PMQs live: Starmer condemns Badenoch’s criticism of Chagos deal and says Tory leader did not even ask for briefing on it

Kemi Badenoch says:

When Labour negotiates, our country loses.

Yesterday it was reported the Chagos deal would cost £18bn. She says this is money that belongs to us and our children. It is so north London lawyers can boast at dinner parties.

Why did the energy secretary stop fighting the Rosebank case.

Starmer says Diego Garcia is “vital for our national security”.

But the legal certainty was thrown into doubt some years ago.

He goes on:

Let me be clear, and I’ll pick my words carefully. Without legal certainty, the base cannot operate in practical terms as it should.

That is bad for national security, and is a gift to our adversaries.

Some within the party opposite know exactly what I am talking about.

That is why the last government started negotiations.

Starmer says, if Badenoch is “properly briefed” on the national security aspects, she will know what is is talking about.

If Badenoch is not properly briefed, she is not fit to be PM.

(Starmer seemed to be alluding to a recent report saying Badenoch missed a recent national security briefing – although that was about the Southport killings.)

PMQs is starting soon.

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

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has condemned President Trump’s plans for Gaza as “unacceptable and dangerous”, saying there “must be no ethnic cleansing”.

In a post on Bluesky he said:

After months of collective punishment and the death of over 40,000 in Gaza, any suggestion Palestinians should be removed from their home is unacceptable and dangerous.

There must be no ethnic cleansing.

Only a proper two state solution will bring lasting peace.

Lammy says Trump ‘right’ about need for rebuilding in Gaza – while rejecting his proposals for Palestinians to be removed

Pippa Crerar

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has said that President Trump is “right” to say Gaza must be rebuilt – while confirming that the government is oppose to his suggestion that they should be forced to leave their homes.

At a press conference in Kyiv in Ukraine, where he is on a visit, Lammy was asked what the government thought of Trump’s plan for a US takeover of Gaza, and whether such a plan would comply with international law.

Lammy replied:

Donald Trump is right. Looking at those scenes, Palestinians who have been horrendously displaced over so many months of war, it is clear that Gaza is lying in rubble.

We have always been clear in our view that we must see two states and we must see Palestinians able to live and prosper in their homelands in Gaza, in the West Bank. That is what we want to get to.

That is why it’s important we move out of phase one of this hostage deal, to stage two and then to phase three and reconstruct Gaza. We will play our part in that support for reconstruction, working alongside the Palestinian authority and Gulf and Arab partners. That’s the guarantee to ensure that there is a future for Palestinians in their home.

In rejecting the plan while at the same time using Trump-positive language, Lammy was adopting the approach adopted by his cabinet colleague Steve Reed earlier (see 9.55am). The Conservative party is also adopting a similar tone. (See 10.16am.)

Keir Starmer praised the “important role” Denmark plays in defending the security of the Arctic region as he met his Danish counterpart last night, amid a diplomatic row with the US over the sovereignty of Greenland, PA Media reports.

The PM hosted Mette Frederiksen for a working dinner in Downing Street evening as her country faces a dispute with Donald Trump, who has said he wants to acquire the Nordic island. In public No 10 has signalled its support for Denmark, while trying to avoid saying anything that might antagonise Trump or escalate the dispute.

Last night, in a readout of the talks, Number 10 made no specific mention of Greenland but said the two leaders agreed to “step up joint cooperation to address threats” faced in the High North region.

Starmer welcomed a new military package announced by Denmark to defend the Arctic from “hostile activity”, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.

It comes after the Nordic country said it would spend 14.6 billion kroner (£1.6bn) to boost security in the region following renewed interest from Trump in controlling Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, PA says.

Speaking outside Number 10 following her meeting with Starmer, Frederiksen said they had agreed to “work closely together” on ensuring the security of the High North, which includes the island.

Asked whether she had received support from the UK prime minister on the issue of Greenland during their meeting on Tuesday, Frederiksen said:

We had a very good meeting.

I consider UK as one of our biggest and most important allies, and he is a close friend and colleague to me and to Denmark.

We have agreed tonight that we will work closely together on the Arctic region and the need for ensuring the security environment in what we call the High North, including Greenland and the Arctic region in general.

So it was a very good meeting, and not only looking at the Arctic region, we have agreed to work closer together on defence and deterrence and on the different security issues that are surrounding us in these years.

In its readout, a No 10 spokesperson said:

Turning to security in the High North and Arctic region, the prime minister paid tribute to the important role Denmark was playing and welcomed their recent announcement of a new military package to defend the Arctic from hostile activity.

Both leaders agreed to step up joint cooperation to address threats in the Arctic and High North, working with allies through Nato and JEF [Joint Expeditionary Force] Partners.

The High North is a term used in defence circles covering the Arctic and North Atlantic. It includes Greenland.

Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, was also doing a media round this morning. She is arguably the most pro-Israeli Tory holding the Foreign Office brief for years, but she would not endorse President Trump’s plan for Gaza.

Like Steve Reed in his interviews (see 9.55am), she made a point of sounding postive about Trump – while rejecting the substance of what he was proposing.

In an inteview on the Today programme, she said:

We’re still in a ceasefire with three phases. We’re not through the first phase.

Coming to the rebuilding is, of course, phase three. Having a vision – and what we heard overnight absolutely sounds like a vision in terms of rebuilding, creating hope, opportunity, prosperity for the people of Gaza – that is obviously an end state.

But how to get there?

