UK politics live: Badenoch refuses to commit to reversing rise in employers’ national insurance in speech at CBI

Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister, has said that if Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, were to visit the UK, a court would ultimately decide if he should be arrested because of the international criminal court warrant against him over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Falconer was responding to an urgent question from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, who has strongly criticised the ICC’s decision. (See 1.13pm.)

Explaining what would happen, Falconer said:

In line with this government’s stated commitment to the rule of law, we respect the independence of the ICC. We will comply with our international obligations.

There is a domestic legal process through our independent courts that determines whether or not to endorse an arrest warrant by the ICC, in accordance with the ICC Act of 2001. This process has never been tested because the UK has never been visited by an ICC indictee, if there were to be such a visit to the UK, there would be a court process and due process would be followed in relation to those issues.

There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, two terrorist organisations. This government has been clear, Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law, that right is not under question, and the court’s approval of the warrants last week do not change that.

Patel said the ICC “appears to be drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s war of self-defence and Hamas terrorism” and she said the only beneficiaries of the decision were Hamas.

But Falconer urged her to respect the ICC. He said:

Diplomacy will continue, regardless of the process of the ICC, but I had understood it to be the common position of this house that the international rule of law is an important commitment.

The international criminal court is an important, the primary body, in enforcing these norms and the issues on jurisdiction and complementarity were heard by the pre-trial chamber, its three judges have issued their findings, and I think we should respect those.

Reeves says public services now need to live within the envelope set.

She says departmental spending limits for beyond 2026 will be set out in the next phase of the spending review. She goes on:

But what I am really sure about … [is] that public services now need to live within the envelope that we’ve set. We will not be coming back to top up those budgets.

Reeves is now taking media questions.

Q: [From the Telegraph] Businesses are disappointed with the budget. Haven’t you betrayed them. And are you ruling out any more big tax rises on businesses?

Reeves says she faced a massive hole in the public finances. In the last parliament people saw what happened when government did not address that. She won’t be that sort of chancellor, she says.

She goes on:

Public services now need to live within their means, because I’m really clear, I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes …

At this budget, we did wipe the slate team to put public finances and public services on footing, and as a result, we won’t have to do a budget like this ever again.

And indeed, unlike the last government, I will only be doing one budget a year, so that this government can focus on what our number one priority is, and that’s growing the economy.

Reeves says she had to “wipe the slate clean” with the budget.

But she says she will not need to deliver another budget with tax rises like that again.

You can be confident we’re not going to have to come back again and do another budget like this. So you can be confident about the tax rates we’ve set for this parliament, and public services now, these are within the means that we’ve set.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, tells the CBI that “everybody knows that that inheritance [at the time of the budget] was pretty dire in terms of the back hole in the public finances”.

In line with the advance briefing, she says her critics have not been able to come up with alternative proposals.

Q: How will people know if your plans are working?

Reeves says she will be judged on whether the economy grows.

And that will only happen if investment starts to happen, she says.

I want you to judge this government on our number one mission, which is to bring growth back to the UK economy. We can’t do that overnight … But over this parliament, we going to return investment, we’re going to return growth to the economy, because, in the end, that’s the only way to ensure that Britain is competitive and to ensure that we pull our weight in the world to improve living standards for working people.

People who stay in Wales overnight, including children, are set to be charged a visitor levy under a scheme that could raise up to £33m a year to be ploughed back into tourism and culture, Steven Morris reports.

The Welsh government’s news release about the visitor accommodation (register and levy) etc. (Wales) bill is here. Commenting on the plan, Mark Drakeford, the finance secretary in the Welsh government, said:

We know tourism makes an important contribution to the Welsh economy and to Welsh life. We want to ensure its long-term sustainability.

That’s why we believe it is fair visitors contribute towards local facilities, helping to fund infrastructure and services integral to their experience.

Visitor levies are common around the world – benefiting local communities, tourists and businesses – and we want the same for Wales.

Money raised through a levy would be retained by local authorities and reinvested back into their local areas to support local, sustainable tourism.

It’s a small contribution that could make a big difference.

The government has been criticised for the quality of the reports it has produced assessing the likely consequences of its employment rights bill. A series of impact assessments (IAs) were published last month. But the regulatory policy committee (RPC), a body set up to scrutinise the quality of impact assessments, has published a report saying the work by the government for this is “not fit for purpose”. It says:

The RPC has assessed eight of the 23 individual IAs as ‘not fit for purpose’ and six of these are in the ‘highest impact’ measure category in the summary IA. The overall assessment for the bill IA is therefore ‘not fit for purpose’. Given the number and reach of the measures, it would be proportionate to undertake labour market and broader macroeconomic analysis, to understand the overall impact on employment, wages and output, and particularly, the pass-through of employer costs to employees.

Commenting on the report, Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said:

Labour’s impact assessment for their radical trade union charter has been rated ‘not fit for purpose’ by the government’s own regulator.

But businesses up and down the country knew this already. Just like the national insurance Jobs’ Tax, this bill is the second wave of an attack on job creators.

Keir Starmer is paying tribute to Prescott now.

He says Prescott was the longest-serving deputy PM ever and “a politician for working people through and through”.

In many respects, Prescott was ahead of his time, Starmer says. He championed causes like tackling climate change, fighting regional inequality, supporting the minimum wage, improving public transport, and building council houses.

Prescott was “a skilled negotiator, sometimes with immense and perhaps surprising sensitivity”, Starmer says. He says Prescott had a talent for bringing people together who had different points of view. He was someone who was not in politics for himself, Starmer says. And he was someone who was a team player who would support a position in public, even if he had opposed it in private before the collective decision was taken.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

Make no mistake, [Prescott] did things his own way, and forged his own path, and in doing so, he brought about some of the greatest transformation this country has ever seen, the linchpin of New Labour, because beneath the pugnacious exterior, John was a skilled negotiator, sometimes with immense and perhaps surprising sensitivity.

He had an incredible skill, which was the ability to bring people together from different starting points, whether that was his work on climate negotiations, or closer at home in his own party, to stand together in a better place. And that sums up another thing that the public, I think, sensed about John. He was not in it for himself.

He was a team player, and he was proud to play for Team Labour, that was never more evident than during the campaign season, when it was time to bring out the battle bus, which has become a tradition our deputy prime minister proudly continued this year, because the Prescott Express was a morale boost to any campaign.

It may have been arriving in a Tesco car park, but John was always met with a reception like Beatlemania and no wonder, the public were at the heart of John’s politics.

And it’s clear the public had a particular place in their heart for him too, and that was key to his popularity. And indeed, after the famous incident, it was the public who came out swinging for him.