Key events
Rushanara Ali (Lab) asks about a life sciences investment.
Starmer says he is able to announce that AstraZenca is confirming an investment in the UK today.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, says this may be his final PMQs. (He is a candidate in the Holyrood elections.) It might be Starmer’s final PMQs too, he says. He says Starmer “promised change but has delivered chaos”.
Starmer says he is proud of his achievements. But what did Flynn do? He kicked out his predecessor, and then lost 39 MPs at the election.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says the UK ambassador said Israel is now the US’s strongest ally, and Starmer will soon lose his job. Having sacked one ambassador for lying, will he have to sack another for telling the truth?
Starmer says the ambassador’s words are the least of what he has had to worry about recently.
He says he was surprised the Lib Dems backed the Tory motion yesterday.
I expect frivolous accusations from the leader of the opposition. Clearly I was wrong to expect anything better from a man in a wetsuit.
Davey asks about food security.
Starmer says that is one of the issues he was talking about at Cobra yesterday. But instead of also focusing on this, Davey was wasting his time on a “baseless political stunt”.
Badenoch accuses Starmer of “pompous, tone-deaf moralising”. She claims all MPs saw Starmer “punch the speaker’s chair” after PMQs last week. She claims he is not a man i control. She says Starmer has lost all credibility. “How much longer do we all have to put up with his shambles?”
Starmer says he changed his party and won and election. He says Badenoch has changed his party too; it is now even smaller than when she became leader.
Badenoch says the PM did not say he would keep Reeves. She says Angela Rayner is on manoeuvres. And the PM is worried about the next move by the king of the north. It is like “a bad episode of Game of Thrones”.
Starmer accuses Badenoch of playing political games with the vote yesterday. Starmer was chairing a Cobra meeting, he says, dealing with the impact of the war in Iran. He says the Tories are just interested in “silly political games”
Badenoch says Labour has not got a defence investment plan. The government is borrowing to fund defence. And the chancellor is briefing out rent controls to curry favour with voters. Will the PM reshuffle the chancellor?
Starmer says interest rates have been cut. The cost of government borrowing has gone up because of the Iran war. And Badenoch wanted the UK to jump in with both feet.
Badenoch claims the government is spending more on welfare because of Starmer’s policy, and he says it cannot spend more on defence because of welfare spending.
Starmer says the Tories hollowed out defence.
Badenoch says 1.5m people are claiming universal credit since Labour took office.
(Many benefits claimants are being transferred from legacy benefits to UC, so the headline figure for increases in UC claims is misleading.)
Starmer says Labour is reforming the welfare system.
Kemi Badenoch says the end of the session is a contrast with the beginning of it. At the start Labour MPs were asking sycophantic questions. Yesterday Starmer had to beg them to save his own skin. Starmer has not grown the economy; the only thing that has grown is the welfare bill.
She asks how many people are claiming universal credit since Starmer became PM.
Starmer lists government achievements, and says he is proud of his record.
Keir Starmer starts PMQs by saying the state visit is a powerful reminder of the depth of the relationship with the US.
He says in this session of parliament Labour has delivered “the biggest upgrade in workers rights in a generation, the biggest improvement in renters rights in a generation,” and the biggest action by any government tackling child poverty.
Farage admits he had to ‘admit defeat’ on his original plan to lift two-child benefit cap because he was attacked as ‘welfarist’
In his Today interview this morning, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, also said that he had to “admit defeat” over a proposal to lift the two-child benefit cap for some types of families.
Last year Farage said Reform UK would lift the cap (now scrapped by Labour) to encourage families to have children. The Tories immediately attacked him as favouring high welfare spending, and Farage then revised the plan, saying his party would onnly lift the cap for British families with both parents working full-time. But even this left the party vulnerable to attack from the right, and in February Robert Jenrick said Reform UK would restore the two-child benefit cap in full after he was make Reform’s Treasury spokesperson.
Asked why he backed down, Farage said:
I made a mistake on this. I tried to do something pro-family. That’s obviously impossible in modern Britain.
What I said was I would like British working families where both people are in full-time work to get some tax credits if they had more kids. And, you know, for my sins, I was accused of being a welfarist. So I’ve had to admit defeat.
Asked who defeated him, Farage said “everybody” and “mass opinion”.
He also said his revised proposal was too nuanced for people to understand, and he sai that in politics it makes sense not to pick a fight on everything.