Reeves says tackling child poverty ‘in Labour’s DNA’ as row over its two-child benefit cap policy continues – UK politics live | Politics

Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and the Brexit party, is encouraging people to read the full set of documents about him he obtained from Coutts using a subject access request. (See 10.22am.) They have been published by MailOnline.

Farage told PA Media:

It is a document that is full of every negative thing that has ever been said about me, it is prejudicial in a way that only the metropolitan elite can do.

He also claimed that, if banks were allowed to reject customers because of their views, the UK was heading for Chinese-style authoritarianism. He said:

I think that the march of woke corporatism needs to be checked and if it is not then we will finish up with a Chinese-style social credit system.

Only those with acceptable views will be able to participate fully in society. I am effectively de-banked. How do I pay my gas bill? What have I done wrong? I haven’t broken the law. I happen to have an opinion on issues that is more popular outside the M25 than it is in inner London postcodes.

Susan Hall has been chosen as the Conservative candidate for next year’s London mayoral election, after a turbulent selection process in which a series of early favourites were excluded or stepped down, Peter Walker reports.

My colleague Pippa Crerar says Sadiq Khan, the incumbent Labour mayor who will be fighting for an unprecedented third term next year, will be thrilled. Khan’s team view Hall as a “hard-right” figure out of touch with London’s values, she says.

A few weeks ago Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and the Brexit party, claimed that his bank account was being closed because of his political views. At first he did not name the bank involved, but as the controversy escalated, with anti-bank stories appearing prominently in the pro-Brexit papers, the elite bank Coutts let it be known that it was closing Farage’s account. The BBC and other news organisations reported that Farage was being told to take his custom elsewhere, not because of his political views, but because there was not enough money in his account.

Now Farage has got hold of a document from the bank that suggests that this account was, at the very best, misleading. After making a subject access request, Farage obtained 40 pages of material held by the bank about him, including minutes from a meeting of Coutts’ wealth reputational risk committee. A full account has been published in the Daily Telegraph.

According to the Telegraph, the minutes of a meeting of the wealth reputation risk committee held on 17 November 2022 say:

The committee did not think continuing to bank NF [Nigel Farage] was compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation.

This was not a political decision but one centred around inclusivity and purpose.

There are more details in our version of the story here.

The Telegraph also says the committee was told that Farage’s account was “sufficient to retain on a commercial basis” – although the bundle of documents released to Farage also included an email sent in March this year saying his account had been “below commercial criteria for some time”.

This morning, responding to the new revelations, Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, said that Coutts’ treatment of Farage had been “disgraceful”.

In an interview with Sky News, he said:

I think it is absolutely disgraceful.

I don’t have to agree with everything Nigel Farage says to recognise that free speech is a very important part of our domestic life.

What has happened with some of these banks through this regime, which is known as the PEP [politically exposed persons] regime, or politically exposed people, is really actually scandalous.

People shouldn’t have their bank accounts closed because of their political or any other view. And banks shouldn’t be refusing to open accounts on that basis as well.

Yet there is a very long-running problem within this country where banks are misapplying the guidance and rules. And not just closing accounts, but refusing to open them in the first place, and that should not be the case.

Good morning. Yesterday Keir Starmer delivered an uncompromising message, at shadow cabinet and at the Tony Blair Institute conference, to critics in his party unhappy about his declaration that the two-child benefit cap will have to stay. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, was on the Today programme this morning and, while she did not contradict her leader, she presented Labour’s stance in a very different manner.

Tackling child poverty would be a priority, she said. She told the programme:

Tackling child poverty is in Labour’s DNA. When we were last in government, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, hundreds of thousands of children and pensioners were lifted out of poverty. Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson set out our opportunity mission just a couple of weeks ago. Child poverty was at the heart of that.

Reeves made the point in an interview with Nick Robinson during which she also said Labour would have “the most dire economic inheritance of any incoming government”. The party could not promise to do things, like lifting the two-child benefit cap, without having the money to pay for them, Reeves said.

When Robinson put it to her that a Labour colleague had said there were six other policies, like axing the two-child cap, that the party would like to implement, but could not afford to, Reeves replied:

The truth is there’s more than six things that an incoming Labour government won’t be able to do. We’re going to have the most dire economic inheritance of any incoming government. The level of debt in the UK economy is the same size as everything we produce in the economy on an annual basis. Our interest rates and inflation are a staggering high levels and our economy is barely growing. It’s barely grown these last 13 years …

It is our duty to get control of the public finances and ensure we’ve got a stable economy. It’s not a ‘nice to have’, it is the rock of stability upon which all other policies have to be built. There will be nothing in a Labour manifesto there’s not fully costed and fully funded.

But Reeves also said this did not mean Labour was not committed to tackling child poverty. That’s when she used the “in Labour’s DNA quote”.

Robinson then suggested that Starmer is only saying now he will keep the two-child cap because he wants to sound tough. Do you really think that, when you are in office, you will not be able to get rid of that? Reeves replied:

Tackling child poverty is in Labour’s DNA. When we were last in government, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, hundreds of thousands of children and pensioners were lifted out of poverty. Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson set out our opportunity mission just a couple of weeks ago. Child poverty was at the heart of that.

That sounded like a very strong hint that, eventually, under Labour, the two-child benefit cap would go.

Reeves was giving an interview after the publication of today’s inflation figures. As Richard Partington reports, the headline rate fell further than expected in June, to 7.9%.

Graeme Wearden has more on this on his business liveblog.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Richard Moore, head of MI6, does a live Q&A with Anne McElvoy from Politico.

10am: The Conservative party will announce who has been chosen as the party’s candidate for London mayor next year. The two candidates are Susan Hall and Moz Hossain.

10am: Sarah Dines, the safeguarding minister, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about human trafficking.

10am: Counsel for core participants make closing statements on the final day of hearings at the Covid inquiry for module one, dealing with the UK’s preparedness.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer in the final PMQs before the summer recess.

1pm: Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, gives a speech on supporting young people.

3.40pm: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, takes part in a “fireside chat” at the Aspen security forum in the US.

5pm: Sunak addresses Tory MPs at the 1922 Committee.

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