General election cost taxpayers £141m, government reveals - politics live

• Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election cost the taxpayer £141m, the Cabinet Office has revealed. (See 4.42pm.)

• The Commons has passed a Labour motion saying that NHS workers should get a “fair pay rise” and that the public sector pay cap in the NHS should be lifted. With the DUP planning to support Labour, the Conservatives, who don’t have a majority without DUP, faced defeat if they opposed the motion and so they chose to abstain, meaning the motion was passed by acclamation, without any MPs objecting. The result is not binding, but it does amount to a symbolic victory for Jeremy Corbyn who called for the public sector pay cap to go at PMQs. Government sources have revealed that in future the Tories will sidestep the risk of defeat when the Commons is debating opposition day motions by treating them as irrelevant and allowing their MPs to stay away. (See 5.50pm.)

• The Police Federation has accused May of lying about police pay at PMQs. (See 3.43pm.)

• Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has told MPs the government is considering imposing a cap on the amount any landowner can receive in agricultural subsidies after Brexit. Currently subsidies are paid by the EU under the common agricultural policy. After Brexit the government plans to introduce its own version. When the Labour MP Paul Flynn put it to Gove at an environment select committee hearing that aristocrats and members of the royal family receive huge sums under the current system, Gove replied:

One of the things we are would like to do as we reform the common agriculture policy is to see if there’s a way we can provide a cap on the level of support than any individual or institution can receive.

• Downing Street has released a video intended to show the government is making good progress towards Brexit.

• Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP and former attorney general, has called for an urgent side-deal on EU citizens’ rights post-Brexit to secure their future in the event Britain crashes out of the bloc without an agreement with Brussels.

• Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party have joined forces in a bid to pressurise the US government into helping resolve the bitter aerospace trade dispute between Boeing and Bombardier. As the Press Association reports, the political rivals, who have been unable to reach agreement to restore Northern Ireland’s failed government, have issued a joint letter to US Vice President Mike Pence raising their concerns about the fallout which could financially devastate one of the region’s biggest employers. The letter was signed by DUP leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Fein’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill.
  

• Theresa May has been given a discount card for high street retailer LK Bennett - the third fashion-related perk she has declared. As the Press Association reports, May recorded the gift from LK Bennett, valid from May 2017 until April 2018, on the Commons register of members’ interests. It follows previously declared donations to the fashion-loving PM from designer Amanda Wakely and shoe store Russell and Bromley. The discounts were declared because they have the “potential to be of registrable value” - indicating that they could be worth more than 300 depending on how much the prime minister spends.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Tory MPs will soon find that they can take quite a lot of Wednesday afternoons off. The government has to allocate a certain number of days per session, like today, for opposition day debates (they are usually on a Wednesday) and Labour normally uses these sessions to table a motion or motions criticising government policy. A government with a majority would just vote them down. But this government does not have a majority and, when it became obvious the DUP were going to vote with Labour, the whips decided to tell Tory MPs to abstain - so that technically the government has not been defeated, and Labour’s “victory” is relatively hollow.

The Tories feel free to do this because the Commons was not voting on legislation; MPs were just voting on a declaratory motion. In an ideal world, the government would always take notice of the views of the House of Commons. But, in practice, the government can happily ignore a declaratory motion saying, ‘Ministers must do X’ and no one will really notice.

How do we know? Because they have been doing it for six years anyway. After the Wright report (see 3.35pm) the Commons started holding regular debates on motions chosen by backbenchers. At first the coalition government started to worry about being “defeated” on various issues. But then the government decided to ignore these votes as a matter of course, telling their backbenchers they could vote as they liked because the outcome did not matter.

According to a well-placed source, Theresa May’s government is now going to adopt the same approach to opposition day debates. Tory MPs will be told to abstain, or they will be given the freedom to do what they want. Either way, the chief whip is going to make it clear that they won’t have to be in the Commons to vote. Government ministers and backbenchers will still participate in opposition day debates, but the Tories will try to render them irrelevant by not making any effort to win the votes.

It’s the equivalent of not turning up to the match because the other team has more players.

The general election cost the taxpayer £141m, the Cabinet Office has revealed. In a Commons written statement, the Cabinet Office minister Chris Skidmore said free mail shots for candidates cost £43m and administering the election cost £98m.

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In the Commons the Labour motion on NHS pay (see 11.54am for the text) has been passed by MPs unopposed.

Gove says a post-Brexit trade deal with the US would have to be ratified by the House of Commons. And the British people do not want to see animal welfare standards watered down, or labour standards watered down either.

If we cannot reach agreement on the US on these points, the deal will have to be limited in scope.

