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‘Frankly insanity’ – Tories claim plan revelations show why Labour should block Chinese ‘super-embassy’ plan
Responding to Pennycook, Alicia Kearns, a shadow Home Office minister, said she was disappointed by the fact that she just got a “technocratic history lesson” from the minister.
She went on:
208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber just one metre from cable serving City of London and the British people. That is what the unredacted plans tell us that the Chinese Communist Party has planned for its new embassy if the government gives them the go ahead. Indeed, we now know they plan to demolish the wall between the cables and their embassy cables, in which our economy is dependent.
Kearns said this would mean the Chinese could have access to “cables carrying millions of British people’s emails and financial data”, and she said this meant they would have “a launchpad for economic warfare against our nation”.
She asked if ministers were aware of these plans, if they have concerns about them, and if they have asked the Chinese for an explanation.
She asked Pennycook to confirm that the government plans to approve the application. She went on:
Labour promised a new relationship with China. Yet UK export goods are down 23%. Surrendering all security for Chinese trade was always a bad policy. But surrendering all security while exports plummet is frankly insanity.
She said the government should refuse the application.
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Labour’s Alex Sobel said the joint committee on human rights published a report on transnational repression in the UK last year. He went on:
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It found the Chinese state undertakes considerable transnational repression against the Chinese diaspora in the United Kingdom, much of it coordinated outside of the existing Chinese embassy. This new embassy is a real threat to Hongkongers, to Uyghurs, and other members of Chinese diaspora that don’t toe the party line in Beijing.
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He asked if this would be a factor when the application was considered.
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Pennycook told him the government was “forthright when it comes to human rights with the Chinese government”, but that he could not comment on the actual application.
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Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the international development committee, said she was in no doubt that this application should be blocked. She said:
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I am in no doubt that this mega embassy should not be allowed to go ahead internationally. China is terrorising the people of Hong Kong. It is terrorising the democratic people in Taiwan and it is terrorising some people already in the UK. I look to my local University of Sheffield Hallam and I also look to what it’s doing to parliamentarians right here. I want my government to stand up to bullies, not reward them.
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We need to be seeing rules, limits, put in place around China to stop this behaviour, not rewarding them with the embassy that they so dearly want.
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Champion represents Rotherham, near Sheffield, and she was referring to Sheffield Hallam university last year having to drop research into human rights abuses in China, in response to pressure from Beijing.
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Responding to Pennycook, Alicia Kearns, a shadow Home Office minister, said she was disappointed by the fact that she just got a “technocratic history lesson” from the minister.
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She went on:
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208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber just one metre from cable serving City of London and the British people. That is what the unredacted plans tell us that the Chinese Communist Party has planned for its new embassy if the government gives them the go ahead. Indeed, we now know they plan to demolish the wall between the cables and their embassy cables, in which our economy is dependent.
\n
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Kearns said this would mean the Chinese could have access to “cables carrying millions of British people’s emails and financial data”, and she said this meant they would have “a launchpad for economic warfare against our nation”.
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She asked if ministers were aware of these plans, if they have concerns about them, and if they have asked the Chinese for an explanation.
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She asked Pennycook to confirm that the government plans to approve the application. She went on:
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Labour promised a new relationship with China. Yet UK export goods are down 23%. Surrendering all security for Chinese trade was always a bad policy. But surrendering all security while exports plummet is frankly insanity.
\n
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She said the government should refuse the application.
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Kearns","caption":"Alicia Kearns","credit":"Photograph: BBC Parliament"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":true,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1768309117000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"07.58 EST","blockLastUpdated":1768309614000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"08.06 EST","blockFirstPublished":1768309614000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"08.06 EST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"08.06","title":"’Frankly insanity’ – Tories claim plan revelations show why Labour should block Chinese ‘super-embassy’ plan","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 13 Jan 2026 08.52 EST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 13 Jan 2026 03.43 EST"},{"id":"69663c488f08ae2c6996e48d","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
Today the Daily Telegraph has splashed on a story saying that China will “build a hidden chamber alongside Britain’s most sensitive communication cables as part of a network of 208 secret rooms beneath its new London ‘super-embassy’”. The government has considering the Chinese government’s planning application for months, and a decision is expected imminently.
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Despite claims that the Chinese could use the building near the City to access cables carrying sensitive financial information, the government is expected to approve the application.
