Burnham on Scottish independence: ‘Too much time is wasted in those dramas’
Following his speech, Burnham is taking questions from the media.
When asked by the BBC whether his approach with devolution will make him more or less likely the last prime minister of the United Kingdom, he said: “Obviously, I don’t want to be that.”
The SNP has been pushing for a path to Scottish independence, which the prime minister has repeatedly ruled out.
Burnham added:
I just feel we all have to move beyond the constitutional questions.
In my view, people in Scotland are suffering the cost of living crisis, like they are in England and everywhere else. And I think our job is to focus on the practicalities, to focus on solutions for people.
Right now, too much time is wasted in those dramas. It consumes too much energy.”
Key events
Next up in Aberdeen, Gilruth’s Welsh opposite number, Sioned Williams, spoke about the connections that bind the two countries as well and claimed that they shared the same dream of independence.
Williams congratulated the SNP for their own victory in May and echoed Gilruth’s sentiment that the success of national parties in all three countries could spell the end of the UK, claiming that “the stars aligned in Wales, Scotland, and the north of Ireland, and the UK constitution now sits in a very different constellation.”
Scottish deputy first minister: ‘Westminster’s time is coming to an end’
Back to Scottish news, day two of the SNP conference has kicked off in Aberdeen with deputy first minister Jenny Gilruth taking the stage first.
Gilruth took the opportunity to congratulate Plaid Cymru, the SNP’s sister party, for their victory in the May Senedd elections, pointing out that it meant that “Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are now led by first ministers who believe in independence from the UK.”
Gilruth also reminded the crowd of the meeting that took place between the three nations’ first ministers in Cardiff in September, claiming that it was “the clearest possible sign yet that Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”
Jamie Grierson
In other news today, pornography that depicts strangulation and incestuous relationships will be banned in England and Wales from early November, the government has announced.
The content will be outlawed from 6 November after cross-party pressure prompted ministers to announce new legislation earlier this year.
Online pornography depicting strangulation or suffocation, sex between people who are related or pretending to be related, or when somebody is pretending to be a child under 16, will be illegal.
The justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said: “This isn’t about criminalising harmless sexual preferences. But porn can shape what people think a healthy relationship looks like, especially young people.
“Content that normalises, or even glorifies, violence against women is dangerous and can blur the line with what is acceptable in real life.”
Read more:
Burnham says he accepts Swinney ‘has a different view’ on Scottish independence
Continuing on the theme of Scottish independence, Burnham was asked by the Daily Record whether he was categorically ruling out a second referendum during his premiership.
The prime minister said:
I think unions of countries are better because you can face a challenging world in a more confident and stronger way, in my view, when you collaborate and you work together.
That is my view, I communicated it to the [Scottish] first secretary very clearly.
He has a different view, but let’s accept there’s a different view there and then work on together what we can agree on.
My view won’t be changing, but let’s now move forward where we can make some progress.”
Burnham on Scottish independence: ‘Too much time is wasted in those dramas’
Following his speech, Burnham is taking questions from the media.
When asked by the BBC whether his approach with devolution will make him more or less likely the last prime minister of the United Kingdom, he said: “Obviously, I don’t want to be that.”
The SNP has been pushing for a path to Scottish independence, which the prime minister has repeatedly ruled out.
Burnham added:
I just feel we all have to move beyond the constitutional questions.
In my view, people in Scotland are suffering the cost of living crisis, like they are in England and everywhere else. And I think our job is to focus on the practicalities, to focus on solutions for people.
Right now, too much time is wasted in those dramas. It consumes too much energy.”
Burnham’s devolution plans ‘a waste of time,’ says Badenoch
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister’s plans to devolve more powers to Scottish towns and regions is a “waste of time”.
During her own visit to Scotland, at the Malcom Group near Glasgow, Badenoch said: “I think that this is yet again a waste of time discussion.
“This naval gazing about Holyrood powers and constitutional settlements and should we have another referendum and should have more councils – they all have the powers that they need.”
She said the discussion should instead be on what the Scottish government is doing with its powers, which she believed was “absolutely nothing”.
She told Sky News: “What are they doing on education? What are they doing on health? They’ve got no answers.”
Here she is standing in front of a mural of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace who famously led a rebellion against English rule:
Taz Ali
Burham has finished his speech, which lasted about 35 minutes. I could just about hear him on the hot mic saying “sorry that went on a bit” as he shook someone’s hand off camera.
