PMQs live: Starmer to face Badenoch as Trump tariffs loom

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Ahead of the Green party’s UQ on Gaza (see 11.43am), the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Ellie Chowns, has put out this statement.

The Green party condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli government’s brutal decision to expand its military operations in Gaza. Seizing large areas of territory and forcibly displacing countless Gazans to create so-called “security zones” would be a further violation of international law against a population already devastated by 18 months of conflict.

“his is not security; it is domination and erasure. It would constitute ethnic cleansing and further collective punishment on a mass scale, and it would only deepen the unimaginable suffering already endured by the people of Gaza.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question at PMQs.

PMQs Photograph: HoC

Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs

PMQs is starting at noon.

Keir Starmer leaving No 10 ahead of PMQs. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Patrick Harvie to stand down as co-convenor of Scottish Greens, saying he's helped them become 'serious political force'

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Patrick Harvie, arguably the longest serving party leader in UK politics, has announced he is standing down as co-convenor of the Scottish Greens after nearly 17 years in the role.

A Scottish Greens MSP since 2003, Harvie had recently taken a leave of absence from Holyrood for an operation and recuperation. He announced today he will not contest this summer’s party leadership election.

Patrick Harvie. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

There will be two urgent questions in the Commons after PMQs. At around 12.30pm a Foreign Office minister will respond to a question from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, about the Chagos Islands. And then another Foreign Office minister (or the same one?) will reply to a UQ from the Green co-leader Carla Denyer about Gaza.

After that Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, will make a statement about nursery provision.

Plaid Cymru says Britain should respond to Trump tariffs by rejoining EU single market and customs union

Plaid Cymru says Britain should respond to President Trump’s tariffs by rejoining the EU’s single market and customs union. Llinos Medi, the party’s business spokesperson, said:

With new US tariffs coming, Welsh businesses face even more uncertainty.

The UK must make a strategic decision: with 58.6% of Welsh exports going to the EU, we must provide stable access to European markets by rejoining the single market and customs union, allowing us to stand up to Trump’s reckless moves.

Keir Starmer is not planning to speak to President Trump today ahead of the tariffs announcement, Steven Swinford from the Times reports.

Sounds like any hopes of a last-ditch concession from Donald Trump ahead of his tariffs announcement are fading

Keir Starmer is not planning to speak to him today, but there are hopes that the economic deal giving Britain a carve-out can be signed as soon as next week. Sources talking about ‘days or weeks’

But in truth No 10 doesn’t know what Trump is planning or when concessions could be made. All deeply uncertain this morning

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is today due to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement with Serbia intended to disrupt people smuggling gangs, the Foreign Office says. It says almost 22,000 people were recorded using the Western Balkans to transit into Europe last year. Lammy says:

With the world becoming more dangerous and unpredictable, the Western Balkans is of critical importance to the UK and Europe’s collective security, and the UK remains committed to building resilience and stability in the region.

Heathrow warned about power supply days before outage caused closure, MPs told

Heathrow Airport was warned about its power supply in the days before it closed because of an outage, PA Media says. In its story from the opening of this morning’s transport committee hearing in the Commons PA reports:

Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said there were a “couple of incidents” which made him concerned.

The airport was closed to all flights on until about 6pm on Friday 21 March, after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation which started late the previous night.

This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.

Wicking told the transport select committee he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on 15 March about his concerns, and the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on 19 March.

He said: “It was following a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply that, on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time.

“That obviously made me concerned and, as such, I raised the point I wanted to understand better the overall resilience of the airport.”

Wicking said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during the outage would have been “disastrous”.

He told the committee: “It became quite clear we could not operate the airport safely quite early in this process, and that is why we closed the airport.

“If we had not done that, we would have had thousands of passengers stranded at the airport at high risk to personal injury, gridlocked roads around the airport, because don’t forget 65,000 houses and other institutions were powered down.

“Traffic lights didn’t work, just to give you an example, many things didn’t work. Parts of the civil infrastructure didn’t work.

“So the risk of having literally tens of thousands of people stranded at the airport, where we have would have nowhere to put them, we could not process them, would have been a disastrous scenario.”

