Starmer facing MPs’ grilling over growth, welfare and British Steel – UK politics live | Politics

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April 8, 2025

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Starmer faces questions from Commons liaison committee

Keir Starmer is about to take questions from the Commons liaision committee.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury committee, will chair the session.

And here is the committee’s list of the topics coming up, and who will be asking questions in each section.

Growth

Ruth Cadbury MP – Transport
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – Public Accounts
Bill Esterson MP – Energy Security and Net Zero
Patricia Ferguson MP – Scottish Affairs

International Affairs and Defence

Tonia Antoniazzi MP – Northern Ireland Affairs
Sarah Champion MP – International Development
Tan Dhesi MP – Defence
Chi Onwurah MP – Science, Innovation and Technology

Welfare Reforms and Health

Debbie Abrahams MP – Work and Pensions
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – Public Accounts Committee
Layla Moran MP – Health and Social Care
Sarah Owen MP – Women and Equalities

Key events

Hillier ends with questions that came out of the Youth Parliament meeting.

Q: When will the government legislate to lower the voting age to 16?

Starmer says it’s a manifesto commitment, and the government will definitely implement it.

It has been brought in in Scotland and Wales, and the sky “didn’t fall in”.

Q: And do you favour more citizenship education?

Starmer says he is pleased it is in the curriculum. And the curriculum is being reviewed.

And that’s the end of the hearing.

Starmer says state-based threats to people in UK are ‘growing’, and threat is underestimated

Meg Hillier asks about foreign states, like China, Russia and Iran, taking action against people in the UK.

Starmer says this is an important issue. State-based threats in the UK are ‘“growing”, he says. It is an important strand of defence and security work.

And it being constantly raised in international talks.

I think we generally underestimate that threat, and it’s very important we’re alive to it.

Toni Antoniazzi (Lab) asks Starmer if he backs calls for an inquiry into the killing of Sean Brown in Northern Ireland in 1997. State agents have been linked to the murder.

Starmer says the government will consider the court of appeal judgment on this, which said the refusal to hold an inquiry was unlawful. But he says in the first instance there should be a criminal investigation.

Chi Onwurah (Lab) goes next.

Q: Peter Kyle says big tech companies are as powerful as nation states. How will you treat them?

Starmer says these are powerful companies. But the government does tax them, and they are subject to the Online Safety Act.

Q: The riots last summer were amplified by misinformaton on social meda. The Online Safety Act does not cover this. Will you take action?

Starmer says where online information incited violence, it was unlawful. Some people thought online was a law-free zone. It was important to establish that it was not.

He says gauging what is misinformation or not is hard to policy.

Q: China spends between £8bn and £10bn a year on information operations, and Russia about half that. What does the UK spent?

Starmer says the government does take action against misinformation by state actors.

Q: Can we defend ourselves without a sovereign AI capability?

Yes, we can, Starmer says. But he says the country should always be ambitious.

Q: Do you agree that a dispute about fish should not hold up the UK and the EU agreeing a security pact?

Starmer says Boris Johnson agreed the fishing deal with the EU. It has to be reviewed periodically, he says. But he says it is best if this is not done in public.

Starmer declines to comment on Chinese nationals caught fighting in Ukraine, saying he needs proper briefing first

Tan Dhesi (Lab) goes next.

Q: What is your response to the news that two Chinese soldiers have been caught fighting for Russia in Ukraine?

Starmer says he has only just heard this news. He says he would like to get a proper briefing on what happened before he comments. He says he would like to speak to President Zelenskyy against this.

Starmer says there should be an inquiry into killing of 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza

Sarah Champion (Lab) is asking the questions.

Q: Israel seems to be ignoring international law. How will the UK comply with the international court of justice ruling on Israel breaking international law?

Starmer says he was an international lawyer. He jokes that marks him down, not up. But of course he believes in international law, he says.

He says the government thinks the occupation of Palestine is unlawful.

Q: Many people feel Israel is not being held to account. Will we push for an inquiry into the recent killing of 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza?

Starmer says there has to be an inquiry into that.

And he says aid needs to be getting into Gaza.

And the UK should put its “foot in the door” to push for a two-state solution.

Starmer says he does not want to cut the aid budget.

But he does not accept the government can do nothing until the aid budget goes up again. He goes on:

That’s why I’ve had active discussions with the World Bank, other institutions, other countries and the private sector about how we could leverage aid financing in a different way, using the private sector, how we can better co ordinate and cooperate with other countries.

Meg Hillier asked Starmer about Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, using a pocket money comparison when referring to disability benefits being cut.

Starmer replied:

Of course language matters, I think every member of Cabinet knows that. Occasionally people don’t get it quite right. They usually apologise and are quite right to.”

The two values that have driven me in everything I’ve done as a lawyer and as a politician are dignity and respect. Dignity is probably the most important word in my dictionary.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con) says the decision to scrap NHS England was welcome.

Q: What can be done to improve health prevention?

Starmer says health has to become more prevention focused, more community focused and more tech-focused.

He says the example he remembers most is poor dental health being the main cause of children going to hospital.

Q: 24% of five-year-olds have got signs of tooth decay. What can be done to transform NHS dentistry? The contract is not fit for purpose.

