The UK’s largest teaching union has called Reform UK “far-right and racist”, and its leader has dismissed Nigel Farage as “a poundshop Donald Trump,” as the union pledged funds to oppose the party’s candidates in elections.

Delegates to the National Education Union’s annual conference backed a motion stating that “far-right and racist organisations, including Reform, seek to build on the despair, poverty and alienation in our society by scapegoating refugees, asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and others who do not fit their beliefs”.

The motion also committed the NEU to use its political fund for campaigns against Reform election candidates and to support the union’s branches in local activity.

Speakers in favour of the motion argued that some Reform UK candidates and activists “have been former members of fascist organisations or espoused their views” as justification.

Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, told journalists: “I’m sure Reform claim that they are not a racist organisation. However, they seem to be attracting an awful lot of former BNP activists, which would make me question that.

“But fundamentally I have great concerns about what a Reform government would do to education.”

Ed Davey has called on China to release the tapes of the interrogation of a Liberal Democrat MP who was denied entry to Hong Kong to visit her family.

The party leader also urged foreign secretary David Lammy to summon the country’s ambassador to Britain to demand an explanation for Wera Hobhouse’s deportation, saying the UK should not be “kowtowing” to Beijing.

Hobhouse, the MP for Bath who is a member of the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) which has been critical of Beijing’s human rights record, has said she believes the action was taken to silence her.

She had flown to Hong Kong to see her son and newborn grandson but was held at the airport, questioned and sent back to the UK.

Asked whether he agreed that she had been detained to “shut her up”, Davey told the PA news agency: “I think it’s very likely the case.

“Liberal Democrats have stood up for the people of Hong Kong against oppression from Beijing, stood up for human rights, and I don’t think the Chinese government likes that.

“And this may be a part of retaliation, even though Wera was only on a family visit, but I think that shows you that they behaved in a shocking way – they need to back down.”

He added: “I very much hope the British Government, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, will call in the Chinese ambassador and demand an explanation. We shouldn’t be kowtow(ing), I’m afraid, to Beijing.”

Keir Starmer’s Labour party faces a very difficult electoral test in the bellwether Scottish parliament seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in June, after Reform UK confirmed Nigel Farage will make a rare campaigning visit to Scotland.

It emerged today a byelection will be held there on 5 June after the unexpected death last month of its widely respected MSP, Christina McKelvie, who had held the seat for the Scottish National party for 14 years.

McKelvie, who had been fighting secondary breast cancer, had already announced she would stand down before the Holyrood elections next year.

In normal circumstances this contest would be a straight head to head between the SNP and Scottish Labour, which had hoped to finally regain power at Holyrood after nearly 20 years in opposition.

Labour trounced the SNP in a byelection for the adjacent Westminster seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West in late 2023, but its popularity has plummeted since the general election.

Although it has primarily cut into Scottish Conservative support in Scotland, Reform UK is also making inroads into Labour’s vote, adding to its difficulties. This byelection could become a classic protest vote against Starmer’s government: Scottish Labour’s support has slumped in parallel with the fall in Labour’s UK-wide popularity.

The SNP, which has seen its support flatline under current leader John Swinney, will focus heavily on Labour’s decision not to compensate the Waspi pensioners; its continuing two child benefits cap and the cuts to winter fuel payments.

A Reform UK spokesperson told the Herald it had already started canvassing:

Nigel is definitely coming. The team will be up here … I’m sure if there is an opportunity for Nigel to campaign in Hamilton Nigel will be looking to do that.

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said the byelection was “a chance to vote for a new direction with Scottish Labour. People in this community and right across Scotland are being let down by this tired and out-of-touch SNP government.”

The SNP has already selected Katy Loudon, who lost to Labour in the Rutherglen byelection. She said:

Households across the constituency are benefiting from SNP decisions – including free prescriptions and social care, free university tuition or help for older people with heating bills.

In stark contrast, the UK Labour government is making life harder for ordinary people across Scotland.

Ministers have announced an overhaul of the way carer’s allowance overpayments are checked in an attempt to fix the failing system which has left thousands with life-changing debts,fines and criminal records.

In a significant policy change, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been ordered to hire extra staff to investigate 100% of the carer’s allowance earnings breach alerts it receives and swiftly notify carers if they are at risk of falling into debt.

Last year, the Guardian revealed that for the last six years, the DWP has chosen to investigate just 50% of alerts on cost grounds – even though this has led to huge numbers of carers unknowingly accruing massive overpayments.

Campaigners are optimistic the move could, over time, significantly reduce the numbers of carers falling foul of the system – but warned thousands more will be unfairly hit by overpayments as huge backlogs of alerts are processed over the next few months.

Carers in England and Wales who breach carer’s allowance earnings limits of £196 a week must return the full £83.30 a week benefit payment, a “cliff edge” penalty that means going £1 a week over the limit for one year would result in the claimant being hit with a repayment demand not of £52, but £4,330.

Ed Davey said Donald Trump was “acting like a bully” and the government should respond with “strength”.

Speaking to the PA news agency from manufacturing business LJA Miers & Co in St Neots, the Liberal Democrats leader said:

We [should] say to president Trump, if you’re not going to play fair, we’re going to keep trading with each other.

We’re going to grow elsewhere, but also come together to oppose what president Trump is doing to the world economy at the moment.

At the moment he’s picking us off, he’s dividing and ruling, he’s acting like a bully.

The only way you respond to a bully is by strength and by people coming together to oppose that.

We briefly mentioned in an earlier post that the National Education Union (NEU) indicated that it would launch a formal ballot on strike action if the government’s final pay offer for teachers “remains unacceptable”. We now have some more details from their annual conference, held in Harrogate in North Yorkshire this year.

A motion passed at the conference said the government’s recommended 2.8% pay rise for September was “inadequate and unfunded” and it would prevent the government achieving its target of recruiting 6,500 more teachers.

In its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in December, the department for education (DfE) said a 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would be “appropriate” and would “maintain the competitiveness” of teachers’ pay despite the “challenging financial backdrop” the government is facing.

The government has yet to publish the recommendations of the teachers’ pay review body, or its decision on whether to accept them. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said “any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible”.

An urgent motion, carried by conference delegates on Tuesday, called for a formal industrial action ballot to be launched if the final outcome of the STRB process “remains unacceptable” – or if the government does not announce real-terms funding increases in the spending review in June.

NEU members staged eight days of strike action in state schools in England in 2023 in a long-running pay dispute. In July 2023, the government agreed to implement the STRB’s recommendation of a 6.5% increase for teachers in England, and co-ordinated strike action by four unions was called off.

Teachers in England received a fully funded 5.5% pay rise in September last year.

Ed Davey has been campaigning in Cambridgeshire today, where he has been planting flowers, and also posing with a baby, which makes for a guaranteed inclusion in the politics live blog while I am at the helm. This is my last post for the day however, as I am now handing you over to the good care of my colleague Yohannes Lowe. I will see you again tomorrow.

Some pictures have just dropped on the news wires of coking coal being unloaded at Immingham Port in Lincolnshire, destined for British Steel at Scunthorpe. Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds was expected to visit there today.

GMB national officer for steel Charlotte Brumpton has been speaking to the media. She told reporters that she felt Chinese owners Jingye had “deliberately frustrated the situation in the end.”

She said “They cancelled orders that they’d had and they also sold some of the raw materials that they had already procured. We cannot read that any other way than deliberately trying to run down the blast furnaces in the middle of a legal redundancy consultation which is, firstly, unprecedented and, also, hugely immoral to their workforce.”

She added that the Scunthorpe workforce is “breathing a huge sigh of relief” that the raw materials have been secured to continue operations.

Speaking outside the plant she said: “It’s a huge step. When we were stood here talking last week, there was real uncertainty about whether we would be able to maintain the blast furnaces beyond May.”

My colleague Peter Walker has just had a little to and fro with Nigel Farage at the end of this event.

In his intro, Lee Anderson specifically singled out Peter to the audience, saying: “I think the Guardian’s in here somewhere. They’re probably frightened to death of him [Farage] – the Guardian’s there, look – they’re frightened to death of him.”

Peter was then given the last question of Farage’s session, and joked “I thought you’d never, never get to me”.

Farage replied “You were on the list and we never, ever … well Lee, might have a go at you in public, but I don’t … not yet anyway.”

Peter’s question boiled down to saying that during the speech Farage had promised to rescind all the revenue-raising measures of the Labour administration and raise the income tax threshold to £20,000, but had only offered measures against DEI and councils buying expensive ergonomic chairs as cost-savings. Did he have a plan, or was he not, Peter asked, running the risk of conning the public?

Farage replied:

Well, I tell you what. I tell you who’s been conned … in 15 years, we’ve gone from an accumulated national debt of nearly £1tn to one of £2.8tn. So has anybody been frank with voters about how they’re going to pay for anything?

We have deep problems. The re-industrialization of Britain, beginning with energy, with oil and gas, will, within a couple of years, produce tens of thousands of well paid, in fact, in many cases, highly paid jobs. And it depends how much time we have, but if we can get our hands on the regulators, the quangos who do so much to stifle business. Every small trader I talk to, no matter what they’re doing, their business, is being impaired by unnecessary excessive regulation.

So I’m talking about a cultural change, a cultural change and a country in which hard work becomes something that we respect, where work from home in the public sector disappears, where productivity increases, there’s some of your answers.

The PA news agency has spoken to one of the workers on strike in Birmingham. The woman, who gave her name only as Wendy, said she feared losing her home as a result of the deal being proposed.

She said she is not asking for more money but wants to keep her wages at the current level rather than see them cut.

I’m a single parent and I bought up three children. I also rent my property from Birmingham city council, so if I lose £600 potentially I could lose my home.

So the impact on it, everything’s going up, but our wages are just stopped there. They are rising everything, especially the council rents, but they want to lower your wages.

When you’re on the back of that wagon, it doesn’t matter if it’s rain, sun, hail, snow, ice – it’s a job where you can have a laugh every day with the family you have created in that yard. This is what I like doing. It’s an amazing job.

Nigel Farage has finished his speech in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham and is taking questions from journalists. He has answered the first by saying: “I’ll make one thing very, very clear, if we win the 2029 general election, we will go to war with the National Education union and all the left wing teaching unions. People should be taught objectively, fairly, and should be taught critical thinking, where kids can make their own minds up what they believe and not be indoctrinated.”

He has called for a British equivalent of Doge – the “agency” run by Elon Musk in Donald Trump’s administration – in every county council. That was in response to a question about the Daily Express on what a Reform UK-led council would look like.

Before the Q&A began he finished his speech by taking aim at what he said was “DEI and that madness” and concluded by saying:

It’s not about left or right. It’s about values, and it’s about believing that our country is going down the tubes. It’s about understanding that Britain is broken, and that without the right leadership, without the right change of mentality, and I think most of us feel, within a decade, it frankly, won’t be a place worth living in.

And we are damn determined to turn this round. We fully intend to turn this round, and we’re actually the most optimistic political party out there, because we believe we can and we will turn this around, get that pendulum to come back in a different direction, get the attitudes of people towards work, towards success, towards life, towards their community. We believe all of that can be turned around. And that is our historic mission.

Liberal Democrat Wera Hobhouse has asked authorities in China and Hong Kong to release tapes of her interrogation prior to the MP being refused entry to Hong Kong. She said that the response of authorities had smeared her, by claiming she was uncopoerative.

This attempt by the authorities to smear me and cast doubt on my account is hugely upsetting but sadly not surprising. I was polite and cooperative throughout the interview, answering every question asked of me. I even volunteered personal information I wasn’t asked for, such as showing officials a picture of my baby grandson who was waiting for me on the other side.

If the Chinese or Hong Kong SAR authorities want to assert that I did not answer questions from immigration officials, they have to provide some evidence. Surely they have a tape, or a transcript of the interview. Release the tapes and let me know what I did not answer.

I just want answers. Following these damaging attempts to smear me, I hope the foreign secretary will now summon the Chinese ambassador in person to give a full and clear account of why I was refused entry to Hong Kong last week. Until that request is answered, it will have a chilling effect on all Parliamentarians who stand up for freedom and democracy.

Yesterday Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called on the foreign secretary to summon the Chinese ambassador for an explanation.

Nigel Farage has appeared to have claimed credit for the government moving to rescue British Steel. The Reform UK leader told supporters at a campaign event in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham that “I don’t believe there would have been a Saturday sitting at parliament if Richard Tice and I had not been up to Scunthorpe and been greeted the way we were, by those workers, especially in the local [Wether]spoons afterwards. They actually felt there was someone speaking up for them. They actually felt there was somebody on their side. And that, I think, is why Labour did what they did.”

Farage claimed “we are witnessing an industrial massacre” in the UK. He said “It’s going on in chemicals, it’s going on in refining. We no longer produce aluminum in this country. We should be self sufficient in oil. We should be absolutely self sufficient in gas. We need to produce more energy and cheaper energy. 21st century living demands absolutely nothing less, and this is part of our strategy. Reform will re industrialize Britain.”

He said “We’re living through a period of net zero lunacy” and said that Ed Miliband’s ambition was to “despoil as much of our coastline as he possibly can.”

Nigel Farage had billed this Reform UK speech as a major announcement, and it appears that it is him saying “Reform are parking their tanks on the lawns of the “red wall”. Today is the first day I’ve said that. But I absolutely mean it, and we’re here, and we’re here to stay.”

Farage chooses the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to pose with a giant print out of the Sun’s front page saying “Britain is broken”. He has also claimed you wouldn’t know it was Easter coming up, due to what he said was “social and cultural decline”.

His message appears to boil down to, at these council elections in May, a vote for the Conservatives in the so-called red wall areas is wasted, and that to vote against Labour people should back Reform UK candidates. He accused what he described as “the Labour lie machine” of being “in full groove”.

Nigel Farage has been introduced at a Reform UK event in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham by Lee Anderson. In his introductory speech Anderson described Labour MPs as “a clueless bunch of people … [who’ve] never had a real job in their life”.

He claimed that in the north-east many Labour MPs could “could walk down the street and nobody would actually recognise them”.

Farage has begun his talk with a list of recent council byelection victories for Reform UK at the expense of the Labour party. I’ll bring you any key lines that emerge.

The largest education union in the country will launch a formal ballot on strike action if the government’s final pay offer for teachers “remains unacceptable”, PA Media reports.

Delegates at the annual conference of the National Education Union (NEU) have voted for districts, branches and school groups to “immediately prepare” for a formal industrial action ballot over the pay and funding offer for 2025/26.

More details soon …

The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to rule out any future Chinese involvement with British Steel.

Foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said:

Giving another Chinese firm ownership of British Steel would be like coming home to find your house ransacked and then leaving your doors unlocked.

Domestic steel production is absolutely vital to our national security and to put that at risk again would be completely unacceptable.

The government should rule out any Chinese firms’ future involvement in the ownership of British Steel – and certainly until it has completed and published its China audit. The stakes are simply too high.

Earlier today business and trade minister Sarah Jones said the government’s preference for the future of the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe was for “a private sector partner to come in”. Pressed on Sky News if that could be another Chinese firm, she said “At the moment, I’m not going to say yes or no to anything that isn’t at the moment on the table or being looked at.”

Nigel Farage is out on the campaign trail today alongside another of Reform UK’s four MPs, Lee Anderson. The pair are due to make an appearance in County Durham around noon, which with his typical flair for self-aggrandising publicity, Farage is billing as a “major speech”.

Presumably it will not stray far from the themes he outlined in an op-ed granted him by The Sun newspaper this morning: Britain is the best country in the world but also in terrible decline and awful to live in, the Conservatives are finished as a political force, Starmer is out of touch and “Keir Hardie would be turning in his grave” over this government, Reform UK are the one true working people’s opposition to Labour, and so on. We will bring you the key lines that emerge from that event.

