Angela Rayner takes PMQs
With Keir Starmer flying to Samoa for the Commonwealth summit, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, is taking PMQs.
Key events
Rayner says the humanitarian situation in Northern Gaza is âdireâ. She says much more aid needs to get in. The government has concluded that arms sent to Israel could contravene humanitarian obligations in Gaza, she says.
Rayner defends right of British activists to campaign in US elections – but declines invitation to praise those wanting to defeat Trump
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, asks if Rayner will join him in applauding âthe brave Labour staff members’â who have gone to the US to campaign against Donald Trump.
Rayner says there are people from all parties who cross the Atlantic to campaign in their own time, with their own money.
Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, asks if the government will consider her partyâs idea for a winter taskforce for the NHS to ensure that more care places are available for people leaving hospital.
Rayner says the government does want to improve care, and get the NHS back on its feet.
Cooper says the Lib Dems will work with the government as a âconstructive oppositionâ. But 18,000 small care providers would be affected if employersâ national insurance goes up.
Rayner says she will not speculate on the budget. But it will a budget to rebuild Britain, she says.
Rachael Maskell (Lab) asks if the government will set up a commission to consider how everyone who needs it can get proper end-of-life palliative care.
Rayner says, from her time as a carer, she knows how important this is. She says she will arrange a meeting with a minister for Maskell about this.
Dowden jokes about the Commonwealth being an organisation of countries united by a common culture, like him and Rayner.
Rayner says, while the Tories are fighting among themselves, Labour is rebuilding Britain.
Dowden says business owners will be worried by Raynerâs answers.
He says he wants to use his final questions to Rayner to ask her to join him in praising the king and the work he has done with the Commonwealth.
Rayner says she is happy to join him in praising that.
Dowden asks if Rayner agrees that working people will pay if employersâ national insurance goes up. Those are her words, he says.
Rayner again says working people were let down by the Tories.
Dowden claims Rayner is saying small business owners arenât working people. But they will be affected if the government puts up employersâ national insurance, he says.
Rayner says the Tory approach to business was âf⦠businessâ.
Dowden asks if the five million people who own small businesses are working people.
Rayner says people like that were let down when the Tories crashed the economy.
Oliver Dowden, the shadow deputy PM, asks Rayner how she defines working people.
Rayner starts by saying this is their first PMQs together since Dowden pushed for an early election. If the Tories do not give him a peerage, she will, she says.
She says working people are people let down by the Tories.
Angela Rayner starts by saying Keir Starmer will be discussing shared economic opportunities at the Commonwealth summit.
She says the UK has today signed a defence agreement with Germany.
And she expresses her support for Chris Hoy, the Olympic cyclist who has disclosed his terminal cancer, and expresses sympathy for the victims of the train crash in Wales.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Angela Rayner takes PMQs
With Keir Starmer flying to Samoa for the Commonwealth summit, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, is taking PMQs.
Labour donor Lord Alli apologises to Lords over four ‘minor’ breaches of rules about registering interests
Lord Alli, the Labour donor, has been ordered to write a letter of apology after a Lords committeed found he had committed four âminorâ breaches of the rules relating to registering interests.
Three of them related to interests that Alli believed he did not need to register for technical reasons, and the fourth was in interest that was registered late.
In a report, the Lords commissioner for standards, Martin Jelley, says:
I consider these to be minor breaches for which remedial action is appropriate â¦
While I consider each individual breach of the code to be minor, I have found there to be four breaches in total, and have therefore recommended that Lord Alli write a letter of apology to the chair of the conduct committee, Baroness Manningham-Buller.
Alliâs apology is included as an appendix in the report. In it he says:
I am writing to you today to offer my apology for my breach of conduct by not registering my interests correctly. I will endeavour to keep to the Code of Conduct at all times to avoid such circumstances again.
Alli is the donor who contributed clothing, accommodation and glasses to Keir Starmer before the general election, which became embarrassing when reports about the extent of what Starmer was getting were published over the summer, at the same time as the government was cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners.