NEU and other teaching unions agree to ‘intensive talks’ with government in hope of ending strikes – live

Even the most loyal SNP supporter would admit that the current leadership contest has not been a great advertisement for the party. None of the candidates are seen to comparable to Nicola Sturgeon in leadership ability, some of the debates have been acrimonious, and the contest has opened up a public debate about the failings of the SNP government.

One person taking a close interest in this is Keir Starmer. Scotland was predominantly Labour territory, not SNP territory, in UK elections before 2015, and Starmer wants some of those voters back. He has made a pitch for them in a major interview with the Daily Record. Here are the main points.

I do think the SNP are falling apart. I think they have run out of road and the mask of many years, which is to argue only about the constitution in the hope that nobody will notice how bad you are in government, has slipped completely.

They’ve descended into an internal wrangle where they are bitterly accusing each other of being pretty well unfit for office on the basis of their appalling record.

They are showing that they’re not truly a progressive party. They’re not truly the party of change. They’re actually the party that’s run out of ideas, run out of hope.

I do think there’s a real lurch to the right. I think it exposes the SNP as a party that hasn’t got a common thread running through it.

Some of the stuff that’s been coming out in these debates is very much to the right. People would recoil from it, when it comes to discussions about family rights, abortion rights. It shows a party that’s completely disorientated without any core progressive value.

Starmer is referring primarily to Kate Forbes, the finance secretary who has said she is opposed to equal marriage, and even having children out of wedlock, because of her Christian faith. The fact that betting odds suggest Forbes has a 44% chance of winning, according to OLBG (which has Humza Yousaf on 65% and Ash Regan on 4%), imply these views are not as big a vote loser for Forbes as many assumed at the start of the contest. But Forbes has stressed that these are just her personal views, and not proposals she would try to implement as first minister.

If you’re progressive, if you want change, if you see a better future for Scotland, where the economy is thriving, where we are rushing towards the next generation of green jobs, if you want a Scotland with better public services and opportunities for every child and a safer Scotland, then that change is on offer. And that change is with Labour.

• He says reforming the Gender Recognition Act will not be a priority for a Labour government, and criticises Sturgeon for not taking public opinion with her when her government passed its gender recognition reform bill. He says:

What’s happened in Scotland is a reminder that if you want change, you have to carry the public with you.

Gender recognition will not be one of the priorities of the incoming government.

The government has yet to explain how the pay rise for health workers announced yesterday will be funded.

Rachel Harrison, national secretary of the GMB, told the Today programme this morning that the union was assured that the funding for the 5% pay rise agreed for 2023-24 would not come from the existing health budget. She said this was a condition set by the GMB and some of the other unions. She explained:

We wanted reassurance that this was additional money and it was not going to come out of NHS current budgets and that was the commitment we were given by the government. We were told that this would be additional money and it wouldn’t come out of existing health budgets.

But when Dominic Raab, the deputy PM and justice secretary, was asked to confirm this in his interview, he refused. He said that the government had already set aside money to pay for a 3.5% pay rise in 2023-24 (the original proposal) and that the money “won’t come, of course, from frontline funding”.

Press on whether the Department of Health would get extra resources to fund this, Raab said that was a matter for the health secretary and the chancellor, but implied the money would come from the existing health budget. He said:

I think the expectation will be the budget is set, it provides enough resource, but of course with all of these things, and particularly with something as fluid as the strikes, the opportunity to make sure we get that right is there.

This is from Sky’s Rob Powell.

Passport Office workers are to strike for five weeks in an escalation of a dispute over jobs, pay and conditions, my colleague Jamie Grierson reports.

In the strike negotiation process “joint statements” are always a good sign, and we’ve just had one issued on behalf of “the government and education unions”. It says they are moving

The government and the education trade unions, Association of School and College Leaders, National Association of Head Teachers, NASUWT and National Education Union, have agreed to move into a period of intensive talks. The talks will focus on teacher pay, conditions and workload reduction.

In order for talks to begin and, we hope, reach a successful conclusion, the NEU has confirmed it will create a period of calm for two weeks during which time they have said no further strike dates will be announced. The education secretary and all the unions will meet today, beginning intensive talks, which will continue over the weekend.

The key move has come from the NEU, because other unions were already talking to the Department for Education. Previously there has been a deadlock because the government said it would not commit to serious talks on pay until the NEU called off its strikes, and the NEU said it would not call off its strikes until the government committed to serious talks on pay.

The NEU held strikes in England on Wednesday and yesterday. No further strike dates have been announced, and so it is not having to call off any. But it has committed to not announcing any further action over the next fortnight.

Coming after yesterday’s announcement of a pay deal for health workers, this statement will raise hopes that an end to the teaching strikes is getting closer.

Both sides are also briefing that they will not be commenting on the details of the talks. That is another sign that things are serious. (It is the equivalent of “going into the tunnel” in EU negotiations terminology.)

Good morning. Yesterday the government and unions representing health workers, including nurses, announced they had reached a new deal on pay. It involves compromises on both sides – the government has improved the pay offer for the current financial year, which it had ruled out; the Royal College of Nursing’s demand for RPI inflation plus 5% is a distant memory – but there seems a good chance that it could end the strikes by workers such as ambulance staff and nurses in England. Here is our story by Heather Stewart and Anna Bawden.

The negotiations did not included junior doctors – the specialists below consultant level who keep hospitals functioning, and who staged a three-day strike this week. This morning Dominic Raab, the deputy PM and justice secretary, was giving interviews and he confirmed to the Today programme that a similar offer was on the table for junior doctors, and that he hoped they would resume talks too. He said:

A similar offer is on the table [for junior doctors]. I think it would be good for the BMA [British Medical Association, which represents junior doctors] to meet with the health secretary, as he’s offered. And I hope that we can resolve that issue as well.

Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, told the same programme that he hoped to have a meeting with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, very soon. He said:

Our position has been that we are open to talk in good faith, meaningfully, at any time.

We were ready to talk months ago. Our formal dispute started over 150 days ago and, again, that is just what I mean in that it is disappointing it has taken Steve Barclay so long to get to the negotiating table.

I only hope that he does come with good faith and a mandate to negotiate.

So far we haven’t arranged a time for this afternoon but there has been some correspondence between our offices so it does look like we’ll be able to set something up in the near future.

The Commons is sitting today, with MPs debating private members’ bills (starting with the hunting trophies [import prohibition] bill), but generally the diary is quiet.

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