PA Media analysis showed last week that Reform UK are fielding more candidates than any other party in the local elections in May, where they are expected to make gains. National polling has Labour, Reform UK and Conservatives closely bunched together with support in the range of low 20s. At the 2024 general election Reform UK had the third-largest vote share at 14% with over four million votes. You can find our guide to May’s council elections in some parts of England here.

Foreign secretary David Lammy will be speaking in London soon at the opening of the Sudan conference at the Foreign Office. It is billed that he will attempt to “galvanise the international community to step up efforts to urgently end the violence” there, which has been ongoing for two years. We will bring you any key lines that emerge.

Scotland’s deputy first minister has commented on the latest unemployment data, which shows that employment and unemployment rates have both increased in the country.

Kate Forbes said there was still work to do to improve the resilience of the Scottish economy. She said:

These figures indicate that Scotland’s unemployment rate remains relatively low despite a challenging economic environment. However, difficulties persist for those who are economically inactive.

With the world changing around us, the UK Government needs to change, too, by revisiting its budget and taking action to create jobs and unleash Scotland’s economic potential.

The UK government can boost growth by pursuing closer trade ties with the EU and reversing the decision to raise employers’ national insurance contributions.

To build a more resilient economy, the first minister and I are working with business leaders to develop measures which create jobs and drive growth. These will be included in our forthcoming programme for government, which publishes on 6 May.”

The byelection for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse seat left vacant after the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie will take place on 5 June, Holyrood’s presiding officer has announced, PA Media reports.

McKelvie was on medical leave for treatment for secondary breast cancer when she died last month. The SNP has already announced councillor Katy Loudon as its candidate.

Just back on speculation about UK-US trade deal prospects for a second, earlier on the Today programme the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam described the UK as being in a “paradoxical” position with regard to US trade, and being on the receiving end of “two quite different messages” from the Donald Trump administration.

He said:

You’ve got the very warm message there from the US vice-president JD Vance about the prospects of a deal with the UK. But remember that the one sector, or one of the two sectors, where there are significant tariffs that have already been applied, 25% has been on automotives, and then the next in its sights is pharmaceuticals. And in terms of the data from last year, those were the two big goods exports from the UK to the US.

He then pointed out that where it had initially looked like the UK had been spared the worst of Trump’s unilateral tariffs – you will recall some people pointed to the rate being lower than that applied to the EU being described in some quarters as a “Brexit dividend” – that is no longer the case. The rowing back and pausing on tariffs for most countries means pretty much everybody is on the same base rate of a 10% tariff.

He told listeners:

So what is actually being negotiated in any talks between the UK and US? That 10% baseline tariff that now applies across the entire world, apart from China. Is that actually up for grabs in any way?

There are reasons to think it isn’t up for grabs. Because one of the reasons why you set a universal tariff is that you don’t want different countries to become areas where you could channel and then not pay the tariff.

The other thing just to watch out for is the UK is also engaged with the EU in a negotiation over things like food standards, and if, as the mood music seems to be, we align, we have a high alignment, high ambition deal … that is precisely the sort of thing that they [the US] notice in trying to do a deal.

Green party of England and Wales co-leader Adrian Ramsay is among politicians who this morning have called for the government to act more swiftly in passing its proposed Hillsborough law, as the 36th anniversary of the disaster is commemorated.

In a post to social media, Ramsay said “Today marks 36 years since the Hillsborough disaster. The inhumanity with which the state handled it was abominable. This government must keep its promise and deliver the Hillsborough law.”

Keir Starmer had initially said the legislation would be in process before today’s anniversary. Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby Ian Byrne has also posted to social media campaigning on the topic, reproducing the front page of today’s Liverpool Echo, where families of the victims have called on the government “Don’t let us down”.

The prime minister himself posted to social media to mark the occassion, reiterating that the government still intended to go forward with legislation. Starmer said:

Thirty-six years ago, we saw one of the greatest disasters in our history. A disaster that led to 97 people tragically losing their lives. Today, I pay tribute to them. In the years since, their families and loved ones have campaigned tirelessly to get justice. Despite all the challenges they have faced, they have kept fighting.