71% of Britons would support retaliatory tariffs against US, poll suggests

The conventional wisdom in Westminster political circles is that, while picking a fight with the US might make an inspiring scene in a Richard Curtis drama, in practice it is never a good idea.

But yesterday YouGov published polling showing that in Britain, and in other major European countries, there is strong public support for the sort of retaliatory tariffs being proposed by the Liberal Democrats. (See 9.26am.) YouGov says 71% of Britons would support retaliatory tariffs, and only 11% would be opposed.

Polling on retaliatory tariffs Photograph: YouGov

UK won’t engage in ‘kneejerk’ response to Trump tariffs, says minister

Alexandra Topping has a story with more on what Bridget Phillipson said in her morning interview round. Phillipson said the UK would not engage in a “kneejerk” response to any tariffs imposed by President Trump – which is also what Keir Starmer was saying yesterday.

Patient satisfaction with NHS has hit record low of 21%, survey finds

Public satisfaction with the NHS is at a record low and dissatisfaction is at its highest, with the deepest discontent about A&E, GP and dental care, Denis Campbell and Tobi Thomas report.

Comments on the blog will open at 10am.

Starmer urged to join EU and Canada in fighting Trump with retaliatory tariffs

Good morning. Keir Starmer is taking his last PMQs before the Easter recess at noon, but the big event today will come at 9pm tonight (UK time) when President Trump announces sweeping global tariffs, upending the free trade consensus seen as the basis for a century or more of western prosperity. Here is our latest global story on this, and here is our overnight UK story, by Pippa Crerar, Heather Stewart and Richard Partington.

Bridget Phillipson was doing interview duty on behalf of the government this morning. As education secretary, she is not involved in trade policy and her message was much the same as Jonathan Reynolds’ when he was in the same broadcast studios yesterday. She said that the UK was “well-placed as a nation” to reach an economic deal with the US (which might lead to tariffs on the UK being reduced) and that talks were still underway.

Keir Starmer’s stragegy – which can be crudely but accurately described as sucking up to President Trump in the hope getting the best possible outcome for Britain – is supported by Labour MPs, and also by the Conservative party. At a press conference yesterday Kemi Badenoch said that the UK should definitely rule out retaliatory tariffs, instead of holding the option open, but otherwise she is backing Starmer on this issue. And the difference is slight because Starmer does not sound at all likely to deploy retaliatory tariffs anyway.

But others are urging Starmer to take a different approach. The Liberal Democrats have been urging the government to be much more robust with the US president, and today they are escalating that, saying Starmer should be forming a united front with the EU and Canada to fight Trump with retaliatory tariffs and other measures. In an overnight statement Calum Miller, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said:

Despite weeks of refusing to criticise Donald Trump’s damaging behaviour, it’s now increasingly apparent that the government will not secure a carve out for the UK ahead of Trump’s global tariff war.

Trump has shown himself to be an unreliable partner on the economy. No one, not even the US’s oldest allies, are safe from the economic harm reaped by this White House.

We need to end this trade war as quickly as possible. That means working with our Canadian and European allies in a united front against Trump, including retaliatory tariffs where necessary – as well as negotiating a bespoke new customs union agreement with the EU to better protect British businesses.

Intriguingly, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, and a journalist with extensive establisment contacts, says there are a lot of people in business and politics who agree with the Liberal Democrats on this. He explained why in a long post on social media last night. Here’s an extract.

Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer – or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation – to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.

The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics – tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.

This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.

Will this idea get any traction? Maybe not today, but at some point in the future it could take off. There is some evidence that No 10 is nervous about being seen as too accommodating to Trump. Yesterday, in a briefing so implausible no one took it seriously, Downing Street in effect sought to blame the king for Trump getting a state visit!

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Kim Leadbeater holds a press conference about her assisted dying bill, which has finished its committee stage and is back in the Commons chamber later this month.

9.15am: Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye gives evidence to the Commons transport committee about the electricity substation fire that closed the airport for a day.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

2.15pm; Lord Hermer, the attorney general, gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights.

2.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.

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