Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch didn’t have the best start at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: she asked a question that had apparently already been answered, allowing Keir Starmer to mock her early on. But the Prime Minister ultimately had the tougher session. That repeated question first came from Lib Dem Christine Jardine at the very start of the session. She reported GPs and charities worrying that the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions meant they would not be able to keep offering patients the service they deserved. Starmer started replying that ‘because of the tough decisions we took’, before he was interrupted by theatrical groans from opposition MPs. He then continued: We have put forward a Budget with an extra £25.

Justin Welby has said he considered resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth. That report, which emerged this week, found the Church of England had, from 2013, missed opportunities to bring Smyth to justice: from that point onwards, Welby and other senior figures knew about the abuse that Smyth exacted on his victims in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  That line, ‘you will protect the work?’, is particularly telling Smyth, a barrister and Christian leader, was accused of beating and abusing boys in the shed in his garden in Winchester. Instead of ever being brought to justice, Smyth was allowed to move to South Africa, where he ran summer camps.

What difference has Kemi Badenoch’s victory made to the way the party talks about education? Badenoch doesn’t want to make policy straight away, having stood on a platform promising a fundamental rethink of what the Conservatives stand for. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons suggested that in the meantime, she wants her frontbenchers to put their efforts into defending the party’s legacy. Laura Trott had been appointed to the shadow education secretary brief just hours before the question session, along with Neil O’Brien in the shadow minister of state role.

Rishi Sunak’s final act in the Commons as leader of the opposition was one he clearly enjoyed. The outgoing Conservative leader had what is normally the unenviable task of responding to the Budget just minutes after it had been delivered, before the small print reveals the real story. Rachel Reeves had helped him quite a bit with this, though, by announcing or hinting at a lot of what was to come over the past week or so. Sunak could also dodge the demands of Labour ministers to offer an alternative plan, as he’s off in just a few days and will be replaced by a new leader who will at some point have to answer that question.

Is the Speaker being a bit precious with his complaint about pre-Budget announcements? Lindsay Hoyle made a statement in the Commons this afternoon in which he issued a stinging rebuke to Rachel Reeves and other ministers for going ‘around the world telling everybody’ about significant Budget policies, rather than making the announcements to MPs first. He was very clear that he meant the Chancellor in particular, saying: While this can hardly be described as a leak – the Chancellor herself gave interviews on the record, and on camera – the premature disclosure of the contents of the Budget has always been regarded as a supreme discourtesy to the House; indeed, I still regard it as such.

Angela Rayner and Oliver Dowden shared a tender moment today at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions as they bade farewell to each other. This will be the last time the pair face each other across the House because the Tories are – finally – about to pick their new leader who will bring in their own deputy. ‘I will miss our exchanges, the battle of the gingers,’ joked Rayner, who got through the questions easily. Dowden used his last session to try to pin Labour down on its planned rises to National Insurance contributions for employers. His opening question was: ‘Mr Speaker, what is the Deputy Prime Minister’s definition of working people?

Other than being fired out of a cannon to raise funds for the NHS, what could Wes Streeting possibly learn from a ‘national conversation’ about the NHS that he hasn’t already picked up from his time studying his own brief? At the launch event for that consultation, the Health Secretary explained that public buy-in was essential for the big reforms necessary to save the health service. He said: ‘I suppose you could say, well, you should just come in and impose your view of change,’ he said. ‘I’d just say to people, be careful what you wish for. The last time a new health secretary came in after a general election where their party won power, that was Andrew Lansley.

The Health Secretary is making a big fanfare about a cash boost in the Budget and a new plan to reform the NHS so that it becomes a more community-based, prevention-focused service. But at the moment, his plan for the health service is very much in nascent form: the government is nowhere near close to publishing it and is instead going to start asking for ideas from the public and healthcare workers.  Wes Streeting’s ministerial colleague Stephen Kinnock sketched out how this consultation would run when he spoke at The Spectator’s health fringe at Labour conference. He told us that there would be a lengthy ‘national conversation’ about what people wanted from their health service which would feed directly into the spending review.