‘If we don’t move now, Scotland could lose out,’ says Burnham
The prime minister said he is making a “serious and genuine offer” to the Scottish government to put more control “in the hands of local people”.
He said:
We need to look at the resources and decision-making powers that sit at the regional level in Scotland, so that no Scottish city regions are left behind.
I know the Scottish government has announced a long term programme for local government reform.
But if you ask me, we’ve got to move faster … if we don’t move now, Scotland could lose out.
There is a risk that some of the towns and cities become underpowered when some of the towns and cities of the north of England are going the other way and starting to power up. I don’t want to see that as prime minister.”
Burnham spoke of Ravenscraig, once the pride of Scotland’s steel industry that employed tens of thousands of people before it closed in 1992.
He said:
When it closed, it wasn’t just a works that shut, it was a whole community which saw the pillars underneath it just taken away, collapsed beneath it.
That was a decision taken hundreds of miles away without any real consequences for what that would mean for people here, taken by people who would never have to live with those consequences, or see those consequences.
Every day and more than 30 years on, I know that work is still ongoing to fill the Raven’s Craig site, such was the hole that it left.
He recalled how the mining community in the Lancashire coalfield in Leigh were equally let down by decisions in Westminster when it shut down.
I was the MP there for 16 years from the early 2000s, just after the pits had shut in the 1990s. It broke my heart to see the old miners shuffling into my surgery, carrying oxygen bottles, still struggling to get compensation for the damage that was done to their lungs.
It pained me to drive past the wasteland around Bickershaw Colliery, one of the last pits to close in Leigh. Nobody asked Leigh what was going to come next either.
You know, no one in Whitehall went to Leigh and said, well, here’s what we’re going to do with transition … and this is the way that the UK has been run in our lifetimes, and it’s what needs to change.
It took so much from Motherwell and its people in terms of the building of Britain. And it took so much from Leigh in terms of the powering of Britain, and then just abandoned them when life moved on.”
Burnham says he is in Scotland with ‘a big offer’ to give more power to people and places
Burnham said he wants to give more power to people and places in order for them to “change things for themselves”.
He said:
I care about Scotland a lot, and I am coming today with a big offer and in search of common ground.
When I walked into Downing Street in July, I said I wanted to do politics differently. Place first, not party first. Honestly, I meant it, and I arrive here in that spirit because people in Scotland, in my view, deserve better from politicians and politics.
I want to show that politics can can be better and we can work in a different way.
Lots of cheers from the young audience after Burnham concedes he is in the “true north”.
“Please don’t tell anyone in Manchester,” he joked.
Burnham delivers speech on devolution in Scotland
Andy Burnham has begun his speech in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. You can watch live below as we bring you the latest lines:
Swinney says he will ‘of course’ work with Burnham on devolution
We should be hearing from Andy Burnham shortly, as Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said he will “of course” work with the prime minister if he wants to devolve more powers to Scotland.
“The prime minister is very welcome in Scotland and I’ll be interested to hear what he’s got to say,” the SNP leader said, according to the Press Association.
He added: “I’ve got a track record throughout my political life of working to make sure as many powers as possible are exercised here in Scotland.”
Meanwhile, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is also in Scotland today, where she is visiting the Malcolm Group logistics company near Glasgow and browsing its collection of trucks. Here she is in front of one such truck adorned with a giant mural of Braveheart:
Richard Adams
Also today, the Ofsted schools inspectorate has offered schools a new complaints review service, in an effort to placate critics who say its inspections place headteachers and staff in England under immense stress and excessive workloads.
Ofsted’s proposal unveiled today comes after the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the National Governors Association (NGA) separately called for changes in Ofsted’s leadership and culture.
The two groups were adding their voices to those calling for an overhaul of Ofsted and its school inspection regime, including the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Education Union.
In the wake of the death of headteacher Ruth Perry after an Ofsted inspection, Labour pledged to reform school inspections. But the new framework introduced by Ofsted last year has been criticised for making matters worse.
A survey by the NGA reported one governor as saying they saw their school’s senior staff “break down routinely throughout the two days” of inspection, while another said: “The outcome was fair but the process was brutal.”
The NAHT’s national executive said in a statement:
This is no longer about further amendment to a bankrupt framework.
