The Green party has said that, if Keir Starmer wants to achieve his net zero targets, he will need to do more to get people to cut their energy use. Responding to Starmer’s announcement about a new emissions reduction target for 2035, the Green party MP Ellie Chowns said:

The announcement of an 81% cut in emissions by 2035 is welcome – we need to remove fossil fuels from our economy as rapidly as possible.

However, the transition to clean energy needs to be matched by moves on energy reduction. We need a mass home insulation programme and large-scale investment in public transport and active travel. Instead, we have seen Labour downgrade the retrofitting of homes, fail to make solar panels on new builds mandatory, hike bus fares by 50% and offer only loose change for walking and cycling.

Keir Starmer says he will not tell people how to live their lives [see 11.30am and 11.58am], but he can put in place policies to support us to make changes that reduce emissions, cut bills and improve our health and wellbeing. This must involve every government department being laser focused on achieving our climate targets.

The Institute for Government thinktank has published a report today on what the budget will mean for public services. It welcomes the extra funding they are getting, but it says that more will have to be done at the spending review if people are going to notice a significant improvement in service delivery by the time of the next election.

Here is an extract.

Given the poor state of many services, growing demand and the cost of meeting higher wage bills (including hikes to national insurance contributions and the national living wage), this budget was never going to return public services to full health. But the largely deliverable spending plans it set out should start to address the most serious wounds – for example, with the extra money for prisons and schools’ special educational needs funding.

The government has also made a start on its long-term objectives with a meaningful boost to capital budgets – another area of weakness long identified by the Institute for Government – while other measures will provide some breathing room for ministers to think more radically in the spending review next spring.

There is a lot of potential in the government’s plan to take a mission-led approach to that spending review and in its nascent reform agenda of creating more local and preventative services. While the budget could have done more to make a start on these changes, it is reasonable to save the bulk of this work till the spring. But the pressure to get these reforms right is high: on current plans, spending is due to grow much more slowly beyond 2025/26 and in fact implies substantial cuts to unprotected areas such as local government and criminal justice.

Summing up the report’s verdict, Nick Davies, programme director at the IfG, said:

The outgoing Conservative government left public services in an appalling state and returning them a decent standard will take at least this parliament. The budget should stabilise most services in the short-term and made the first tentative steps on the long road to recovery. Much more will be needed in the spending review from Labour’s reform plans if they are to deliver meaningful improvements by the next election.

Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, is now described as favourite to be the next UK amassador to Washington. He is also down to the final five in the election to be next chancellor of Oxford University.

The two cities are 3,600 miles away from each other, but Mandelson told the Times’s How to Win an Election podcast that he did not think he would have a problem combining both jobs at the same time. He explained:

If by some chance these two things were to happen, they are not, you know, incompatible with each other. And the university has made that clear to me. They’re not incompatible.

Look, if I was in the United States, I would be promoting Oxford as a great, iconic premier university that is revered in the US. And if I was in Oxford as its ceremonial figurehead, I would be helping to bring in the best of American philanthropy. So they’re not incompatible. And I think anyone who thinks for one moment will realise that.

There are few people in British public life who have been as accomplished as Mandelson at accumulating titles and so it is quite possible he will end up with both jobs. William Hague once mocked this trait in a speech when Mandelson was in government. He said:

[Mandelson’s] title now adds up to, “The right honourable the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, First Secretary of State, Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills”. It would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and find that he had become an archbishop.

Hague may have been ahead of his time. There is now a vacancy for one of those too …

Ellie Reeves, the Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that amendments tabled to the House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill suggest there is no principled objection in the Commons to the government’s plan to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords.

The last Labour government removed most hereditary peers from the Lords, but 92 were allowed to stay as a compromise. Under a peculiar rule, the legislation said that when any of them died, there would be byelctions to replace them, with only peers voting and only hereditary peers able to stand as candidates.

The new bill will abolish this system, and remove the right of the remaining hereditaries (currently 88 in number) to be in the Lords because of their hereditary peerage. Some of them may be offered life peerages.

Opening today’s debate, which will deal with its committee and remaining stages in the Commons, Reeves said:

This bill is a matter of principle. In the 21st century it cannot be right for there to be places in our legislature reserved for those born into certain families.

