Sunak declines to say who was behind MoD hack but says UK has ‘robust’ security policy towards China – politics live | Politics

University vice-chancellors will attend a meeting in No 10 later this week to discuss how to tackle rising antisemitism on campuses, Downing Street has said.

At this morning’s lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said that Rishi Sunak opened cabinet this morning by saying there had been an “unacceptable rise in antisemitism on our university campuses” and vice-chancellors would be meeting to discuss “the need for our universities to be safe for our Jewish students”.

The spokesperson said:

Our university campuses should be places of rigorous debate, but they should also be tolerant places where people of all communities, particularly Jewish students at this time, are treated with respect …

The right to free speech does not include the right to harass people or incite violence.

We expect university leaders to take robust action in dealing with that kind of behaviour and that will be the subject of the conversation in No 10 later this week to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to this sort of behaviour is adopted on all campuses.

Asked if the police should be called in to clear protest camps at British universities, as as been happening in the US, the spokesman said: “We want to see university leaders taking a robust approach to unacceptable behaviour.”

Rishi Sunak has said he is “deeply concerned” about the consequences of Israel attacking Rafah. Asked about the situation in Gaza, Sunak told broadcasters:

We’ve been consistent in saying that we want to see an immediate humanitarian pause in this conflict so that we can crucially release the hostages, get them back to their families and get more aid in to Gaza, people desperately need it, and then use that pause to build a more lasting and sustainable ceasefire.

When it comes to the question of Rafah, again I’ve been clear that we are deeply concerned about the full military incursion of Rafah, given the humanitarian consequences of that.

I’ve made that point specifically to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu whenever I’ve spoken to him.

In a clip for broadcasters, Rishi Sunak declined to say that China was responsible for the cyber-attack that led to armed forces’ payroll information being exposed, but he did claim the UK already had a “very robust” security policy in relation to Beijing.

Asked about the incident, Sunak said:

There are indications that a malign actor has compromised the armed forces’ payment network, but I do want to reassure people that the Ministry of Defence has already taken action in [taking the network] offline and making sure that people affected are supported in the right way.

There’s a limit to what I can say about this now, but the defence secretary will be making a full statement to parliament later today.

Asked why he was not naming China as the party responsible, Sunak did not answer directly, but he went on:

More generally, if you look back to our integrated review, I set out a very robust policy towards China, which means that we need to take the powers which we have done to protect ourselves against the risks that China, and other countries, pose to us.

They are a country with fundamentally different values to ours, acting in a way that is more authoritarian at home, assertive abroad.

That’s why for example, we blocked Chinese investment into a sensitive semiconductor last year. That’s just one of the numerous actions that we’ve taken to protect this country, and recently I announced a historic increase in our defence spending to 2.5% GDP. I made the point that we are facing facing an axis of authoritarian states, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, which pose a risk to our values, our interest and indeed our country.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson said that the government was reviewing the operations of a third-party contractor whose systems were hacked in the MoD cyber-attack. He said:

In relation to the specific contractor involved in this incident, a security review of that contractor’s operations is under way and appropriate steps will be taken after that.

Humza Yousaf has formally tendered his resignation as first minister to the king, the Scottish government has announced. In his letter he wrote:

Your Majesty,

With my humble duty, I write as anticipated in my letter to Your Majesty of 29 April to tender to Your Majesty my resignation from the office of First Minister. I propose that my resignation take effect from the start of Scottish parliamentary plenary business on Tuesday 7 May 2024.

Throughout my time as First Minister, I have been most grateful for your counsel and the kindness you have shown to both Nadia and I.

It has been my pleasure to serve Your Majesty and the people of Scotland since March 2023.

Refugee charities say ‘shock operation’ intended to stop small boat crossings is not working

Diane Taylor

Eleven NGOs working closely with asylum seekers hoping to cross the Channel to seek sanctuary in the UK, have warned the UK government that the Rwanda policy is not acting as a deterrent and will not “stop the boats”

The NGOs, including Calais Food Collective, L’Auberge des Migrants and Care4Calais, have issued a statement saying that the increasing militarisation of the border in northern France, thanks to bilateral deals between UK and French authorities, which is funding harsh evictions and policing methods, is making people feel like they are in a warzone and is encouraging them to cross as quickly as possible, however dangerous this might be.

The statement calls for an end to this “madness” and the creation of safe routes for those aiming to seek asylum in the UK, which would end the need for asylum seekers and their families to risk the deadly crossing.

In their statement, the charities say:

The UK Home Office has launched a ‘shock operation’ with asylum seekers to be detained across the UK and removed to detention centres until they can be deported to Rwanda. Those people who are detained during the coming weeks will therefore remain in detention centres for an indefinite period. This is a violation of their fundamental human rights.

As organisations working in solidarity with people on the move who are blocked at the UK-France border, we witness on a daily basis the violence through which the policy of dissuasion acts. Here, people on the move face expulsion from their informal living sites every 24-48 hours, by riot police who take their tents, for most their only form of shelter. When people on the move attempt to cross to the UK on small boats, they are assailed by police who slash their boats, preventing them from making the crossing.

The politics of dissuasion isn’t working and has never worked. Successive governments in the UK and Europe have been unable to imagine any alternative to the management of the presence of people on the move on European soil than the politics of dissuasion. In the face of the repeated failure of dissuasion politics to reduce the numbers of people seeking to join Europe, successive governments have doubled down on the cruelty of their policies. As long as the situation continues in this way there will be more deaths, as five people drowned in the channel on the night of the Rwanda bill’s passing, and more lives destroyed and made miserable, but there will be no change in the movement of people towards Europe and the UK. The number of people crossing to the UK in small boats during the first four months of 2024 is the highest recorded for that period.