The leadership and culture of Ofsted must change so that the government and the sector can engage, in an atmosphere of restored trust and good faith, to create an inspection system that is trusted by the sector, valued by parents and the government.”
Ofsted said it will establish the new independent complaints review next year to hear challenges from schools dissatisfied with the outcomes of Ofsted’s existing internal complaints service.
But Andy Jordan, the Association of School and College Leaders’ inspection and accountability specialist, said “much more” needs to be done to restore confidence in Ofsted.
“It’s important to realise that this will not address the central issue of why so many schools feel compelled to complain in the first place,” he said.
Scottish independence is “bigger than any party”, the Scottish Green co-leader, Gillian Mackay, said. But she cautioned that votes from Green and SNP supporters will not be enough to win a second referendum.
Mackay is due to speak at the SNP’s annual party conference in Aberdeen tomorrow on a panel discussion about Scottish independence, which has not gone down well with some SNP members, according to the Press Association.
Still, Mackay said she was “delighted” to be speaking at the SNP conference, adding she would be “discussing how we can best take the independence movement forward”.
But she stressed: “Independence is bigger than any party. SNP supporters and Green supporters alone are not enough to secure a sustained pro-independence majority and to secure the referendum that we need.
“We need to reach beyond our own parties, bring more people with us and build the broadest possible movement for Scotland’s right to choose our own future.”
Heather Stewart
John Healey is poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget, to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands.
The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the International Monetary Fund has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”.
To keep the Treasury’s deficit reduction plans on track in the face of rising government borrowing costs, the Guardian understands Healey has decided to tap the financial sector for additional revenue.
One option understood to be under discussion – reversing cuts to the bank surcharge made by Jeremy Hunt – would raise upwards of £2bn a year.
Lenders have been logging strong earnings on the back of rising interest rates, with the UK’s four largest lenders – HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group – alone having generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over the past five years.
Thinktanks and trade unions have repeatedly urged Healey to tax Britain’s banks more heavily, an option considered but rejected by his predecessor Rachel Reeves, who was wary of deterring future investment.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said: “Britain’s big four banks are making a billion pounds a week, while bonuses have hit a post-crash record. These are bumper profits, driven by high interest rates and households’ mortgage misery. It’s time to make sure banks pay their fair share.”
Read more:
Burnham in Scotland as SNP minister accuses PM of ‘hypocrisy’ over indyref stance
Good morning and welcome to our UK politics live blog. Prime minister Andy Burnham is in Scotland today where he is expected to invite Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, to collaborate on devolving decision-making powers away from both Westminster and Holyrood and pushing control further down to Scottish regions and towns.
The newswires have reported an extract of his speech, which he is expected to deliver in Lanarkshire around midday:
During my first week in office, I told the first minister that I wanted to work with him to spread opportunities to communities across Scotland’s regions and cities.
Through No10 North, we are rewiring the state and I want to make sure regions in Scotland are fully part of this.
This is me making an offer to the Scottish government. With us working together, there is no limit to what we can achieve for the Scottish people.”
Burnham’s visit coincides with the SNP’s annual party conference in Aberdeen, which the party has said will launch the biggest pro-independence campaign since the 2014 referendum.
The prime minister has repeatedly ruled out another independence referendum, but he has been accused of hypocrisy by the SNP for proposing to reopen the debate on Brexit and re-examining the UK’s relationship with the EU.
“That hypocrisy is there for all to see and I think the Scottish electorate will take a pretty dim view of it,” SNP minister Stephen Flynn told the Press Association.
He added: “Mr Burnham wants power pushed out of Westminster – so do we.
“But let’s make sure that power and that decision making is taken by the Scottish people and they have the opportunity to do so in an independence referendum.”
In other news:
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Young people who rely on benefits will be given less money in exchange for more intensive health and employment support under plans for a separate youth welfare system, the Financial Times reported. Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into Britain’s youth jobs crisis, will recommend benefits for young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) be delivered through a different process, sources told the newspaper.
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Reform’s Robert Jenrick has responded to claims made by his colleague Sarah Pochin that the party is “chauvinistic”, after she was caught by an undercover ITV news reporter complaining about the party’s culture. “That’s not my experience of Reform,” Jenrick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
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John Healey is planning to increase taxes on the UK banking sector in his 28 October budget, the Guardian understands. One option on the table is reversing former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s 2023 cut to the bank profit surcharge, from 3% back to 8%. You can read more on this story here:
