Labour says Sunak should apologise for lying 12 times about its tax plans in ITV debate – UK politics live | General election 2024

Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, has said that costing opposition policies was one of “the grubbiest processes” he ever had to undertake as a civil servant.

In an interview on Radio 4’s World at One, he said a future government should ban civil servants from being asked to do this work.

He also said Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, was “wrong” when she claimed this morning that the Treasury had signed off on the figures quoted by Rishi Sunak in the debate last night about the cost of Labour’s plans. (See 12.29pm.)

O’Donnell, who has permanent secretary at the Treasury before becoming cabinet secretary, told the programme:

These costings … are one of the grubbiest processes I’ve ever been involved in, and I hope to goodness that a future government will stop doing this because they’re done by both parties, right? Conservative and Labour have done them, I’ve done them – many of these during my career. I hated every second working on these.

You have to produce costings. Ministers tell you to produce these costings on some assumptions they give you, which are dodgy assumptions designed to make the policy look as bad as possible.

You’re required to do this … The civil service is not acting independently here – they’re acting as a civil service that is required by the existing rules to basically provide costings on an assumption provided to them by the government. It’s totally not independent – it’s just what the government told them to do, and they do it.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, has said that last night’s Sunak/Starmer debate was “depressing” because there was “no openness about tax and spend”.

Depressing debate last night. No openness about tax and spend. Big direct tax rises are nailed in over next 3 years whoever wins, as allowances and thresholds are frozen. Avoiding big spending cuts while keeping to promises on debt will require more tax rises.

The SNP is not against new oil and gas licences being issued for the North Sea, Scotland’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes has said.

Under Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, the SNP government in Edinburgh was opposed to new licences being issued. But it is now having a rethink, and at the STV debate on Monday John Swinney, the new first minister, refused to say whether or not he was in favour of continuing the presumption against new licences being issued.

Speaking to journalists during a campaign visit to Linlithgow, Forbes said:

We’ve been clear that we’re not against new licences per se, but they have to meet a climate compatibility test.

We’re very serious about meeting our climate change targets and obligations. We believe it is one of the most pressing issues of our day.

But we also believe that it needs to be a just transition, which means you can’t leave workers behind and we also need the talent, skills, infrastructure and resources in the industry to reinvest.

Forbest also claimed her party had “never said no” to further licensing, adding:

My position is that it has to be a just transition.

We have to remember that that requires justice to be at the heart, not forgetting the workers like Labour will, with potentially 100,000 jobs at risk.

Ian Murray, Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary, said:

This is laughable from the deputy first minister and goes to show that the SNP is tying itself in knots to explain the mess it is in over the future of oil and gas.

For months the SNP has said one thing to the North East and another to the rest of Scotland – now their hypocrisy and opportunism has caught up with them.

For Kate Forbes to say that the SNP never argued against future oil and gas licences is just false – Humza Yousaf called new oil and gas ‘tantamount to climate change denial’ just months ago.

Victoria Atkins, the health secretary for England, has said NHS staff should be banned from wearing Palestine flag badges at work

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Atkins suggested that doctors or nurses wearing badges or stickers showing the Palestinian flag could lead to some Jewish patients feeling unsafe. She said she was “determined to ensure that Jewish people feel as safe in our healthcare system as they should in the rest of society”.

She went on:

I’ve already been in conversations with NHS England about how we can ensure that uniforms are free political and flags, and this goes across the board. Our hospitals, surgeries and other healthcare settings should not be places where individuals express their political views, but environments that enable people simply to get health care quickly and safely.

Working with NHS England, I know they share these concerns, as do NHS trust executives — and indeed, the overwhelming majority of people who work in the NHS.

A Labour government will risk public sector strikes if it fails to increase workers’ pay, the TUC president Matt Wrack has warned. Kiran Stacey has the story.

The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will participate in the seven-party BBC election debate on Friday, the corporation has announced.

Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, will represent the Conservative party, and Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, will speak for the official opposition. The Liberal Democrats will be represented by Daisy Cooper, their deputy leader.

They will be joined by Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Carla Denyer, the Green party co-leader, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid Cymru.

Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, was doing interviews on behalf of the government this morning. She repeated the claim the £2,000 per household in extra taxes figure had come from the Treasury – even though its permanent secretary has said that is not correct. (See 9.26am.) She told Times Radio:

This is something which has been signed off by the permanent secretary of the Treasury. And let me tell you, as someone who used to work in the Treasury, they do not sign up to these dodgy figures.

And it’s really important that the £2,000 of taxes on working families, I thought Keir Starmer was very exposed on that. He could not rule it out. And that’s because that is based on policies that the Labour party .. want to put in place in the next parliament.

Coutinho also said the costings were provided by “independent Treasury civil servants”.

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, later said it was wrong to describe them as independent. They were impartial, which is different, he said.

He also suggested ministers were undermining civil service impartiality. He explained:

The HM Treasury permanent secretary being dragged into this political row for his department simply doing its job is a threat to the impartiality of the civil service which ministers rely on, and have a duty to protect under the ministerial code.

Civil servants aren’t independent, they serve the government of the day regardless of which party.

The figures quoted are based on special advisers’ and ministers’ assumptions, which civil servants are then asked to calculate.

This is not a new phenomenon – civil servants have done so for successive governments and it does not represent an independent civil service assessment.