Shabana Mahmood calls for ECHR reform, saying it has ‘endured because it has evolved’ and must do so again
Good morning. Keir Starmer is on his way back from the G7 in Canada, and he won’t be in the Commons for PMQs, where Angela Rayner will be taking the questions instead. With the government also publishing its bill to slash sickness and disability benefits, Starmer may feel its a good day not to be around. As Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot report, ministers are expecting a big revolt when MPs debate the legislation, probably in early July.
There will be no statement on the bill in the Commons, but we are getting one on HS2.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is also floating reform plans in another area. She is giving a speech in Strasbourg where she will argue that the way the European convention on human rights – the international human rights law which is embedded in UK statute in the Human Rights Act and which has angered ministers of all parties because of the way it restricts the deportation of refused asylum seekers – must evolve. According to a preview by Sam Blewett for Politico, she will say:
If a foreign national commits a serious crime, they should expect to be removed from the country …
The European convention on human rights is one of the great achievements of postwar politics. It has endured because it has evolved. Now, it must do so again.
Getting Labour MPs to vote for benefits cut is probably easier than trying to overhaul the ECHR. Previous governments have tried, with very limited success. But Starmer’s government is pushing on this when many other European governments also want to see the ECHR “evolve”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, holds a press conference to announce plans to improve armed forces’ housing.
11am (UK time): Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, gives a speech at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on reforming the European convention of human rights.
Noon: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, takes PMQs, because Keir Starmer was away at the G7 in Canada. Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, stood in for Kemi Badenoch the last time Starmer was away, but it has not been confirmed yet that he will do so again today.
After 12.30pm: Heidi Alexander, transport secretary, makes a statement to MPs about HS2. As Kiran Stacey and Gwyn Topham report, she will say that the Conservatives wasted billions of pounds on the project through poor management, badly negotiated contracts and constant design change.
4.30pm: Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, speaks at a Rusi conference.
And at some point today Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is publishing the univeral credit and personal independent payment bill.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Angela Rayner faces Chris Philp at PMQs
Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, will be taking PMQs shortly. And she will be up against Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.
When Kemi Badenoch became Tory leader, she did not appoint a deputy (or even a “de factor deputy”, a post that has existed in Tory politics in recent years) and she said she would decide who would stand in for her at PMQs on a case by case basis. Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, got the gig the first time Starmer was away.
Maybe Badenoch has decided Burghart is no good. (Last time he bombed, but partly because he was not used to the shouting.) Or maybe she had decided that today is a day to ask about small boats. For whatever reason, she has nominated Philp.
This is from James Heale from the Spectator.
Chris Philp follows Alex Burghart in rotating for Kemi Badenoch at PMQs. One Westminster wag asks “When is it going to be Robert Jenrick’s turn?”
Shadow defence minister James Cartlidge backs Labour’s decision to spend £6bn nationalising MoD’s housing stock
The Conservatives are normally seen as the party of privatisation, but James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, has backed one of Labour’s biggest nationalisation policies – its decision to spend £6bn buying back 36,000 houses for armed forces personnel that were sold to the private sector in 1996. In fact, Cartlidge has claimed credit for the idea.
In an interview with Sky News this morning, Cartlidge said that as minister for defence procurement in the last government he developed plans for the government to buy back the housing estate. He said he was glad that Labour had been able to conclude this.
Cartlidge told Sky he was now pushing for the creation of an armed forces housing association to oversee the regeneration of the defence estate. He said he would like it to have a budget ring-fencing for housing improvements.
Cartlidge said the quality of MoD housing was ultimately a recruitment issue.
We have this profound challenge of the number of people joining the armed forces being outweighed by the outflow the people leaving. So ultimately its about retention.
And the number one issue reason cited in last month’s attitude survey for the armed forces for leaving was family life. We know the quality of housing is unfortunately poor. It’s due to the basically to the structural nature of those homes.
Cartlidge said the only effective way to improve the housing was to rebuild it, and that was why the MoD needed ownership.
But, in the interview, Cartlidge faced the question that dogs most shadow ministers giving interviews on policy now. The presenter, Wilfred Frost, asked:
To wrap up this topic, the state of housing for the armed forces is in a poor state because your government did not do enough for it?
Cartlidge said the problem was the poor state of the housing in the first place. And Frost replied:
[The housing] which is not in a good enough state because of your government?
Cartlidge said the houses were built many decades ago. The Tory government spent £400m repairing homes. But buying back the homes was a better approach, he said, and he insisted he was “delighted” that had happened.
When Frost pressed him a third time to admit the last government should have done more, Cartlidge said that the money was not available. But he claimed his personal record as a minister was good. He said:
What did I do about it? I did something that hasn’t been done for 30 years – yes, it completed under Labour – and now we would recommend to the government, when they bring forth their housing defence white paper, that we set up a housing association.
On Monday Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, had an equally torrid time when being interviewed by Frost defending the Tories’s decision not to set up a dedicated grooming gangs national inquiry when they were in office.
Green party calls for Home Office to be broken up, with responsibility for immigration handed over to new department
The Green party is calling for the Home Office to be broken up, with responsibility for immigration handed over to a new department.
Carla Denyer, the Green party’s co-leader, has published a report she commissioned saying it should be replaced by a Department for Population, Infrastructure and Immigration, and a Department for Community Security. She says:
Whether for it’s for work, for love, or to flee danger – people move, and it’s government’s job to make it work for us and our communities.
But decades of finger-pointing at migrants as a cover for government failure and neglect have broken this country’s relationship with migration – and the Home Office sits at the heart of the problem.
Rather than harnessing benefits of migration and effectively managing the challenges it throws up, the Home Office is designed to simply treat movement as a crime – resulting in families torn apart, taxpayer money wasted, and communities divided.
It’s time to get rid of the failing Home Office and replace it with a common-sense system to properly manage migration – one driven not by an imperative to drive down numbers or grab headlines but which instead is concerned with integration, infrastructure, and this country’s economic needs.
See Diane Taylor’s story at 10.54am for a timely example of why Denyer thinks the Home Office’s record on immigration cases is so poor.
UK Home Office tells parents their children should return to Brazil alone
A Brazilian mother and father have been left distraught after being told by the Home Office that their young children have no right to stay in the UK and should return to Brazil alone, Diane Taylor reports.
There has been a lot of comment and reporting (including here) on one of the pictures of Keir Starmer that emerged from the G7 summit in Canada. It even provided the Morning Star with its splash. But, in his end of summit analysis, Peter Walker argues that another, more flattering, picture may have provided a more accurate insight into what the PM achieved.
In the Politico article on ECHR reform quoted earlier, Keir Starmer gets a surprise endorsement from Jeremy Hunt, the Tory former chancellor and former foreign secretary. Hunt says Starmer would be the ideal person to get international agreement on updating the convention because of his background as a human rights lawyer. He says:
[Starmer] won’t thank me for saying it but literally no one is better placed or more respected in legal circles to do a long overdue reform. Far better to fight Reform with substance than empty rhetoric on ‘working people’.
UK inflation eases to 3.4% amid falling fuel and air fare prices
Inflation in the UK eased to 3.4% last month after rises in the cost of food and furniture were offset by a steep fall in air fares and petrol prices, Phillip Inman reports.
Council of Europe chief says ECHR should not be ‘scapegoat’ in domestic politics and he’s not calling for its reform
Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, the international body which is guardian of the European convention on human rights (and the European court of human rights, which enforces the convention), has given mixed messages this year about his willingness to back ECHR reform.
In May, after the leaders of nine European countries (not including the UK) signed a letter calling for an “open-minded conversation” about the interpretation of the convention, Berset responded by saying:
No judiciary should face political pressure. Institutions that protect fundamental rights cannot bend to political cycles. If they do, we risk eroding the very stability they were built to ensure.
