The former governor of the Bank of England has endorsed the Labour party in a mayor coup for Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Adam Forrest www.independent.co.uk 

Mark Carney – who enjoyed a close working relationship with Tory chancellor George Osborne – said it was “beyond time” for Ms Reeves to run the economy in a Labour government.

The Canadian, who ran the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, said Ms Reeves was a “serious economist” who “understands the big picture” in a surprise video message after her conference speech in Liverpool.

His comments came after Ms Reeves promised a Labour government would “rebuild Britain” – warning the country to “never trust the Tories with our economy ever again”.

In a speech which received several standing ovations, Ms Reeves:

• Promised a crackdown on government waste to save an estimated £4bn
• Announced Labour will hold an inquiry into the failure to build HS2
• Revealed a planned crackdown on the use of private planes by ministers as she mocked Rishi Sunak
• Pledged a new Covid corruption commissioner with a “hit squad” of investigators
• Vowed to protect the independence of the Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility

In a move met by gasps in the conference hall, her speech was followed by a video message from Mr Carney, the 58-year-old who was hand-picked by Mr Osborne to be governor.

He said: “Rachel Reeves is a serious economist. She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture. But, crucially she understands the economics of work, of place and family. It is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.”

His backing represents a major coup for Labour. A spokesperson for Ms Reeves said the endorsement sends “a very clear signal” that Labour is ready to fight the Conservatives on the economy.

Mr Osborne at the time described Mr Carney, who was the first foreigner to run the central bank in 318 years, as “quite simply the best qualified person in the world” for the job. Such was Mr Osborne’s admiration for the Canadian, that he struck a deal to secure Mr Carney allowing him to serve a five-year term instead of the expected eight.

Ms Reeves borrowed an attack line used by David Cameron ahead of the 2015 general election, telling voters they can choose between “five more years of Tory chaos and uncertainty” or “a changed Labour Party offering stability”.

In a stinging attack, Ms Reeves asked those gathered: “Is there anything in Britain that works better than when the Conservatives came into office 13 years ago?”

Labour vowed to protect the independence of institutions such as the civil service and the Office for Budget Responsibility, which have been dubbed part of a “blob” by senior Tories.

She said Labour will mandate that all significant tax and spending decisions are subject to independent forecasts to avoid “a repeat of the devastation Liz Truss and the Tory Party have inflicted on family finances”.

Ms Reeves also announced that Labour would launch an independent expert inquiry into lessons learnt from the government’s failure to build HS2, to be led by shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh.

Attacking the Tories for allowing costs to balloon, she said: “If I were in the Treasury, I would have been on the phone to the chief executive of HS2 non-stop, demanding answers and solutions.”

She also announced a £4bn clampdown on government waste, with a target to reduce spending by half over the next parliament. Labour will appoint a “Covid corruption commissioner” in the hope of recovering up to £2.6bn lost to fraud.

She confirmed plans for reforms to the “antiquated” planning system to make it quicker and easier to build the infrastructure needed for modern industries and clean energy networks.

Ms Reeves also confirmed that her first budget would crack down on the tax perks enjoyed by private schools – telling Rishi Sunak to “bring it on” if he wanted a fight on the issue at a time when children in state schools were being taught in temporary classrooms due to crumbling concrete.

She also revealed a planned crackdown on the use of private planes by ministers as she mocked Mr Sunak’s travel habits, suggesting his love of flying was because he was scared of meeting voters.

Mr Carney’s endorsement came after high street supremo Mary Portas introduced Ms Reeves to the stage, saying she is going to be “Britain’s first female chancellor in 800 years” and would be “the best qualified chancellor Britain has ever had”.

Responding to the speech, Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt attacked Labour’s plans to borrow £28bn a year by the end of its first term in government to invest in green energy “a fairy-tale for the British economy with no happy ending”.

Mr Hunt said: “Borrowing more doesn’t solve problems, it creates them – the worst kind of short termism when instead we should be taking long-term decisions that will actually tackle inflation and unleash growth”.

He also pointed out that Ms Reeves failed to use the term “inflation”. But Labour fired back that Mr Hunt “doesn’t know what inflation means” – pointing out that she talked about prices going up.

Ms Reeves won union and business backing for her speech. CBI chief executive Rain Newton-Smith said business leaders will be “encouraged” to hear her speak so “ambitiously” about investment. The TUC’s general secretary Paul Nowak said Labour had offered the “boost to living standards this country has been crying out for”.

A Labour government would create a powerful Covid corruption commissioner to help recoup billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money that has been lost to waste, fraud and flawed contracts during the pandemic, Rachel Reeves is to announce.

Good luck with that! – Owl

Pippa Crerar Political editor Guardian

The new commissioner would be given the power to bring together public agencies including HMRC, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Crime Agency to pursue at least £2.6bn of “lost” public funds. They would examine contracts line by line and would have to update parliament on their progress in clawing back money.

An estimated £7.2bn was lost in fraud from Covid support schemes including from business loans and grants, furlough and “eat out to help out”, although the figure could be as high as £10.8bn, according to the House of Commons library. Labour believes a lower estimate of £4.7bn could be achieved if losses are contained.

In her conference speech in Liverpool on Monday, Reeves will announce that Labour would review sentencing on fraud and corruption conducted against UK public services, as well as reform public procurement rules to include a strong “debarment and exclusion” regime for those complicit in fraud against the state.

There would also be more robust oversight of public grant and loan schemes in future with counter-fraud experts, data management and analytics all involved to prevent financial losses.

“The cost to the taxpayer of Covid fraud is estimated at £7.2bn with every one of those cheques signed by Rishi Sunak as chancellor and yet just 2% of fraudulent Covid grants have been recovered,” Reeves will say.

“We will appoint a Covid corruption commissioner equipped with the powers they need and the mandate to do what it takes to chase those who have ripped off the taxpayer, taking them to court and clawing back every penny of taxpayers money that they can. That money belongs in our NHS, it belongs in our schools, it belongs in our police and conference – we want that money back.”

During the pandemic the government suspended its usual procurement processes and introduced a highly secretive VIP “fast lane” for procurement of goods including protective equipment. It later wrote off £8.7bn it had spent on defective or overpriced PPE.

Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project campaign group, said: “The scale of PPE waste and corruption is sickening: over £10bn lost; more than four in every five pounds spent. If you’re serious about looking after public money – yours and mine – you want those billions back. Recovering them starts with political will. Until now that has been sorely lacking – so this is a very positive development.”

Now you see them, now you don’t! – Owl

Documents detailing projects to be funded with savings from scrapping HS2 deleted from government website.

Ben Quinn Political Correspondent Guardian

Government documents that were abruptly deleted after appearing online with announcements of new transport projects were just giving “examples” of what savings from the scrapping of HS2’s northern leg could be spent on, a minister has claimed.

The documents detailed an extra £100m of funding for a mass transit “underground” project in Bristol. Mention of plans to invest £36bn in projects around the north and Midlands, including reopening Transport North East’s Leamside line, were also removed from the government’s website.

“We gave some examples to people about the sorts of things – and we know these things are priorities locally – the sorts of things that that money could be spent on, and to bring it to life for people,” the transport secretary, Mark Harper, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday.

The deletions on Wednesday night included removing an entire page where the government pledged to “revolutionise mass transit in Bristol’. It appeared to have been replaced with a broader pledge to give the west of England combined authority £100m, which it could spend on various projects in the region.

Asked if Bristol was going to get a new mass transit system, Harper said: “My department published a document which set out very clearly what we are going to spend the £36bn on that we are saving from cancelling the second phase of HS2.

“The money that was promised for Bristol is for £100m extra for the elected mayor of the west of England combined authority and that is money that he will have available to spend on his projects including on a mass transit system… some of those things are already being delivered.”

The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, described the deleted plans as “fantasy promises” by the government.

“They can’t hide from the fact that they released a document that looked like it had been scribbled in crayon by advisers that had never left London,” she said on Twitter.

Questioned on Sky News, Harper said ministers would “develop the business case” for restoring the Leamside line, despite the documents last week saying it would be reopened.

“We’ve made a big commitment to the north-east elected mayor for a significant amount of money, £1.8bn, and it will be for them to decide how they spend that money,” he told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips show.

Every pupil in Devon is effectively worth £238 less than the average English pupil.

Forget levelling up. – Owl

Fairer funding is essential for education in Devon 

John Hart, Leader of Devon County Council www.northdevongazette.co.uk 

You may think education is a national service and it’s funded accordingly. Government financial support for a child is the same in Devon as in Dover, in Cornwall compared to Cumbria.

Well I’m afraid it’s not.

For what are complex historical reasons, every local education authority is funded differently.

When I was first in charge of education in Devon we were regularly placed in the bottom five of the 151 councils responsible for schools in this country for the funding we received.

We started regularly campaigning with parents, school leaders and governors and the support of our MPs for fair funding for Devon. And we have had some success. The current figures show us at 121 out of 151 for school funding – up 25 places. So our report might read: progress but still work to be done.

And Devon is vigorous in campaigning for fair funding for our schools as it is in every other service area. We have been at the forefront of the all-party f40 campaign – that’s the grouping of the 42 worst funded councils in the country. Indeed my deputy leader, James McInnes, was the national chairman for a number of years, Devon MP Sir Gary Streeter is a vice chairman and our current Cabinet member for schools, Andrew Leadbetter, is a leading member.

The facts are these: if you have a child or grandchild in a school in Devon the funding we receive for them nationally is £5,410 per pupil. That compares to an average in the South West of £5,431 per pupil and an England average of £5,648. So every pupil in Devon is effectively worth £238 less than the average English pupil.

For a primary school with 200 pupils that’s £47,600 lost every year. For a 1,000-pupil secondary school that’s a staggering £238,000. A newly qualified teacher earns £30,000 a year so the primary is missing out on one and a half teachers, the secondary school almost eight extra staff. We have around 95,000 children at school in Devon so, collectively, that’s an awful lot of teachers and classroom assistants that our schools could employ if only they were funded at the national level. And yet, historically, our schools perform well thanks to the hard work of staff and pupils.

When it comes to what’s known as the High Needs Block, that’s the funding we receive for children with special needs, we are placed 118th out of 151 LAs with an average allocation of £768 compared to the South West average of £806 and the England average of £855. Again you can see that Devon children miss out both compared with our neighbours in the South West and even more compared to the national figures.

That’s why we have been working with f40 in holding briefing meetings for all MPs at Westminster as Parliament returned in September and providing them with up to date figures and statistics.

The briefings included not only details on the fair funding campaign for all mainstream schools but also on the need for financial support for our special needs’ children. f40 – which I emphasise is all-party – estimates that the budget deficit faced by all top-tier councils providing support for children with special needs will be £2.5 billion by March 2025. As I wrote in a previous column, that is because need and expectation is outstripping capacity and funding across the country.

That’s why I have appointed a new Cabinet member, Lois Samuel, to concentrate solely on special needs. Together with Andrew Leadbetter and I, she will emphasise Devon’s case for all our children to be properly funded.

Women who are bullied and sexually harassed in the workplace will be given new protections as whistleblowers under a Labour government.

In a major coup for Labour, eminent barrister Marina Wheeler KC, Boris Johnson’s former wife, is to be appointed Labour’s “whistleblowing tsar” to advise on their reforms.

Kate Devlin www.independent.co.uk 

In another landmark change, common-law wives who live with their partners will also get the same rights, including over property, as married women should their relationship end.

In a major coup for Labour, eminent barrister Marina Wheeler KC, Boris Johnson’s former wife, is to be appointed Labour’s “whistleblowing tsar” to advise on their reforms.

Ms Wheeler is the second high-profile woman to take a key job with Keir Starmer’s team.

Last month, Sue Gray, the Whitehall mandarin who wrote the Partygate report on drinks parties in No 10 which contributed to Mr Johnson’s downfall, started work as Starmer’s chief of staff.

In a speech to the Labour conference on Tuesday, shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry will say the whistleblowing and common-law wife reforms will mean women do not have to “live in fear… suffer in silence and … hope for the best when it comes to keeping a roof over her head”.