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In their story, Gareth Corfield and Fraser Lyness said:
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\n
The plans, which are redacted in all publicly available versions, can only be revealed because The Telegraph has uncovered the unredacted documents.
\n
The drawings show that a single concealed chamber will sit directly alongside fibre-optic cables transmitting financial data to the City of London, as well as email and messaging traffic for millions of internet users.
\n
The same hidden room is fitted with hot-air extraction systems, possibly suggesting the installation of heat-generating equipment such as advanced computers used for espionage. The plans also show that China intends to demolish and rebuild the outer basement wall of the chamber, directly beside the fibre-optic cables.
\n
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The Conservative MP Alicia Kearns has tabled an urgent question on this.
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Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, is responding to it now. He says it is a live planning application, and so he cannot comment on it.
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Instead, he just set out information about the process. And he says a decision will be taken on or before 20 January.
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After Pennycook finishes, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, says, because this is a question about security, a Home Office minister should be replying, not a planning minister.
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Jakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.
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Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki has urged the British government to offer Polish as a modern foreign language available to students in the UK as part of a push for closer political and people-to-people relations between the countries.
\n Briefing reporters outside 10 Downing Street after his meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, Nawrocki stressed the importance of Polish-British military and security links, noting that over 100 UK troops are stationed in Poland.
\n He said the two leaders also discussed the opportunities for Polish and British military industries to work together as they rearm their respective armies.
\n Nawrocki said they also talked about trade, including Poland’s anticipated involvement in the G20 summit this year, and ongoing talks about the UK’s post-Brexit settlement with the EU, including on easing SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) checks that would have allowed Polish companies to trade with the UK.
\n He also said that he was “very pleased” that “the UK is on the way to introducing Polish as a foreign language in the education system in the UK”, as he offered his backing to the idea which would benefit thousands of children born in Polish and Polish-British families in the UK.
\n With an estimated population of over 800,000, Poles remain one of the largest national foreign-born communities in the UK. However, the number of Poles in the UK has been falling in the last few years as more have been moving out of the country than coming in.
\n A former head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki emerged from relative political obscurity to unexpectedly win last year’s presidential election. He beat liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski after a closely run contest in which he was backed by the US president, Donald Trump.
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president Karol Nawrocki speaking to journalists after his meeting with Keir Starmer.","caption":"Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki speaking to journalists after his meeting with Keir Starmer.","credit":"Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1768308080000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"07.41 EST","blockLastUpdated":1768308311000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"07.45 EST","blockFirstPublished":1768308312000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"07.45 EST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"07.45","title":"Polish president urges Starmer to offer Polish as modern foreign language for students in UK","contributors":[{"name":"Jakub Krupa","imageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2025/01/22/Jakub_Krupa.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=41cc9981ec7b067e2d3b5391c5a68a4f","largeImageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2025/01/22/Jakub_Krupa.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=4a039a2b765744058f3c2c677268513e"}],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 13 Jan 2026 08.52 EST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 13 Jan 2026 03.43 EST"},{"id":"6966396a8f083d0a2f316273","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
Lisa O’Carroll is a senior Guardian correspondent.
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Seven in 10 parents who had child benefit suspended in a HM Revenue and Customs anti-fraud crackdown fiasco last year were in fact legitimate beneficiaries who had not emigrated, the tax authority has revealed.
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The chief executive of HMRC, John-Paul Marks, told the Treasury select committee said 71% of those targeted, higher than the 63% previously admitted, were in “error”.
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Marks admitted that “just under 5%” of the 23,700 parents who lose their child benefit, were in fact fraudulent.
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Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, accused HMRC of causing unnecessary “pain” to innocent parents and making an “egregious” error assuming parents who had used Dublin Aiport to return to Northern Ireland had emigrated.
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The admission shows a major system failure by HMRC which had told the government before rolling out the scheme in July, it could save up to £350m in benefit fraud over five years.
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They had piloted a scheme the previous year but had used PAYE records and Home Office travel data to try and work out which parents had emigrated and were still claiming child benefit.
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But, when the scheme was rolled out, the PAYE checks were removed leaving incomplete Home Office travel records as the basis of the calculation of fraud.
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Parents said they were left frightened and stressed after they received letters telling them their benefit was being suspended with demands they answer 73 questions involving detailed medical records, school reports and bank statements to prove they were not fraudsters.