Here are the main, new points from Rachel Reeves’s speech and Q&A this morning. We have already published a substantial preview based on what was briefed in advance.

• Reeves said pensioners could face a “tax bombshell” under Rishi Sunak’s long-term plan to abolish employees’ national insurance, because it could mean income tax rising by 8p in the pound to compensate. This would hit pensioners in particular because they do not pay national insurance, but they do pay income tax. Referring to the plan, Reeves said:

A £46 billion unfunded plan to abolish national insurance contributions – if Labour had put a similar proposal on the table, voters, journalists and our opponents would be demanding to know where the money was going to come from.

And yet two months on from the spring budget – and despite having countless opportunities to clarify their plans – there are still no answers from ministers on how they will pay for it.

What services will they cut?

What other taxes will they put up?

What changes will they make to pensions?

New analysis has shown that replacing national insurance contribution revenues with higher basic and higher rates of income tax would mean rates of income tax going up by eight percent.

A tax bombshell aimed squarely at Britain’s pensioners.

This is a new line from Labour, and perhaps a better one than anything tried so far. Labour has been criticising this policy for the last two months, but it has not yet settled on one line of attack that has achieved powerful cut through. At various points it has argued that, to fund this pledge, the Tories would have to borrow more, cut spending or put up taxes. All of these propositions are a bit vague, and more recently Labour has been focusing on the threat to pensioners. At PMQs last month Starmer argued that the plan would mean the value of the state pension being cut. When Sunak ruled this out last week, Starmer instead suggested the plan would mean the state pension age having to rise to 75. Sunak wriggled on this, but as an attack line it is a bit flawed because 75 is unrealistically high, and even under Labour the pension age will go up. Today Reeves is arguing that the policy will hit pensioners, not because their pensions will get less generous, but because they might be hit by higher taxes. It is all hypothetical, but it is designed to scare the living daylights out of elderly Telegraph readers who have income not is not subject to national insurance but that is subject to income tax.

The truth is that many, many businesses already go well beyond what is set out in the new deal for working people – they don’t have zero-hour contracts, they are not using practices of fire and rehire, they give better rights around sick pay. So businesses have got nothing to fear from the new deal for working people.

But [for] businesses who do use these methods there will be a level playing field to ensure that businesses can’t undercut each other by using zero-hour contracts or through fire and rehire.

She said Labour had spent a lot of time consulting with businesses already, and she went on:

And so, for example, on zero hour contracts after 12 weeks, if you’ve been working regular hours, you will be able to get that permanent contract. But if you want that flexibility as a worker, you can remain on the contract you’re one. It’s just about saying that the flexibility can’t be all one way. And there’ll be nothing in Labour legislation that would stop employers from using overtime, for example, or taking workers on on a seasonal basis.

Asked about the timing of the legislation, Reeves said a Labour government would “bring forward legislation within the first 100 days of a Labour government”. And it would consult on the plan within those 100 days, she said.

• Reeves said she did not think the results last week “point to a hung parliament”. She was responding to Tory claims that the results do point to a hung parliament, which are entirely based on a projection published by Sky News on Friday afternoon suggesting that, if people voted in a general election exactly as they had in the local elections, Labour would not win a majority. As Pippa Crerar explains here, there are many reasons why it is not realistic to assume that you can a direct local elections/general election read across like this. (To his credit, Prof Michael Thrasher, the psephologist who came up with the projection, barely mentioned it in an analysis of the election results he published in the Sunday Times. He has been pilloried on social media, but in part this may be because a projection never intended as a forecast ended up getting far more attention than it was supposed to because, for No 10, it was the only silver lining to the results available.)

• She suggested that, if figures due out of Friday show that the economy is growing, Labour would be entitled to describe this as just a technical recovery. In her speech she said:

Let me be clear – Keir Starmer and I won’t be doing a victory lap for finally meeting the inflation target for the first time in three years.

And we won’t be doing a victory lap over going from negative growth to no growth either.

If Jeremy Hunt wants to call it a ‘technical’ recession, then I assume he’s comfortable calling it a ‘technical’ recovery.

Not a recovery for working people.

After years of political chaos and short-term thinking, at this election stability is change.

The stability on which households and business alike rely if they are to plan ahead.

Stability underpinned by strong fiscal rules and robust, independent institutions – the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

And stability of purpose enshrined in national missions to bring government and business together, to meet the challenges of the future.

The Chinese embassy in the UK has now issued a statement saying that claims Beijing was behind the Ministry of Defence data hack are “completely fabricated and malicious slanders”. An embassy spokesperson said:

The so-called cyber-attacks by China against the UK are completely fabricated and malicious slanders.

We strongly oppose such accusations. China has always firmly fought all forms of cyber-attack according to law.

China does not encourage, support or condone cyber-attacks. At the same time, we oppose the politicisation of cybersecurity issues and the baseless denigration of other countries without factual evidence.

China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UK.

We urge the relevant parties in the UK to stop spreading false information, stop fabricating so-called China threat narratives, and stop their anti-China political farce.

Libby Brooks

Humza Yousaf is expected to formally offer his resignation to the king this morning after John Swinney was elected unopposed as the new leader of the SNP yesterday.

Swinney will now seek the backing of MSPs later this afternoon to become the new first minister. The Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour have said they will vote against him but the Greens won’t oppose his appointment so Swinney is expected to become the fourth SNP first minister later this afternoon.

He faces multiple challenges: uniting his party, governing from a minority position and heading off a resurgent Scottish Labour which is forecast to win a significant number of seats from the SNP at the general election.