That was interpreted as a firm no.
But in June, in an interview with the Times, Berset said the council should “adapt” and there should be “no taboo” when looking at the ECHR. The interview was published in the UK on day Kemi Badenoch announced the Tories were setting up a commission looking at how the UK could leave the convention.
But now Berset has clarified that he is not calling for ECHR reform. He told Politico for the Sam Blewett story published today:
I am not calling for reform of the European convention on human rights, nor do I support any effort that would weaken it.
It should never be used as a scapegoat in domestic political debates. When states face complex challenges, the answer is not to dismantle the legal guardrails they themselves helped build. The proper place for dialogue is through our institutions, not through pressure on the European court of human rights or attempts to bypass the system.
These comments suggest that Badenoch was right when she told a press conference in June that she did not think the Berset interview in the Times meant he was serious about reform.
Yesterday two Labour MPs, Jake Richards and Dan Tomlinson, published an article in the Times calling for ECHR reform. Arj Singh also has a story today in the i previewing what Shabana Mahmood will say on this topic in her speech later (see 9.19am), and he quotes the Labour MP Steve Yemm saying the UK should be at the forefront of efforts to update the convention. Yemm says:
I do think the UK should now put itself at the forefront of making the case for reform of the ECHR. Articles 3 and 8 have unintended consequence and are clearly creating barriers for example in deporting foreign criminals.
It can’t be right if a treaty that we signed 75 years ago means that we are struggling to enact policy on migration that the voters favour. The best way to safeguard the convention is to make it fit for purpose.
But Singh also quotes an unnamed minister saying that pushing for ECHR reform is risky because it could raise expectations that don’t get met, just as David Cameron did when he tried to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU before the Brexit referendum. Cameron did secure some changes, but they were widely viewed as minimal and disappointing.
Shabana Mahmood calls for ECHR reform, saying it has ‘endured because it has evolved’ and must do so again
Good morning. Keir Starmer is on his way back from the G7 in Canada, and he won’t be in the Commons for PMQs, where Angela Rayner will be taking the questions instead. With the government also publishing its bill to slash sickness and disability benefits, Starmer may feel its a good day not to be around. As Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot report, ministers are expecting a big revolt when MPs debate the legislation, probably in early July.
There will be no statement on the bill in the Commons, but we are getting one on HS2.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is also floating reform plans in another area. She is giving a speech in Strasbourg where she will argue that the way the European convention on human rights – the international human rights law which is embedded in UK statute in the Human Rights Act and which has angered ministers of all parties because of the way it restricts the deportation of refused asylum seekers – must evolve. According to a preview by Sam Blewett for Politico, she will say:
If a foreign national commits a serious crime, they should expect to be removed from the country …
The European convention on human rights is one of the great achievements of postwar politics. It has endured because it has evolved. Now, it must do so again.
Getting Labour MPs to vote for benefits cut is probably easier than trying to overhaul the ECHR. Previous governments have tried, with very limited success. But Starmer’s government is pushing on this when many other European governments also want to see the ECHR “evolve”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, holds a press conference to announce plans to improve armed forces’ housing.
11am (UK time): Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, gives a speech at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on reforming the European convention of human rights.
Noon: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, takes PMQs, because Keir Starmer was away at the G7 in Canada. Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, stood in for Kemi Badenoch the last time Starmer was away, but it has not been confirmed yet that he will do so again today.
After 12.30pm: Heidi Alexander, transport secretary, makes a statement to MPs about HS2. As Kiran Stacey and Gwyn Topham report, she will say that the Conservatives wasted billions of pounds on the project through poor management, badly negotiated contracts and constant design change.
4.30pm: Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, speaks at a Rusi conference.
And at some point today Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is publishing the univeral credit and personal independent payment bill.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
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