Labour says Sunak should take blame for soaring HS2 costs as they happened on his ‘direct watch’ – as it happened

• Labour has said Rishi Sunak should take the blame for escalating costs at HS2 because he was responsible for monitoring spending while he was at the Treasury. (See 1.25pm.) The party challenged Sunak as five Labour metro mayors urged Sunak not to scrap, delay or scale back HS2 as it would “leave swathes of the north with Victorian transport infrastructure that is unfit for purpose”. Other political and business leaders in the north of England have also expressed alarm about the prospect of the HS2 link from Birmingham to Manchester being cancelled.

• Britain has given the go-ahead to develop the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield off Shetland, sparking outrage from environmental campaigners.

• Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said it is “flippant” to dismiss her immigration speech yesterday as motivated by the desire to boost her standing in a future Tory leadership contest – but without ruling out that she might be a candidate. (See 3.04pm.)

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Keir Starmer has restated his promise not to revoke the licence allowing the Rosebank oil and gas field development to go ahead if Labour wins the next election.

As Mark Sweney and Matthew Taylor report, the decision by the North Sea Transition Authority to approve the development today has outraged environmentalists.

The field has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil in its lifetime, which when burned would emit as much carbon dioxide as running 56 coal-fired power stations for a year, and the Green party MP Caroline Lucas has called the move “the greatest act of environmental vandalism” in her lifetime.

In an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, Starmer said he would not revoke the licence because he wanted people investing in the UK to have certainty.

Asked if Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, was wrong to say developing Rosebank would “drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments”, Starmer replied:

He’s right that we need to have this transition, but I’m mindful of the fact that if there’s one thing that has killed growth in the last 13 years – and it has been killed – it’s the chopping and changing lack of strategic thinking.

And therefore, as a matter of principle, we will accept, as it were, the baseline that we inherit from the government if we win that election. And – if I’m not getting ahead of myself – that’s why we’ve been very clear that we won’t revoke that licence.

Asked if he was saying, not that he can’t revoke the licence, but that he won’t, Starmer replied:

It’s won’t and it’s deliberate and it is in order to ensure that we have the stability we desperately need in our economy.

Further excerpts from the interview are due to be released tomorrow.

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A reader asks:

This might be a silly question, but can you please explain why the cost of HS2 has increased so much over time? Is this due to factors outside government control (eg inflation, Covid) or is this partly a result of decisions made by successive Conservative governments? Thanks

Gwyn Topham has answered this question much better than I would be able to do. This is what he published on this two days ago.

Hospital emergency departments are dealing with too many elderly patients who are not in the right place for the care they need, Helen Whately, the care minister, has said.

During a speech and Q&A at the NHS Confederation’s Health Beyond the Hospital conference in London, Whately said this was something she had witnessed herself as a result of family members being in hospital recently. She said:

I had my own very recent experiences, particularly of the emergency care pathway. I’ve also got several family members with various health problems at the moment so I’ve been spending quite a lot of time on a personal basis in hospitals and in the health system at the moment.

One of the things that I’ve seen through all of that is how hard it is for emergency departments with so many in fact frail, elderly patients who it’s not necessarily the right place for them to be.

And I’ve spent hours, whether it was for my mum in an emergency department, looking round and knowing it’s so hard for so many of those people there who it’s so often not the best place to be.

Whately said a “cultural shift” was needed to move more money and resources to out-of-hospital care.

She attended the event on crutches, having broken her ankle in a road accident earlier this month.

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Priti Patel, the former home secretary, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former leader of the Commons and former Brexit opportunities minister, have both received honours today at an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle. They were both tireless supporters of Boris Johnson, and they received a damehood and a knighthood respectively in his resignation honours.

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Only about 10% of Britons think that more oil and gas production will reduce bills and increase energy security, a poll suggests. As PA Media reports, YouGov research commissioned by Global Witness, a green campaign group, suggests just 8% think increasing fossil fuel production is the best way to increase energy security. PA says:

The poll comes after energy secretary Claire Coutinho said the government will “continue to back the UK’s oil and gas industry to underpin our energy security” following the Rosebank announcement.

But any fuel extracted from Rosebank will mostly belong to Equinor, whose largest shareholder is the Norwegian state, and the majority of the fuel is expected to be sold internationally.

This has prompted many researchers, campaigners and opposition MPs to question whether adding a significant amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is worth any economic and security gains.

Campaign group Global Witness, which commissioned the poll, said the results show that the UK public overwhelmingly prefer new renewables to fossil fuels.

When asked which energy source would best serve the UK’s energy security, 56% of the public chose more renewables, followed by 20% who chose more nuclear – compared with the 8% who backed fossil fuels.

Similarly, 53% chose renewables when it came to the best way to reduce energy bills, followed by 18% who chose more nuclear.

Suella Braverman is still in the US and she has been speaking to PA Media about the row generated by her immigration speech yesterday. One Tory peer accused her of using the language of the far right. (See 10.22am.) Here are the main lines.

• Braverman said it was “flippant” to dismiss her speech as motivated by the desire to boost her standing in a future Tory leadership contest – but without ruling out that she might be a candidate. When asked about speculation that the speech was part of a future leadership drive, she replied:

With respect, that is a slightly flippant interpretation of what is a very serious issue.