Q: So would the government actually hold up a US trade deal if it involved the UK having to accept chlorinated chicken?

Yes, says Gove, very directly.

(He said the same thing during the summer.)

Gove is now talking about fishing after Brexit.

He says he does not think anyone is saying no foreign boats should fish in British waters after Brexit.

But Britain will be able to choose who can and cannot fish in these waters.

Q: Will British fishermen get access to more fish after Brexit?

Yes, says Gove. He says at the moment the French can access more fish in the English channel than the British.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is giving evidence to the Commons environment committee now.

In response to a question from Labour’s Paul Flynn about the common agriculture policy, and subsidies paid to wealthy landowners, he said that as Britain its own subsidy regime after Brexit, the government is considering introducing a cap setting a maximum amount that can be paid to any individual or institution.

• Gove says government may cap amount any landowner can receive in farming subsidies after Brexit.

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Here is the full statement from Calum Macleod, the Police Federation vice chair, on what Theresa May said about police pay at PMQs.

It shows they have lost touch with reality, if they ever had it, and are clueless as to the demands and dangers officers have to face on a daily basis to keep communities safe. Officers are struggling to keep their heads above water and all we are asking for is fair recognition.

When comparing total pay in 2015/2016 to what it was in 2009/2010 it has increased in nominal terms by +2%, but decreased by -16% in real terms. This cannot be right.

We expect police officers to run in to the face of danger every day to protect the public however the government refuses to give them the money they deserve. This has to be addressed and the government has to be held to account. How can they abide by their independent pay bodies which recommended an 11% pay rise for MPs but fail to abide by ours, which recommended a 2% consolidated). This smacks of double standards.

The Police Federation has accused Theresa May of lying about police pay at PMQs. Calum Macleod, the vice chair of the Police Federation, told HuffPost UK:

The government stating that police officers have had a 32% pay rise since 2010 is a joke – and is in fact a downright lie.

It shows they have lost touch with reality, if they ever had it, and are clueless as to the demands and dangers officers have to face on a daily basis to keep communities safe. Officers are struggling to keep their heads above water and all we are asking for is fair recognition.

May told MPs that, if you take into account progression pay, pay rises and the increase in the income tax threshold, someone who was a new police officer in 2010 will have seen their post-tax pay increase by £9,000, a real-terms rise of 32%.

One of John Bercow’s innovations as speaker has been to allow PMQs every week to over-run, effectively turning a 30-minute session into a 45-minute session without the prime minister or anyone else having a say. He has also been much, much more willing than his predecessors to grant urgent questions and emergency debates, again carving out time from the parliamentary timetable for topics that he has chosen to see debated, not the government.

Now he is proposing an even more significant shift. In an interesting article for Prospect, Bercow says a House business committee, not the government whips, should get to decide what gets debated and when.

Bercow points out that this was one of the recommendations of the Wright committee (so called after its chair, the Labour MP Tony Wright) set up after the expenses scandal. The Wright committee called for the election of select committee chairs and the establishment of a backbench business committee, to determine which MPs can raise which topics on the day’s set aside for backbench debates. Both reforms are widely seen as successes, making select committee more independent and ensuring a wider range of topics gets debated on the floor of the Commons. But the proposal for a House business committee was shelved, for the fairly obvious reason that its creation would make it harder for the government to get its business through the Commons.

Explaining how this would work, Bercow says:

How would a House Business Committee work? First, the government is entitled to have a majority, but not a monopoly, on the committee. The party, or coalition, with the majority of seats in the Commons should not have its business scuppered by being denied parliamentary time, as that would be undemocratic. The House, however, should have the right to ask that certain measures receive more scrutiny than the norm because of the nature and implications of those measures.

Second, it should be chaired by an independent individual, thus securing the confidence of the whole House: the Wright committee suggested the senior Deputy Speaker. Third, there should be a backbench component and representation from the so-called “minor parties.” Fourth, as it would be desirable to link the work of select committees to the Chamber, there is a strong case for a representative of the select committees to be included, possibly the chair of the liaison committee. Finally, there is a strong case for the backbench members of the committee being elected by the whole House, so they can speak with that mandate.

Setting up a committee like this is “the right, democratic thing to do,” he goes on. “Inadequate scrutiny hardly makes for stellar legislation.”

There is no particular reason to think that Bercow will have any more luck that Tony Wright in getting this idea off the ground. But the EU withdrawal bill has stirred up the whole debate about the balance of power between the legislature and the executive (a House business committee would have set aside more than eight days for the bill’s committee stage, and when that committee stage takes place, some of the amendments will be calling for the Commons, not ministers, to decide how the Henry VII powers in the bill get parliamentary scrutiny) and so perhaps Bercow has chosen the right time to try again.

