Treasury minister branded ‘ridiculous’ after claiming HGV driver shortage nothing to do with Brexit – as it happened

Boris Johnson has claimed that the Cop26 climate crisis conference taking place in Glasgow in November could mark “the beginning of the end of climate change”. In a video address to the Youth4Climate conference in Italy, which was also addressed by the Italian PM, Mario Draghi, and the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, Johnson said he wanted Cop26 to focus on four big issues, involving coal, cars, cash and trees.

He went on:

We want to move away, as I’ve described, from using coal as the way we generate electricity, we want to move to move towards renewables.

We want all the countries in the world to move off coal. We want everybody to stop using internal combustion engine vehicles, and it can be done, people are moving away from them as we speak.

We want to raise the funds that the whole world needs, the developing world in particular, to tackle climate change – and we need to get up to $100bn.

And we need to plant hundreds of millions if not trillions of trees around the world. If we do all that, we can make Cop26 in November … the beginning of the end of climate change.

Johnson quoted a projection saying that “a child born in 2020 will endure seven times as many extreme heatwaves and twice as many droughts as their grandparents”.

But he also claimed that if the world succeeded in addressing the climate crisis, dire predictions for the future could be avoided. He ended his speech saying:

So without being unduly rhapsodical, when you’re my age, you young folks, you young thrusters out there, you’ll inhabit not a world on fire, but a planet where your phones and your computers and your lights are powered by the wind and the water, the waves and the sun.

You’ll inhabit a world where electric cars glide silently down your streets from California to Cape Town; emission-free, guilt-free jet zero planes will fly overhead; and all of us will be able to deal with whatever the climate throws at us.

So what I’m saying to you is that the situation is dire, it is frightening, but change is possible and it can be done.

Johnson, of course, is always stubbornly optimistic, although even by his standards this sounds excessively Panglossian. For an alternative assessment, do read the Twitter thread starting here from my colleague George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and environmentalist.

The Local Government Association, which represents councils in England, has welcomed the new household support fund (see 8.54am) announced today. But it says the main “safety net” for people in need should come from the welfare system, not from local authorities.

Shaun Davies, chair of the LGA’s resources board, said:

Councils have demonstrated throughout the pandemic that they are best placed to understand local needs and reach their most vulnerable residents. This funding recognises the vital role of local welfare support and is a positive step to enable councils to continue to provide much-needed support to low income households at risk of poverty and financial hardship throughout the winter.

The end of the universal credit uplift and other Covid-related support could combine with rising fuel and food costs to make this a very challenging winter for many low income households, in particular those with children. The mainstream benefit system will need to provide the principal safety net for them, enabling councils to target additional, discretionary support to those who need it most.

It is our view that the GBP20 per week uplift in universal credit should be retained for as long as it is needed, to support low-income households to recover from the pandemic and to prevent unsustainable costs falling on councils.

The Department for Work and Pensions has admitted that the household support fund is effectively a revised version of a Covid funding scheme already in place that comes to an end today. Last year the government launched a winter grant scheme (pdf), starting in December, that distributed money to councils for them to use to help people struggling to pay for food, heating or other essentials. As winter ended, the scheme was extended under a new name, the local support grant. That scheme ends today.

But the DWP claims the new scheme is more generous. It says GBP429m has been spent in England under the old version from December until now, and that GBP421m has been allocated under the new scheme just for this winter – although the DWP has not specified exactly how long that funding is expected to last.

The new scheme is also intended to help a wider group of people. Under the old versions, 80% of the money was supposed to go to families with children. The new one is intended to offer more help to adults without children, the DWP says.

Further guidance to councils on how the money should be spent will be released soon.

Harriet Harman has also written to Dame Cressida Dick telling her that why she thinks she should resign and to Priti Patel, the home secretary, demanding seven changes to Met police procedures that would strengthen safeguards for women against the threat posed by violent officers. She has released both letters.

Charities and the Labour party have criticised the government’s planned GBP500m winter hardship fund as a “temporary sticking plaster” that will help struggling households recover from next week’s GBP20 a week cut to universal credit, my colleagues Patrick Butler and Jasper Jolly report.

Here is a summary of the main points from Keir Starmer’s six interviews this morning.

• Starmer said that Labour’s policy to raise the minimum wage to GBP10 per hour was “a minimum for now”. At the party conference he faced strong criticism from the left for not backing GBP15 per hour. Asked about this, he replied:

We set out that it should be immediately GBP10, which is a 12% increase and roughly about GBP2,000 a year more than those on the minimum wage get now and so that’s a significant step in the right direction. It’s a minimum for now, it should be immediate but it would make a big difference to those on the minimum wage.

And believe you me, I have close relatives working in the care sector, I know what it means to live on the minimum wage, I know how desperately they need a Labour government to change things.

• He defended his decision to say that he was “100% behind Jeremy Corbyn” when Corbyn was leader, despite criticising him now, saying he was being loyal. He said:

I’m a member of the Labour party, a Labour MP, and like every member of the Labour party and every MP we support a Labour government. A Labour government is always better than the alternative.

• He claimed that no opposition has set out the fiscal rules it will follow so clearly ahead of an election. He told the Today programme:

I can’t remember a leader of the opposition setting out in such clear terms fiscal rules way ahead of an election so people can see them and pick over them and know exactly where we are going as a Labour party.

John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, says Starmer’s claim is false because Labour did the same thing four years ago.

• Starmer claimed the “vast majority” of Labour members in the conference hall yesterday supported him. Asked about the heckling he received, he said:

When your party changes, when your party dusts itself down and faces the electorate, there are some people who don’t like that. But if you saw the hall yesterday, the vast majority of people were absolutely with me.

• He said it was essential to discover how the police officer who killed Sarah Everard was able to “slip through the net”. And he said “thousands upon thousands of police officers doing a fantastic job are absolutely sickened by this”.

• He said Lord Mandelson has no formal role in the party. Asked on LBC about the person who heckled him with the question “Where’s Peter Mandelson?”, Starmer said he wished he had been quicker yesterday, and responded: “In your head.” He went on:

[Mandelson has] got no formal role at all and I personally haven’t spoken to Peter in some time. But look, I’m not going to pretend I don’t take … I have all sorts of conversations with people, I’m very happy to do so, so I’m not pretending there aren’t people I don’t talk to.

• Starmer said that his speech yesterday, which has been criticised as too long, was timed to last one hour, but went on for an half and a half because of all the standing ovations and clapping.

• He said it was time for a female James Bond.