Grooming gangs inquiry to examine role of ethnicity, culture and religion
The grooming gangs inquiry will directly examine whether ethnicity, culture or religion influenced offending and whether they shaped the institutional response, the Press Association reports.
BMA dismisses Starmer’s 48-hour warning over resident doctors’ strike plan, calling for talks not ‘threats’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee later to discuss the Iran war, but domestic issues don’t go away and he (or, to be more accurate, his staff) have also found time to write an article for the Times delivering a warning to resident doctors in England planning to go on strike. As Jamie Grierson reports, the PM is threatening to withdraw an offer of thousands of extra NHS training posts for resident doctors if they do not call off the strike within 48 hours.
Judging by what Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA resident doctors committee, told the Today programme in an interview this morning, Starmer may have as little success with his ultimatum as Donald Trump seems to be having with his inconsistent and increasingly apocalyptic warnings to what is left of the Iranian government.
Fletcher told Today:
I’m very happy to sit down with the government at any point to try and negotiate a settlement, but I don’t think that’s done by writing in newspapers and issuing threats unilaterally.
He also claimed that the BMA had been pushed into strike action because the government changed the terms of what it was offering at the last minute. He said:
The government made very late changes to the pay offer, reducing the pay investment and stretching it over a longer period in a way that had not been previously talked about.
Ministers effectively moved the goalposts on the deal at the last minute.
But these negotiations are not about arbitrary cut-offs as the prime minister seems to think.
Any ‘deadline’ disappears the moment there is a credible and sustainable offer on the table.
Our focus remains on getting a good deal for both doctors and for patients, and we are seeking to talk once again with the government later today with every intention of achieving a meaningful outcome that could see the strikes called off and a pay deal we can support.
Asked if it was true that he had personally been in favour of giving his members the option of voting on the pay offer, Fletcher replied:
Two weeks ago, the government took that investment, reduced it, and then stretched it over three years. That is a very, very, very different outcome to the one that we were discussing just two weeks ago.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The Home Office publishes the terms of reference for the national grooming gangs inquiry.
Morning: Zack Polanski, the Green leader, launches his party’s campaign for the Senedd election in Cardiff.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south-west Hertfordshire.
Morning: John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is campaigning in Dundee and Stirling. Alex Cole-Hamiliton, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, are also doing media-focused campaign events.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Robert Jenrick, his Treasury spokesperson, are holding a press conference at Heathrow airport to publicise a cost of living announcement.
Afternoon: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss the Iran war.
Starmer is also meeting Ahmed al‑Sharaa, president of Syria, in Downing Street at some point today.
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