She will declare: “That is the difference between a Tory government that pretends to care about women’s rights, and a Labour Party that delivers them.”

Ms Wheeler said it was a “privilege” to help Labour protect women from abusive colleagues.

Women in the workplace “too often suffer sexual harassment and assault and they pay a heavy price for speaking out. Knowing this, and to keep their jobs, they suffer in silence,” Ms Wheeler told The Independent.

She highlighted the revelation earlier this year that one in three female surgeons had reported sexual harassment or assault at the hands of colleagues over the last five years.

Ms Wheeler, an expert in employment law, said she was “delighted to be working with Emily Thornberry to help formulate solutions – including law reform where necessary – to encourage women to come forward, trusting that they will not be penalised for having done so. It will be a privilege to help deliver this.”

In recent years, several MPs have been accused of using their power to sexually harass and bully members of staff and others.

The Labour move also follows allegations of rape and sexual scandal against comedian Russell Brand. The claims came to light after a number of women broke years of silence over the matter. Mr Brand denies the allegations.

In her speech, Ms Thornberry will say victims of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination in the workplace are entitled to the same protection as whisteleblowers.

“No woman should be forced to stay quiet for fear of being sacked,” she will add.

Whistleblowers are entitled to protection against losing their job or otherwise suffering as a result of speaking out.

But the law currently applies to only a small number of areas, such as health and safety and potential miscarriages of justice.

The government’s current guidelines on whistleblowers warn that “personal grievances”, including bullying and harassment, are not covered by whistleblowing laws unless the case “is in the public interest”.

Female surgeons recently lifted the lid on harassment, which they said was rife in their profession, but many said they feared speaking out because of the damage it could do to their careers.

Ms Thornberry will also pledge to reform the law for couples who live together. She will say that, for too long, women “have been left with no rights when those relationships come to an end”.

“No woman should be forced to get married or stay in an unhappy relationship just to avoid being put out on the street.”

Countries including New Zealand, Scotland and Ireland have changed laws to offer extra protections to cohabiting couples.

Surveys show many people still believe the ‘‘common law’’ myth that if a couple have lived together for long enough they are effectively treated as married under the law.

Tory MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee, recently called on the government to give greater protections to the growing number of cohabitating partners.

Details of Labour’s latest announcement came a day after deputy leader Angela Rayner unveiled plans to clamp down on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Her proposals include a statutory code of practice for employers, clear processes on how to deal with sexual harassment at work and training to help assess “foreseeable risks”.

Ms Rayner told The Independent sexual harassment was “rife” as she warned such behaviour is “destroying careers and ruining women’s lives”.

She said recent high-profile cases which have hit the headlines “are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the experiences of millions of women in workplaces the length and breadth of Britain”.

Dramatic findings point to Conservatives losing every red wall seat that they secured at the last election

Michael Savage Policy Editor Guardian

Labour is currently on course to win a landslide victory on the scale of 1997, according to dramatic new modelling that points to the Conservatives losing every red wall seat secured at the last election.

The Tories could also lose more than 20 constituencies in its southern blue wall strongholds and achieve a record-low number of seats, according to a constituency-by-constituency model seen by the Observer. Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, defence secretary Grant Shapps and leadership contender Penny Mordaunt are among those facing defeat. Some 12 cabinet ministers face being unseated unless Rishi Sunak can close Labour’s poll lead.

According to the model’s central projection, which takes into account the new boundaries that the next election will be fought on, Labour would win 420 seats – equating to a landslide 190-seat majority. The Tories would take just 149 seats and the Lib Dems 23. The results mirror the 1997 landslide, when Tony Blair’s party secured a majority of 179 with 418 seats. The new analysis also suggests that the cost of living and the state of the NHS continue to be the clear priorities for voters.

The huge study, commissioned by the 38 Degrees campaign group, has been carried out by the Survation polling company using a mega poll made up of more than 11,000 voters. A modelling technique called multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) has then been applied to reach constituency-level findings. Pollsters using the method successfully detected the swings ahead of the 2017 election.

While a 190-seat Labour majority is its average estimate, the modelling – based on polling carried out shortly before the Tory conference last week – suggests Labour could have between 402 and 437 seats. The Tories could have between 132 and 169 seats. The results suggest a Labour majority between 154 and 224 seats.

Every one of the 44 red wall seats that the Tories won at the last election would return to the Labour party, the analysis found. A further 22 so-called blue wall seats – defined as those held by the Tories in 2019, have a majority of Remain voters and a higher than average number of graduates – are also lost by the Conservatives.

The findings will be controversial among both parties’ members. Many Labour insiders are expecting the polls to close over the coming months as the election approaches. Senior figures in Sunak’s team also believe they can target Labour leader Keir Starmer, whom they don’t believe has been embraced by the public.

Despite Sunak’s attempts to switch focus to his plans to ban smoking, overhaul A-levels and ditch the northern leg of HS2, the analysis suggests that voters remain overwhelmingly focused on the cost of living and the state of the NHS.

In every single constituency, these two issues were most important to voters. Across the country, a third said they are “getting by, but making cutbacks” and 8% described themselves as “financially desperate”. More than two fifths (42%) said they had struggled to get a GP appointment in the past six months.

In a major blow for Sunak, Labour has some significant leads in red wall seats. In Blyth Valley, the first red wall seat to be declared for the Tories in 2019, large Labour majorities are predicted. In Blyth and Ashington, Labour are ahead 49% to 22%. In Hartlepool, whose predecessor seat was won by the Conservatives for the first time in a 2021 byelection, Labour have a 38-point lead. In both constituencies, a quarter of voters said they were “worried about their financial future”.

Bassetlaw, whose predecessor seat saw the country’s largest swing from Labour to the Tories in 2019, is predicted to return to Labour. The model suggests a 23-point lead with 12% of residents reporting they are “financially desperate”. Meanwhile, North Dorset – whose predecessor seat last elected a non-Conservative MP in 1945 – is predicted to fall to the Liberal Democrats. At 64% the NHS was a top issue for the highest proportion of this constituency.

