Key events
Helena Horton
Helena Horton has an update on Thames Water
Thames Water has blocked controversial plans to pay executives “retention payments” out of a £3bn loan, the environment secretary told the Efra committee.
Steve Reed said: “Just over the last few days we have seen a very unfortunate situation where Thames Water appeared to be attempting to circumvent that ban, calling their bonuses something different so they can continue to pay them. I am very happy indeed that Thames have now dropped those proposals. It was the wrong thing to do. They have now withdrawn their proposal to make those payments.”
The company won a court battle that allowed it to accept the loan, which comes with an expensive 9.75% interest rate and fees. The chair of Thames Water has written to the committee to clarify his comments after the Guardian revealed he wrongly told it last week that the bonuses were “insisted upon” by the creditors.
Sir Adrian Montague told the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) select committee last week that the lenders had insisted that “very substantial” bonuses of up to 50% of salary should be paid to company executives from the controversial loan in order to retain key staff.
The chair of Thames Water has now written to the committee to say he “misspoke” after the Guardian revealed his comments were not true.
After the Guardian approached Thames to ask why its chair claimed the lenders “insisted” bonuses were paid, Montague wrote to the Efra committee to clarify his comments.
“Following the session we have been approached by the Guardian who we understand intend to write a story suggesting that we misled the committee in relation to the Company’s management retention plan.
“I appreciate that in the heat of the moment I may have misspoken when I stated that the creditors insisted on the management retention plan.”
Helena Dollimore, Labour MP and member of the committee, said of Montague’s appearance: “He was trying to justify the paying of these retention payment … that the creditors of Thames Water had said it was a condition of the loan for top leaders to get retention payments. Since that evidence to our committee we’ve seen documents filed in the high court that suggest Sir Adrian misled in his wording … This is very serious behaviour from the bosses of Thames Water at our committee.”
Richard Tice, the deputy Reform UK leader, is in parliament today. He tells MPs that the government has “surrendered the fishing industry”, and that “my constituents are furious that you have surrendered on freedom of movement and on rule taking under the ECJ.”
He continues, saying, “there is good news, prime minister. Do you accept that you have also surrendered the jobs of many of your backbench MPs at the next general election to Reform?”
Keir Starmer gently replies “I will happily explain to his constituents the huge benefits of these deals, measured in jobs that will be saved, jobs that can now thrive, bills that will come down. And it is really important for our economy that we have these deals. That is in the interests of his constituents. It’s in the interests of the whole country.”
Long-term Brexit campaigner Mark Francois has just angrily accused the government of making the UK a rule-taker again from the European Union. Keir Starmer wearily replies “I’d forgotten about some of the nonsense that gets spouted.”
Francois continues to heckle the prime minister as he answers, with multiple MPs calling on the Conservative MP to shut up.
Just to confirm what Keir Starmer mentioned earlier, the MP for Clacton and Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has not attended parliament for this statement on the UK-EU trade deal.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has given his response to the UK-EU deal in this debate, suggesting that people on the frontbenches of other parties “need to calm their jets.”
He continued:
This is obviously not a surrender, just as it’s obviously no substitute for membership of the European Union. Nor indeed is it, as the prime minister has repeatedly said today, providing unprecedented access to the EU market. That is simply absurd.
He then calls for more investment in Scotland.
Emily Thornberry, chair of foreign affairs committee, made a short intervention earlier, and opened by saying “Can I begin by thanking the prime minister for what he has said about Gaza? It couldn’t be clearer the message that he’s sending to the far-right government of Netanyahu, and it should have the unanimous support of this house. It is essentially: this must stop.”
Responding to veteran Brexit campaigner Bernard Jenkin, who accused Labour of betraying the referendum result with this UK-EU trade deal, Keir Starmer said the fact that Labour was doing trade deals with India and the US show the government wasn’t rejoining the European Union.
Starmer says they have stuck to their red lines about not rejoining the EU, “no single market, no Customs Union, no freedom of movement.”
Starmer says the fact there are deals elsewhere “could be no better evidence that we not going back into the EU.”
Ed Davey: UK-EU trade deal doesn’t go far enough to fix Brexit damage
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has said his party does not think the newly announced UK-EU reset deal “goes far enough to fix our broken relationship with Europe,” but says that nevertheless the party welcomes parts of it.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Ed Davey said:
We have long been arguing for an agri-food deal to help British farmers export to Europe.
We have long argued for a youth mobility scheme to give our young people incredible new opportunities, and British businesses, especially in hospitality, a boost.
We have long argued for closer alliances on defence in the face of Putin’s imperialism and Trump’s unpredictability.
So can I welcome the progress on these issues, even it is only very limited progress on things like youth mobility, because we’ve all seen the terrible damage caused by the Conservatives Brexit deal.
