state actors.

“That is why things like your telecoms infrastructure and other things that help to make our society work are a really important part of our security.”

He criticised the previous UK government, saying that under Rishi Sunak the Conservative party had a spending target of 2.5% but “no credible plan to reach it.”

Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden has praised Liz Kendall’s handling of her government brief amid a rebellion by Labour MPs over welfare reform plans.

Asked on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme how long she could stay in her job if she could not convince Labour MPs to vote alongside the government, McFadden said “Liz Kendall is doing an excellent job.”

He continued:

She has been central to the development of these reforms.

She has argued for them, not as a difficult choice, but as the right choice, because she believes in a welfare state that should be there for people.

Because she’s not comfortable about 1,000 people a day signing on for Pip and us just watching that number grow.

And because she’s absolutely passionate about getting more help and support to long term sick and disabled people who could work if they had that extra help and support, and right now, under the unreformed system, they don’t have that.

Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden has defended the government’s handling of a rebellion by Labour MPs over welfare reform changes, and said the vote of the bill will go ahead as planned next week.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, McFadden said “We will see the vote next week. We will keep talking to people between now and the vote, but there is no escaping the need for reform of the welfare system.”

He said the UK faced “a decade which is set to see the number of people on long term sickness and disability benefits double,” claiming that “1,000 people a day go on to Pip” which he said was the equivalent of “a city the size of, for example, Leicester” every year. He said:

We are an outlier in terms of the proportion of people in work in the UK compared to other countries, when you look back at what it was before Covid.

And so the set of reforms that we brought forward are aimed at ensuring the welfare state is there for people who need it.

It should always be there for people who need it in the future, but also making sure that, as the party of labour, as the party of work, we have support in place for that proportion of people on long term sickness and disability benefits who could work if they were given support.

On the rebel MPs, McFadden said “Of course, we’ll engage with people … we’ll always have a dialogue with people … you know, welfare reform is not an easy issue, and to govern is sometimes to have to grasp issues that aren’t easy.”

Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of UK politics. Here are the headlines …

It is cabinet this morning, and then the prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to travel to The Hague for a Nato leaders’ summit. Angela Rayner and Liz Kendall are expected to visit a construction site in London this afternoon.

It is Martin Belam with you today. You can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com if you spot typos, errors or omissions.