Keir Starmer says SNP and Westminster using gender recognition bill for political advantage – UK politics live | Politics

At her news conference, asked about Keir Starmer’s claim that the SNP and the Tories are both exploiting the gender recognition bill for partisan advantage (see 10.22am), Nicola Sturgeon said that this had only become a constitutional issue because Westminster was refusing to accept the right of the Scottish parliament to legislate on a matter within its own competence. She went on: “So, if anybody is trying to use it politically, it’s those Westminster politicians.”

She pointed out that most Labour MSPs voted for the bill. And she said the Scottish government accepted an amendment, from Labour, saying the bill would not affect the Equality Act. So Starmer needed to understand this was not just an SNP bill, she said; it was legislation backed by a large number of MSPs.

Sturgeon also said that she found Starmer’s comments on the NHS in his interview with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday “pretty dispiriting”.

She claimed that some of what he was saying was “quite dangerous”, because he implied people with serious conditions should not consult their GP, or should bypass their GP. She said Starmer may have intended to say something different.

And she said Starmer should be committing to invest more in the NHS, and to reverse Brexit, to address the staffing problem in the health service. She went on:

Keir Stamer needs to stop trying to be a pale imitation of the Tory government he’s seeking to replace, and actually start offering some positive alternative.

Nicola Sturgeon told the press conference in Edinburgh that it would be an “outrage” if the UK government blocked the Scottish gender recognition reform bill, and that that would show “complete contempt” for the Scottish parliament. This is from the Mirror’s Ashley Cowburn.

At her news conference in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said that there had been a slight easing in the pressure on the NHS in Scotland over the last week. This is from the BBC’s James Cook.

But one of the first questions was about the SNP’s decision to get its members to choose at a special conference in March between two options for turning an election into a de facto independence referendum.

As the National reports, one option is to treat the next general election as a de facto independence referendum. The alternative is for the next Scottish parliamentary elections, in 2026, to be used as the de facto independence referendum.

Asked which option she preferred, Sturgeon said she favoured the plan she set out last year (for the general election to be the de facto referendum).

The motion to be debated at the special conference, with the two options, is here.

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, has written an open letter to the Bishop of Portsmouth urging him to back reform proposals that would allow vicars to conduct same-sex marriages in Church of England churches. She says the Church of England is increasingly out of step with its counterparts in Scotland and Wales, where the clergy are allowed to take these services.

Judging by the letter, Mordaunt has written in her capacity as a constituency MP, not as a cabinet minister.

This rather undermines a claim in a Mail on Sunday story yesterday saying that Rishi Sunak is concerned about bishops being too leftwing.

And this is what Keir Starmer told LBC about wanting to see gun ownership laws tightened. He was speaking in response to a question about the Euston shooting at the weekend. He said:

We’ve had these incidents from time to time with guns.

And every time there is, there’s evidence, which I am concerned about, that people have access to guns that they shouldn’t have access to.

Now, if it’s illegal access, obviously, that’s a pure matter of the criminal law.

But other people, where better checks should be taken over circulation of guns. So I think that we need to look again as to whether those laws are strong enough …

There are many illegally owned guns out there and there are legally owned guns, which I don’t think should be in the hands of the people who are legally owning them.

Asked for evidence to justify this, Starmer cited the outcome of a review carried out after the mass shooting in Plymouth, where five people were killed in 2021 by a man using a legally owned gun.

Asked if he wanted gun ownership laws “made even tougher”, Starmer replied yes.

But he stressed that he did not want to see gun ownership outlawed completely. Farmers needed guns, he said, and he was not opposed to gun clubs. But gun ownership should be “subject to tighter control”.

This is what Keir Starmer said in his LBC interview about Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill, and the UK government’s reported intention to block it.

I am worried about the fact that I think this is being used by the SNP as a sort of devolution political football. And I think it’s being used by the government – or might be used – as a divisive football in relation to the particular issue.

On this whole issue of trans rights, I think the government is looking to divide people rather than bring people together.

• He refused to say whether Labour would support the UK government if it did block the legislation. When it was put to him that, from what he was saying about his reservations about the bill that he was minded to support Rishi Sunak on this, he did not accept that. He said he would want to see exactly what the government said before deciding how to react. Blocking Scottish legislation would be “a big step for a government to take”, he said. But he also said No 10 was treading “very, very carefully” (which rather undermines the claim he made about the Tories potentially exploiting this for party political advantage).

• He said that he accepted the Gender Recognition Act needed to be modernised. But he confirmed that he thought people should not be able to self-certify their gender at the age of 16 (as they would be able to under the Scottish law). And he said he was worried about the potential impact of the Scottish bill on UK equality laws.

I approach it on the basis that for 99.9-something percent of women, it is all about biology. Sex-based rights matter, and we must preserve all those wins that we’ve had for women over many years, and including safe spaces for women.

According to figures recently published by the Office for National Statistics, 0.5% of people say the gender they identify with is not the same as their sex registered at birth.