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The 71% error rate is much higher than previously admitted when HRMC told Conservative MP Andrew Snowden in a written answer before Christmas that 63% of the parents had been wrongly targetted because of flawed travel data.
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Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, has said that Labour should be “really, really tough” in its response to Elon Musk over X and its Grok AI tool creating sexualised, deepfake images.
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Last week Haigh called for the government to give up posting on X.
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Today, in an interview on the Today programme, referring to the Grok AI feature allowing users to digitally undress pictures of women and children, Haigh said:
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\n
These issues are a feature, they’re not a bug of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
\n
Elon Musk is ideologically committed to pushing the boundaries of free speech, and we’ve seen that from his reaction to the threats of the Ofcom investigation.
\n
He doesn’t believe in the kind of guardrails and safeguarding that the British public would expect online, and he takes a very different approach from AI companies like Google and OpenAI.
\n
So it’s right that we are really, really tough in our response, and I’m really pleased the government has taken him on so roundly.
\n
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Q: Would you support a total ban on under-16s having social media accounts?
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Davey says, as a parent, he thinks we have to have this debate. He thinks there has to be “some sort of ban”.
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There’s no doubt that we’re going to have to put some sort of ban in place to keep them safe. So no doubt about that.
\n
The question is, how do you do that?
\n
I’ve seen some of the proposals from other parties. There’s a danger that they will have some unintended consequences.
\n
So I’m really worried that the idea we’ve heard from the Conservatives is that GCSE pupils will end up being banned from Wikipedia.
\n
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Asked about assisted dying, Davey says he voted against the bill. But he goes on:
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I personally voted against the assisted dying bill. And, though many of my colleagues didn’t, I think the real issue at the moment is what the Lords is doing, and I think it’s quite outrageous that that seems to be members of the House of Lords who are trying to kill the bill. And I say that as an opponent of the bill. But it’s the democratic right of the House of Commons to pass bad law if it wants to.
\n
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Davey says he had hoped that Keir Starmer was serious about what he said during the election campaign about wanting a cross-party solution to social care. He goes on:
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I’m afraid I’ve been proved wrong. There has been total failure on social care, kicking it into the long grass. No real political push for it. Elongated timetables. So they’ve been huge, disappointing.
\n
And they will not save our NHS unless they sort out care. I’ve long said if you if you care about the NHS, you’ve got to care about care.
\n
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Q: Why are the Liberal Democrats still using X?
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Davey says he is not afraid to pick a fight with Elon Musk. He says Musk has interfered in British democracy “in the most outrageous way”. Musk has also incited violence, he says.
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And he says what has been happening with Grok has been “shocking”.
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But he says there should be a “strong liberal voice” on social media.
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UPDATE: Davey said:
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I’ve picked a few fights with Elon Musk because I think he has interfered in British democracy in the most outrageous way. He’s incited violence and I have called in the past for investigations into him.
\n
The point about Grok – which is quite shocking – and what it is doing, and the danger that it poses to women in the UK, to our children, is quite shocking. We need to take it really seriously.
\n
We have been thinking about it really hard. There’s a real balance to strike here. I think X does need a strong Liberal voice and I’m leader of the Liberal Democrats to give that voice.
\n
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Davey at his press conference.","caption":"Ed Davey at his press conference.","credit":"Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1768301431000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"05.50 EST","blockLastUpdated":1768303244000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"06.20 EST","blockFirstPublished":1768301733000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"05.55 EST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"05.55","title":"Davey defends Liberal Democrats’ continuing use of X, saying there should be ‘strong liberal voice’ on social media","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 13 Jan 2026 08.52 EST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 13 Jan 2026 03.43 EST"},{"id":"696621418f08e217d516afec","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
In his speech Davey also criticised Labour over the lack of jobs availabe for doctors after they train.
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The Department of Health and Social Care has announced a plan to help with this problem today. PA Media reports:
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Medical graduates from the UK and Ireland will be prioritised for training places under new legislation to be proposed by the government.
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The move forms part of the health secretary’s aim of resolving the dispute between the government and resident doctors in England.
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Wes Streeting said that while the NHS “will never exclude international talent” he wants to give “home-grown medics” the “level playing field they deserve”.
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He met representatives from the British Medical Association (BMA) last week with a view to ending strike action by doctors.
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The medical training (prioritisation) bill will be introduced to parliament today.