Having now seen all of the amendments tabled from parties from across the house, it is clear there is no principled objection to the aim of this bill, which is to remove the right of people to sit and make laws in our legislature by virtue of an accident of birth.

Alex Burghart, Reeves’ Tory shadow, said the bill was “an attempt to gerrymander the membership of the House of Lords undercover of a reform”.

Pete Wishart, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, said the bill did not go far enough. He said he hoped there would be a vote on an SNP amendment banning anyone who has donated more than £11,180 to a political party (the threshold at which a donation must be declared) from getting a peerage. He said:

114 years since the Labour party first promised to abolish the House of Lords and the best they can do is this quite frankly embarrassing bill. Unlike the Westminster parties, our position in the SNP is unequivocal – get rid of the House of Lords now.
At the very least Labour MPs must now back my amendment to end peerages being dished out to party donors – this murky practice should have ended with the Cash-for-Honours scandal. The only possible reason Labour MPs could have for not backing this amendment is that they want to keep stuffing the House of Lords with their millionaire donors.

Other SNP amendments, include one saying the Lords should be abolished and another saying peers should have to pay income tax on the daily allowance they receive, were not allowed because they were outside the scope of the bill.

MPs will vote on amdendments to the bill later this afternoon or early this evening.

National Citizen Service (NCS), a flagship volunteering idea promoted by David Cameron when he became prime minister, is finally being scrapped, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has told MPs.

In a statement to parliament, Nandy confirmed the move as part of announcement about developing plans for a new national youth strategy.

Cameron originally proposed national citizen service when he was opposition leader as a modern version of national service – compulsory military service for young people, phased out in the UK in the early 1960s but still a popular concept with rightwing Tories.

Cameron’s version involved teenagers volunteering. Originally he suggested that all young people might take part, in an initiative that was part of his “Big Society” vision and that he hoped would break down class divisions. But when his government did launch the scheme after 2010 it was voluntary.

The government eventually passed legislation making the scheme permanent. But by then Cameron was out of office, and subsequently the scheme had its budget slashed. Nandy told the Commons today that from March next year NCS will be wound down for good.

She told MPs:

In 2011 when the National Citizen Service was established, Facebook and X had only 700 million users. Now they have over three billion. And TikTok had not even been dreamt of.

In 2011 an estimated one in eight 10 to 15 year olds had a probable mental health problem. Now that’s one in five. The world has changed and we need a youth strategy that reflects that.

Nandy also told MPs that the government would be developing a new national youth strategy, and that this would be backed by £85m from government, and a further £100m from the dormant assets scheme.

In a news release, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport says:

The strategy will prioritise delivering better coordinated youth services and policy at a local, regional and national level. It will make sure decision-making moves away from a one-size-fits all approach, handing power back to young people and their communities, and rebuilding a thriving and sustainable sector. This will help deliver on the government’s missions, spreading opportunities, making our streets safer and taking pressure off health services.

To kickstart the process, the government is inviting young people to take part in a series of face-to-face engagements to ensure their perspectives and aspirations are at the heart of decision making. They will then be asked to share their views as part of a ‘Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation’ conversation on how best to help the next generation of young people …

More than £85m will be allocated in recognition of the urgent need for more youth facilities. This will include £26m of new funding for youth clubs to buy new equipment and undertake much needed renovations via the Better Youth Spaces programme.

Keir Starmer is planning to withdraw the offer to his former chief of staff Sue Gray of the post of nations and regions envoy amid concerns over what exactly the role would entail, Pippa Crerar reports.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, told the BBC this morning that he thought “the economics” would push Donald Trump in the direction of renewable energy.

Trump’s re-election has been widely seen as a disaster for global efforts to deal with the climate crisis because Trump has described climate change as a “hoax” and he is an unashamed support of more drilling for oil and gas

Asked about how the government would deal with this given its ambitious climate goals, Miliband replied:

It’s our job to work with the duly-elected US president. He has his own views.

I think what’s interesting about this – and you will see what decisions the new administration makes – is that the economics now point in the direction of clean energy.

If you think about lots of the decisions that companies and countries are making, they recognise this is the single biggest job creator of our era, and so people want to be ahead in that race.