Starmer defended his decision to take a donation from Dale Vince, who has also funded Just Stop Oil. Starmer said he was strongly opposed to the tactics used by Just Stop Oil. He indicated he was concerned that, despite what they say, they do obstruct ambulances. When he saw footage of protests like that, he thought it might have been his own mum in the back of that ambulance, he said. (She was frequently hospitalised because of a serious disability.)

Q: Do you support the government’s plan to take new powers to deal with these protests?

Starmer said he was not convinced the police did need new powers.

If the police need legal clarity, they should get a lawyer to give a strong opinion, and test it in court, he said.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

I am as strong as anyone in the argument we need to take action against Just Stop Oil – gluing yourself to the road, taking those actions, stopping ambulances getting through – wrong, deeply arrogant and I want the police to act.

If I was prime minister … what I would do instead of more headline-grabbing legislation, I would get the chief constables into a room, sit them down with me and say ‘right, what’s the problem?’

Because I don’t accept that if you are walking at a funereal pace that that is not obstructing the highway and I think if police were told, in terms, ‘yes, that is an offence, get on and do something about it’ they could get on and do something about it tomorrow morning.

Keir Starmer is doing his LBC phone-in, with Nick Ferrari presenting.

Ferrari started by turning to the NHS, and Starmer’s Telegraph article about NHS reform. He introduced the first caller.

Q: You have promised to slash bureaucracy within GP services. How will you do this when the service is already in crisis?

Starmer said the accepted the service was in crisis. His wife works in a big London hospital, he said. Labour would get rid of the non-dom tax exemption to fund extra staff for the NHS, he says.

On bureaucracy, he said there should be more preventative medicine. He said some people could refer themselves to physios, instead of having to go through a GP.

The eight o’clock call to get a GP appointment is a nightmare, he said.

Q: You said yesterday that if you needed internal bleeding, you should be able to refer yourself for tests. How will you know if you have internal bleeding?

(My colleage Owen Jones was one of those particularly outraged by this remark.)

Starmer said he was on TV and trying to be delicate. He was referring to blood you might see when you go to the toilet.

In this case, people should be able to self-refer, he said.

Q: Isn’t there a risk of too many people referring themselves, after consulting “Dr Google?”

Starmer said he accepted you would need to consult on this. But he said the idea had merit.

Q: The BMA says this is unlikely to allieviate pressure on the NHS.

Starmer said he did not want to go to war with the BMA. But reform was necessary, he said. He said he imposed reform as DPP. When he started, they still used paper files.He could not believe that. He started the move towards digitial files. People were opposed to that, but things had to change, he said.

Good morning. It it quite a busy day at Westminster, and there is a lot of news definitely coming: the results of strike ballots that will decide if teaching strikes go ahead, a meeting that could pave the way for the intenstification of Northern Ireland protocol talks with the EU, and the debate on the government’s anti-strikes bill.

But there is also a lot of interest this morning in news that might come today, or maybe later this week. George Parker in the Financial Times, firming up a story reported by the Times last week, says Rishi Sunak “is set to use a constitutional ‘nuclear option’ for the first time by blocking legislation passed by the Scottish parliament that seeks to make it easier for people north of the border to legally change their gender”. Parker says:

One senior government figure said: “There isn’t much disagreement that legally we have to act.” A decision could be taken as soon as Monday and Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, is said to be fully supportive of the intervention.

My colleague Peter Walker says the final decision has not yet been taken, but that the FT is right about the direction in which the government is heading.

So that may, or may not be, a story for today.

In Scotland most Conservative MSPs opposed the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform (Scotland) bill. But Jamie Greene, the party’s justice spokesperson, was one of three Tory MSPs who voted for the bill in the final vote (it was a free vote) and he has written to Rishi Sunak urging him not to block the bill. As Mike Wade reports in the Times, Greene said:

I fear the UK government’s rumoured moves to block the Scottish gender recognition reform bill will set us back years. This move could be a gift to proponents of independence who may accuse us of tearing up the devolution settlement.

It could be a gift to Labour, as we show to LGBT+ people, their friends and their families, that we are happy to leave the centre ground for others as we fail to live up to our promise to govern with compassion …

We must not treat trans people as a political football. Make no mistake. This could also fuel accusations of riding roughshod over devolution. It may also give the SNP-led Scottish government the welcome gift of a fight.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Keir Starmer holds his ‘Call Keir’ phone-in on LBC.

Morning: GMB officials representing ambulance staff meet to discuss further strike action.

Morning: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, holds a virtual meeting with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice president and EU Brexit negotiator, about the Northern Ireland protocol.

11am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a press conference about the situation in the NHS in Scotland.

11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

Afternoon: The NEU and NAHT teaching unions are due to announce the results of their strike ballots.

After 3.30pm: MP begin debating the second reading of the strikes (minimum service levels) bill.

3pm: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.

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