Patel said that the UK should be working with its partners, “Arab countries in the Middle East”, on a long-term solution. These countries are opposed to the Trump plan, although Patel did not spell that out.

She also said that she was interested in having a “reformed PA [Palestinian Authority]” running Gaza – which is not part of what Trump seems to be planning at all.

And she stressed the need for international agreement on Gaza’s future. She said:

I think we are a long way, if I may say so, from even speaking about new governance, new structures.

Clearly, this is an aspiration. These are discussions that must, must absolutely happen. But they’ve got to happen collectively. It’s not for one country to dictate what that’s going to look like. This is going to be a negotiation.

By contrast, Trump does seem to want to dictate unilaterally what will happen in Gaza.

The UK government would oppose any plan that would stop Palestinians returning to their home in Gaza, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, said this morning.

In an interview on the Today programme, asked about President Trump’s proposal for a US take-over of Gaza, and the implicit ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who have been living there, Reed stated the government’s opposition to the idea – while at the same time trying to avoid direct criticism of Trump. Reed even praised him for the role he played in securing the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Reed said:

I think it’s right that I should share with you the UK Government’s view of what should happen.

It would be inappropriate for me to provide a running commentary on what Donald Trump says, or indeed any other world leader.

While we’re talking about Donald Trump, I think he deserves credit for his role in securing this ceasefire in the first place. That was clearly the important staging post towards getting the longer term peace that will want to see.

But … the UK government’s view is, and will remain, that Palestinians must be able to return to their homes and rebuild their shattered lives.

Good morning. PMQs is normally mostly about domestic politics, but today – despite the government doing its best to promote an announcement about a £2.65bn investment in flood defences – foreign policy may well dominate. That is partly because of President Trump, and his desire to leave office with the US territorially bigger than it was when it arrived (something that went out of fashion in most parts of the respectable world around the end of the 19th century).

Last night Keir Starmer had dinner with the prime minister of Denmark, the country that has sovereignty over Greenland, and late last night No 10 put out a statement that slightly firmed up Starmer’s support for Denmark in its determination to see off Trump’s plan to buy/annex the vast, frozen island. More on that soon.

Now it turns out Trump wants to add Gaza to the US property porfolio too. Or something like that. At a press conference in the White House he said he wanted to “take over” the Palestinian territory, but the exact details are hazy and, as ever with Trump, it is quite hard to know where this plan sits on his deadly serious/wild fantasy spectrum. Steve Reed, the environment secretary on broadcast duty this morning, has already politely expressed the UK government’s opposition to the idea, but Starmer is almost certain to be asked about it too.

But at PMQs Kemi Badenoch may well decide to focus on the Chagos Islands – one place that Trump has not decided he wants to conquer for the US, at least not yet. You can imagine, though, why Starmer might be tempted to just hand it over. Britain has sovereignty, as a colonial-era hangover, and is in the process of giving it to Mauritius. Increasingly, the deal is getting mired in controversy.

Last night they were also working late in the Foreign Office on a media statement. Yesterday afternoon, after the Times ran a story, prompted by comments from Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, in his national assembly, saying the UK was now prepared to hand over around £18bn to Mauritius as part of the deal, No 10 refused to deny the story. The UK is planning to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, because it keeps losing cases in international courts over ownership, but it is planning to pay for the giveaway too so it can carry on running the UK/US airbase on Diego Garcia for another 99 years. There was some government background briefing to the effect that the £18bn figure was not accurate, but the No 10 line left journalists with the impression that the Times story was broadly accurate.

Finally, at 11pm last night, the Foreign Office put out a statement rebutting the Times story a bit more strongly. It also claimed the Times was wrong to say the deal has been revised so that Mauritius will have a veto over any UK request to extend the 99-year Diego Garcia lease which it did not have in the original version of the deal agreed last autumn. A Foreign Office spokesperson said:

This reporting is incorrect.

The figures being quoted are entirely inaccurate and misleading.

There has been no change to the terms of extension in the treaty.

The UK will only sign a deal that is in our national interest.

This will be of some use to Starmer if Badenoch raises the question at PMQs.

But what is much more significant is the news that some senior Labour figures are privately aghast at the deal. In a report for Bloomberg last night, Alex Wickham said that two cabinet ministers are against it. Wickham said:

A person familiar with the views of one cabinet minister said they did not understand why the UK was agreeing to pay large sums of money to Mauritius at a time when the Treasury was telling UK government departments to prepare for spending cuts.

A second person familiar with a different cabinet member’s views said Starmer should cancel the deal. Both suggested Starmer was acting on legal advice from attorney general Richard Hermer.

On the Today programme this morning Henry Zeffman, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, said he was hearing the same thing. He said:

Making calls on this story to contacts in government last night, it became clear to me that some of the most senior people in government are opposed to this deal … Just looking through the words in my notebook, “terrible”, “mad”, “impossible to understand” – those are the words I can use, at least at this time of day on air. But there are other words in my notebook. And these are from very senior government sources.

In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson say Labour backbenchers are unhappy too.

One MP who fears Nigel Farage’s outfit could be closing in on their marginal seat told Playbook the treaty would be “Reform rocket fuel.” “How am I supposed to tell my constituents that we took away their winter fuel allowance to pay a foreign country to take our sovereign territory?” they messaged to say.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is due to hold a press conference in Kyiv with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, is due to give a Commons statement on which English councils are being allowed to delay elections so they can reorganise into unitary authorities.

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