Matthew McGregor, chief executive of 38 Degrees, said the findings suggested voters were “crying out for change” and warned Labour against being overly cautious. “With the spotlight this week on the Labour party’s conference pledges, it’s clear what voters will be looking for: real guarantees of action to help those most in need and bring the dual cost of living and NHS crises under control for all of us,” he said. “If they can’t deliver that, there’s no promise these polling results will hold.

“These are the issues which will dominate at the next election. Parties who are unconvincing, out of touch or distracted on these issues will rightly suffer at the polls.”

The results make it even less likely that Sunak and his team will opt for a spring election. Figures close to the PM are said to be opposed to a May vote, despite many MPs believing it may be in the party’s interests to go for an earlier vote. Meanwhile many figures in the Labour party accept that a lack of clarity over Starmer’s vision for power remains a vulnerability.

Damian Lyons Lowe, chief executive of Survation, said: “Red wall seats, which were crucial to the Conservative’s Brexit coalition, are all predicted to return to Labour. Furthermore, it is in seats with the highest proportion of Leave voters that the swing back to Labour is largest. Even traditional Conservative strongholds in the south-east and south-west are under threat from the Liberal Democrats and Labour.”

Survation polled 11,793 people between 11-25 September

More than 100 leading companies urge PM to reinstate net zero measures to avoid hardship for many.

“Our industry has been working hard to gear up for that acceleration [of effort needed to meet net zero], but your announcement signalled less not more action needed,”

 “In order to bring forward big financial investments, to recruit and train hundreds of thousands of people and to bring the public along with us in this journey we need confidence in long-term active policy support from government. Your announcement has set that back.”

“Long-term decisions for a brighter future” – Ha Ha Ha! – Owl

Fiona Harvey Guardian

Some of the UK’s biggest construction companies, property developers and estate agencies have written to Rishi Sunak to warn that his weakening and postponement of green policies will harm investment in housing and cause hardship for many people.

More than 100 companies, including some of the UK’s biggest construction specialists, have urged the prime minister to reinstate the net zero policies, or find alternatives that “make upgrading Britain’s homes affordable”.

The Guardian revealed earlier this week that housebuilders and property developers have benefited by billions of pounds from delays to low-carbon building regulations in the past eight years of Conservative government, while the sector became one of the biggest sources of donations to the Tory party – almost £40m since 2010, according to a Guardian analysis.

In the last fortnight alone, Sunak has dismayed businesses and investors by rolling back several key low-carbon measures, including scrapping the proposed requirements for landlords to insulate and upgrade their properties to be more energy-efficient. He also announced a delay to the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars, from 2030 to 2035, softened measures to phase out gas boilers, and is pressing ahead with plans to scrap rules on sewage from new housing.

These delays are only the latest example of a number of low-carbon measures that have been held up or ditched over years of Conservative government, with the result that homeowners and taxpayers will have to pay tens of billions of pounds to bring newly built homes up to low-carbon standards.

The delays have resulted in years of unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, and higher energy bills for residents.

There is some division on the subject within the construction and development sector; while some developers may welcome any delay to low-carbon measures, others are looking more to the future.

The letter to Sunak, seen by the Guardian, notes that many construction and property companies were planning to make substantial investments in net zero, which are now in doubt. The 114 signatories include Arup, Laing O’Rourke Construction, BNP Paribas Real Estate, Landsec, BAM, Buro Happold, Grosvenor, Avison Young, Great Portland Estates, Knight Frank, AECOM, Clarion Housing Group, and CBRE Group.

“Our industry has been working hard to gear up for that acceleration [of effort needed to meet net zero], but your announcement signalled less not more action needed,” the letter says. “In order to bring forward big financial investments, to recruit and train hundreds of thousands of people and to bring the public along with us in this journey we need confidence in long-term active policy support from government. Your announcement has set that back.”

The signatories also take issue with Sunak’s insistence that his delays would save money for households. “The longer we delay and the more we see stop-start piecemeal policy-making, the harder and more expensive the task becomes,” they say.

The signatories urge Sunak to “bring forward a comprehensive national strategy to retrofit our homes and buildings including much higher sustained government investment and market drivers to stimulate private investment as well as regulation. This would pay dividends to the treasury in tax returns.”

They also call for a new “future homes and building standard”. This was supposed to be in consultation by now, but a government spokesperson told the Guardian the aim was now to publish a consultation by the end of this year.

Simon McWhirter, the deputy chief executive at the UK Green Building Council, which organised the letter, said: “It’s beyond disappointing and simply reckless to see this false narrative from government that delaying climate action would reduce costs to households.

“Decisions now – whether around retrofit or the quality of our new buildings – will dictate the quality and legacy of what we’re able to achieve for generations. Delaying policies just means they’ll have to be implemented much faster, later, pushing up the cost for everyone – householders and businesses alike.”

Tor Burrows, the group sustainability director at the property company Grosvenor, said: “Diluting the UK’s commitment to net zero is not the way to build our economy, create jobs or address climate change. Businesses desperately need clarity and stability to help them plan how they will invest in green practices, tech and skills. Without this we risk losing out on crucial investment which will ease the cost of living and increase the country’s global reputation and competitiveness.”

Jonathan Gibson, the principal and global director for environmental, social and corporate governance at Avison Young estate agents, said: “While we understand the challenges posed by the cost of living crisis and approaching elections, we must not compromise our long-term sustainability goals for short-term political gains. I urge the incoming government, especially in the context of the forthcoming general elections, to reconsider this regressive stance on net zero policies and demonstrate a genuine commitment to tackling climate change.”

Majority of Express, Telegraph, and Sun readers plan to vote for Labour

Tom Head www.thelondoneconomic.com 

Jeez, no wonder Rishi Sunak is running scared of a General Election. The PM has so far failed to rescue to Tories from their self-inflicted woes, and looking at these numbers, it would appear that the Conservative Party is in more trouble than previously thought.

Right-wing press sees readers turn to Labour

The Survation poll, commissioned by Unherd, features answers from more than 20,000 respondents. It questioned the readership of eight flagship newspapers in the UK, ranging from the left-leaning Guardian and Mirror, to the traditionally right-leaning Express and Daily Mail.