So, we will seek to find common ground with Donald Trump, he will make his own decisions about what he wants to do. I obviously want him to stay in the Paris Climate Agreement, but that’s his decision.

In the interview, Miliband was also asked about a post he put on Twitter in 2016 about Trump saying “the idea that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief.”

Miliband replied:

Look, I’ve said things in the past. My job now as a government minister is to work with the new US administration.

I genuinely don’t think that Donald Trump is reading my tweets, I don’t have such a high opinion of myself.

Ministers are to partially take over the running of Tower Hamlets council for at least three years after inspectors found the East London local authority had a secretive and “toxic” culture based around its controversial mayor, Lutfur Rahman.

In a written statement, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it would propose sending “ministerial envoys” to work with the council, and would instruct it to appoint at least two opposition councillors to its advisory board.

Rahman was originally the Labour leader of the council, and then its directly-elected mayor. He was re-elected as an independent but removed from office in 2015 after a specialist court concluded that he was guilty of vote-rigging, buying votes and religious intimidation. He returned in 2022 under the banner of his Aspire party, after a five-year ban from office had lapsed.

After new concerns about the running of the council, inspectors were sent in by the previous government. Today’s statement said they found a series of concerns, including a lack of trust between political parties, and a subsequent churn of top officials, with concerns that many had left “as a result of ‘speaking truth to power”.

They also found limited scrutiny, an internal culture described as “suspicious and defensive” and “toxic”, with key decisions taken by a small group of people around Rahman.

While the council had made some changes, the statement said, the leadership showed a tendency to reject criticism, adding: “On some issues, the inspectors are sceptical of the council’s capability to self-improve.”

Jim McMahon, the local government minister, said he was satisfied the problems were sufficiently serious that he was justified under the Local Government Act to impose a “statutory support pack” for at least three years, with the envoys regularly reporting back.

In its own statement, the council welcomed the plan, saying it was “committed to working with the government on our continuous journey of improvement”.

Q: What is your message for Donald Trump about whether he should stick to the Paris climate agreement?

Starmer ignored the Trump part of the question, but said he wanted to show UK leadership on climate issues at the Cop conference.

He went on:

I see this not just as a global challenge, but a global opportunity.

If you look at where global investors are investing, they are investing in renewables, and everybody knows there’s a transition, an energy transition.

These things happen quite rarely, once in a generation usually, perhaps a little bit longer than that, where there’s a global transition on energy.

And the lesson from history is to go into that transition with a clear plan for a just outcome, but also to take advantage of being a first mover in that. And that’s what I want us to be.

There’s a race on for the next generation of jobs. They’re good, well paid jobs. Other countries are in that race. I want to be in it, and I want to win it for the UK, because that will be measured in jobs, well paid, good, secure jobs in the UK for many years to come.

Q: [From the Times] Is it really realistic to think you can hit your new carbon target without any change to how people live their everyday lives?

Starmer said this was realistic. He replied:

Yes, of course it is. And the target is my target, and the plan is my plan. I’m not borrowing from somebody else’s plan.

I don’t think that as we tackle this really important issue, the way to do it is to tell people how to run their lives and instruct them how to behave. I’m not going to do that.

I made a commitment before the election and shortly after the election that we’d be a government that trod lightly on people’s lives and I’m not going to now go around telling people how to live their lives.

I do think that the single most important milestone in hitting the target we’ve set out today is clean power 2030 which I know is tough … I’m absolutely sure we can do it.

Q: [From Christopher Hope at GB News] In relation to the controversy about the plan to subject farms to inheritance tax, John McTernan, a former adviser to Tony Blair, has said that farming is an industry the UK does not need and that the government should treat them as Margaret Thatcher treater the miners. Do you agree?

Starmer said he totally disagreed.

I totally disagree. I’m absolutely committed to supporting our farmers. I said that before the election, and I say it after the election. That is why, in our budget last week, I was very pleased that we’re investing £5bn of our budget over the next two years into farming … I think it’s essential that [farmers] not only prosper, but prosper well into the future. So I totally disagree with those comments.

Q: Do you think Justin Welby should resign? And do you think people should face consequences if they do not report possible criminality to the police?

