Rishi Sunak to face first PMQs as Suella Braverman reappointment comes under scrutiny – UK politics live

The environment sector has reacted with some surprise that Rishi Sunak has appointed Thérèse Coffey as environment secretary.

At a crucial time for the environment, with much important and complex legislation coming down the line including the farming payments review due this week, many hoped the new prime minister would choose someone with recent senior experience in the department.

Names hopefully floated around as the reshuffle took place included George Eustice, the former secretary of state under Boris Johnson, and Victoria Prentis, a former minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) who is popular in the farming sector. Some even dared to dream that Michael Gove, the architect of a lot of the post-Brexit environmental legislation which was under threat by Liz Truss, may make a return.

However, there are some points of hope in Coffey’s appointment, despite the fact she has not shown much interest in the environment in the past. Unlike her predecessor Ranil Jayawardena, she held a junior ministerial role at Defra for three years.

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Rowena Mason

The head of the UK’s lobbying watchdog has called for tougher disclosure rules to show which ministers have been solicited, as well as a review of exemptions made use of by David Cameron and Philip Hammond.

Harry Rich, who is in charge of the register of consultant lobbyists and their clients, said it would “significantly assist transparency” if lobbyists were asked to reveal which ministers and permanent secretaries they had spoken to – as well as when, how and what about.

He also told the Guardian that it would “definitely enhance transparency” if contact between consultant lobbyists and special advisers was brought under the regime. “The more transparency there is, the more the aims of the legislation are being upheld,” he said.

Rich is making suggestions for more transparent lobbying declarations in a submission to parliament’s public administration and constitutional affairs committee (Pacac) in his first public intervention on the subject since taking the job in 2018.

In the submission, he suggests declarations include which minister or permanent secretary was lobbied, dates of the communications, medium of communication – whether by meeting, letter or email, phone, text – and topics of communication. “The fact that the targets of lobbying activity are not identified on the register feels like a significant gap,” it says.

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The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has written to the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, to demand an investigation into Suella Braverman after she breached the ministerial code.

Braverman was forced to resign for a security breach for emailing confidential policy to a backbench MP, John Hayes, and trying to copy in his wife but mistakenly emailing it to another MP’s office. Officials raised alarm that Braverman may have been sharing sensitive information outside the department.

Cooper wrote:

If a full investigation has not yet taken place into the extent of this and other possible security breaches, I am urging you and the Home Office to now urgently undertake such an investigation as the public has a right to know that there are proper secure information procedures in place to cover the person who has been given charge of our national security.

It must include the extent of the Home Secretary’s use of private email accounts to circulate Government papers and the extent to which official documents have been sent outside Government, as well as any other concerns that have been raised about possible serious information and security breaches by Suella Braverman.

The Lib Dems have also called for a Cabinet Office inquiry into Braverman.

Aubrey Allegretti

Rishi Sunak may delay a fiscal announcement that is pencilled in for Halloween and will be designed to stop the markets going into another spiral, a senior minister has admitted.

Given that the new government has only just got up and running, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, said it may no longer be possible to stick to that date for the statement, when major spending cuts and grim forecasts about the future of the economy are expected to be laid out.

The long-awaited statement was originally meant to be the former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s chance to set out his medium-term growth plan, and it was brought forward by nearly a month after borrowing costs and currency exchange markets went haywire off the back of his mini-budget.

Though Kwarteng was sacked as Liz Truss tried to shore up her dying government, the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, promised he would stick to the timetable, viewed as vital to reassure the City that the exchequer could plug a fiscal black hole of about £70bn.

However, Cleverly suggested the date could be pushed back, saying it would not be a bad thing if the government had more time.

Asked if the government could delay the Halloween statement, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

It may well do. The prime minister’s only just stepped in. That date was set by the previous prime minister in the anticipation that she would be able to work throughout this period of time on that with the chancellor. Obviously things have changed.

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Richard Adams

Ministers educated at private schools make up nearly two-thirds of the new cabinet, led by the Winchester alumnus Rishi Sunak as prime minister, according to analysis by the Sutton Trust social mobility charity.

Some 61% of ministers appointed by Sunak attended private schools, similar to the proportion of Liz Truss’s original cabinet (68%) and Boris Johnson’s first cabinet (64%) but more than twice that of Theresa May’s 2016 cabinet (30%), and above that of David Cameron’s 2015 cabinet (50%). Cabinets led by Labour leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had around a third of ministers who were independently educated.

Sunak’s cabinet also sees the three major government departments all led by privately-educated ministers: the Home office, the foreign office and the Treasury.

Of the 31 ministers attending Sunak’s new cabinet as of this morning, 45% went to Oxford or Cambridge universities. This compares with 21% of all MPs.

As a prime-ministerial Oxford graduate, Sunak continues a line at Number 10 that stretches back to the start of world war two: other than Gordon Brown, every prime minister who attended university was educated at Oxford.

The Liberal Democrats have called for a Cabinet Office inquiry into Rishi Sunak’s reappointment of Suella Braverman as home secretary six days after she was sacked for a serious security breach.

The Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, said:

Suella Braverman’s appointment makes a mockery of Rishi Sunak’s claims to be bringing integrity to Number 10. There must be a full independent inquiry by the Cabinet Office into her appointment, including any promises Sunak made to her behind closed doors.

If it is confirmed that Suella Braverman repeatedly broke the ministerial code and threatened national security, she must be sacked.

A home secretary who broke the rules is not fit for a Home Office which keeps the rules.

Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, yesterday accused Sunak, who had promised to govern with “integrity”, of “putting party before country”.

Severin Carrell

Nicola Sturgeon reminded Rishi Sunak of her hopes to stage a fresh Scottish independence referendum and urged significant action on living costs during a brief inaugural phone call with the prime minister on Tuesday night.

A Scottish government read-out of their conversation said the first minister also asked Sunak to honour his pledge for a more constructive relationship “built on mutual respect” between the government, after a fractious relationship with his predecessor Liz Truss.

The statement said:

The first minister also expressed the strong view that the UK government should address the pressure and pain being felt by people and businesses as a result of inflation and other economic pressures, and should not exacerbate that with a further wave of austerity.

[Finally,] the first minister made clear her intention to honour the mandate the Scottish government received from the people of Scotland at the last election.”

Sturgeon, the Scottish National party leader, noted that the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, had promised to consult with devolved administrations in advance of his emergency budget next week.

The continuing disarray at Westminster has led her finance secretary, John Swinney, to postpone by at least a week publication of Scotland’s draft budget. Swinney expects to cut hundreds of millions of pounds in spending, due to inflation and Hunt’s expected cuts.

In amongst a round of calls with foreign leaders on Tuesday, Sunak also called Mark Drakeford, the Labour Welsh first minister. It is something of a convention now for incoming prime ministers to speak to devolved government leaders soon after taking office, a tradition Truss ignored, to Sturgeon’s irritation.

The foreign secretary James Cleverly has suggested the fiscal statement planned for 31 October could be delayed as Rishi Sunak wants to ensure it “matches his priorities”.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Cleverly said:

Obviously the date of that fiscal statement was originally set with no expectation of a change of prime minister. We’ve now had a change of prime minister.

Sunak is in the process of forming a government and will want some time with his chancellor Jeremy Hunt “to make sure that the fiscal statement matches his priorities”, he continued. He said:

I don’t know whether that means that date is going to slip… The prime minister and the chancellor know they need to work quickly on this but they also want to get it right, so we’ll see what happens to that date.

He was also unable to confirm whether the government’s financial statement will go ahead on Monday while speaking to Sky News. He said:

We know it needs to come soon, we know people want certainty, we know people want a clear idea of the government’s plans. Whether it happens exactly on that day, I’m not able to confirm.

Rishi Sunak is considering a delay to next week’s highly anticipated fiscal statement intended for 31 October, according to a report.

The Times has reported that the prime minister is expected to meet the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today to discuss his proposals to increase taxes and squeeze public spending that are due to be unveiled to MPs and markets on Monday.

Sunak is considering postponing the update until next month to allow more time to scrutinise the options, the paper writes.

The statement could be pushed back and turned into a full budget to set out the new government’s priorities for all areas of tax and spending, it adds.

A government source said that while Sunak was across the “broad thrust” of Hunt’s plans, he wanted to “get under the bonnet” of the options. They said:

The prime minister and chancellor will be looking at the timing of the statement in the near future.

Rishi Sunak’s sudden return to the top of British politics and the unveiling of his new cabinet dominates the UK front pages on Wednesday.

The Guardian headlines “PM’s reshuffle gamble on first day in charge” and leads with an image of Rishi Sunak meeting King Charles at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

The paper writes that Sunak “pledged to bring ‘integrity and accountability’” but “gambled by restoring Suella Braverman to the Home Office less than a week after she was sacked for a security breach.”

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Good morning. Rishi Sunak will meet with his new cabinet this morning and face his first Commons appearance as prime minister, as he begins the gruelling task of uniting his party and restoring the country’s economic credibility.

As he entered No 10 yesterday as PM, the fifth in six years, Sunak vowed to fix the “mistakes” of his predecessor Liz Truss and pledged to bring “integrity and accountability” into his government. His cabinet reshuffle was billed as returning experienced hands to the top jobs, but Sunak gambled by restoring Suella Braverman to the Home Office less than week after she was forced to resign for a security breach.

Sunak’s new cabinet keeps Jeremy Hunt as chancellor and attempts bridge the divide with former Boris Johnson supporters by sticking with the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace.

Dominic Raab, Sunak’s own key ally who described Truss’s economics as a suicide note, becomes his deputy prime minister and justice secretary.

However, Sunak made several decisions that alarmed some MPs, as he reappointed Braverman as home secretary and declined to promote his former rival Penny Mordaunt. He also appointed David TC Davies as Welsh secretary despite his controversial comments on subjects including face veils, trans rights, child refugees, climate change and same-sex marriage.

Braverman, who still harbours her own leadership ambitions, was handed the job six days after she was forced to resign for a security breach for emailing confidential policy to a backbench MP, John Hayes, and trying to copy in his wife but mistakenly emailing it to another MP’s office. Officials raised alarm that Braverman may have been sharing sensitive information outside the department.

The return of Braverman, a Eurosceptic rightwinger, drew a shocked reaction from some MPs on the moderate wing of the party – but is widely seen as a “payback” for her endorsement of Sunak when Johnson still threatened a comeback during the leadership race last week.

Here is the agenda for the day.

09.30am. Sunak will hold his first cabinet meeting.

09.45am. Home affairs committee on Channel crossings, which is due to hear from David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration.

12pm. PMQs

2.15pm. Treasury committee hearing on the Autumn 2022 fiscal events.

My name is Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll be taking you through today’s developments in British politics for the next few hours. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.