Incredibly, a majority of readers for seven of those eight titles now plan to vote LABOUR at the next election, all by a rather comfortable margin, too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail’s audience is the only one which has a majority behind the Tories – albeit, a slim one.

Only Daily Mail readers remain behind Tories

Despite the Daily Express’ thinly-veiled support for the right-wing government – and fervent cheerleading of Brexit – around 40% of its readership are willing to back Labour next year, as opposed to the 31% who are sticking by the Tories.

Incredibly, the most pro-Labour paper after The Guardian and The Mirror is The Sun. The Murdoch-owned tabloid is often maligned by Labour supporters, but almost 50% of those surveyed say they will be backing Keir Starmer at the next election.

Labour looking ahead to possible 2024 landslide?

The Times also has a similar number of those committing to the official opposition. Meanwhile, broadsheet press audiences are also swinging towards a change in government, with Labour-leaning Financial Times and The Telegraph readers outnumbering Tory counterparts.

This data spits in the face of claims Mr. Sunak made at the Conservative Party Conference this week, arguing that nobody in the UK wants a General Election. Unfortunately for him, a petition to force through an immediate vote has gained 200,000 signatures over the past few days.

As Margaret Thatcher would often ask: “Is he one of us?”

Rishi Sunak has been accused of a “breathtaking lack of self-awareness” after posting a picture of himself on board his private jet days after axing the HS2 line to Manchester.

Kevin Schofield www.huffingtonpost.co.uk 

The prime minister is shown working on board his plane in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

He said he had taken “long-term decisions” to, among other things, “boost our transport”.

In his speech to last week’s Tory conference, Sunak announced that he was scrapping the HS2 line between Birmingham and Manchester and using the £36 billion saved to boost transport links around the country.

The decision has been widely criticised, including by former Tory prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Reacting to his private plane post, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said: “A perfect image to accompany the announcement you’re scrapping High Speed rail, flying home on your private jet.

“A breathtaking lack of self-awareness. And utter contempt for the millions who never voted for you or this.”

Other users of the social media platform also criticised the PM’s choice of picture.

HuffPost UK revealed last month that Sunak was switching to the same private plane used by Manchester City.

The PM swapped his Airbus 321 for a slightly older model operated by private jet specialists Titan Airways.

The new plane, flying under the call sign G-POWT, will also be used by members of the Royal Family.

It was most recently used last month to fly Man City’s stars to Greece to play in the Uefa Super Cup Final, where they beat Sevilla on penalties.

Will the Tories now be able to fund a bigger pre-election tax give away? – Owl

Families who sold their homes along the cancelled HS2 northern leg could have to pay hundreds of thousands more if they want their properties back, i can reveal.

David Parsley inews.co.uk 

The Government is working on plans to sell-off almost £600m of properties that were bought along the now axed northern section of the line and, under law, must offer the original owners the right to buy their homes back before putting them on the open market.

However, the former owners will be charged at today’s market value meaning they could now be unaffordable to many “desperate” to return to the homes.

Tim Broomhead, a partner at agents Knight Frank, “Many HS2 sellers were desperate not to leave, and many who want to return may well find they can no longer afford to buy back their cherished homes.”

While property prices have fallen over the past year, the vast majority of homes that were acquired by the government have risen significantly in value.

Homes were sold to the Department for Transport along the HS2 route since 2015, either via Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) or Statutory Blight process, which means property owners along could sell their homes to the government if they were on land impacted by the railway.

If a family sold their home to HS2 when Statutory Blight sales began in 2015 at the then average price in England of around £203,000 they would have to pay £306,000 to buy it back today.

Many more valuable homes along the line were sold significantly above the average price in England, meaning a household that sold their home for £500,000 in 2015 would have to pay £750,000 to buy it back now.

Even an owner that sold up in 2021, when the average house price in England was around £250,000, would have to pay 22 per cent more to buy back at today’s market value.

The policy to force households to pay the current market value to buy their homes back is set out in a government document referring to the sale of unwanted properties along the HS2 (a) line between Birmingham and Crewe.

The High Speed Two Phase 2a Information Paper sets out the Disposal of Surplus Land policy from the Department for Transport (DfT) and refers to the Crichel Down Rules.

The rules, which came about following a property dispute between a landowner and the government following the Second World War, state: “In accordance with the Crichel Down Rules, and subject to key guiding principles set out in this paper, landowners may be offered the opportunity to buy back land, at market value.”

The right to buy back homes also applies to those who sold through the Statutory Blight process.

Mr Broomhead said the process had taken a mental health toll on many of his clients. “For years many families I have represented have suffered constant stress due to the threat that HS2 has posed over their lives,” he said.

“It’s the stress and the effects on their mental health that has been quite hard to witness actually. And it doesn’t matter whether that’s somebody in the smallest cottage or the largest farm. It’s their home and it is going to be taken from them.

“It has been unbelievably stressful for every single one of them.”

On Friday i revealed that the Government is still buying homes via CPOs even though the northern leg of HS2 was cancelled by Rishi Sunak on Wednesday.

In one example taxpayers’ money was used to pay more than £1.5m for a country estate in Staffordshire.

The DfT will also still have to pay tens of millions of pounds in CPOs that were already in negotiation before Mr Sunak axed HS2’s northern leg.

The latest figures from HS2 show the government has spent a total of £3.3bn on acquiring 1,422 properties along both the southern and northern legs of HS2.

Of this amount, £562m was spent on 824 homes along the axed line between Birmingham and Manchester, although agents representing sellers along the route believe this figure could rise to as much as £700m due to sales already at an advanced stage of negotiation.

A spokeswoman for HS2 said on Friday that the Government has still not ordered managers of the property purchase to cease CPOs.

A spokeswoman for DfT said: “Any property that is no longer required for HS2 will be sold and a programme is being developed to do this.”

What are Crichel Down Rules?

The Crichel Down Rules originated from a 1954 political scandal, after which the laws around Compulsory Purchase Orders were drawn up.

The case centred on 725 acres of agricultural land at Crichel Down, near Long Crichel in Dorset, which was owned by Captain Napier George Henry Sturt, the 3rd Baron Alington.

