Burnham latest: Miliband fails to turn up to PMQs as Badenoch accuses him of ‘betraying’ Starmer

Kemi Badenoch and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson were involved in a heated exchange in the Commons after Ms Badenoch branded her a “spiteful class warrior”.

The row escalated when Ms Phillipson accused the Tory leader of having “lost her head” following a behind-the-scenes incident after Prime Minister’s Questions.

The initial confrontation occurred during Mrs Badenoch’s regular exchanges with Sir Keir Starmer, where she directly criticised the Education Secretary.

Ms Phillipson was seen shaking her head as Mrs Badenoch claimed she “taxed private schools to pay for more teachers but the number of teachers has gone down”.

“It turns out appointing a spiteful class warrior as Education Secretary was a disaster,” she said, suggesting Sir Keir had been “let down by her incompetence”.

Read the full article here:

Savers face a new 22 per cent levy on interest earned from cash held within stocks and shares ISAs.

In practice, what this means is that you could get a tax bill on money which is in your stocks and shares ISA, but not invested (in funds, shares, etc), if it earns interest paid by your ISA provider.

As an example, if you have exactly £10,000 invested in funds and sell it all (perhaps intended as a house deposit), the money sits in your stocks and shares ISA account. If your provider pays 3 per cent interest, across one year you would earn £300 in interest on the money. The 22 per cent tax bill is then applied to that interest, meaning you’d owe £66 in this particular example.

Read the full article here:

Kemi Badenoch has been rebuked by the UK statistics watchdog over a “not wholly accurate” claim about Government spending on benefits.

The Tory Party released a document that said that “for the first time ever, the total welfare bill is now higher than total receipts from income tax” last month.

Writing to the Opposition leader on Wednesday, the UK Statistics Authority said that spending on social security does exceed income tax revenue, but that “this is not a recent or first-time occurrence.”

Figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) suggest this has been the case since at least 2011 and the gap has narrowed in recent years, with the positions forecast to reverse in 2026/27, the watchdog said.

“We have reviewed the published statistics and assessed that this claim is not wholly accurate,” interim chair Penny Young wrote.

The Conservatives also focused mainly on out-of-work and sickness benefits in their wider statement and should have made clear that the “total welfare bill” included other benefits like the State Pension, it added.

Health Secretary James Murray detailed the way in which the bodies of dead babies were wrongly handled by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Mr Murray’s voice faltered as he said failures at maternity services showed there was a “level of disrespect and lack of humanity that, I’ll be honest, left me aghast”.

He said babies were referred to as a “specimen or sample”, that a baby was placed in a mortuary space which was already occupied by an “unknown and unrelated adult”, a baby disposed of in clinical waste against the wishes of their parents, and another baby’s body kept in a domestic fridge in a bereavement room.

Mr Murray told MPs: “The emotional and psychological effect of these dehumanising failures was to lay out the most profound disrespect on the most unbearable distress. There is also evidence that the trust actively decided not to report failings in mortuary care to families.”

He said he had asked NHS England to write to trusts to ensure failings are not repeated elsewhere.

He said the Human Tissue Authority will require all mortuaries to review internal records over the last decade to ensure all incidents have been logged and reported. They will have to report back by October 16.

James Murray told MPs that today’s damning report “shines a light on what was going on”.

First and foremost, he said, “women were not listened to”.

The inquiry also found staff shortages and a lack of training, while bullying by doctors and senior midwives was also rife, which meant staff who tried to speak up were “intimidated and ridiculed”.

But, he added, “perhaps most damning of all… for years the Trust ignored evidence of clinical and cultural flaws from both internal and external reviews that it had itself ordered … .that refusal to act is unforgivable”.

The health secretary James Murray has pledged not to stop until the families affected had the “justice” they deserve.

He added: “I say today on behalf of the NHS I am sorry.

“I am sorry not just for the failures or the heartless and undignified treatment, but also because your cries of concern went unheard for too long, and so the government will act.”

He said that, having met the families and having seen the report, “I feel appalled by the neglect, incompetence, racism, discrimination, contempt, and harassment that so many suffered.

“And I feel heartbroken to know that at so many times when they tried to raise the alarm about their care they were ignored, sneered at, disbelieved, blamed, and lied to.

“The question… is how on earth could this have happened?”

Downing Street has confirmed that Sir Keir Starmer will double down on his plans to publish his highly-anticipated Defence Investment Plan (DIP) imminently.

Likely incoming prime minister Andy Burnham’s camp and allies of former defence secretary John Healey have urged the prime minister against publishing the plan until his successor is in place.

But the prime minister has insisted he will publish the plan before next month’s Nato summit, which will take place before his successor takes their place in No 10.

The health secretary James Murray is making a statement in the Commons on the independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

He told MPs: “The nature and sheer scale of the failings it exposes are horrific.

It uncovers dangerously and tragically deficient care at almost every turn.

Its findings and conclusions are chilling”.

Hundreds of babies and mothers died or were harmed due to “deeply embedded systemic failures” spanning more than a decade, the inquiry into the NHS’s largest maternity scandal has found.

More than 500 cases of potentially avoidable harm have been uncovered, including the care of mothers and babies in 94 stillbirths and 62 neo-natal deaths.

A total of 120 babies suffered a form of brain injury while nine children were left with cerebral palsy.

Downing Street has failed to rule out Sir Keir Starmer handing out resignation honours – despite pledging not to do so before taking office.

The outgoing prime minister criticised the Tory government in 2023 for approving Boris Johnson’s controversial resignation honours list, and ruled out ever doing the same.

However, when asked this week whether Sir Keir would be drawing up his own resignation honours list, Downing Street an answer would be “getting ahead of ourselves”.

Pressed on the issue on Wednesday, the prime minister’s political spokesperson repeated the answer.