Speaker’s office defends Hoyle’s decision not to call Diane Abbott at PMQs – UK politics live

Speaker’s office defends Hoyle’s decision not to call Diane Abbott at PMQs

A spokesperson for Sir Lindsay Hoyle has defended the speaker’s decision not to call Diane Abbott at PMQs. (See 12.46pm) The spokesperson said:

During prime minister’s questions, the speaker must select MPs from either side of the house on an alternating basis for fairness.

This takes place within a limited timeframe, with the chair prioritising members who are already listed on the order paper.

This week – as is often the case – there was not enough time to call all members who wanted to ask a question.

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Key events

No 10 says it delayed calling Hester’s comments racist to allow time for ‘proper right of reply’

Downing Street has defended its decision to wait until late yesterday to describe Frank Hester’s comments about Diane Abbott as racist on the grounds it wanted to give the businessman time for a proper right of reply.

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, asked why it took so long to accept the comments were racist, the PM’s spokesperson said “it was right to give someone a proper right of reply” after “very serious allegations” were made.

No 10 only issued its updated statement after Hester himself issued a statement yesterday afternoon in which he did not deny saying the words attributed to him.

The PM’s spokesperson insisted today that Hester’s comments about Abbott remained “unverified” – even though Hester has not denied saying them. The spokesperson also declined to say whether No 10 has contacted Hester to ask him whether or not he made those comments.

The PM’s press secretary, who deals with party political matters, said the Conservatives would not be returning the £10m given by Hester because he has apologised – but would not comment on whether a future donation from him might be accepted.

ShareHunt says Hester’s comments about Abbott ‘despicable’ – but says he does not deserve to be ‘cancelled’

At the Treasury committee Labour’s Angela Eagle is asking the questions now.

Q: Were Frank Hester’s comments rude or racist?

Hunt says it was “a despicable comment that should not have been made”. He says Hester has apologised.

Q: He has only apologised for being rude. Should he apologise for being racist?

Hunt says Hester has apologised for his comment, which he says he believes was racist.

Q: If you were Tory treasurer, would you return the £10m?

Hunt says:

I don’t believe that someone should be cancelled for a comment they made in the past and for which they have apologised.

But that does not make the comments any less despicable and I don’t defend them.

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Updated at 10.37 EDT

Hunt says getting debt as proportion of GDP down to pre-pandemic levels will be ‘long and difficult journey’

Q: Is it realistic to think that Britain will ever see a sustained reduction in debt as a proportion of GDP, taking it to pre-pandemic levels?

Hunt says it will be “a long and difficult journey”, but that “it’s right that we try”.

ShareHunt says Treasury did not leak news about 2p national insurance cut in budget

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has just started giving evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.

Harriett Baldwin, the Conservative chair, put it to him that he cannot have been happy to see the news that he was cutting national insurance by 2p in the pound in the papers beforehand.

Hunt said he was not happy about that. “It wasn’t an intentional leak,” he said.

But he said it was getting “very difficult” to stop leaks.

He said journalists would ring up the Treasury saying they would run a story about a budget measure unless it was explicitly denied. The Treasury does not like to reply, he said. So journalists take a gamble, he said.

He said some of the reports said a measure would be in the budget before the final decision had been taken.

Asked what budget measures had been pre-briefed by the Treasury, Hunt said none of the “principle measures” were leaked in advance.

ShareSpeaker’s office defends Hoyle’s decision not to call Diane Abbott at PMQs

A spokesperson for Sir Lindsay Hoyle has defended the speaker’s decision not to call Diane Abbott at PMQs. (See 12.46pm) The spokesperson said:

During prime minister’s questions, the speaker must select MPs from either side of the house on an alternating basis for fairness.

This takes place within a limited timeframe, with the chair prioritising members who are already listed on the order paper.

This week – as is often the case – there was not enough time to call all members who wanted to ask a question.

ShareScottish Tories urge UK party based in London to ‘review’ donations from Hester

The Scottish Conservative party has urged the UK party based in London to “review” its decision to take money from Frank Hester.

After the Scottish Labour party challenged the Scottish Tories to say if they had ever received money from Hester, a spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives said:

These comments were racist and wrong.

The Scottish Conservative Party has never accepted a donation from Frank Hester and the UK Conservative Party should carefully review the donations it has received from Hester in response to his remarks.

SharePMQs – snap verdict

When something is indefensible, that means you cannot defend it. Frank Hester’s comments about Diane Abbott as reported in the Guardian are indefensible and so it is no surprise that Rishi Sunak got hammered by Keir Starmer today when the Labour leader brought the topic up. To be fair, Sunak would have been in even more trouble if he had not been willing to adopt the line that the remarks were racist. (See 11.16am.) But this was a day when a drubbing was inevitable, and so it panned out.

