Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has announced plans to reform and repeal a number of City regulations, including rules originally meant to protect the UK from another financial crisis, in order to “unlock” investment and “turbocharge” growth across the UK. Hunt has refused to quash claims that the Treasury intervened to block a pay offer to rail workers that may have ended their strike action. (See 1.47pm.) Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has accused the government of cruelty in its asylum policy, and said that people-smuggling is as serious as slave trading in the 19th century. He has posted a link to the full text of his speech on Twitter.
Labour would rush through asylum applications for people from certain countries deemed “safe”, including Albania, in an attempt to clear the backlog of claims, Yvette Cooper has said. Britain will work to develop next-generation fighter jets with Italy and Japan, Rishi Sunak has announced. Water pollution goals are to be weakened by the government next week, the Guardian can reveal, as Environment Act targets will give farmers three extra years to reduce their waste dumping into waterways. Savanta has released a poll suggesting Labour has a lead over the Conservatives of 11 points – down 10 points from its lead in the middle of November.
Commenting on the findings, Chris Hopkins, Savanta’s political research director, said: Polls like this come with their typical health warning: it’s just one poll, we’d need to see more polls move in similar directions before claiming that this is a trend, and it could very much be an outlier. However, Labour’s inflated lead in VI [voting intention] polls has been exacerbated by higher-than-usual proportions of 2019 Conservatives being undecided. In this poll, just 10% of those who voted Conservative in 2019 are undecided, compared to 15% last week, and therefore the Conservatives are retaining more of their 2019 vote and fewer are being removed from the headline VI numbers. That is something to keep an eye on, because if Rishi Sunak can shore up more of the 2019 vote, he could at least save the party from the complete electoral oblivion that is making so many of its MPs decide to stand down rather than fall to an inevitable defeat at the next election.