Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer joked at Prime Minister’s Questions today that Tory MPs seemed to be on recess already. But he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either, giving automated answers to Kemi Badenoch’s questions about tax and the economy. Having complained volubly about prime ministers not answering the questions he asked as leader of the opposition, he now has a stock set of his own personal flannels with which to dodge giving real answers as Prime Minister.

If he were measuring his success at Prime Minister’s Questions purely by avoiding making any senior colleagues cry, Keir Starmer had a reasonably good session today. Rachel Reeves was beaming on the front bench, and next to her Yvette Cooper was joining in with the smiling too. It was the same level of smiling sincerity as you might see at an overlong secondary school piano recital, but the Prime Minister can probably take that as a win. He repeatedly spoke over his shoulder to Reeves, partly to show they were indeed in ‘lockstep’, but also presumably so he could check that she was still grinning.

Given we have known for a good while that Labour thinks the way to save the health service is to move care out of hospitals and into the community, you might have expected today’s NHS ten-year plan to explain how the government is going to do that. The preventive agenda is not a new idea that needs explaining, it’s been around for the entire 77-year history of the health service. The problem, therefore, is not the lack of an idea, it’s that reform never actually happens. The important and urgent priorities of waiting lists and emergency units always end up dominating, and the neighbourhood health centres, walk-in clinics, polyclinics or the ‘health centres’ set out in Labour’s original plan for the NHS under Nye Bevan, end up coming a distant second, if at all.

What do we really need to change about the NHS? Later this week we will finally get the NHS plan from Health Secretary Wes Streeting which, like all the other big reforms before, promises to make the health service fit for the future and focused on patients. Streeting has been more articulate than many previous ministers about the failings of the current setup, saying the NHS today is often organised around the needs of the system, rather than the people it is meant to serve. One of the most pernicious aspects of this is the way the health service deals with mistakes. Streeting has already trailed ‘pioneering AI technology’ in the new plan which he says will ‘rapidly analyses healthcare data and ring the alarm bell on emerging safety issues’.

Liz Kendall tried to use her Commons statement on the government’s U-turn on some of the disability benefit cuts to persuade her colleagues that the changes made the legislation worth supporting. Not all of them sounded very convinced: there were repeated complaints about a ‘two-tier system’ whereby two people with the same needs would get completely different levels of support. MPs were also concerned they were signing ‘blank cheques’ by voting on the bill tomorrow when full details of the changes won’t be available until later in the year. And there were suspicions that the changes won’t be as meaningful as ministers have suggested.

Wes Streeting has announced yet another inquiry into NHS maternity safety: this time a national investigation which the Health Secretary wants to address ‘systemic problems dating back over 15 years.’ This rapid review, modelled on the Darzi review of the NHS, will report in December 2025 and will work across the entire maternity system, using the findings of previous reviews and urgently examining the ten worst-performing maternity services in the country.

MPs are coming to the end of the assisted dying debate. The speeches can be roughly divided into the following camps: those who, like the Bill’s sponsor Kim Leadbeater, are very much in favour of the Bill and confident in its drafting; those who are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but who are so concerned about the drafting of the Bill that they are opposed to it; and the implacable opponents to the principle. The speeches from the latter two camps largely focused on the argument that today’s vote is not about the principle of assisted dying but about the Bill as it stands. The proponents of the legislation, though, have largely focused on the need to back assisted dying as a principle.

This evening, the Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has resigned as a government whip over the disability benefit cuts. In a letter to Keir Starmer, she writes that she is quitting the frontbench 'with a heavy heart', adding: Foxcroft's resignation suggests that the rebellion over disability benefit cuts really is quite serious I have wrestled with whether I should resign or remain in the government and fight for change from within. Sadly it now seems that we are not going to get the changes I desperately wanted to see. I therefore tender my resignation as I know I will not be able to do the job that is required or me and whip – or indeed vote – for reforms which include cuts to disabled people's finances.

Kemi Badenoch will have been irritated to miss today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given it denied her the opportunity to accuse Labour of delaying the inevitable on a national inquiry into grooming gangs. Sadly for those watching, the fact that today’s session was a battle of the deputies did not mean that the rest of us were able to avoid hearing two parties who have both clearly failed to address grooming gangs properly over the years arguing about who cared more about the issue. That the parties are going round in circles on both topics underlines the failure of Labour and the Tories Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, was standing in for Badenoch, and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, was deputising for Keir Starmer, who is on his way back from the G7 meeting.

Has the government really U-turned on grooming gangs? Six months after resisting a national inquiry into the crimes committed against young girls by men of predominantly Asian heritage, ministers have announced one. But Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs this afternoon about the exact nature of that inquiry suggested the government had executed something a little wobblier than a U-turn. The Home Secretary told the Commons that Louise Casey’s rapid review had recommended a national commission – with statutory inquiry powers – which will direct and oversee the local inquiries into grooming gangs that are already underway. It would not be ‘another overarching inquiry of the kind conducted by Professor Alexis Jay’, added Cooper.

This evening, Keir Starmer has announced he does want a national inquiry on grooming gangs after all. The Prime Minister had tasked Baroness Casey to conduct a rapid review of the evidence available on the scale of these crimes committed by gangs – and her review is expected to conclude on Monday that there needs to be a full public inquiry.  Starmer said today that Casey had also changed her mind on whether such an investigation was necessary, arguing: ‘She’s come to the view there should be a national inquiry on the basis of what she’s seen. I’ve read every single word of her report, and I’m going to accept her recommendation. I think that’s the right thing to do, on the basis of what she has put in her audit. I asked her to do that job, to double-check on this.

‘Mr Speaker, he loves talking about Liz Truss – why? Because he wants to hide from his economic record.’ Kemi Badenoch didn’t need to do much guesswork ahead of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: she knew Starmer would bring up the former prime minister. Starmer always likes to mention Truss, as Badenoch pointed out, but today he was nailed on to do so as part of the groundwork for Rachel Reeves’ spending review speech. The Tory leader, though, wanted to prepare the ground for her party’s narrative about what Reeves was having to do. She opened by pointing out that: Since Labour took office, inflation has nearly doubled, growth has halved and unemployment has surged. Is this what the Prime Minister meant when he tweeted the economy is improving?

Kemi Badenoch was on good, brutal form at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Keir Starmer had tried to spike her guns by using a planted question to tell the chamber at the start that as the economy improved, he wanted to see more pensioners eligible for winter fuel payment. But the Tory leader still managed to make Starmer – and his party – look uncomfortable. Her most potent line was a taunt: ‘He can’t see them, but they all look sick just hearing what it is he’s going to do.’ Enough Labour MPs have expressed worries about the government’s policies on benefits, immigration and aid that her accusation rang true, even though some of Starmer’s backbenchers theatrically laughed at her.