An education minister has refused to say whether prime minister has confidence in Home Secretary Suella Braverman following her controversial comments about the Metropolitan Police’s staffing of Armistice Day.
Robert Halfon was asked repeatedly if Rishi Sunak had confidence in his home secretary by Sky News, but was unable to answer.
Instead, he said it was the prime minister’s focus to ensure “remembrance services go ahead peacefully”.
On three occasions, he refused to confirm if Mr Sunak backed his home secretary.
Asked about the articlepublished in The Times on Wednesday evening – which Downing Street did not clear – Mr Halfon said there was an internal investigation into how it made it into print without sign-off from the prime minister’s team.
In her article in The Times, Ms Braverman likened pro-Palestine demonstrations to marches seen in Northern Ireland, and accused the Met of holding “double standards” and being more lenient to left-wing protests.
Mr Halfon’s first response to being asked if Mr Sunak had confidence in Ms Braverman was to say: “Look, the prime minister’s focus is ensuring that the remembrance services go ahead peacefully.
Advertisement
“That’s why he’s met with the Metropolitan Police commissioner… Mark Rowley has assured the prime minister that the protests will be peaceful, that the remembrance services will go ahead safely and securely, and that has to be the priority.”
Mr Sunak had wanted the marches called off, but following a meeting on Wednesday with Sir Mark Rowley agreed they could go ahead.
If the Met feels it cannot staff the demonstrations properly, it can apply to the home secretary who can then ban them from taking place.
Some parts of the Conservative Party are being very vocal in their support of Ms Braverman, including Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson.
He appeared to join in her criticism of the Met, posting on social media that the home secretary had not “took the knee on Whitehall while BLM riot”.
Mr Anderson added that it was Labour MPs who “want her sacked” that did this, but the Met also came under considerable criticism at the time for kneeling during Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
He said: “Suella is guilty.
“Guilty of saying what most of us are thinking and saying. Thank goodness we have a home secretary who refuses to be cancelled.
“She is using everyday language used by everyday people. Labour MPs would know this if they got out more.”
Darren Jones, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News that Ms Braverman was “weaponising” the issue for her “own personal ambitions”.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
Responding to Mr Anderson’s tweet, Mr Jones said the Conservative Party spokesman was claiming the public would be happy for politicians to decide on an ideological basis “what issue can be protested and what issue can’t be protested”.
“I’m sorry, that’s not the way that our democracy works,” he added.
Mr Jones said the demonstrations should go ahead, but should “not disrupt” remembrance services.
Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
6:36
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
More on Rachel Reeves
Related Topics:
“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”