Tories claim No 10 admission UK won’t avoid new US tariffs shows Starmer has failed to protect British business

The Conservatives have criticised the government for failing to avert the threat of President Trump including the UK in his next round of tariffs.

Responding to Downing Street saying this morning that it did not expect the UK to be exempt from the tariffs due to be announced on Wednesday (see 1.01pm), Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said:

This news is potentially a hammer blow not just to British businesses and workers but to his own chancellor whose creative accounting at the emergency budget fails to include the impact of tariffs

Labour claims talks with the US are going “well”. But, if this is what well looks like, I wouldn’t like to see what the opposite looks like. The prime minister has so far failed to come up with the goods, he needs to rekindle our US trade deal.

This is just further proof that, when Labour negotiates, Britain loses.

Key events

Afternoon summary

Keir Starmer outside No 10 today, waiting to meet the Finish president Alexander Stubb. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Minister backs Birmingham city council in declaring major incident over bin strike

Birmingham city council says it is declaring a major incident over the impact of the ongoing bin strike, as it estimates 17,000 tonnes of waste remains uncollected around the city, PA Media reports. PA says:

Members of the Unite union in Birmingham are holding an all-out strike in a long-running dispute, after the scrapping of waste collection and recycling officer roles, which has led to rubbish piling up in the streets and residents complaining about rats.

The council says daily blocking of its depots by pickets has meant workers cannot get their vehicles out to collect waste.

It said declaring a major incident will initially increase the availability of street cleansing and fly-tip removal, with an additional 35 vehicles and crews around the city.

It will also allow the council to explore what further support is available from neighbouring authorities and the government, to help manage the situation, and work with partners to better manage health and fire risks that the build-up of rubbish is causing.

A focus of the major incident will be on making sure bin lorries can safely enter and exit the council’s waste depots.

Speaking in the Commons, Jim McMahon, communities minister, said the government did not have the power to intervene in the strike, but that he backed the council in declaring a major incident. He said:

We encourage all parties to redouble their efforts to get around the table and to find a resolution.

To do this, any deal to end industrial action must maintain value for money and ensure fit-for-purpose waste collection services without creating or storing up liabilities for the future.

Sentencing Council expected to suspend plans for new guidelines

Ministers expect the Sentencing Council to suspend plans for new sentencing guidelines that could have led to criminals getting different sentences depending on their age, sex and ethnicity, Jessica Elgot reports.

Yvette Cooper tells MPs youth mobility scheme with EU ‘not our plan’

Last month the Times reported that the government was considering offering the EU a youth mobility scheme as part of its attempt to reset relations with Brussels. “Under a plan to be tabled by British negotiators, tens of thousands of young EU workers and students would be able to come to the UK to live and work for two years, with the possibility of a one-year extension,” the paper said. “The reciprocal scheme would allow young Britons, aged 18-30, similar access to countries in the European Union.”

During Home Office questions in the Commons today, Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said she was “delighted” to read the report which she said showed the government was adopting “a common sense approach that will give our young people opportunities and help grow our economy”.

But Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, told Smart that the government was not planning to do what the Times had reported. She said:

As the front bench spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats knows, that is not our plan, and we are clear that net migration needs to come down.

It quadrupled under the previous Conservative government in the space of just four years. Those numbers need to come down.

In response to another question, from her Tory predecessor James Cleverly, the home secretary also refused to rule increasing the minimum income threshold for a migrant seeking a visa for a spouse or partner to join them in the UK.

When Cleverly was home secretary, he raised the threshold to £29,000 for a visa of this kind, with plans to raise if futher to £38,700. When Cooper took office, she shelved plans for the rise to £38,700 pending a review.

Cooper told Cleverly the government would outline its plans in a forthcoming white paper which she said include “measures to reduce net migration, including making sure that employers recruit and train here in the UK”.

PA Media has more on impact on the UK of the new tariffs threatened by President Trump. PA says:

President Trump has already announced a 25% import tax will be introduced on all cars imported to the US, a measure which will be a blow to the UK’s automotive industry.

Some 16.9% of UK car exports were to the US last year, representing a total of more than 101,000 units worth £7.6bn.

The levy is on top of a series of tariffs set to come into effect on 2 April, which could include a general 20% tax on UK products in response to the rate of VAT, which Trump deems to be discriminatory against the US …

The new tariffs could derail the government’s plans to grow the economy, and they come into force just after chancellor Rachel Reeves made a series of cuts at the spring statement in order to restore a narrow buffer in the public spending headroom.

Losses deepened for the UK’s FTSE 100 stock exchange, which was trading around 1.3% lower during Monday.

European stocks are also still seeing sharp falls, and US markets have opened lower with the S&P 500 down about 1.4% in early trading.

The budget watchdog has warned that a full-blown trade war, in which the UK responds in kind to Trump’s tariffs, could knock 1% off gross domestic product, a measure of the size of the economy, and wipe out Reeves’ headroom.

The government does not think it will be able to pass its emergency law allowing it to scrap the Sentencing Councils’s alleged “two-tier guidance” on pre-sentence reports before Easter, Henry Zeffman is reporting for the BBC. He says within government it has been argued that the legislation “would be obstructed in the House of Lords, especially by eminent lawyers, if the government were seen to be moving with excessive speed”.