The land was requisitioned by the air ministry for £12,006 in 1938 to be used for bombing practice by the Royal Air Force. 

In 1940, the owner died on active service in the RAF, and the Crichel Estate passed in trust to his only child, Mary Anna Sturt.

In 1941, war time prime minister Winston Churchill pledged in parliament that land would be returned to its owners after the Second World War, when it was no longer required by the RAF, but this promise was not kept.

Instead the land, which was then valued at £21,000, was handed over to the Ministry of Agriculture which then offered it back to the family for £32,000. The family could not afford it and the land was then leased.

In 1949, Toby and Mary Marten – the daughter of the third Lord Alington – began a campaign to get their family estate back. 

They gained a public inquiry, which in 1954 was damning about actions of the government and led to the resignation of the agriculture minister Sir Thomas Dugdale. Following the inquiry, the government established the Crichel Down Rules, which still apply to CPOs today.

Amount schools receive for each pupil will be lower, forcing headteachers to redraw their budgets for 2024-25

Richard Adams Education editor Guardian

The Department for Education has admitted to bungling its funding figures for state schools in England next year, after revealing a £370m error in previous announcements by ministers.

The DfE’s mistake means that mainstream primary and secondary schools will be given at least £50 less a pupil than originally forecast, forcing school leaders to redraw their budgets for 2024-25. For a typical secondary school the loss equates to a teacher’s salary.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the miscalculation “speaks volumes about the chaos at the heart of government”.

“School leaders will be rightly angry that basic accounting errors may force them to rethink already tight budgets as a result of the erroneous figures they were provided. Many may now have to revisit crucial decisions around staffing or support for pupils as budgets are reduced,” Whiteman said.

The mistake appears due to an underestimate of pupil numbers by DfE officials, meaning that while the £59.6bn core allocation will be unchanged, the amount schools receive for each pupil will be lower than previously announced.

In a letter issued on Friday evening, Susan Acland-Hood, the DfE’s permanent secretary, said her department had issued revised figures under the national funding formula (NFF) for schools.

“I apologise for this error. The secretary of state [Gillian Keegan] has asked me to conduct a formal review of the quality assurance process surrounding the calculation of the NFF, with independent scrutiny,” Acland-Hood told Robin Walker, the chair of the Commons’ education select committee.

Acland-Hood added: “I would want to express my sincere apologies that this error has occurred, and reassure you that rigorous measures are being put in place to ensure that it will not be repeated.”

When the funding figures were announced in July, ministers told parliament that mainstream funding would rise by 2.7% a pupil between 2023-24 and 2024-25. But the revised DfE document issued at 5pm on Friday says the rise will now be just 1.9%.

Minimum funding levels under the NFF will also be lower on average, with primary schools seeing at least £45 a pupil less, and secondary schools £55 less.

Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “Children’s education has already been crushed under the weight of a failed pandemic recovery programme, crumbling buildings and the cumulative effects of 13 years of Conservative government, and now leaders are faced with yet more uncertainty for schools and families.”

The revision will increase pressures on school budgets. This week the Institute for Fiscal Studies had warned that the purchasing power of school spending a pupil in 2024-25 would be about 3% lower than in 2009-10 because of rising costs.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is important that there are no similar mistakes in the future. It is also important that ministers urgently review the education budget to make sure all schools receive enough funding to meet all cost pressures.”

Plans to introduce new national parks in the Chilterns, Cotswolds and Dorset & East Devvon have faltered, as existing national parks face a funding crisis.

Lucie Heath inews.co.uk

They are the UK’s great outdoor playgrounds. Huge, beautiful, tracts of wild land that for more than 70 years have been made more accessible, and more protected from the ravages of overdevelopment, thanks to their designation as national parks.

Their special status has been one of Britain’s great post war success stories – a fact that all political parties have recognised with both Labour and the Conservatives vowing to create new national parks during the last 2019 general election campaign.

Labour committed to creating 10 new parks, with candidates including the Malvern Hills, Chiltern Hills, Lincolnshire Wolds and North Pennines.

The Tory manifesto didn’t put a number on it. But the party did pledge to “create new National Parks”. And it said, in the same sentence, that it welcomed the 2019 Glover Review – a Government-commissioned report that suggested the creation of three new national parks in the Chilterns, the Cotswolds, and Dorset and East Devon.

But with the next general election looming that promise now seems certain to be broken. If anything work to create new national parks in England has gone “backwards” in recent years, according to campaigners, with “no action” this parliamentary term,

In some areas this seeming ambivalence from Government has even led to campaigners giving up on the idea. Meanwhile funding cuts mean existing national parks are struggling and having to sell off land and buildings to make ends meet.

There are currently 14 national parks in the UK, including nine in England, three in Wales and two in Scotland.

The majority were created in the 50s, however four new parks have been created within this century. These include Loch Lomond and The Trossachs and the Cairngorms, which were created by the Scottish Government in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and the New Forest and South Downs, which were created in 2005 and 2009 under Labour Governments.

The UK’s national parks

Peak District,1951

Lake District, 1951

Snowdonia, 1951

Dartmoor, 1951

Pembrokeshire Coast, 1952

North York Moors, 1952

Yorkshire Dales, 1954

Exmoor, 1954

Northumberland, 1956

Brecon Beacons, 1957

The Broads, 1989

Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, 2002

Cairngorms, 2003

New Forest, 2005

South Downs, 2009

Long-running campaigns have existed in other areas keen to achieve national park status. Local environmentalists want to take advantage of the additional funding and power that comes with being a National Park as opposed to the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) status that areas like the Cotswolds, and Dorset and East Devon, already possess.

“Despite covering a 50 per cent greater area than England’s 10 National Parks, and welcoming more visitors, the 34 AONBs in England receive far less resources from the Government,” says Dr Elaine King, chief executive of Chilterns Conservation Board, the other AONB recommended for national park status by the Glover review.

Similarly Richard Brown, part of the campaign for the creation of a new National Park in Dorset, said Dartmoor National Park receives 16 times the level of funding as Dorset AONB, despite covering an area that is 20 per cent smaller.

