Rishi Sunak to ditch key Tory leadership campaign
pledges
PM likely to abandon promises on immigration,
greenbelt protection and charging patients for missing GP appointments
Rishi Sunak leaves Downing Street for prime minister's questions at the House of
Commons in London
No 10’s admission follows series of policy U-turns by
Sunak.
Pippa Crerar and
Jessica Elgot
Wed 2 Nov
2022 15.58 GMT
Rishi Sunak
is set to ditch his flagship Conservative leadership campaign pledges, as No 10
admitted there would be a review to assess whether they were still
“deliverable” as a result of the worsening economic backdrop.
It means
Sunak is likely to abandon key promises on immigration in a week when both the
prime minister and the home secretary have come under criticism for dangerous
overcrowding at an immigration centre.
The prime
minister’s press secretary said ministers “need to look again” at a slew of
promises made over the summer during Sunak’s losing battle with Liz Truss for
the Tory leadership, but there was no end date to the review.
Among some
of the policies that have become politically embarrassing for Sunak are a
“10-point plan on migration” that includes issues that have become flashpoints
over the past week engulfing his home secretary, Suella Braverman.
The points
from the leadership campaign include:
Ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by
delivering thousands of new beds.
Setting a target that 80% of claims are resolved
within six months of being lodged.
Using cruise ships to house asylum seekers while their
claims are processed.
Sunak would
face an enormous challenge to meet the 80% target, with the most recent figures
suggesting only 4% of people who crossed the Channel in small boats in 2021
have had a decision within six months.
Whitehall
officials had previously warned that holding people on cruise ships would
breach the 1951 refugee convention preventing “arbitrary detainment”. Sunak had
first suggested the idea in 2020, when it was dismissed on cost grounds.
No 10’s
admission comes after a series of policy U-turns by Sunak, including an
announcement he would be going to the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt next week
days after Downing Street said he was not planning to attend.
Other
pledges include promises to protect the greenbelt from planning laws, charging
patients for GP appointments if they miss one, cutting the basic rate of income
tax from 20p to 16p by the end of the next parliament and reviewing and
repealing all retained EU law within 100 days.
“We are
looking at all the campaign pledges and we are looking at whether it is the
right time to take them forward,” Sunak’s spokesperson said. “We need to take
some time to make sure what is deliverable and what is possible, and engaging
with stakeholders and with the relevant secretaries of state as well.
“Obviously,
those are pledges that were made a few months ago now and the context is
somewhat different, obviously, economically. We’re not making commitments right
now either way. We need to look again.”
She added
that Sunak still backed the “sentiment” of the campaign pledges, as well as
hinting that promises he made as chancellor could also be up for review given
the different economic context.
The prime
minister remained committed to the 2019 Conservative manifesto overall, she
said, but did not expand on specifics. Earlier, in the Commons, Sunak had
refused to say whether he would stick to the manifesto pledge on the pensions
triple lock.
His
spokesperson said: “Those things which have fiscal implications those are
things the chancellor is considering with the prime minister. Obviously the
economic context has changed significantly, not just in the last few months but
also with the pandemic and the global macro-economic situation and also Putin’s
invasion.”
Sunak has
already dropped his plans to fine patients £10 for missing GP appointments and
scrap or reform all EU legislation by the next election, both campaign pledges.
He has also backed down on fracking after saying in the summer he would back
the controversial practice “with local consent” but subsequently reinstating
the ban.
In yet
another U-turn, Sunak is to attend Cop27 next week after No 10 said previously
he was too focused on the domestic economy to attend and banned King Charles
from going, days after Boris Johnson announced he was attending.
A Labour
spokesperson said: “I think what we’re seeing is a government that is
bedevilled by its core problem – and that is that decisions are being made for
reasons of party management, not in the national interest.
“Look at
why we’ve got Suella Braverman as home secretary in the first place. She’s
purely there because of a deal that was done during the course of the Tory
leadership election.
“Whether
it’s on the decision to go to Cop27, whether it’s on decisions of policy,
whether it’s on decisions of personnel, you’ll see a government that is simply
trying to get by on the basis of party political management rather than the
national interest, and that’s not the way the country should be run.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário