Jeremy Hunt questioned by Treasury committee about autumn statement – UK politics live | Politics

Baldwin says she and Hunt both rebelled over the decision of the Boris Johnson government to cut aid spending from 0.7% of national income.

Hunt says he is committed to returning aid spending to the 0.7% figure when it is possible.

Baldwin says the autumn statement figures imply that will not happen in the next five years. Hunt confirms that is the case. He says:

I don’t believe it is possible to budget for that [going back up to 0.7%] in the figures, no.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is giving evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.

Harriett Baldwin, the Conservative chair of the committee, starts the questioning.

She says the Office for Budget Responsibility said yesterday that Hunt’s fiscal rules are the loosest of any set of fiscal rules the Treasury has had since the OBR was set up.

Hunt accepts that, but he says the OBR also said that he faced the tightest set of public finances.

Baldwin puts to Hunt that his fiscal rules are “mañana” ones – because they assume debt falling, but always in the future.

Hunt does not accept that. He says the plan is for debt to fall.

Labour says the issue of the Parthenon marbles would not be a “priority issue” under a Keir Starmer premiership.

At a post-PMQs briefing, asked if the marbles would remain in the UK under a Labour government, a party spokesperson said:

[A] Labour government will not be spending any time legislating on this matter or giving any government time to this matter. It is not a priority issue for us. There will be no change in the legal status.

As you will be well aware, there are cultural exchanges that happen the whole time between institutions and government.

If the British Museum and the Greek government were to come up with a loan agreement that was acceptable to both sides, then we obviously wouldn’t stand in the way of that. But it is not a process that we would be looking to insert ourselves into.

Asked about fears that the Greeks would not return the ancient sculptures after such an exchange deal, the spokesperson said:

Well, I think that would not meet the definition of a loan if that was the case.

That is for the British Museum and the Greek government to discuss on those terms and clearly any agreement they came to would have to be compatible with the existing law because we are not looking to change the law on these matters.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says she would like to see UK rejoin EU

Lisa O’Carroll

The UK should rejoin the EU, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said, admitting that European leaders had “goofed up” on the departure of Britain from the bloc.

She made the remarks at an event in Brussels last night.

Asked if the UK could ever rejoin the EU she replied:

I must say, I keep telling my children: ‘You have to fix it. We goofed it up, you have to fix it.’ So I think here too, the direction of travel – my personal opinion – is clear.

Her remarks at an awards ceremony staged by Politico come as relations between the EU and the UK continue to improve after a near collapse of relations under Boris Johnson and Lord Frost, who negotiated the Brexit trade deal.

The new foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, made his first official return to Brussels this week after losing the keys to Number 10 in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Officially he was in the EU capital to attend a meeting of Nato foreign ministers but he squeezed in an hour-long meeting with Maroš Šefčovič, a vice-president of the European Commission and the chief Brexit negotiator following the UK’s exit from the bloc in 2020.

Although Cameron had campaigned for remain, nervousness about being back in the embrace of the EU given was evident.

He declined to speak to the media on his first day in the Belgian capital and refused any questions on the second.

It is widely assumed that it was Tony Blair who annihilated the Tories in the 1990s, but it was his predecessor, the late John Smith, who first cemented in the public mind the idea that John Major was a hapless incompetent leading an administration of utter uselessness, and he did it in a speech in the Commons in June 1993. You can watch an excerpt here.

Smith described Major as the “man with the non-Midas touch” and went on to say: “It is no wonder that we live in a country where the Grand National does not start and hotels fall into the sea.” Today Keir Starmer referenced that speech when he told Rishi Sunak:

It is ironic that he has suddenly taken such a keen interest in Greek culture when he has clearly become the man with the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to … maybe the home secretary can help me out here.

It is always quite risky resurrecting a joke that someone else has used brilliantly in the past. But by the time Starmer used this line, in his sixth question, he had already performed a fairly effective demolition job on Sunak, and so it worked fine.

The exchanges covered immigration policy and Sunak’s row with the Greek PM, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, about the Parthenon marbles. In the long term, migration is probably the most serious problem for Sunak, but today he was at his most inept trying to justify the Mitsotakis snub. Starmer asked:

Never mind the British Museum, it’s the prime minister who has obviously lost his marbles.

The Greek prime minister came to London to meet him, a fellow Nato member, an economic ally, one of our most important partners in tackling illegal immigration.

But instead of using that meeting to discuss those serious issues, he tried to humiliate him and cancelled at the last minute. Why such small politics, prime minister?

Sunak could have tried to play down the whole affair. But instead he escalated, by denouncing the Greek PM as someone who cannot be trusted to keep his word. This is what No 10 was in effect briefing yesterday, but for the prime minister to say this in parliament, about leader of a friendly country, is highly provocative. Sunak said.

Of course, we’re always happy to discuss important topics of substance with our allies, like tackling illegal migration or indeed strengthening our security.

But when it was clear that the purpose of a meeting was not to discuss substantive issues for the future, but rather to grandstand and relitigate issues of the past, it was inappropriate.

Furthermore … when specific commitments and specific assurances on that topic were made to this country and then were broken, it may seem alien to him, but my view is when people make commitments they should keep them.

Starmer replied:

I discussed with the Greek prime minister the economy, security, immigration, I also told him we wouldn’t change the law regarding the marbles. It’s not that difficult, prime minister.

And then, when Sunak in his reply said that Starmer was “backing an EU country over Britain”, Starmer hit back:

The prime minister is now saying that meeting the prime minister of Greece is somehow supporting the EU instead of discussing serious issues. He’s just dug further into that hole that he’s made for himself. Rather than deal with the facts, he’s prosecuting his one-man war on reality.

That clinched it. Wit and eloquence can count for a lot in debate, but being right is normally even better, and Starmer’s attack was powerful today because it crystallised what many Tories, as well as Labour MPs, will be thinking.

After his “hotels fall into the sea” speech (which followed Black Wednesday), Smith had the authority of a prime minister in waiting, while Major could never quite shake off the perception that he was a bit of a joke. The relationship is broadly similar today. That is not a result of today’s PMQs, but the exchanges this afternoon do confirm the picture.