Keir Starmer says Labour will prioritise growth which will mean ‘better jobs, public services, holidays and more cash’ – as it happened | Politics

• Keir Starmer has said Labour would streamline planning rules to enable more houses to be built. (See 9.02am.) In a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce, he said current planning laws were a brake on productivity. (See 3.41pm.) In response to Tory suggestions that this was hypocritical, because shadow ministers have regularly blocked housing developments in their own constituencies, Starmer said that, unlike Rishi Sunak, he would press ahead with housebuilding reform even in the face of objections from MPs. (See 5.21pm.)

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has released an open letter to Keir Starmer asking questions about his plans to reform planning and promote housebuilding. He claims that three-quarters of members of the shadow cabinet have in the past blocked developments in their own constituencies.

Starmer is being interviewed by Evan Davis on the PM programme, and Davis asked him about this claim. Starmer said he had not seen Gove’s questions, but he acknowledged that implementing his plans would be difficult because MPs would say: “Not here.”

But he said, unlike Rishi Sunak, he would not back off in the face of pressure from his party. He went on:

The prime minister backed off. He admitted it was the challenge within his own party, his own backbenchers, that forced him to [scrap the targets]. He didn’t say: ‘Look, it’s good for housing or good for growth.’ He just [backed down] because he was too weak to press on. We’ve got to be tougher than that and push forward.

In so far as people object because they want to protect the green belt, that’s right. Of course, we want to protect the green belt. But we need to recognise we do build on bits of the green belt and we don’t build on the right bits.

At PMQs Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM, rejected suggestions that there was anything improper about the funding of the Teesside freeport scheme. (See 12.31pm.) Dehenna Davison, the levelling up minister, has defended the project in more detail in a letter to the Labour MP Andy McDonald. She says the government has seen “no evidence of corruption, illegality or wrongdoing” in the project. Sam Coates from Sky News has a copy of her letter.

McDonald has called for an independent inquiry.

Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, has called for the National Audit Office to carry out such an inquiry. Davison says in her letter the government is considering this request.

Downing Street has confirmed that Rishi Sunak has abandoned a proposal to close all 30 of the Confucius Institutes operating in the UK.

Funded by the Chinese government, Confucius Institute are units operating within universities teaching Chinese language and culture. China hawks are criticial of them because they promote Chinese soft power.

During the Tory leadership contest last summer (which he lost to Liz Truss, who is particularly hawkish on China), Sunak said:

Enough is enough. For too long, politicians in Britain and across the west have rolled out the red carpet and turned a blind eye to China’s nefarious activity and ambitions.

I will change this on day one as PM. I will stop China taking over our universities, and get British companies and public institutions the cybersecurity they need.

Today, at the post-PMQs briefing, No 10 confirmed that Sunak no longer plans to close the Confucius Institutes. Confirming a TalkTV story, the PM’s spokesperson said that the government was removing government funding from Confucius Institutes, and that they had to operate them within the law. But the government judged it would be “disproportionate” to ban them, the spokesperson said.

In her speech in Taiwan delivered early this morning, Truss said Sunak should keep the promise he made last summer and close the institutes. She said:

Last summer, the new British prime minister described China as the biggest long-term threat in Britain and he said that the Confucius Institutes should be closed. He was right and we need to see those policies enacted urgently. The UK’s integrated review needs to be amended to make it absolutely clear that China is a threat. Confucius Institutes in the UK should be closed down immediately. Instead, the service could be provided by organisations with the support of Hong Kong nationals and Taiwanese nationals who’ve come to the United Kingdom freely.

Q: What assurances can you give that Labour will allow investment to thrive?

Starmer says this is vital. The UK will not get growth without investment. They want long-term stability and planning.

He says having four chancellors in a year is politically funny, but it is hopeless for investment.

And he says tax is high because the UK has low growth. Low growth leads to high tax. We have to break out of that cycle, he says.

Starmer says problems with the planning system are a key reason for Britain’s low productivity. He says:

Some nation will lead the world in offshore wind, why not Britain?

I’ll tell you one reason why not: our planning system.

I met the people running the National Grid recently and you know what they said to me, they said: if we want to get anywhere near our goals on net zero, we need to build more infrastructure in the next seven years than we have in the last 30.

Let that sink in.

And yet – what’s the average time it takes to build an off-shore windfarm? Thirteen years … an entire Tory government.

And now housebuilding – crashing to a record low. Onshore wind – just two turbines built last year.

Critical infrastructure like HS2, built more slowly and expensively because of the red tape.

And the net result, an economy stuck in second gear. A doom-loop of low growth, low productivity and high taxes. A generation and its hopes – an entire future – blocked by those, who more often than not, enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others.

The evidence could not be clearer. There are 38 countries in the OECD, and we are the second worst when it comes to the effectiveness of our planning system.

And just think, some people still call our problems the “productivity puzzle”. We know the problems, we’ve just got to show a bit more bottle to fix them.

Keir Starmer is addressing the BCC conference now. He starts by talking about growth, and explaining why one of his “missions” for Labour is for the UK to have the highest sustained growth in the G7 in the next parliament. He says:

I know what a lot of people in Westminster say about growth. They say it’s an abstract concept, doesn’t resonate, doesn’t connect with peoples’ lives, I don’t accept that.

Growth is higher wages. Growth is stronger communities. Growth is thriving businesses. It’s more vibrant high street, less poverty, more opportunity, warmer homes, healthier food, better jobs.

It’s public services that are well funded. It’s holidays, meals out, more cash in your pocket – an end to the suffocating cost of living crisis, our ticket to win the race for the future and the biggest single thing we need to lift our sights, raise our ambitions, and get our hope, our confidence and our future back.

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has accused advisers working for the party of briefing against him.

In an interview with Times Radio, Burnham said that he was not accusing Keir Starmer, members of his shadow cabinet, or Labour HQ, of being responsible for negative stories about him.

But he implied that some of Starmer’s younger aides were to blame. He said:

Whenever I go out there with something positive, the negative Westminster briefing machine somehow flicks into gear. All that I’d say is, leave me alone.

I’ve been out there being supportive of the party and working for a majority Labour government as everyone is, but I’m doing my thing. I’m building a really powerful positive agenda for Greater Manchester, and to have the kind of old ways of Westminster trying to cut across that with their negative briefing – you know, their insecurity – I honestly don’t know what purpose they think it serves.

Burnham did not name any of those he believed were responsible for those briefings in the interview. But he said:

It’s not Keir or the shadow cabinet or the party, but it’s those people – I know who they are and you know who they are – the unelected people in their 20s or 30s who think they know it all and they’re the kind of bee’s knees etc. And they go around sort of briefing against elected politicians.

Mark Serwotka has announced that he will retire from his post as general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union at the end of the year. The PCS is the biggest civil service union and Serwotka has led it since 2000, being re-elected four times.

In a statment he said:

Today PCS is in the best place it has been for many years. We have withstood attacks on our union from Conservative governments and we are now growing.