Tories claim No 10 admission UK won’t avoid new US tariffs shows Starmer has failed to protect British business

The Conservatives have criticised the government for failing to avert the threat of President Trump including the UK in his next round of tariffs.

This news is potentially a hammer blow not just to British businesses and workers but to his own chancellor whose creative accounting at the emergency budget fails to include the impact of tariffs

Labour claims talks with the US are going “well”. But, if this is what well looks like, I wouldn’t like to see what the opposite looks like. The prime minister has so far failed to come up with the goods, he needs to rekindle our US trade deal.

This is just further proof that, when Labour negotiates, Britain loses.

Police will review case that led to parents being arrested for complaining about daughter’s school, MPs told

Diana Johnson, the policing minister, has told MPs that there will be a review of a case in Hertfordshire that saw two parents arrested and detained for complaining about their daughter’s primary school.

The case was raised by Oliver Dowden, the local MP and former Conservative deputy PM, who said it was an example of the police interfering with free expression. He also complained about the fact that a councillor who took up the parents’ case was told by police that she might be recorded as a suspect in the harrassment investigation.

Dowden said:

Many constituents in my constituency are exasperated by the fact that when there’s shoplifting or burglary the police are unable to turn up, yet at the same time they were able to send six officers to get themselves involved with a dispute with a local school and to warn local elected representatives off getting involved.

Sadly, this misallocation of resources and unwarranted police over-reach is not an isolated example. So, can I urge the minister to avoid engaging in political pointscoring and instead join me in sending a very clear message from both sides of this house that our expectation is that the police should be focused on solving real crimes and stay out of legitimate free expression and democratic debate.

In response, Johnson said:

This is an operational matter for policing and it’s quite clear the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner have set out that there will be a review of what happened in that particular case.

UK ‘back in the game’ given leadership Starmer showing on Ukraine, says Finnish president

The UK and Finland are “tied hip-to-hip” on Nato, Finnish president Alexander Stubb has said at a meeting with Keir Starmer in Downing Street. (See 2.57pm.)

Stubb also praised the leadership Starmer was showing on Ukraine, saying he felt the UK was now “back in the game”.

Speaking to the media in Downing Street, Stubb said much of his family had dual Finland-UK nationality and added: “Keir and I hit it off, in the beginning, straight off the bat.”

He added:

I’m really glad to see the leadership the UK is showing, not least in the war in Ukraine. And in many ways, in my mind, the UK is back, back in the game.

We’ve had an interesting week in many ways, last week in Paris with the coalition of the willing, many phone calls with Zelensky, myself meeting President Trump on Saturday, and we continue the conversations today and try to find solutions together.

But I think Finland and the UK are tied hip-to-hip and in so many places, including Nato and of course, JEF (Joint Expeditionary Force] which you guys founded.

Starmer said “on all the important issues, whether it’s Ukraine or other global issues” the UK and Finland were “very closely aligned”. He added: “And certainly I think the closer we can work together on some of these challenges, the better.”

Finnish president Alexander Stubb leaving No 10. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

Government should have ‘pushed back’ against ‘two-tier justice’ claims, says Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti

The Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti told the World at One she thinks the government should have “pushed back” at the Tory claims that the new guidelines from the Sentencing Council amount to “two-tier justice”.

Chakrabarti, who was shadow attorney general when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and who before that head of Liberty, the campaign group, said she thought Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has misrepresented what the guidelines were doing. They say judges should require pre-sentence reports before offenders from certain groups, including ethnic minorities, get sentenced. Chakrabarti said this was a response to evidence showing there is structural discrimination against minorities in sentencing.

She said:

I certainly don’t think of that giving this kind of advice [a pre-sentence report] amounts to two-tier justice, and I think the government should have pushed back against that narrative …

I’m nervous that with Reform on the rise, and the Conservatives running scared from Reform, the government is presented with this choice and with these pressures, and it’s too easy to be drawn to the right on matters of rights, freedoms and justice. I would urge caution on that.

And I would urge caution when it comes to interfering either with independent judges or with a Sentencing Council that ought to be independent of government.

Sarah Montague, the presenter, asked Chakrabarti to respond to an argument made by the columnist Stephen Bush in the FT explaining why the guidelines can be seen as unfair. Bush says:

If we think that pre-sentence reports result in judges making better decisions, it’s not fair for some offenders to be the beneficiary of better decisions and for others to not be.

Just as an illustration of that, 64 per cent of young offenders from “other” ethnic groups are eligible for free school meals (compared with about a quarter of the school-age population), while 63 per cent of young offenders from a “Black” minority background are. It seems a fair assumption that not having very much money is an aggravating factor for going on to commit a crime. So why should the 52 per cent of young “white” offenders eligible for FSM not automatically qualify for a pre-sentence report?

Chakrabarti said in an ideal world she would like every offender to have a pre-sentence report. When it was put to her that this was not feasible, she said a range of factors should decide whether resources should be spent on a pre-sentence report. If the offender comes from a different background to the sentencer, the sentencer should be more inclined to learn more about them via a pre-sentence report, she said.

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Tories claim No 10 admission UK won’t avoid new US tariffs shows Starmer has failed to protect British business – as it happened

Tories claim No 10 admission UK won’t avoid new US tariffs shows Starmer has failed to protect British business

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