Hearing the Conservative leader complain today is like listening to a back seat driver who previously crashed the car.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says he wants to associate himself with the prime minister’s remarks about “the appalling situation in Gaza” and said Keir Starmer should work with allies to “put pressure on Netanyahu”, and consider formal recognition of Palestine as a state. Palestine is recognised as a sovereign state by 147 of the 193 member states of the UN.
Liam Byrne says there had been good cross-bench cooperation at committee level working on these deals, which Keir Starmer acknowledges. He says:
I first [want to] pick up on his point about cross-party support at the select committee, because there are members of the party opposite who I think are ashamed by the response of the leader of the opposition, and know very well that these are good deals that should be supported. A number of backbench MPs are already coming out saying, actually, these deals are good and in the national interests.
Ed Davey is up next.
Keir Starmer has listed a large number of new things introduced by the trade deals, ending each item with “and she’s against it,” referring to Badenoch.
He tells MPs of the benches opposite “they’re so unserious. They’re lost. They’re lost. Lost into a descent into the abyss. They used to be a proud party of trading agreements. They’ve slid off into the abyss.”
Liam Byrne, chair of the business and trade committee, is speaking now.
Kemi Badenoch has just sparked a raucous chorus of laughter from the Labour benches by saying “Mr Speaker, in government, details matter, and so does honesty.”
Keir Starmer opened his response to her by simply saying “Oh dear.”
He continues “that was just such an unserious response. She says details matter in government. They matter in opposition as well.”
Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister deliberately did not mention “the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations who have described the deal as a surrender and a giveaway.”
She continued:
This is a prime minister who would pay to give away his family silver. Why is the prime minister selling our fishermen down the river? Is it because they don’t vote Labour.
Leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, has said Labour’s trade deals with the US, India and EU are not a “hat-trick of deals but own goals”.
Badenoch said “it is very easy to sign deals if you’re prepared to give everything away for pennies.”
She said:
The prime minister can dress it up as much as he wants, but he has failed. It is bad for bills, it is bad for jobs and it is bad for borders. This is not a deal made for Britain. This is a deal made for Labour’s PR to show them on the world stage, but it is a stitch up for our country for their short term headlines.
She accused Starmer of “selling out our sovereignty, our businesses, and the public.”
Keir Starmer has included jibes at Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Ed Davey in his statement. Touting a long list of business organisations who had made approving sounds about the deal, he said:
I wonder whether that long list of businesses coming out to support this deal will temper the reaction of the Leader of the opposition in her response. But then again, for weeks now, she has been dismissive of the benefits of any trade deal, in defiance, frankly, of her party’s history.
But it’s not just them. It’s also the member for Clapton – who’s not here – and the member for Kingston, who’ve both shown in their own ways, that their parties simply do not get that if your whole approach to our allies is about striking a pose, then you don’t get to strike a deal.
Badenoch is up now.
Keir Starmer says the new UK-EU trade deal will assist in tackling illegal migration. He told the House of Commons:
It also strengthens our borders, because, again, the previous deal left a huge gap, weakened our ability to work together to tackle illegal migration, the ultimate cross-border challenge. This partnership closes that gap, including joint work on returns, preventing channel crossings and working upstream … co-operating along the whole migration route to strengthen our hand in the fight against the vile smuggling gangs.
Keir Starmer has used his statement about recently struck trade deal to criticise the previous Conservative government for its failure to secure them. He said the trade deals were “in the national interest”.
He said “The principles we took into the negotiations are clear and simple. Does it drive down bills? Does it drive up jobs? Does it strengthen our borders? And in each case, the answer is resoundingly Yes. These deals release us from the tired arguments of the past, and as an independent sovereign nation, allow us to seize the opportunities of the future.”
He said he can see that “when it comes to this hat-trick of deals, it’s our new partnership with the EU that [the Conservatives] most want to talk about. Given their abject failure to strike a deal with India or the US, I can’t say I blame them.”
Starmer says UK is ‘horrified’ by ‘escalation from Israel’ in Gaza
Keir Starmer has said before he makes the trade statement, he wishes to speak about Gaza, saying that the government is “horrified by the escalation from Israel.”
He told the House of Commons:
I’d like to say something about the horrific situation in Gaza, where the level of suffering innocent children being bombed again is utterly intolerable. Over the weekend, we coordinated a response with our allies, as set out in my statement with President Macron and prime minister Carney last night, and I want to put on record today that we are horrified by the escalation from Israel.
We repeat our demand for a ceasefire as the only way to free the hostages. We repeat our opposition to settlements in the West Bank, and we repeat our demand to massively scale up humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
The recent announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza, a basic quantity, is totally and utterly inadequate. So we must coordinate our response, because this war has gone on for far too long. We cannot allow the people of Gaza to starve, and the foreign secretary will come to the house shortly to set out our response in detail.
Starmer has now gone on to start talking about recent UK trade deals.
