‘We have more cards we can play’ – Lammy says G7 planning further moves to pressure Russia into agreeing ceasefire
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told MPs that G7 foreign ministers were able to find “common ground” when they met in Canada last week, despite claims in advance that this would not be possible.
He said a ceasefire offer was now on the table, “Ukraine is serious about peace”, and it was now up to President Putin to decide how to respond. He said:
Now it is Putin who stands in the spotlight, Putin who must answer, Putin who must choose. Are you serious, Mr Putin, about peace? Will you stop the fighting? Or will you drag your feet and play games, pay lip service to a ceasefire while still pummeling your prey?
My warning to Mr. Putin is this – if you are serious, prove it with a full and unconditional ceasefire now.
But Lammy said Putin did not seem interested in a ceasefire, and so the G7 was considering further action.
If Putin does not deliver, and I must tell the house that I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously. We’re not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.
We can all see the impact the G7’s unprecedented sanctions have had on Russia’s faltering economy; social spending down, inflation and interest rates sky high. There can be no let up in our efforts.
In Canada we discussed where we can go further to target their energy and defence sectors, further squeeze their oil revenues and use frozen Russian assets. At the same time we will keep up our support to Ukraine – Europeans clearly need to shoulder our share of this responsibility.
Key events
Early evening summary
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Welfare ministers have suggested that people worried about the disability benefit cuts being announced tomorrow may be reassured when they see the details – while refusing to guarantee that people who are too sick or disabled to work aren’t at risk of losing money. (See 3.07pm, 3.37pm and 4.54pm.)
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David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has told MPs that Britain and its G7 allies have have “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously” about a ceasefire in Ukraine. (See 4.38pm.)
Two protesters have been ejected from a speech by Kemi Badenoch at London’s Guildhall.
The Conservative leader began to speak when a woman holding a banner that said “Abolish Billionaires” held up a banner and began to shout.
She was soon ejected from the Central London hall by members of the audience.
A second woman appeared to shout about the cost-of-living crisis as she was ejected from the room.
At the event, which marked 50 years since Margaret Thatcher helped to set up the think tank, Badenoch could be heard to say: “I hardly think Mrs Thatcher can be blamed for the cost-of-living crisis.”
Only 37% seem to agree with Streeting about people getting mental health diagnosis too readily, poll suggests
Yesterday Wes Streeting, the health secretary, claimed there has been some “overdiagnosis” of mental health conditions.
According to polling by YouGov, almost four out of 10 people (37%) seem agree with Streeting that getting a diagnosis is too easy. But 32% say getting a diagnosis is too hard, and 14% say the balance is about right – meaning at last 46% don’t agree with Streeting.
(Streeting talked about there being “overdiagnosis” of mental health conditions, whereas YouGov asked about it being “too easy” to get a diagnosis; the terms have different connotations, although roughly they imply the same thing.)
The polling also found considerable differences between demographic groups on this issue.
Women are more likely to say getting a diagnosis is too hard, not too easy – while men are more likely to say the opposite.
The under-50s are more likely to say getting a diagnosis is too hard, not too easy – while the over-50s are more likely to say the opposite.
People from London and Scotland are more likely to say getting a diagnosis is too hard, not too easy – while people from the rest of Britain are more likely to say the opposite.
And Labour and Lib Dem supporters are more likely to say getting a diagnosis is too hard, not too easy – while Conservative and Reform UK supporters are more likely to say the opposite.
King welcomes new Canadian PM Mark Carney to Buckingham Palace
King Charles has welcomed Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada, to Buckingham Palace. Later Carney is meeting Keir Starmer in No 10.
The king does not routinely meet foreign prime ministers when they visit London, and Carney is not staying in London for long. But the king is Canada’s head of state and, with President Trump repeatedly saying he wants the US to annex Canada, Charles seems to be more than usually keen to show Canadians that they have his full support.
The Green party MP Siân Berry has welcomed the growing interest in a wealth tax (a Green party policy) as an alternative to disability benefit cuts. (See 9.31am.) She said:
We are pleased to see pressure for a wealth tax growing, something the Green party has long argued for. Just a 2% tax on people with assets above £10m would raise far more than the savings proposed through welfare cuts. This tax is long overdue. The government cannot delay any longer. Now is the time to tax extreme wealth and stop punishing the poorest and most vulnerable.
During work and pensions questions in the Commons earlier Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, asked Liz Kendall for an assurance that she had “collective agreement” for the plans for disability benefits being announced tomorrow.
When Kendall urged Whately to be patient, and did not directly address the question about cabinet support, Whately claimed this reply meant Kendall did not have the support of cabinet colleagues.