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The proposed legislation will prioritise doctors from the UK and Ireland, and those who have worked in the NHS for a significant period, for specialty training places.
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Specialty training is the final stage of becoming a fully qualified doctor, with a focus on a specialist area of medicine or general practice.
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Graduates from the UK and Ireland would also be prioritised for foundation training under the bill.
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Since 2019, the number of applicants for training posts has risen from 12,000 to almost 40,000, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
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Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has set out a plan to end 12-hour A&E waits in English hospital. The party says the problem has escalated hugely over the past few years, and it is proposing two measures that it says would address the problem.
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They are:
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“A new law to enshrine the right for patients to be seen in A&E within 12 hours.”
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“Spending £1.5bn to make around 6,000 more beds available each day by expanding hospital capacity and creating ‘safety net’ social care beds for patients waiting on long-term care decisions.” The Lib Dems would get the money by “cancelling the planned medicine price hike agreed with the Trump administration before Christmas”.
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Speaking at a news conference this morning, Davey said:
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Right now, in the corridors of A&E departments across our country, there are thousands of people – sick or injured – lying on trolleys or waiting on plastic chairs. No privacy. No dignity. There have even been tragic cases of people dying on those trolleys and left undiscovered for hours.
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What more stark an example could there be, of the way things in our country aren’t working the way they should, than thousands of people lying for hours in corridors in our hospitals, and people dying on those trolleys? This deadly corridor crisis isn’t befitting of the heroic doctors, nurses and other health professionals who work in our NHS. It’s not what we expect from our NHS, and it’s not what we pay our hard-earned money in taxes to fund our NHS for …
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With the package we are calling for today, the government could put an end to 12-hour A&E waits altogether, by the end of the year. Never again should anyone have to watch their loved one die on a trolley in a hospital corridor.
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The Lib Dems also released this chart showing how the number of 12-hour trolley waits has soared.
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Davey at his press conference.","caption":"Ed Davey at his press conference.","credit":"Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1768299781000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"05.23 EST","blockLastUpdated":1768300542000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"05.35 EST","blockFirstPublished":1768300542000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"05.35 EST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"05.35","title":"Ed Davey sets out Lib Dem plan which he says could end 12-hour A&E trolley waits in England by end of year","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 13 Jan 2026 08.52 EST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 13 Jan 2026 03.43 EST"},{"id":"6966149b8f086f5496829ab7","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
Here is a fuller version of the quote from Wes Streeting’s speech, from the Times’ Steven Swinford.
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Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument. They complain about the civil service. They blame stakeholder capture.
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This excuses culture does the centre-left no favours. If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?
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And we should be in no doubt that they are excuses. Back to my shopping trolley analogy: there’s no point complaining about the wonky wheel if you’re letting the trolley have a mind of its own, instead of steering it towards the destination you’re after.
\n
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Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has given a speech to the Institute for Government conference this morning.
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As Jessica Elgot reports, Streeting criticised politicians who complain about being unable to reform public services because of Whitehall inertia.
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New – Streeting goes full throttle on the idea that politicians can’t make the state work and that “nothing happens” when levers are pulled.
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“Where there aren’t levers, we build them. Where there are barriers, we bulldoze them. Where there is poor performance, we challenge it.”
\n
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He says the complaints are just poor excuses from the right.
\n
“Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument… If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?”
\n
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This was aimed partly at the right. (At the Reform UK press conference yesterday, the party’s latest recruit Nadhim Zahawi was complaining about the “over-mighty bureaucratic inertia that now dominates and runs the country”, for which he claimed Tony Blair was mostly to blame”.)
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But Streeting criticised Labour figures who adopt this view too. He may have been thinking of the former adviser to Keir Starmer, Paul Ovenden, who wrote an article for the Times over the holiday period complaining about the “supremacy of the stakeholder state”.
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But Starmer has also himself set out this argument – in December 2024, when he said that there were “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”, and again last month, when he said:
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My experience now as prime minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons why I want to cut down on regulation, generally and within government.
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Streeting’s comment will be seen by some as an implicit dig at Starmer – although he might argue that he was just restating the determination to make the Whitehall machine deliver that the PM himself has also set out.
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Good morning. British politics in 2026 has to a large extent been preoccupied with foreign affairs, and Donald Trump’s turbocharged neo-imperialism, but domestic problems remain paramount. At the PLP last night, as Pippa Crerar reports, Keir Starmer sought to justify the amount of time he spends on foreign policy by saying it has a direct link to cost of living problems.
