PMQs live: Starmer hits back at Badenoch claim he backs criminals over ‘law-abiding British people’

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Chris Law (SNP) says support for Starmer is plummeting in the polls, but there is now majority support for independence. (He is referring to this poll, putting support for independence at 54%.) Who is best to decide what is best for Scots?

The party that won the general election, says Starmer.

Jerome Mayhew (Con) says Starmer told farmers before the election that he accepted that losing a farm was not like losing any other business. Does Starmer now understand why farmers see his government as “duplicitous”.

Starmer says the government has put more money into farming. And he says, in practice, ordinary farms will only be affected by the tax if they are worth more than £3m.

Peter Lamb (Lab) asks about palliative care, and a local hospice that has had to make redundancies.

Starmer says he recognises the vital role that hospices play. Most hospices provide funding by offering NHS services. Funding will be set out in the usual way, he says.

Starmer repeats claim 'vast majority' of farmers won't be affected by inhertance tax changes

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asks Starmer if he agrees that President-elect Trump’s comment saying the US should have nothing to do with Syria is worrying.

Starmer says he hopes Syria has a peaceful future, and rejects violence. He does not address the point about Trump.

Davey asks if Starmer agrees that Britain has the best farmers in the world, because of the tradition of family farming. But the inhertance tax changes will be the final blow to them, he says.

Starmer claims the “vast majority of farmers will be unaffected” by the inheritance tax changes, “despite the fear mongering of the party opposite”.

(He seems to be referring to the Tories, not the Liberal Democrats.)

Starmer hits back at Badenoch after she claims he backs criminals over 'law-abiding British people'

Badenoch delivers a broad attack on Starmer’s record.

Starmer has consistently backed criminals over law-abiding British people. He defended terrorists like Hizb ut-Tahrir in the European Court. He argued all immigration law had a racist undercurrent, but he voted against life sentences for people smugglers, he voted against more than 100 measures to control migration. He even said it was wrong. He even said it was wrong when the Conservatives took away Shamima Begum’s citizenship. He has appointed her defense lawyer as his attorney general.

Events in Syria mean we may see more small boat arrivals. For once, will he take the side of the British people and strip citizenship from jihadi terrorists and supporters of Assad who want to come back and destroy this country?

And Starmer hits back forcefully.

I was director of public prosecution for five years. Unlike anyone on their benches, I was prosecuting for five years, hundreds of thousands of criminals … I was working for three of those five years with the then home secretary, Theresa May, who commended the work that I did at the end of those five years.

So for her to stand there and say, I haven’t done anything in law enforcement, I dedicated five years of my life to law enforcement locking up criminals, which is more than she can say ..,

It’s like the arsonist complaining about the people trying to put the fire out … Just wait till they get their hands on the people that created the mess that we are clearing up.

Badenoch says the only thing Starmer has smashed is his own reputation. Labour said it would end asylum hotels. But in some towns, like Peterborough, use of hotels is being expanded. She quotes someone she saw on Sky News saying Labour made things easier for asylum seekers.

Starmer says Badenoch should have welcomed the Iraq deal on people smuggling, and the German deal. He says Badenoch should spend time researching that instead of researching her “terrible jokes”.

Badenoch says Starmer did not answer a single question. She says the Tories have “acknowledged where things went wrong”. Since the Rwanda deterrent has been scrapped, small boat arrivals have gone up by 20%. How much more will the government spent on hotel accommodation for migrants?

Starmer says he would invite Badenoch to say what went wrong under the last government, but it would take all afternoon. He says the government has committed to smashing the people smuggling gangs. He says Labour has got deportation flights off.

Badenoch claims Starmer wanted all deportations halted. She says the letter she has quoted is just the tip of the ice berg. She says he ruled out setting a target-based approach to immigration.

Starmer says Badenoch asks about his record. For five years, he was chief proscecutor, prosecuting people. The Tories set a cap for all of those 14 years. It was never met, he says.

Badenoch says Starmer wanted free movement when he campaigned for Labour leader. She says she wanted skilled people to get visas. He says Starmer was one of the Labour MPs who opposed the removal of foreign offenders. She asks about one case where removal was halted, and the offender went on to kill someone. Will Starmer apologise for signing these letters.

Starmer says this is an example of the last government not acting to keep people safe.

Kemi Badenoch asks why cutting immigration was not on the PM’s list of government priorities.

Starmer says the last government presided over unprecedented immigration. And Badenoch was the championg for this experiment in open borders, he claims.

Andy McDonald (Lab) says Middlesbrough council has been taken out of intervention since coming under Labour control. Does the PM agree that the spending review should unwind austerity?

Starmer says local government funding is going up. And the carbon capture cluster on Teesside will create jobs, he says.

Keir Starmer starts PMQs by welcoming the fall of President Assad. The people of Syria suffered “far too long under his brutal regime”. But what comes next is not certain, he says.

Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union, was reduced to tears giving evidence to the environment committee this morning about the impact of the inheritance tax changes, according to Chris Brayford from the Farmers Guardian.

Here are more pictures from the farmers’ protest in Whitehall.

Tractors parked on Whitehall. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Tractors in Whitehall. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Environment secretary Steve Reed says government's commitment to farmers 'steadfast', in response to protests

Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has issued a statement in response to today’s protest expressing the government’s support for farmers. As Sky News reports, he says:

Our commitment to farmers is steadfast.

That is why this government is working hard to get money into farmers bank accounts as well as announcing today how farmers can benefit from the new Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier scheme, with more flexible actions, improved payments to help cashflow and a rolling application window.

It’s part of our £5bn farming budget over two years - the largest ever directed at sustainable food production in our country’s history.

As we set out our Plan for Change, we are focused on supporting our farmers, supporting rural economics growth and boosting Britain’s food security.

PMQs is starting soon. Here is the order paper with the names of MPs down to ask a question.

PMQs Photograph: HoC

Stuart Maggs, head of tax and partner at Howes Percival law firm, told the environment committee that older farmers in particular were being penalised by the inheritance tax changes. As PA Media reports, he said for years best advice to farmers has been to retain the farm until death, which means a lot of 70 to 90-year-olds are still working on the farms.

Even if you’ve got the next generation involved, to bring the average down, the person who owns the farm has naturally been at the elder end of the spectrum.

So this change coming in now has really hit home to farmers, because they’re in a situation where there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t give away and survive seven years.

He added that rules called gifts with reservation means that if one generation gives the land to the younger generation but still enjoys the benefit from it – i.e. they live on the land or it’s paying for them in their older age – they will get taxed.

With agriculture estates getting a rate of return of about half a per cent to 1%, it simply means this going to be unaffordable. And so farms are going to have to sell land or sell up. And it’s going to happen a lot.

Government advice to farmers about dealing with inheritance tax changes 'not realistic', MPs told

Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser at the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV), a body representing rural valuers, told the environment committee inquiry into the future of farming this morning that the advice given by the government to farmers on what they could do to deal with the inheritance tax changes were “not realistic”.

Referring to suggestions that farmers could avoid inheritance tax by giving their farms to their children at least seven years before death, he said:

You need to have an adequate, sufficient number of willing, competent, capable, interested members of the family if you’re going to try and pursue some of the lines that ministers have taken.

And they have to be people who are going to be able to get on with each other and so some of the strategies that are being outlined are, for many people, simply not realistic, because they don’t have more than one or two children who are involved in the business.

Moody said CAAV modelling showed the cost from paying the tax over 10 years could amount to around three quarters of an extra employee on the business.

It is a very significant shock on what the business can actually pay out of earnings, leaving only not much, if anything, left for breakfast or for reinvestment.

The Commons environment committee has been taking evidence on the future of farming this morning, and one of the witnesses was Dr Arun Advani, an economics professor at Warwick University and head of the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax), a thinktank.

Advani told MPs that, even with the extension of inheritance tax to some farms announced in the budget, farms were still “much more attractive than other sorts of assets” for people wanting to reduce their inheritance tax liability. That is because agricultural property relief is just being cut from 100% to 50% on assets worth more than £1m, not cut altogether. He said:

One reason for doing that is because there are farmers who you might be concerned about, who are earning, who have wealth a bit above the current tax-free threshold, who you want to give a low rate to because of the well documented concerns about incomes of farmers.

But the downside is it still means that if you have, say, £100m or £1bn that you want to put into farmland, 20% rate is still much more attractive than other sorts of assets.

And so what you will still have in this world is people who want to buy up agricultural land, competing with genuine farmers, who are trying to expand their farm, who really are actually wanting to work on the land. They’re still going to have to compete with much better off people.