Starmer to make surprise announcement on ‘defence and security’ in Commons, ahead of meeting with Trump – UK politics live

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Badenoch calls for aid budget to be cut to fund MoD, saying raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 'no longer sufficient'

If Keir Starmer does announce cuts to aid spending to pay for a higher defence budget, Kemi Badenoch will be able to claim that he has lifted one of her ideas.

At the weekend she proposed this in an open letter to Starmer. And this morning she repeated the proposal in her speech, where she said:

2.5 per cent by 2030 is now no longer sufficient.

We must rebuild and go further and faster …

I will back the prime minister in taking difficult decisions to increase defence spending. For example, he should consider whether some of the 0.5 per cent currently spent on development aid should be repurposed – at least in the short term – towards defence and security.

Minister refuses to deny claim government about to cut aid budget to fund increased defence spending

In the Commons Foreign Office ministers are taking questions, ahead of Keir Starmer’s statement at 12.30pm. Chris Law (SNP) asked about rumours that the government is going to cut aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.2% to fund increased defence spending.

Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, was responding. She did not confirm or deny that aid spending would be cut, and just made a general point about the value of aid.

Exposed: Labour peer’s involvement in apparent cash-for-access venture

The Guardian is publishing the results of an extensive inquiry into the business interests of members of the House of Lords. Today Henry Dyer and Rob Evans have a story about how a Labour peer, Lord David Evans of Watford, offered access to ministers during discussions about a commercial deal worth tens of thousands of pounds, an undercover investigation revealed.

(This is not the David Evans who was general secretary of the Labour party until last autumn. He is also a Labour peer, but he is Lord Evans of Sealand.)

Here is the news story.

And here is a profile of Evans.

Polish PM Donald Tusk says he expects Starmer to host defence meeting with European leaders in London on Sunday

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, has suggested that Keir Starmer will be hosting some sort of defence summit for European leaders in London on Sunday.

As Jakub Krupa reports on his Europe live blog, Tusk spoke about the meeting – which has not yet been announced by the British government – in Warsaw this morning, where he was speaking at a press conference alongside António Costa, the European Council president. Tusk said:

I hope that this greater [defence] mobilisation of Europe, of member states and Europe more broadly, will become a fact.

[Before meeting at the next European Council,] we will be in London on Sunday, together with our British friends and a group of leaders, to talk about these joint plans on defence.

Jakub has more coverage here on his blog.

Steve Reed disrupted by protest by farmers during speech at NFU conference

Helena Horton is a Guardian environment correspondent

Environment secretary Steve Reed faced a protest by farmers at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster.

Farmers unfurled a banner featuring a plea to stop the family farm tax in front of the secretary of state as he attempted to make a speech.

Speaking from behind the banner, Reed said:

I understand the strength of feeling in the room. You can see an example of that here. Even if the conversation gets difficult, I will always show up to have it ,because I respect this union and I respect British farming.

They were protesting over new inheritance tax changes, which come in from April next year, when a 20% levy will be introduced on agricultural businesses upon the death of the owner.

Reed said: “I can’t give an answer I know many of you want on inheritance tax today.”

He also used his speech to lay out his plans to make farming more profitable including a bid to source half of all publicly procured food from British farms, and extending the seasonal workers scheme for five years.

Reed announced he would set up “a new farming profitability department within the department [Defra]” and he said he was starting workshops with the farming industry to shape a 25-year faming profitability roadmap from next week.

Steve Reed speaking at the NFU conference. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Protesters interrupting Reed’s speech. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

Speaking before Reed, NFU president Tom Bradshaw accused Labour of being “cruel” to the elderly, saying “the mental health pressures on our industry today are unbearable and unacceptable”.

He suggested elderly farmers were wishing for death as a result of the inheritance tax changes, saying:

As difficult as this is for me to say and you to hear, many older farmers are now facing that very real dilemma that unless they die before April 2026, their families will face a family farm tax bill they simply cannot afford.

Bradshaw hit out at Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, because she refuses to meet him to discuss the tax despite being asked to by Labour MPs. He said: “Perhaps if I offered to meet her in Davos, she would meet me”.

He has set out a “blueprint” for government to help farmers, which includes banning any imports of food which would be illegal to produce here, such as crops treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, and meat produced to lower animal welfare standards. He also said Labour should U-turn on its plan to end the badger cull.

Tom Bradshaw speaking at the NFU conference. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Starmer to make surprise announcement on 'defence and security' in Commons, ahead of meeting with Trump

Keir Starmer is to give a statement to MPs at 12.30pm on “defence and security”, the Commons authories have announced.