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And, with immigration and small boats a key issue for voters, the Home Office is today talking up its record on one aspect of this problem.
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Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has released figures which, she says, shows that raids to catch people working in the UK illegally have reached “the highest level in British history”. The PA Media write-up is a tad less hyperbolic, saying the figures are at their highest level “since current records began in 2019”.
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PA reports:
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Some 12,791 visits took place in 2025, up 57% from 8,122 in the previous year, to businesses such as nail bars, car washes, barbers and takeaway shops.
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Ministers are seeking to crack down on illegal working in the UK, as part of efforts to deter those coming to the country illegally.
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Meanwhile, arrests were also at a record high of 8,971 last year, up nearly 59% compared to 5,647 in 2024 – the previous highest point in data published by the Home Office.
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Of those arrested, 1,087 people have been removed from the UK so far …
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The Home Office also said visits were up 77% and arrests were up 83% since Labour came to power.
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Some 17,483 visits and 12,322 arrests were recorded between July 2024 and December last year, up from 9,894 and 6,725 respectively across January 2023 to June 2024.
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Of the arrests, 1,726 people have been returned so far, up 35% on the 1,283 removed from visits in the previous 18-month period.
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In a related move, the Home Office is opening a Secure Borders UK TikTok account designed to discourage people from coming to the UK illegally on small boats. The Sun has got some examples of the video if will feature (mostly people being detained, it appears), and its write-up is negative and sarcastic. The headline, “Fury as ‘pathetic’ PM’s ‘laughable’ brainwave to stop Channel migrant dinghies is revealed to be a new TIKTOK ACCOUNT”, sets the tone. But public opinion does not get turned around overnight, and in Labour circles there may be a tiny bit of cheer this morning from the latest YouGov poll for the Times and Sky News showing Reform UK support at its lowest level since April.
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There is plenty more domestic politics to come as the day goes on. Here is the agenda for the day.
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8.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at the Institute for Government’s annual conference. Other speakers during the day include: Louise Casey, chair of the independent commission into adult social case, at 9.40am; Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Michael Gove, the former Tory cabinet minister, at 11.45am; Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, at 2.45pm; and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, at 4.30pm.
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9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet. There is a political cabinet, and a normal cabinet.
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9.30am: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, holds a press conference in Cardiff
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10am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, holds a press conference to promote a plan to end 12-hour A&E waits. Later he will visit London Air Ambulance.
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11am: Starmer hosts Karol Nawrocki, the Polish president, in No 10.
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11.30am: Streeting takes questions in the Commons.
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Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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2.20pm: Shona Robison, the Scottish government’s finance secretary, presents her budget to MSPs.
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2.30pm: Kirsty Brimelow, chair of the Bar Council, and other senior legal figures give evidence to the Commons justice committee about plans to restric jury trials; at 3.30pm Sarah Sackman, a justice minister, gives evidence.
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If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
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If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
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I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
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Key events
The UQ on the Chinese “super-embassy” is over. None of the Labour backbenchers who spoke were supportive of the government, and their comments ranged from serious concern to outright opposition.
Labour’s James Naish said Keir Starmer told the Chinese that there would be no delays with the application. He asked for an assurance that this did not mean the government had pre-determined the decision in advance.
Pennycook said the decision was being taken in the proper way.
Labour’s Mark Sewards said one of his constituents was Chloe Cheung, who has to live with the fact that she has a £100,000 bounty placed on her head under the national security law passed in Hong Kong. She fears anyone could claim that by seizing her and taking her to the new embassy. He asks what is being done to stop her being taken to the new embassy.
Pennycook said the government would not tolerate transnational repression. And he said China already has seven diplomatic premises in the UK.
Labour’s Lillian Jones asked for the security services to look again at this embassy decision in the light of the Telegraph report. (See 1.06pm.)
Pennycook said he could not comment on the security services.
Labour’s Rushanara Ali, MPs for Bethnel Green and Stepney, said the embassy would be in her constituency. She said her constituents were worried about it, not least because the constituency has one of the largest Muslim populations in Britain and people were very aware of China’s record persecuting Uyghur Muslims.