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• Theresa May ducked a question from Jeremy Corbyn on whether police or prison officers numbers could be cut in order to fund the pay rises announced for both groups of public sector workers this week.

• The Commons is set to approve a Labour motion saying that NHS staff should get a “fair pay rise” and that the public sector pay cap should be lifted in the NHS. MPs are debating the motion now, and will later debate another Labour motion saying the government’s latest rise in university tuition fees should be scrapped. The DUP is voting with Labour on both motions, which means even that if the Tories were to try voting them down, they would probably lose. Instead Tory MPs are going to abstain. The NHS pay motion will not be binding on the government when passed. Labour claim the tuition fee one will be binding, but the government disputes this.

• Wage rises in Britain have failed to keep pace with inflation, according to the latest official figures, despite a buoyant labour market that saw unemployment fall to its lowest level since 1975.

• George Osborne told colleagues at the Evening Standard that he will not rest until Theresa May is “chopped up in bags in my freezer”, according to a profile of the former chancellor.

• May has condemned the Unite general secretary Len McCluskey for saying he would back illegal strikes. Speaking at PMQs, she also joked about McCluskey citing Mahatma Gandhi to justify illegal protest. She told MPs:

I was struck this week to see that Len McCluskey, or perhaps Mahatma as his friends call him, had said if they need to act outside the law, so be it.

Well, I have to say I join you, on this side of the House we’re very clear - we condemn illegal strikes, we condemn action outside of the law.

The people who suffer from those illegal strikes are the ordinary working families who can’t get their children to school, who can’t access the public services they need and who can’t get to work.

Yesterday the shadow Brexit minister Paul Blomfield said Labour was “a party that respects the law” when asked if he backed McCluskey. But Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, sidestepped the same question when he was asked about McCluskey’s comments in an interview yesterday, and this afternoon, on the World at One, the shadow education minister Tracy Brabin defended McCluskey. She said:

He’s the champion for his members and workforce and he’s saying to the government you’ve got to take this seriously or further down the line we are going to have big trouble ... Given his position, he’s probably right [to threaten illegal strike action] because he needs the government to listen because they are not listening.

• May has announced that the government will spend a further £25m on the Hurricane Irma relief effort.

• Lord Bridges of Headley, a former Brexit minister, has accused the government of not being “honest” about the challenges created by the decision to leave the EU. (See 9.30am.)

• Mark Price, who quit as a government trade minister a fortnight ago, has warned that Brexit will not solve the day-to-day problems that led people to vote to leave the EU, but instead will make them worse.

• Britain needs to show “more clarity and less ambiguity” in Brexit negotiations, a French government minister has said, warning that the consequences of failure to reach a deal would be felt across Europe but “even worse in Britain”.

• Jean-Claude Juncker has declared that the “wind is back in Europe’s sails” in an at times deeply personal State of the Union speech in which he gave his vision for the future of the bloc when the UK makes its “tragic” departure in 2019.

• The UK would not have voted for Brexit had it not been for the banking crisis which began 10 years ago with the run on Northern Rock, according to the former chancellor Lord Darling.

• Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has urged the arms industry to increase exports after Brexit. Speaking at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London’s docklands, he said:

As we look to life post-Brexit and spread our wings further across the world it is high time that we do more to compete for a bigger share of this international export market.

It is time now to build exportability into our thinking from the off, aligning that with requirements of our international partners, enabling a more open architecture to our platforms that can ‘plug and play’ with different bits of capability.

• The moment Nick Clegg and his wife had to tell their eldest son he had blood cancer was one of the “toughest things” for the family, Miriam González Durántez has said.

• Norman Lamb has warned it is unacceptable that the Commons science and technology committee, which he chairs, has no female members so far.

• May has revealed that the Conservative backbencher Michael Fabricant is going to appear on the Channel 4 programme Celebrity First Dates. In response to a question from him at PMQs, she said:

I have noticed that he is shortly to appear on a Channel 4 programme called Celebrity First Dates. What I’m not sure about is whether he is the celebrity or the first date.

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about PMQs.

No one was hugely impressed, by Corbyn is definitely getting the better reviews.

From the Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the New Statesman’s George Eaton

From Sky’s Adam Boulton

From the Guardian’s Peter Walker

From the Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith

From the Independent’s John Rentoul

From 5 News’s Andy Bell

From the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman

From Sky’s Faisal Islam

The Independent’s Tom Peck has coined the term “director’s cut PMQs” to describe John Bercow’s new, longer version.