Another key difference between AONBs and National Parks is that the latter is run by a single authority that oversees planning for the area.

Mr Brown has seen no progress on creating new national parks since the latest Conservative government came into power.

“We’ve been treading water for some time on this and to some extent we slightly went backwards,” he says.

He believes his group has proved that Dorset meets the criteria for National Park status which would bring many environmental and economic benefits to the area. But it needs “political will” to happen.

“If any government after the next election is serious about protecting the environment then national parks have a role to play in that,” he said. “Areas such as Dorset desperately deserve it, but also desperately need it. They need that political backing.”

While Mr Brown insists “the flame is very much alive” when it comes to the Dorset National Park campaign, those in other areas feel they have had no choice but to give up.

Last month the Cotswolds National Landscape Board dropped its proposal to make the Cotswolds a National Park from its management plan for the area, telling local press the “Government does not view new designations as a priority issue”.

Meanwhile, the Chilterns Conservative Board has shifted its focus to campaigning for enhanced powers for AONBs after it said the Government made clear the creation of new National Parks “is off the table for the foreseeable future”.

It is one of two AONBs that Natural England is currently considering extending, while two new AONBs have also been proposed covering the Yorkshire Wolds and Cheshire Sandstone Ridge.

All this comes at a time of crisis for the UK’s existing national parks, which have seen their Government funding fall by 40 per cent in real terms over the past decade, according to the Campaign for National Parks (CNP).

“It’s not just that there’s no action on new national parks. There’s also a backwards step where they’re not protecting the ones that we do have and they’re not making sure that they’re delivering what we need from society,” says CNP chief executive Rose O’Neill.

In recent years national parks such as Dartmoor and Exmoor have been forced to sell off land and close visitor centres to balance the books.

Meanwhile, the landmark State of Nature report, which is compiled by more than 60 environmental NGOs and charities and published every four years, found last week that Britain’s national parks are not “up to scratch” when it comes to conservation of species.

“We’re seeing nature in natural parks no better than outside,” Ms O’Neill says.

“Next year is the 75th anniversary of the founding legislation for national parks. In the long term sense it’s been a very successful policy…but right now we’re seeing an undoing of that and unravelling of that.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “Protected landscapes contribute a great deal to the nation – supporting rural economies by attracting visitors, building partnerships with farmers and creating green jobs.

“That is why we announced additional funding to support National Parks earlier this year and, in line with the manifesto commitment, are in the process of considering two new Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty for designation and two existing ones for extension.”

The Conservatives and Labour were approached for comment.

Tory candidate boasts of stopping 20 mph zones

When I was county councillor, one of the biggest complaints I got was about speeding through residential areas. Virtually all the parishes I represented put in for 20 mph zones through their villages and towns – not that it did them much good with the Tory-controlled county council, which even before its financial crisis did everything it could to avoid meeting these requests.

But now Simon Jupp – the current Exmouth MP who is abandoning his constituents to try his luck in our area next time – has used his column to boast of stopping the “blanket imposition of 20 mph zones”. If only, Simon! Talk to the people who want to represent before trotting out Sunak’s latest pro-boy racer talking point.

A £300m contract for work on the HS2 line between Birmingham and Manchester was agreed just days before Rishi Sunak scrapped the project.

Ben Gartside inews.co.uk

The contract was handed to several infrastructure firms for work on ground investigations on the northern leg of HS2 in September following a two-year appointments process.

According to details published on the Government’s website last Thursday, HS2 Limited, which is funded and sponsored by the Department for Transport, awarded the contract to nine suppliers.

All the suppliers were handed eight-year deals, lasting until 2031. i understands that the full £300m will not have to be paid out and that ground work on the project had not begun.

However, some firms which have already carried out work on the northern leg of HS2 are considering whether to try to claim compensation, i understands.

One industry insider labelled the process of handing out contracts for HS2 a “farce” and claimed some firms had waited years to hear about developments on various parts of the project. Some companies involved are making redundancies and have warned they may be forced to make further job cuts because of the scrapping of the northern leg.

Another source told i the halting of existing work and issues over contracts would become a palaver for the Government in the coming months.

And in an interview with i, the Civil Engineering Contractors Association chief executive Alasdair Reisner said that compensation would need to be considered for firms now out of work.

Mr Reisner said: “[The fallout] will be interesting, you can’t march people to the top of the hill and do nothing. There will need to be some form of recompense.”

Mr Reisner also warned that redundancies would be likely following the announcement.

“It’s inevitable jobs cuts will come, it’s difficult to see there’s anything you could readily transfer people across to.”

Mr Reisner’s comments come after HS2 contractor Skanska fired the starting gun on job cuts last week.

It announced redundancies across eight different divisions. The company had already moved staff from HS2 to other jobs in July, following the suspension of work at Euston station.

The Prime Minister confirmed in his speech that the HS2 line between Birmingham and London would run to Euston rather than Old Oak Common in the capital’s western surburbs, which could see work resume.

One executive at a HS2 contractor told i that numerous firms had faced difficulties already due to delays and backtracking, and that it would only get worse following Mr Sunak’s announcement.

They said: “One contractor we know had spent lots of time planning and preparing for Euston work, only for it to be cancelled days before they had formally begun the contract, and that is the most dramatic impact you can imagine.

“We weren’t in contract [for some work now suspended], after we had proceeded in good faith that work was going to happen. Many others are in a similar boat.

“A lot of tier-two and tier-three contractors [firms one and two steps removed from the main project] are incredibly fragile, and they’ve been hit again and again.

“You only need one project to fail. There will be more companies failing because of this decision.”

Mr Sunak said he was cancelling the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the high-speed rail project and will “re-invest every single penny” equating to £36bn in local transport projects across the North.

He said the plans will include a new Network North that will improve rail links between towns and cities across the Pennines as well as improving roads.

The Department for Transport and HS2 Limited were approached for comment.

A future Labour government would not be able to easily reverse Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 as he has “spitefully” authorised the sale of properties that were subject to compulsory purchase orders on part of the route.