Starmer says the contract is being renegotiated.

And the government has to deal with dental deserts, he says.

He says supervised tooth brushing at school has just started.

Starmer says Louise Casey review should lead to social changes in 2026, before final report gets published

Meg Hillier asks Starmer if he expects the interim report from Louise Casey, which is due next year, to lead to policy changes.

Starmer says he asked Casey to do the work in two stages.

The second part will cover major reforms to the system.

But he also asked her to say what should be done now, he says. He says he is pretty sure that that report is due in 2026 – but he says he cannot find that date in the notes he has with him.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

Louise is starting her work this month. I’ve asked her to do her work in two stages. The second of the stages is, what are the major reforms that are needed, and therefore the cross party work needs to be done.

The first part is, what are the deliverable changes that we can do right here, right now, without waiting for the wider reform – I’m as sure as I can be, but I can’t find the right page of my notes – that that’s 2026.

Layla Moran (Lib Dem) asks about social care. She accuses Starmer of delaying social care reform.

Starmer says he has asked Louise Casey, who is leading the review of this, to start consulting on a cross-party basis straight away.

He says he does not want her to rush the work.

But he also does not accept that nothing can happen in the interim.

Sarah Owen (Lab) asks Starmer about the anxiety people are feeling about benefit cuts. She reads out quotes from people who have written in with about their fears.

Starmer says the principles are important. If people cannot work, they need protection. But if people can work, they should work. He says the current system makes it hard for people to get off benefits and into work.

Q: Will the consultation period bring people together?

Starmer says he does want to bring people together.

He says people never able to work won’t be constantly reassessed.

Starmer criticises OBR for not taking account of positive impact welfare reforms might have on employment

Deborah Abrahams (Lab) asks about the Pathways to Work green paper, and the cuts to benefits.

Starmer says he is convinced that some of the programmes to get people into work, including the right to try work, can make a big difference.

Q: In the past welfare reforms have not delivered the savings people expecte. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says 400,000 will be pushed into poverty from these changes, not 250,000 as the DWP claims. How will you ensure you do not push people into poverty?

Starmer says is it significant that the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] assessements do not take into account any likely behavioural change. He says he “struggles with that”.

He says he is worried by the number of young people not in employment, education or training (Neets).

Abrahams says the evidence shows that poverty and family adversity are the factors explains why people become Neet. She calls for evidence to show the impact of these policies.

Starmer says evidence is crucial.

He says the last Labour government cut child poverty, and he wants to do the same too. The child poverty strategy will be crucial.

Q: Will you commit to not legislating before we have those impact assessments?

Starmer says he is not going to make commitments on timing, because the government needs to press on. But he says he absolutely accepts Abrahams’ point about the evidence base for policy.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

It is significant to my mind that the ability of any policy to change behaviour is not priced in. The OBR have scored nothing against any change here. The assumption is not a single person changes their behaviour.

I personally struggle with that way of looking at it. I do think these measures will make a material difference and they need to make a material difference.

Starmer says regulation has gone too far and ‘large chunk of growth’ can be achieved by cutting it back

Meg Hillier goes next.

Q: How will cutting regulation boost growth?

Starmer says:

I think there’s a large chunk of growth we can get by stripping away regulation …

You’ll be astonished at how many regulators and regulatory bodies that we’ve put in place over the years …

As soon as you regulator in place, you can bet your bottom dollar there’s going to be a consultation with X, Y and Z before a decision can be made. That then takes forever. There’s a deadline that’s breached, and nobody wants to do anything about it, because you might come up against the regulator and the priorities of the regulator aren’t necessarily aligned with what the government is trying to achieve.

So there’s a huge amount of work to do that.

I’m not saying there should never be any checks and balances. Of course, I’m not, but what I think has happened over the years, which is perhaps understandable, is every time there’s been anything that’s gone wrong in government, the instinct of successive governments has been let us put an arm’s length body, a regulator, a check and balance, a consultation in place, to a point where now all of us, myself included, are pretty frustrated that when we want to get something done, it is taking far too long.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con) asks about AI. Starmer has talked about how it can transform the public sector, he says. Clifton-Brown says the public accounts committee has heard calls for digital services manager to be embedded at senior levels in the civil service.

Starmer says he is in favour of this. He is pushing this from the centre, he says. It can be “transformative”. And it can release humans to be more human.

As an example he cites planning.

We think we can use AI to collate a lot of the available information put it into the right format, so a decision maker can use their professional judgement and spend more time on that, than on the task of collating the information.

Starmer says he is not one of those people who think progressing AI should be held back because it is too risky.

Starmer says he would like to see the defence be “part of our story on economic growth”.

Until now, there has been a tendency to see it as being in a category of its own.

Patricia Ferguson (Lab) asks Starmer if he would back a standalone minister for space, to help the development of the space industry in Scotland.

Starmer says that idea has not been put to him. He will think about it. But he says is he “not a particular fan of just creating more and more posts”.

But he says he does see space as a growth area for Scotland.

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Starmer facing MPs’ grilling over growth, welfare and British Steel – UK politics live | Politics

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