New embassy ‘real threat’ to Chinese diaspora in UK, Labour’s Alex Sobel says
Labour’s Alex Sobel said the joint committee on human rights published a report on transnational repression in the UK last year. He went on:
It found the Chinese state undertakes considerable transnational repression against the Chinese diaspora in the United Kingdom, much of it coordinated outside of the existing Chinese embassy. This new embassy is a real threat to Hongkongers, to Uyghurs, and other members of Chinese diaspora that don’t toe the party line in Beijing.
He asked if this would be a factor when the application was considered.
Pennycook told him the government was “forthright when it comes to human rights with the Chinese government”, but that he could not comment on the actual application.
Labour’s Uma Kumaran said that her population, Stratford and Bow in London, has one off the largest Hongkonger populations in the UK. She said her constituents were scared by the prospect of this embassy being in a neighbouring contituency. And she asked what the government was doing to ensure that the Chinese would not be able to use it for “further coercion [and] further intimidation of Hongkongers in the UK.
Pennycook told her that all material considerations would be taken into account when the decision is taken.
Calum Miller, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said that the government should delay any decision on the Chinese “super-embassy” until the review of foreign intererence in British politics, announced by the government last month, is published.
Labour MP Sarah Champion says she wants Labour to ‘stand up to bullies, not reward them’ in Chinese embassy decision
Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the international development committee, said she was in no doubt that this application should be blocked. She said:
I am in no doubt that this mega embassy should not be allowed to go ahead internationally. China is terrorising the people of Hong Kong. It is terrorising the democratic people in Taiwan and it is terrorising some people already in the UK. I look to my local University of Sheffield Hallam and I also look to what it’s doing to parliamentarians right here. I want my government to stand up to bullies, not reward them.
We need to be seeing rules, limits, put in place around China to stop this behaviour, not rewarding them with the embassy that they so dearly want.
Champion represents Rotherham, near Sheffield, and she was referring to Sheffield Hallam university last year having to drop research into human rights abuses in China, in response to pressure from Beijing.
In his response to Kearns, Pennycook again said he could not comment in detail on the Chinese application. But he said the relevant planning information had been published, and he said the government had requested further information when redacted drawings were supplied.
‘Frankly insanity’ – Tories claim plan revelations show why Labour should block Chinese ‘super-embassy’ plan
Responding to Pennycook, Alicia Kearns, a shadow Home Office minister, said she was disappointed by the fact that she just got a “technocratic history lesson” from the minister.
She went on:
208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber just one metre from cable serving City of London and the British people. That is what the unredacted plans tell us that the Chinese Communist Party has planned for its new embassy if the government gives them the go ahead. Indeed, we now know they plan to demolish the wall between the cables and their embassy cables, in which our economy is dependent.
Kearns said this would mean the Chinese could have access to “cables carrying millions of British people’s emails and financial data”, and she said this meant they would have “a launchpad for economic warfare against our nation”.
She asked if ministers were aware of these plans, if they have concerns about them, and if they have asked the Chinese for an explanation.
She asked Pennycook to confirm that the government plans to approve the application. She went on:
Labour promised a new relationship with China. Yet UK export goods are down 23%. Surrendering all security for Chinese trade was always a bad policy. But surrendering all security while exports plummet is frankly insanity.
She said the government should refuse the application.
Minister responds to urgent question about report claiming Chinese ‘super-embassy’ would have ‘hidden chamber’ near sensitive cables
Today the Daily Telegraph has splashed on a story saying that China will “build a hidden chamber alongside Britain’s most sensitive communication cables as part of a network of 208 secret rooms beneath its new London ‘super-embassy’”. The government has considering the Chinese government’s planning application for months, and a decision is expected imminently.
Despite claims that the Chinese could use the building near the City to access cables carrying sensitive financial information, the government is expected to approve the application.
In their story, Gareth Corfield and Fraser Lyness said:
The plans, which are redacted in all publicly available versions, can only be revealed because The Telegraph has uncovered the unredacted documents.
The drawings show that a single concealed chamber will sit directly alongside fibre-optic cables transmitting financial data to the City of London, as well as email and messaging traffic for millions of internet users.
The same hidden room is fitted with hot-air extraction systems, possibly suggesting the installation of heat-generating equipment such as advanced computers used for espionage. The plans also show that China intends to demolish and rebuild the outer basement wall of the chamber, directly beside the fibre-optic cables.