Helen Pidd www.theguardian.com 

Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool city region, said the move killed HS2 “stone dead” and would “tie any future government’s hands and make the delivery of HS2 for the north all but impossible”.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, on Thursday refused to commit to building HS2, telling ITV News Meridian: “What I can’t do is stand here now they have taken a wrecking ball to this project, and say that we will simply reverse it.

“What I will say is we will work with leaders across the country to make sure that we have the transport we need between our cities and within our cities and projects that can actually be delivered.”

The government failed to deny that HS2 would not be extended to Euston unless enough private investment was secured to pay for the new station.

“There is already support and interest from the private sector. Ministers have had discussions with key partners since the announcement,” a government spokesperson said.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, also conceded on Thursday that paying off contracts previously awarded for the cancelled HS2 sections would cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

He told BBC Breakfast that the cost of pulling out of the agreements would “broadly balance out” with money recovered from selling land and property acquired for the high-speed railway.

‘It’s laughable’: mayors across the north react to Sunak scrapping HS2 leg – video

National Labour proponents of HS2 were blindsided on Wednesday when the prime minister not only cancelled the Manchester leg but made it extremely difficult for the project to be restarted. “We expected him to kick it into the long grass,” said one party source. “We are now trying to understand where this leaves us. Selling off the land was unexpected.”

Gareth Dennis, a railway engineer and writer, said the decision to sell off the land was motivated by “spite” and was, in effect, “salting the earth” to make it extremely difficult for Labour to restart the project.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said that within “weeks” it would lift the so-called “safeguarding” order on phase 2a of the route, which would have run from Birmingham to Crewe in Cheshire. Safeguarding is the process HS2 Ltd and the government use to buy up land needed for the railway.

As of last week, HS2 Ltd had bought up 239 properties on phase 2a at a cost of £219.3m. “Any property that is no longer required for HS2 will be sold and a programme is being developed to do this,” said the DfT in its Network North prospectus, released on Wednesday.

“Phase 2a safeguarding will be formally lifted in weeks,” said the document.

However, the DfT confirmed on Thursday that safeguarding would remain for now on the Crewe to Manchester leg (phase 2b west) as well as the Birmingham to Leeds spur (phase 2b east), which was paused by the government in November 2021. “Phase 2b safeguarding will be amended by summer next year”, said the government, to retain any land needed for Northern Powerhouse Rail, a new east-west line across the Pennines.

Dennis said: “I knew Sunak would cancel HS2 to Manchester but I didn’t expect him to be so spiteful that he would authorise the sell-off of land on the route. There are barely any votes in lifting the safeguarding. It’s pure salting the earth to make it extremely hard for Labour to build it.

“What will happen now is essentially a fire sale. The land is not going to be returned to nature. It’s going to be developed on. That will make it much more expensive and much more complex should any future government want to build it.”

Rotheram said: “After weeks of uncertainty and confusion, Rishi Sunak’s lifting of the HS2 safeguarding order means that he has not only cancelled HS2 but he’s killed it stone dead. The consequences of this decision will tie any future government’s hands and make the delivery of HS2 for the north all but impossible.

“The Liverpool city region was set to benefit from a £15bn economic boost from the delivery of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in full. Almost overnight, the prime minister has robbed us of that chance to grow and develop our economy. He has turned the northern powerhouse into the northern powerless with this latest act of a long line of pronouncements that are holding the north down, not levelling us up.”

In his first interview since his speech to the Conservative party conference, Sunak declined to apologise for the decision to scrap the rail line, saying that he sometimes needed to take “decisions that aren’t always easy”.

Sunak said “the facts have changed” on HS2, pointing to costs doubling since the project was approved more than a decade ago and changes in passenger behaviour since Covid as evidence that the economic case for it had been “severely eroded”.

He denied that the line would be reduced to a mere “shuttle service” between London and Birmingham, insisting that many more people would be helped by paring back plans for the project and boosting other transport schemes instead.

Simon Jupp finds a cause: not health, not cost of living, not levelling up, not saving the planet but the motorist! – Owl

Majority who rely on cars shouldn’t have to face anti-driver policies

Simon Jupp www.devonlive.com

As we all know, the way people travel in rural East Devon is not the same as urban London. In East Devon, over half of people in employment travel to work by driving a car or van.

This Conservative government is continuing to back motorists across the UK. Most people across the UK still rely on cars to get from A to B, and 50 million people in Great Britain hold a driving licence. It’s why successive Conservative Chancellors – dating back to 2011 – have frozen fuel duty to soften prices at the pumps. As Chancellor, Rishi Sunak went even further and cut fuel duty by 5p to protect the pounds in drivers’ pockets early last year.

And, this week, a new long-term plan to back drivers and put the brakes on anti-car measures was announced by Transport Secretary Mark Harper. The measures include reviewing guidance on 20mph speed limits in England to prevent their blanket use in areas where it’s not appropriate, and amending guidance on low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) to ensure local support. I firmly believe that local traffic measures need to work for residents, businesses, and emergency services – rather than council planners.

Drivers across the country will also soon be able to benefit from new technology to simplify parking payments. I know it’s incredibly annoying to park using one app in East Devon but another in Lyme Regis over the border in Dorset. The national parking platform pilot will be rolled out nationwide so that drivers can use an app of their choice to pay instead of downloading multiple apps.

And, in the continued drive to tackle potholes, the government will support councils to introduce more lane rental schemes, where utility companies are required to pay to dig up the busiest roads at peak times. Under the proposals, at least half of the extra money raised from these fees will go directly towards repairing road surfaces. Backing drivers sits alongside the continued investment in public transport and active travel.

As popular as the car is in East Devon, catching the bus is certainly an affordable alternative as the government’s £2 fare cap continues to keep costs down. After many previous meetings with Stagecoach bosses, I was really pleased when evening bus services serving Sidbury and Ottery St Mary were reinstated and a 15 minute frequency brought in for the 57 between Exeter and Exmouth – a route that has seen 30% passenger growth.

As a Devon MP and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Great South West, I have also been campaigning for government funding for a new railway station for Cullompton. Following my meetings with the Chancellor, Transport Secretary and Rail Minister, I am hoping for progress soon.

and….

Saved from the later phases of the project – so don’t hold your breath – Owl

Transforming British transport