Rishi Sunak to launch Tory local election campaign amid Waspi women row – UK politics live

The government has announced that funding has been allocated for nearly 955 new electric buses in England, with 25 councils across the country sharing the £143m expenditure.

Transport secretary Mark Harper said “As part of our plan to improve local transport across the country, we’re providing a further £143m to improve journeys for bus passengers, particularly in rural areas, with almost 1,000 brand-new, zero-emission buses due to hit the road.”

The spending allocation is, according to PA Media, broken up as follows:

• North-west £9.4m

• North-east £14.8m

• Yorkshire and the Humber £5.7m

• East Midlands £25.4m

• West Midlands £7.4m

• South-west £43.4m

• South-east £30.2m

Sunak’s local election campaign launch in Derbyshire today is expected to have a transport element to it, and he is likely to try to talk up government transport policies, which have been under increased scrutiny after the long-drawn out demise of the HS2 plans and the promised redistribution of the funds.

Former Chancellor George Osborne has said that Rishi Sunak should name the general election date to avoid a summer of speculation. On his Political Currency podcast he said:

I would today say: “I’ll tell you when the general election is going to be”. That ends all the speculation about early elections. It means you don’t go through the whole summer with questions on is it going to be October or November. The marginal advantage he’s going to get by having a bit of a surprise … is more than outweighed by the endless speculation. The only reason people know he isn’t calling an election right now is because he knows he couldn’t win it.

Overnight Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has defended her handling of her tax affairs.

In an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight programme she told viewers:

I’ve been very clear there’s no rules broken. [The Conservatives] tried to manufacture a police investigation. [The police] said there’s no issues there.

I got tax advice which says there was no capital gains tax. It’s a non-story manufactured to try to smear me. I was a home care worker, you know, I didn’t have an accountant. I had, as most people would: you put your house on the market, you get a legal conveyancing solicitor, and you get an estate agent.

But since those allegations were put to me, I got expert tax advice to make sure that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t aware of the HMRC rules … when I sold that property. I sold it as most people would put it on the market, got the solicitor and the estate agents, etc.

Since those allegations were put to me – the tax laws on capital gains tax and principal private residency – is very complex, including marriage. I got that advice that is categoric that I do not owe any capital gains tax on that.

PA Media notes that a book by former Conservative Party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft had suggested that she failed to properly declare her main residency when she sold a property in 2015 before she entered parliament.

Former Conservative party treasurer Ashcroft resigned from the House of Lords in 2015 to focus on other activities.

Labour have announced a series of proposals on the justice system, including a trial scheme in which six police forces will be given powers to charge domestic abuser suspects without the involvement of the Crown Prosecution Service. The plan is based on a pilot implemented by West Yorkshire police which has invested in a cohort of trained police decision-makers.

Our Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal has more here: Labour to give police emergency powers to charge domestic abuse suspects

Rishi Sunak is planning to launch the Conservative party’s local election campaign in Derbyshire today.

The party is facing the expectation of poor results on 2 May, due to a combination of the Sunak government’s unpopularity – Labour is broadly 20 points ahead in polling – and that Conservatives performed comparatively well when the same seats were contested in 2021, after the elections were delayed for a year due to Covid restrictions.

Sunak is hoping to push a message about the economy and the finincial situation of Labour-controlled local government, but his planned media appearance script is likely to be derailed by questions about what the government is proposing to do about the situation with Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) women.

Yesterday the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said thousands of women, potentially hundreds of thousands, are owed compensation because of government failings related to the way changes to the state pension age were made.

The recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950 a person fall far short of the £10,000-plus that campaigners were calling for, and the ombudsman cannot compel the government to pay. It said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had clearly indicated it would “refuse to comply”, which was “unacceptable”. The issue led many of this morning’s newspaper front pages.

The local elections are being held in England. Wales also has four police and crime commissioners up for election, three of which are held by Labour and one by Plaid Cymru.

Good morning. Welcome to our live UK politics blog for Friday. We are expecting Rishi Sunak to be out and about in Derbyshire today kicking of the Tory campaign for local elections in England. Here are your headlines …

• It has emerged that home secretary James Cleverly spent £165,561 chartering a private jet for a one-day round trip to Rwanda to sign Rishi Sunak’s deportation deal in Kigali.

• Kent council is the latest to warn that it is running out of cash.

• The public accounts committee has warned morale in the civil service is being hit by chronic low pay.

• Also being hit by the cost of living crisis: nurses. Six in 10 nurses in England are having to turn to credit or savings due to low pay.

• Keir Starmer has unexpectedly inserted himself into a row about the new men’s England football kit, calling for it to be scrapped. Lee Anderson has described the kit as “virtue-signalling woke nonsense” because a small cross design on the back of the neck isn’t the correct colour for the St George’s Cross.

Private members’ bills are being discussed in the Commons today, and there is some business in the House of Lords too. There is no business scheduled in the Scottish parliament, Senedd or Northern Ireland assembly.

It is Martin Belam with you today. I very much enjoy reading your comments and will try to chip in when I think I can be helpful, but by far the easiest way to contact me if you have spotted a typo/error/omission or just want to point me in the direction of something is by emailing martin.belam@theguardian.com.