Starmer says this is a matter for the church, but he says these are “horrific” allegations. His thoughts are with the victims, he says. For a second time, he says the allegations are horrific.

I’m not going to shy away from the fact that saying these are horrific allegations and that my thoughts are with the victims in relation to it.

He does not express any support for Welby.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

Let me be clear: of what I know of the allegations, they are clearly horrific in relation to this particular case, both in their scale and their content.

My thoughts, as they are in all of these issues, are with the victims here who have obviously been failed very, very badly.

It’s a matter, in the end, for the church, but I’m not going to shy away from the fact of saying that these are horrific allegations and that my thoughts are with the victims in relation to it.

Q: How will you vote on assisted dying?

Starmer says he will not be putting pressure on Labour MPs. He says he wants to study the detail of the bill, but safeguards are important to him.

When I was chief prosecutor, I was involved in drawing up guidelines. We had a massive consultation exercise, and I saw first-hand the depth of the strength of the arguments on both sides. That is why this will be a free vote.

And it will be a free vote where every MP can decide for themselves what position they want to take on the bill, and I will not be putting pressure on any MP to vote one way or the other.

I personally will study the details of the bill, which has now been published today, because safeguards have always been extremely important to me and were an essential part of the guidance that I myself drew up when I was chief prosecutor.

Starmer is now taking questions.

Q: [From Alex Forsyth at the BBC] How will you achieve this? What will it mean for people?

Starmer says:

We’ve set out the target, which is an important, ambitious target.

What we’re not going to do is start telling people how to live their lives. We’re not going to start dictating to people what they do.

Keir Starmer is holding a press conference at the Cop29 conference in Baku.

He says there can be no national security, no economic security, and no global security, without climate security.

He says the government has made a rapid start on measures to achieve its goal of decarbonising electricity supply by 2030.

The race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, he says. And he says he wants the UK to be “ahead of the game”.

Prinsley intervenes with a final point. He says he is telling MPs that abstaining is not a neutral act. People should came and vote, he says.

Leadbeater agrees. She says abstaining would imply the status quo is OK.

If you abstain, you are saying that the status quo is OK, and hopefully this moment has proved that it’s not OK.

And that’s the end of the press conference.

Hill says the bill is very clear that this bill would only apply to the terminally ill. A judge would not be able to apply the provisions to anyone else.

Falconer says a lawyer could argue that this law is discriminatory, on the grounds that it discriminates between the terminally ill and other people.

But a legal case like this would have “no prospect of success”, because the courts in Europe have said repeatedly that assisted dying is not a right provided by the European court of human rights. He says the courts have always treated this as a matter for national parliaments.

So any legal challenge on ECHR grounds would be “doomed”, he says.

UPDATE: This article by the lawyers Anurag Deb and Lewis Graham, on the UK Human Rights Blog, backs up what Falconer was saying at greater length.

The panel are now taking questions.

Q: How many people do you expect to use this law?

Leadbeater says most evidence from around the world suggests between 0.5% and 3% of deaths would be covered.

Initially the numbers would be in the hundreds, she says.

Falconer says different numbers apply in different countries. But the numbers would grow, he says.

Leadbeater refers to the figures quoted early showing that, in Western Australia, less than half of the people who registered did not use the right. (See 10.23am.) But having that permission gave them reassurance, she says.

Q: Would the court hearings be in public?

Hill says the bill shows that there would have to be a “substantive consideration”. That means the legal process would not just be a tick box exercise.

He says how the hearings operate is something that would be decided at a later point. But the bill does not say they have to take place in private, he says.

Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions, is speaking now. He says the law has not changed since the Suicide Act of 1961.

At present there is a “two-gear system”. People with money can go to Dignitas. But if a relative even just buys them a ticket, they are committing a criminal offence.

He says judges have not been able to change the law; there are limits on what they can do. And the CPS cannot properly address this either, he says, because it cannot say for certain that it won’t prosecute some cases.

Under the current system, all the scrutiny happens after someone has died.

He says it is time for parliament to look at this again, and pass a better law.

After a death does happen, a grieving relative is left in limbo for 15, 15, 18 months, not knowing if they will be prosecuted for booking that ticket to Dignitas, or leaving the pills by the bedside.

That shows the law at the moment “provides no safeguards … and leads the vulnerable in pitiable situation”.

Hill says the Leadbeater bill “has safeguards all over it”.

Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, is speaking now. He says the law is “completely broken”. The law says people can be jailed for 14 years for helping people to die, but the CPS will not prosecute people motivated by compassion.

He says Leadbeater has described the bill as having “the best and most robust safeguards in the world” for a law like this, and she is right.

The Kim Leadbeater briefing is taking place in an MP’s room in the Commons. There are about a dozen or more journalists here, and almost as many people due to speak. Half the journos have ended up sitting on the floor. We are just starting now.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has submitted an application to stand for the party at the next Scottish parliament election but, if elected, also plans to remain an MP, PA Media reports.

Writing in the Press and Journal newspaper, Flynn said he hopes to be joined by current and former colleagues at Westminster in aiming to become an MSP at the 2026 election. He said that, if elected, he plans to remain the MP for Aberdeen South until the next general election but would not take two salaries.

He wrote:

I’m chucking my bonnet in the ring. I will be seeking my party’s nomination to be their candidate for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine at the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.

Why? Well, it’s simple really. I don’t want to sit out the upcoming battles that our city, shire and country face in Holyrood …

In my mind, it is clear that we are at a crucial junction in our nation’s story.

As John Swinney rebuilds the SNP and refocuses his government, I feel that I can contribute towards the next chapter and help build the case for independence.

And, in doing so, I’ll aim to be as unashamed as always in putting Aberdeen and Scotland first.

Flynn has been tipped as a future SNP leader, but in practice to run for that post he would need to be sitting as an MSP, not an MP.

The UK’s jobs market has shown further signs of cooling after a rise in unemployment in September while pay growth slowed, Richard Partington reports.

Good morning. Parliament passes important laws (as well as some rather tedious ones), but normally the process is predictable because the government is in charge and most of what it does foreshadowed in a manifesto. Once a minister says ‘X will become law’, usually it does.

But assisted dying is different because the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater is trying to change the bill through the private member’s bill process, MPs will have a free vote and no one really has much of a clue as to what will happen. The main uncertainty is whether or not MPs will vote to give the bill a second reading when it is debated, on Friday 29 November. But even if it passes at second reading, given the jeopardy inherent in the private member’s bill process, it could still be touch and go whether it becomes law.

Leadbeater published her bill last night, and she is holding a briefing about it this morning. Here is our overnight story by Jessica Elgot, Harriet Sherwood and Kiran Stacey.

Even though Labour MPs will have a free vote, the views of ministers, and the prime minister, will still be influential. Keir Starmer voted in favour of assisted dying when the Commons last debated a bill (in 2015 – it was defeated by 33o votes to 118) and, when asked about this issue before the election, he always implied that, provided the safeguards were adequate, he would vote in favour again.

When he was director of public prosecutions in 2010, with parliament refusing to change the law and the CPS under pressure to prosecute people who had clearly helped terminally ill relatives to die out of kindness, not malice, Starmer issued new guidance on what might have to happen for the CPS to decide prosecution was not in the public interest. This did not change the law, but it was a bold move by a DPP clearly frustrated at the way the law was operating.

Now the bill is out, and Starmer can exame the safeguards, which are not trivial. But he still has not said definitely that he will vote for the bill. Speaking to reporters travelling with him at the Cop29 summit, he said Labour MPs would have to make up their own minds. He said:

Look, it’s going to be a free vote and I mean that. It will be for every MP to decide for themselves how they want to vote.

I’m not going to be putting any pressure whatsoever on Labour MPs. They will make their own mind up, as I will be.

Obviously a lot will depend on the detail and we need to get the balance right but I’ve always argued there will need to be proper safeguards in place.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Kim Leadbeater holds a press briefing about her assisted dying bill. Charlie Falconer, the former lord chancellor who has introduced similar legislation in the the Lords, and Sir Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions and another supporter of the bill, are also attending.

11am (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to hold a press conference in Baku in Azerbaijan, where he is attending the Cop29 summit. Later he is due to give a speech confirming the government’s new target to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035.

After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill.

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