I promised to bring a Hillsborough Law before parliament, with a legal duty of candour for public authorities and public servants, and criminal sanctions for anyone who fails to comply. I will deliver on that promise.

After decades of injustice, we must get this legislation right. We must make sure it achieves what the people of Liverpool have spent the past thirty-six years fighting for.

Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was killed at Hillsborough, said she could not “knock” the prime minister’s ambition for the legislation, even if she was “disappointed it’s not come out for the anniversary”. PA Media reports she added she did not want to see the legislation “watered down” in a rush to get it passed.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride, recently granted a knighthood in Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list, has used social media this morning to criticise Rachel Reeves’ approach to government borrowing.

In a series of posts, the Central Devon MP said:

We are spending over £100bn a year on debt interest. It’s almost double what we spend on defence. That is totally unacceptable. People’s taxes are being poured down the drain on interest payments.

Before Covid debt was falling, but government had to spend huge amounts supporting the economy during the pandemic. And post-Covid, interest rates have risen due to inflation. That’s why the Conservatives left a plan in place to stop debt rising and start bringing it down.

Rachel Reeves said before the election that she would stick to that commitment to get debt falling.

He then criticised her for adjusting the definition of government “debt”, and suggested that she had put the government in a position where it was “vulnerable to even small changes in markets” which he described as “completely irresponsible”.

He finished by quoting Reeves saying “The responsible choice is to reduce our levels of debt and borrowing in the years ahead”, adding “I agree with Rachel. The problem is she doesn’t seem to agree with herself”. Stride was a government minister from 2015 until 2024.

Alison McGovern, minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, has commented on those latest job statistics, which showed that the number of payrolled workers in UK fell by 78,000.

The Labour MP for Birkenhead said:

We’re determined to get Britain working again as part of our plan for change by overhauling job centres, creating good jobs, transforming skills, transitioning to net zero and delivering the biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation.

This month, local areas are also starting to roll out their plans to tackle the root causes of inactivity as we get Britain back to health and back to work – backed by a share of £125m of investment.

Real wages are continuing to rise, and the “National Living Wage” is also coming into effect this month – boosting working people’s payslips and improving living standards as part of our plan for change.

The ONS figures shows wages rising 5.9% in the three months to February, while unemployment remained at 4.4%.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is out campaigning in Cambridgeshire today ahead of local elections in May in some regions of England, and has continued to apply pressure to the UK government after Wera Hobhouse was refused entry to Hong Kong by authorities there.

In a statement last night, Davey said statements from Chinese officials indicate that “no explanation for the appalling treatment of my colleague and friend Wera Hobhouse is going to be forthcoming”. Davey said “We cannot simply let this slide.”

He continued:

Refusing a British Parliamentarian entry to Hong Kong for a private family visit, without reason, is an affront to UK-China diplomatic relations and will have a chilling effect on all UK politicians who speak up for freedom and democracy. That is why it is so important that we secure a statement setting out the Chinese authorities’ motivations for this act.

It’s now clearer than ever that the Chinese authorities aren’t going to play ball here. The foreign secretary needs to urgently take the exceptional step of summoning the Chinese ambassador in person to provide a clear and comprehensive account of why Wera was refused entry.

Government ministers today will be taking stock of some not great economic news, as the number of workers on UK company payrolls has fallen at the fastest pace since the height of the Covid pandemic, and UK business confidence appears to have fallen to its lowest level in over two years.

My colleage Richard Partington writes:

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the number of people employed in at least one job paid through pay as you earn fell by 78,000 in March after a revised fall of 8,000 in February.

Reflecting a slowdown in the jobs market, the latest snapshot showed annual pay growth rose slightly in the three months to February and remained at historically high levels. Regular pay, excluding bonuses, rose to 5.9%, from a revised 5.8% in the previous rolling three-month period to the end of January.

Despite the drop in the number of workers on company payrolls, the ONS said its official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.4% in the three months to February.

It should be noted here is currently a caveat around ONS labour market data, with the validity of some of its data being questioned.