The Conservative MP Alicia Kearns has tabled an urgent question on this.
Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, is responding to it now. He says it is a live planning application, and so he cannot comment on it.
Instead, he just set out information about the process. And he says a decision will be taken on or before 20 January.
After Pennycook finishes, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, says, because this is a question about security, a Home Office minister should be replying, not a planning minister.
Polish president urges Starmer to offer Polish as modern foreign language for students in UK
Jakub Krupa
Jakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.
Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki has urged the British government to offer Polish as a modern foreign language available to students in the UK as part of a push for closer political and people-to-people relations between the countries.
Briefing reporters outside 10 Downing Street after his meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, Nawrocki stressed the importance of Polish-British military and security links, noting that over 100 UK troops are stationed in Poland.
He said the two leaders also discussed the opportunities for Polish and British military industries to work together as they rearm their respective armies.
Nawrocki said they also talked about trade, including Poland’s anticipated involvement in the G20 summit this year, and ongoing talks about the UK’s post-Brexit settlement with the EU, including on easing SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) checks that would have allowed Polish companies to trade with the UK.
He also said that he was “very pleased” that “the UK is on the way to introducing Polish as a foreign language in the education system in the UK”, as he offered his backing to the idea which would benefit thousands of children born in Polish and Polish-British families in the UK.
With an estimated population of over 800,000, Poles remain one of the largest national foreign-born communities in the UK. However, the number of Poles in the UK has been falling in the last few years as more have been moving out of the country than coming in.
A former head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki emerged from relative political obscurity to unexpectedly win last year’s presidential election. He beat liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski after a closely run contest in which he was backed by the US president, Donald Trump.
71% of parents who had child benefit suspended after HMRC emigration fraud probe were legitimate claimants, MPs told
Lisa O’Carroll
Lisa O’Carroll is a senior Guardian correspondent.
Seven in 10 parents who had child benefit suspended in a HM Revenue and Customs anti-fraud crackdown fiasco last year were in fact legitimate beneficiaries who had not emigrated, the tax authority has revealed.
The chief executive of HMRC, John-Paul Marks, told the Treasury select committee said 71% of those targeted, higher than the 63% previously admitted, were in “error”.
Marks admitted that “just under 5%” of the 23,700 parents who lose their child benefit, were in fact fraudulent.
Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, accused HMRC of causing unnecessary “pain” to innocent parents and making an “egregious” error assuming parents who had used Dublin Aiport to return to Northern Ireland had emigrated.
The admission shows a major system failure by HMRC which had told the government before rolling out the scheme in July, it could save up to £350m in benefit fraud over five years.
They had piloted a scheme the previous year but had used PAYE records and Home Office travel data to try and work out which parents had emigrated and were still claiming child benefit.
But, when the scheme was rolled out, the PAYE checks were removed leaving incomplete Home Office travel records as the basis of the calculation of fraud.
Parents said they were left frightened and stressed after they received letters telling them their benefit was being suspended with demands they answer 73 questions involving detailed medical records, school reports and bank statements to prove they were not fraudsters.
The 71% error rate is much higher than previously admitted when HRMC told Conservative MP Andrew Snowden in a written answer before Christmas that 63% of the parents had been wrongly targetted because of flawed travel data.
Louise Haigh says government should be ‘really, really tough’ in its approach to X
Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, has said that Labour should be “really, really tough” in its response to Elon Musk over X and its Grok AI tool creating sexualised, deepfake images.
Last week Haigh called for the government to give up posting on X.
Today, in an interview on the Today programme, referring to the Grok AI feature allowing users to digitally undress pictures of women and children, Haigh said:
These issues are a feature, they’re not a bug of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Elon Musk is ideologically committed to pushing the boundaries of free speech, and we’ve seen that from his reaction to the threats of the Ofcom investigation.
He doesn’t believe in the kind of guardrails and safeguarding that the British public would expect online, and he takes a very different approach from AI companies like Google and OpenAI.
So it’s right that we are really, really tough in our response, and I’m really pleased the government has taken him on so roundly.
Davey says that President Trump’s comments about Greenland show that he is “out of control”. He says Keir Starmer and other European leaders were right to issue a statement saying that the future of Greenland is not a matter for the US. And he says he would be happy to see Nato come up with a strong response, putting Nato forces there to protect it from Russia. And the US should be invited to join that mission, he says.
The press conference is now over.