We have not been told what he will be announcing, but a ministerial statement by the prime minister is normally big news, and there is speculation that he might have something significant to say about defence spending ahead of his meeting with President Trump in the White House on Thursday.

The government has a theoretical commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but it has not said when this will happen, or even if it will be before the next election. Until recently ministers have been saying that the decision will be announced when the strategic defence review is published in the spring.

But Starmer is going to want to arrive in Washington with some news that will impress Trump, and the one thing the US president gets most praise from in Europe is being right about the need for Nato countries to spend more on defence. Starmer may be addressing that today.

Badenoch says BBC needs to show it did not break laws on funding terrorism when paying for Gaza documentary

Q: We know know the BBC spent £400,000 on the documentary from Gaza that was narrated by the son of a Hamas minister. You have asked if any of this money ended up with Hamas. Do you think the Met police should now investigate, because funding a terrorist organisation is an offence?

Badenoch replies:

We know that it is illegal to give money to terrorist organizations. Hamas is a terrorist organization … I think that the BBC certainly needs to investigate and get the evidence for what has or what hasn’t happened, and then the police can make a decision on that.

The final question comes from someone from Policy Exchange, the rightwing thinktank hosting the speech. He asks if Badenoch agrees the BBC is pro-Hamas and anti-Israel.

She replies:

I have always said that it was shocking that the BBC, for a long time, just would not even call Hamas a terrorist organization. We need our primary British news institution to be able to tell the truth. Everything starts from truth, not shying away from it, not hiding from that.

That’s why it’s one of the reasons why I’m calling for an investigation and a review by the BBC, because this latest documentary is just the most recent in a long series of concerns we’ve had about its reporting.

But she also says she is not attacking the BBC as an insititution and she is not saying it is “a terrible organisation”. She says she is just asking for accountability.

Kemi Badenoch speaking at Policy Exchange in Westminster today. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Q: Should the government raise defence spending to 3% of GDP?

Badenoch says, when the Tories were in office, they considered whether they could raise defence spending to 3% of GDP. But “we couldn’t make the numbers work”, she says.

She says the government should be increasing defence spending by using some of the money from the aid budget, and by cutting welfare spending.

Badenoch says Tories to start considering policy options for leaving ECHR

Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] Will you start making plans now for leaving the ECHR?

Badenoch says she was setting out principles today in her speech, not policy.

On leaving the ECHR, she says: “Let’s start doing the work to see what can be done.” She says a policy commission she will set up will look at this.

Badenoch says UK will 'probably' have to leave ECHR if it continues to stop government acting in national interest

Badenoch says the US is acting in its national interests. The UK needs to do that too.

Asked about the ECHR, Badenoch says:

I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country and what is right in our national interest, and if it continues to do so, at some point, we will probably have to leave.

What I have not agreed with is deciding that we should leave without having a plan for what that looks like and how to do so in a way that makes sense.

Badenoch is now taking questions.

Q: [From Vicki Young from the BBC] If you were going to Washington this week, would you be raising concerns with President Trump about some of his language, and how the US voted at the UN last week.

Badenoch says America is an ally. But she disagreed with Trump when he called President Zelenskyy a dictator, and she would say so.

But she would not have problems, because there is so much they can cooperate on, she says.

Badenoch says government should not be wasting time on “fripperies”, like culture war issues.

We must … get serious within our own nation. We no longer have time for fripperies and inconsequentials. We cannot waste effort on trivia such as declaring our pronouns or trying to redefine what a woman is.

We shouldn’t apologize for our past, let alone be discussing paying reparations.

Our leaders should not be taking the knee. Young people can no longer be taught to dislike our country, our institutions and our history, so much that they say they wouldn’t fight for it.

And before someone else again accuses me of fighting culture wars, this goes well beyond personal interest. Every single second that we spent on these matters is a second lost while our adversaries are advancing.

This is a point Badenoch made in her speech last week at the Alliance for Resonsible Citizenship.

Given that Badenoch spent much of her campaign for the Tory leadership campaign talking up her record as equalities minister, and how she torpedoed the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill because she was opposed to the extent to which it extend trans rights, she is perhaps not the best person to say ministers should not be talking about these issues.

In her speech Badenoch expands on the point she made in the extracts released in advance (see 10.21am) about some international bodies supposedly advocating an “activist” agenda.

Just look at how the ECHR redefined climate protection as a human right, or at the overreach in the advisory opinion of the international court of justice and the ruling of the international tribunal for the law on the sea on Chagos, or at the UN rapporteurs touring the world claiming that the West is racist and discriminatory when we clearly are not.

If international bodies are taken over by activists or by autocratic regimes, regimes like China and Russia, we must use our influence to stop them, and if that fails, we will need to disengage.