In another exchange Siân Berry, the Green MP, asked for an assurance that the benefit cuts being proposed would not be implemented this calender year, or without a vote by MPs.
Stephen Timms, the social security and disability minister, replied:
I recognise there has been a good deal of anxiety and I regret that that has occurred. But there won’t be long to wait, the proposals will soon become clear and I think she will welcome a great deal of the changes we want to make.
‘We have more cards we can play’ – Lammy says G7 planning further moves to pressure Russia into agreeing ceasefire
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told MPs that G7 foreign ministers were able to find “common ground” when they met in Canada last week, despite claims in advance that this would not be possible.
He said a ceasefire offer was now on the table, “Ukraine is serious about peace”, and it was now up to President Putin to decide how to respond. He said:
Now it is Putin who stands in the spotlight, Putin who must answer, Putin who must choose. Are you serious, Mr Putin, about peace? Will you stop the fighting? Or will you drag your feet and play games, pay lip service to a ceasefire while still pummeling your prey?
My warning to Mr. Putin is this – if you are serious, prove it with a full and unconditional ceasefire now.
But Lammy said Putin did not seem interested in a ceasefire, and so the G7 was considering further action.
If Putin does not deliver, and I must tell the house that I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously. We’re not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.
We can all see the impact the G7’s unprecedented sanctions have had on Russia’s faltering economy; social spending down, inflation and interest rates sky high. There can be no let up in our efforts.
In Canada we discussed where we can go further to target their energy and defence sectors, further squeeze their oil revenues and use frozen Russian assets. At the same time we will keep up our support to Ukraine – Europeans clearly need to shoulder our share of this responsibility.
The urgent question is over, but Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, is now raising a point of order.
Jenrick claims that Nicholas Dakin, the justice minister, misled MPs when he said the new Sentencing Council guidelines were approved by the last government. He says that the guidelines on which the last government was consulted were not the same as the ones finally published, because new wording was added, as the council itself admitted in its recent letter.
The Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, objects, and tells Jenrick to accuse Dakin of inadvertently misleading the house. MPs are not allowed to accuse each other of being deliberately misleading, or lying.
Dakin says he doesn’t think he inadvertenly misled MPs.
Justice minister Nicholas Dakin says he’s ‘confident’ that Sentencing Council will respond to government’s concerns
Desmond Swayne (Con) said the Sentencing Council row showed why it was a mistake for MPs “to delegate powers to quangos which then clearly come up with solutions which we find repulsive”.
Dakin says, if Swayne had been present at the meeting last week, he would not have seen it as Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, just “asking” for a new approach.
He says there was a constructive exchange of views and that a “proper process” is now in place, “which I am confident will come up with the right answer”.
Josh Babarinde, the Lib Dem justice spokerperson, said two-tier justice already existed in the UK. He said the country used to be run by “two-tier Tories who thought they could get away with illegal number 10 parties, while the rest of us told to stay at home”. And he described Jenrick as a two-tier Tory “who unlawfully approved a development for his donor”.
Andy Slaughter, the Labour chair of the Commons justice committee, spoke out in defence of the Sentencing Council. He said the new guidelines did not require pre-sentence reports to be obtained for offenders in the designated categories, including minority ethnic people, and did not prevent judges getting pre-sentence report for other people.
Dakin said Slaughter was making a good point.
Responding to Jenrick, Nicholas Dakin, the justice minister, said Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, met the Sentencing Council to discuss this dispute last week.
He says they had a “constructive discussion” and Mahmood agreed to set out her objections in more detail in writing. The council agreed to consider those before the guidelines came into effect.
Dakin said this process should be allowed to play out.
Robert Jenrick uses urgent question to call for officials who drew up new Sentencing Council guidelines to be sacked
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, is now asking a Commons urgent question about the new Sentencing Council guidelines that he claims will create “two-tier justice”.
He says the guidelines, which say judges should normally ask for pre-sentence reports when certain categories of offender, including minority ethnic offenders, are being sentenced. This violates the prinicple of equality before the law, he says.
He says the people who draw up the guidelines should be sacked.
He says the government should back his bill allowing the government to intervene. And he says he thinks Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is refusing to do this because she secretly agrees with the plans.
The Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp asked what the government was doing about “so-called ‘sickfluencer’ sites, social media platforms where people are shown how to game the benefits system”.
In response, Alison McGovern, the employment minister, said:
We have a fraud bill going through the House at the moment and the issue that he has raised is at the forefront of the attention of my fellow minister, the minister for transformation [Andrew Western], and he will take every step he can to deal with issues in that area.
Later, in response to another question on the same topic, Western said the government inherited “an appalling level of fraud in the welfare system” from the last government. He said the fraud bill included a £8.6bn package to tackle fraud.
