Keir Starmer suspends seven Labour MPs after rebellion over two-child benefit cap in crunch vote – live

Zarah Sultana, one of seven Labour MPs suspended for backing an SNP motion to scrap the two-child benefit cap, said she slept well after the vote.

“I slept well knowing that I took a stand against child poverty that is affecting 4.3 million people in this country and it is the right thing to do and I am glad I did it,” she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

She said she saw the email on the way home from the vote last night saying she had had the whip removed.

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, she said: “I look forward to many bills that will be coming forward in this Government including nationalising rail, the new deal for working people, but I was also very honest that we should go further, we can make a real difference to people’s lives.

“And when you’ve got anti-charity campaigners, think tanks, trade unions saying that the key driver for child poverty in this country – which is the sixth largest economy in the world – is the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, then it is a moral imperative on the Labour Party to scrap that and do everything that they can to make sure that not a single child has to live in unnecessary hardship and poverty.”

A first-of-its-kind set of guidelines for the care of transgender people before and after general surgery has recommended gender-inclusive language and consideration of whether a patient should be accommodated in a single room rather than on a ward.

The guidance, created independently of the NHS, is said to have been put together amid a “dearth of knowledge and confidence amongst anaesthetists when caring for transgender and gender-diverse patients”.

Published in Anaesthesia – the journal of the Association of Anaesthetists – it was produced by a working group of experts including those from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge, and sets out 15 recommendations.

It states there is “currently no existing guidance covering the scope and focus of this document”, and that it covers “the specific clinical care required for this cohort of patients when attending for either elective or emergency surgery or anaesthetic care”.

The recommendations include confirming and using a patient’s preferred name and pronouns, with a suggestion that digital pre-assessment questionnaires can allow the person to “privately and safely disclose both their sex at birth and gender”.

The guidelines advise that someone’s transgender identity “need only be shared with the patient’s consent and if it is deemed important for the safety of their care”, and should be given the same level of confidentiality as “any other sensitive personal information”.

Transgender and gender-diverse patients should be cared for in an environment that “respects their gender identity”, the guidelines state, adding that “in some circumstances, this may involve providing a single room”.

Sir Keir Starmer faces a Commons grilling in his first Prime Minister’s Questions amid backbench unease over a vote on the two-child benefit cap that saw him suspend seven Labour MPs.

The PM will be quizzed from the Government benches by MPs for the first time since entering Number 10 after stripping Labour rebels of the whip for backing an SNP motion to scrap the welfare measure.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, ex-business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Zarah Sultana have been suspended from the parliamentary party.

Although the rebellion was small and the motion comfortably defeated by Government, opposition to the cap within Labour is not limited to the seven who lost the whip.

The House of Commons voted 363 to 103, majority 260, to reject the amendment tabled in the name of SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn.

More than 40 Labour MPs recorded no vote, with some of those listed spotted in the chamber throughout the day, while others will have had permission to miss the vote.

The decision to remove the whip from the seven who defied the Government over the amendment is an early show of ruthlessness from the new administration, and sends a message that dissent will not be taken lightly.

Ahead of the vote, Sir Keir had said there is “no silver bullet” to end child poverty but acknowledged the “passion” of MPs who were considering opposing the continuation of the Tory measure.

Children are being failed in “dual crises of poverty and mental health”, according to charities which have ramped up calls for the Government to scrap the two-child benefit limit.

The groups said money and mental health are “inextricably linked” and that those children growing up in families facing financial hardship face a knock-on impact throughout their lives.

The report from the Centre for Mental Health, Save the Children UK and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition recommended the new Labour Government should scrap both the two-child limit and the benefit cap “to ensure all children receive their benefit entitlements”.

The cap, introduced in 2013 under the then-Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government as a way of “restoring fairness to the welfare state”, sees the amount of benefits a household receives reduced to ensure claimants do not receive more than the cap limit.

The Government hopes to agree a pay deal with junior doctors that “the country can afford,” the Health Secretary has said as official talks began to try and bring the long-running dispute to a close.

Wes Streeting said that junior doctors made a “reasonable case” that their pay had not kept up in line with inflation, but said that their request for a 35% uplift was not affordable.

But addressing the Commons, Mr Streeting insisted that the Government was negotiating with medics from the British Medical Association (BMA) “in good faith”.

Formal negotiations between the new Government and the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee began on Tuesday with a view to end the long-running dispute over pay.

Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairmen of the Committee, refused to answer questions from reporters as they arrived at the Department for Health and Social Care on Tuesday morning.

Mr Streeting was asked about the negotiations during his first Oral Health Questions in the House of Commons.

Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins said: “In opposition, (Mr Streeting) described the 35% pay rise demand by the junior doctors committee as reasonable. What he didn’t tell the public was that this single trade union demand would cost an additional £3 billion, let alone the impact on other public-sector workers.

“So, will he ask the Chancellor to raise taxes or will she ask him to cut patient services to pay for it?”

Mr Streeting, in his reply, said: “What I said was that the doctors were making a reasonable case that their pay hadn’t kept up in line with inflation, but we were clear before the election that 35% was not a figure we could afford.

“We are negotiating with the junior doctors in good faith to agree on a settlement that we can deliver and the country can afford.”

A review of plans for 40 new hospitals could delay projects, a shadow health minister warned, as the new Health Secretary vowed not to give patients “false hope” about when they can expect more up-to-date facilities.

Wes Streeting faced questions in the Commons about the Conservatives’ £20 billion New Hospital Programme – for new and refurbished hospitals by 2030 – and told MPs he has ordered a review into the scheme’s funding and timetable.

He said: “It’s painfully clear that the previous government’s New Hospital Programme, that said they would deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030, is not deliverable in that timeframe.

“I want to see the New Hospital Programme completed but I’m not prepared to offer people false hope about how soon they will benefit from the facilities that they deserve.

“That’s why I’ve asked officials as a matter of urgency to report to me on the degree to which the programme is funded, along with a realistic timetable for delivery.”

In May 2023, the Department of Health and Social Care claimed “the Government is on track to deliver the manifesto commitment to build 40 new hospitals in England by 2030”, in line with a flagship Tory manifesto pledge made in 2019, before former prime minister Boris Johnson led his party to an 80-seat majority.

Britain’s army is not as strong as it should be because of “historic underinvestment”, the head of the military has admitted, with “deficiencies in people, equipment, stockpiles, training and technology”.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, said there was a need for “humility” to recognise the limitations and “near-term financial challenges” faced by our armed forces.

But he said Russia, the main adversary of the West, has been hugely damaged by brutal losses in Ukraine and will take a decade or more to rebuild its military strength to the level it had at the time of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and rectify the shortcomings exposed. Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta has the full story:

Councils are facing “unsustainable financial pressure” in dealing with record levels of homelessness, the public spending watchdog has said as it called for a long-term and cross-Government strategy to tackle the problem.

England remains an outlier in the UK as the only one of the four nations without a strategy or target for statutory homelessness, which the National Audit Office (NAO) noted is the case despite its recommendation for one seven years ago.

The NAO report, published on Tuesday, is its first since 2017 on the issue, which covers people considered homeless as they are in temporary accommodation provided by their local authority, rather than those rough sleeping.

The report acknowledged the rough sleeping strategy under the previous Conservative government, but said no such strategy had been formulated to tackle statutory homelessness – something each of the other UK devolved administrations has an overarching strategy or action plan for.

Funding for local authorities to meet their obligations under the 2017 Homelessness Reduction Act, extending local authorities’ statutory duties to include prevention and relief, is a major issue amid rising need, the NAO said.

The report stated: “Funding remains fragmented and generally short-term, inhibiting homelessness prevention work and limiting investment in good-quality temporary accommodation or other forms of housing.

“Until these factors are addressed across government, DLUHC (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) will not be able to demonstrate that it is delivering optimal value for money from its efforts to tackle homelessness.”

An increasing number of NHS bodies have been unable to break even, according to a new report on the financial management and sustainability of the health service.

NHS England is facing challenges on an “unprecedented” scale, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned, with its sustainability hinging on how well it manages future demand.

Concerns have also been raised that the health service “may be working at the limits of a system which might break before it is again able to provide patients with care that meets standards for timeliness and accessibility”.

The report is the ninth of its kind by the NAO, and the first to be published since February 2020. Experts said its findings depict “a picture of systemic failures and inefficient decision-making”. It warned that NHS England’s financial position is “worsening” due to a “combination of long-standing and recent issues, including failure to invest in the estate, inflationary pressures, and the cost of post-pandemic recovery”.

According to the NAO, NHS England is expected to spend £153 billion in 2023/24. It said “many NHS bodies failed to break even” during the period and in the previous 12 months, although the NHS calculates it underspent against its overall budget by about £30 million last year after additional cash from Government and reallocation of central funding.

The combined deficit of the 42 integrated care systems (ICSs) – which were introduced in 2022 to bring together the NHS, councils and voluntary sector to create services based on local needs – was £1.4 billion, the NAO said.

This deficit was initially planned to be £720 million for the year.