(The only fail-proof escape option would have been for Sunak and the Tories to have disowned Hester completely on Monday night, and returned his money. But this was never likely, partly because they have probably spent it already, but mainly because tactics like that would outrage and alarm almost the entire Tory donor community, some of whom may also have said things in private they would not want to read in the Guardian.)

Although the broad outline of PMQs was predictable, there were two features that were interesting, and that could have important repercussions for the general election campaign.

First, on the basis of today’s exchanges, it is probably safe to say we have reached the point where Jeremy Corbyn extremism arguments are unequivocally helping Starmer. Even when Boris Johnson was trying to discredit Starmer on the grounds that he campaigned to make Corbyn PM, it was a weak line because voters know that MPs will toe the party line in an election campaign without necessarily thinking their leader is wonderful, and it is obvious that Starmer isn’t a Corbynite leftie. But today, every time Rishi Sunak tried this line of attack, it only set Starmer up for an even more powerful response. We got two of them. Echoing Tony Blair’s line to John Major (“I lead my party, he follows his”), Starmer said:

The difference is, he’s scared of his party, I’ve changed my party.

And then, in his next response, he said:

The problem is that he’s describing a Labour party that no longer exists.

Like all the best political soundbites, these ones work because they are in essence true.

And, second, we may have seen the first clear evidence today that Jeremy Hunt’s decision in the budget to propose the eventual abolition of national insurance was a blunder. Today we saw this debated in the cut-and-thrust of PMQs, a particularly good testing ground for political messaging, and Sunak was trying to use the proposal as a means of laying down an election dividing line: Tories, committed to lower taxes over time, versus Labour, who aren’t.

But a tax cut worth £46bn is implausible, and Starmer’s question about whether this meant pension cuts or NHS cuts (see 2.11pm) was an inherently more persuasive proposition. Starmer’s ability to cite the £46bn figure also blunted Sunak’s point about Labour’s supposed commitment to an unfunded £28bn green energy plan (which hasn’t functioned well as a message anyway since Starmer said it was not happening).

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Updated at 09.35 EDT

Diane Abbott was trying to “catch the speaker’s eye” during PMQs. She was not on the list to ask a question, but the speaker, Sir Lindsay Houle, routinely takes questions from MPs who aren’t on the list, and a lot of commentators on X are criticising him for this.

These are from Adam Payne at PoliticsHome.

MPs look and sound confused by Lindsay Hoyle’s decision to not call Diane Abbott for a question

Abbott was visibly frustrated to not get a question. Starmer and Flynn went to speak to her after PMQs finished

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Updated at 09.15 EDT

When Lee Anderson defected to Reform UK on Monday, he said what persuaded him to join another party was George Galloway winning the Rochdale byelection. But now they are sitting alongside each other on the opposition benches.

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Mark Francois (Con) asks Sunak to assure him that he is not making the same mistake made by Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s, when defence spending was restricted until it was too late.

Sunak tells Francois he agrees with the point he is making.

The world that we’re living in is becoming both more challenging, strategically, and more dangerous. And in response to those challenges. We must invest more in our armed forces.

And that’s the end of PMQs.

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Rachael Maskell (Lab) asks about the situation in Gaza. The PM’s plan is not working. Will he change tack and push for a bilateral ceasefire?

Sunak says the government is incredibly concerned about the situation in Gaza. The UK is playing a leading role in providing aid, he says.

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Natalie Elphicke (Con) asks about hold-ups at Dover. Is funding available to keep the port clear?

Sunak says this is being discussed at the highest level of government, with French and EU counterparts.

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Sarah Olney (Lib Dem) asks if Sunak thinks Thames Water will still exist by the end of the year.

Sunak says it would not be right to comment on the financial situation of a company.

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Sir Edward Leigh (Con) asks if Sunak agrees the Tories are the only party that will block mass and illegal migration.

Sunak agrees. He says Labour says it would block the Rwanda policy even if it were working.

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Patrick Grady (SNP) says Tories call the European court of human rights foreign. But the UK has been part of it since it was set up, it has an Irish president, and a British judge on it. How is it foreign?

Sunak repeats his point about not letting a foreign court block flights to Rwanda.

ShareSunak says he won’t return £15,000 donation from Frank Hester covering cost of helicopter flight

Marsha de Cordova (Lab) says last year Sunak accept a £15,000 non-cash donation from Frank Hester for the use of a helicopter. Will he reimburse that?

No, says Sunak. He says Hester is supporting a party with a diverse cabinet and the first British Asian PM.

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