I am here meeting my US counterparts, talking about the epoch-defining challenge of illegal migration and I have set out my observations and my analysis of the problem, inviting international collaboration to find a joint solution.

I think that is my duty as home secretary and I am pleased to be here in America raising the salience of the matter and working with partners.

Pressed on this again, she added:

I am here working as home secretary. I am very pleased to be working hand in hand with the prime minister to stop the boats, as he has pledged earlier in the year.

• She dismissed claims that it was unrealistic to expect countries to agree to revise the UN refugee convention. In her speech she called for it to be revised. When it was put to her that this was not realistic, she replied:

I am inviting my international partners to engage in an exercise of review and reform.

Ultimately, I think it’s legitimate to ask these questions whether the definition of refugee in the international conventions is still fit for purpose, whether the definition of persecution has been stretched beyond a reasonable limit, and that’s in face of these high numbers that we are now seeing.

• She rejected suggestions that the speech showed she lacked compassion for migrants. When this was put to her, she replied:

No, I don’t think that is true. And what I would say is that we are facing unprecedented levels of illegal migration, not just in the UK but also in countries like the US and other western or European nations.

It’s right that we ask for greater collaboration at the international level amongst like-minded partners and, ultimately, the UK cannot sustain such levels of illegal migration, or indeed, legal migration.

It’s indeed the prudent thing for political leaders to call this out and take steps to address it.

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Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist who helped the government to produce its levelling up white paper and who now chairs the levelling up advisory council, has said the HS2 is “crucially important” to the project. In an interview with Channel 4 News he said:

On the specifics of HS2, that is a crucially important, totemic I would say, symbol of levelling up in practice.

If I had my way, we’d be talking not about HS2 being thin sliced, but about HS3, HS4 and HS5.

We said in the report that by unlocking the potential in UK cities, you could earn yourself an extra £100bn. That’s each year, which stands comparison with the £100bn you mentioned in HS2 to as a one-off cost. Compare the two – of course that’s an investment worth making, a price worth paying.

Haldane seemed to be referring to this report on levelling up published by the Royal Society of Arts, the thinktank he runs.

Here is the Louise Haigh letter to Rishi Sunak about HS2 costs (see 1.25pm) in full.

Until now Labour has been relatively cautious about getting involved in the HS2 story, because although notionally it is fully committed to HS2, if Rishi Sunak were to cancel the Birmingham to Manchester and the Old Oak Common to Euston legs of the project, completing HS2 would suddenly become an enormous unfunded spending commitment.

But this afternoon the party is making a strong intervention. Without making a firm policy commitment, it is seeking to show that Rishi Sunak should take the blame for HS2 costs overrunning. Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, is making this argument in an open letter to Sunak pointing out that he has been responsible for monitoring HS2 costs for more than four years, either as chief secretary to the Treasury (from July 2019), as chancellor (from February 2020) or as PM (from last year).

Referring to a story in the Times yesterday saying Sunak is alarmed at the rising cost and quoting an official accusing HS2 bosses of acting “like kids with the golden credit card”, Haigh said:

In your present and previous roles – both as chancellor and chief secretary to the Treasury – you have had plenty of opportunities, as well as a responsibility to British taxpayers, to monitor spending and progress.

It is under your direct watch that the cost of HS2 has reportedly almost trebled.

The National Audit Office has found that HS2 “cost increases may not have been necessary” if risks had been “recognised and managed earlier” by the government.

During your time as chancellor, the NAO published a report titled Progress in implementing National Audit Office recommendations: High Speed Two. This report confirmed that: “A detailed estimate of the full cost of the programme has not yet been completed.”

And, as chancellor, you agreed revised funding for phase one of “£44.6bn, including £5.6bn of contingency to be held by HS2 Ltd and £4.3bn of other contingency to be held by government”.

Haigh went on:

HS2 is the government’s largest infrastructure programme by value. I’m therefore concerned that, as chief secretary to the Treasury, chancellor, and now prime minister, you suggest that you had no idea what was happening with the project.

Please can you confirm that HM Treasury receives regular reports from the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd? If so, did you ever read any of these reports?

Referring to the briefing given to the Times, Haigh also said it was unfair “for politicians to blame officials who can’t defend themselves in public”.

Haigh ended her letter by saying that the government was in chaos and and it should urgently update parliament on HS2 costs, with 2023 prices not 2019 prices.

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The government will delay new environmental laws that require housebuilders to improve local nature and wildlife habitats when they build a development in existing green space, Helena Horton reports.

My colleagues Josh Halliday and Jessica Murray have spoken to more than a dozen northern political and business leaders about reports that Rishi Sunak wants to abandon the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2. They say this would be disastrous, and “the final nail in the coffin” for levelling up.

A reader asks:

Would it be possible to research the ‘Charles line’ which is mentioned in the HS2 article (‘Northern research group may accept delay of HS2 to Manchester if the Charles line is built’). I cannot find any information about this ‘Charles line’ anywhere and it rather smacks of throwing the north a bone to chew on and stay quiet.

The “Charles line” is what some Tories want to call Northern Powerhouse Rail, the proposed new line or upgrade from Liverpool to Leeds and beyond. (Different versions have been proposed at different times.) They believe that that way it would be a northern equivalent to the recently-opened Elizabeth Line linking Reading and Heathrow with east London.