Burnham warns that NHS will ‘struggle’ to cope if consultants don’t resume talks over pay – as it happened

• Alan Milburn is expected to recommend that young people on benefits should be able to work for up to 16 hours a week without losing income, the Mirror reports. In an interview, Milburn told the paper:

The system makes trying a job feel like a gamble many young people can’t afford to take. We should make it far easier for them to try work and build their hours. A part time job gets a young person on the first rung of the career ladder. It may help them climb.

Milburn’s report is due to be published next week.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

Harriet Cross, the shadow Scottish secretary, has rejected John Swinney’s defence against her claim that the Scottish government snubbed Remembrance Day on its social media account. (See 3.28pm.) She said:

Your letter has not answered my questions, John.

Why did the official Scottish Government account not acknowledge Remembrance Sunday, but did post about a Sikh Festival at precisely 11am?

Kemi Badenoch has piled in too. In her own post on this, she said:

You only need to look at Swinney’s hysterical bluster and weasel words to see @HarrietCross_MP has him bang to rights.

You can celebrate a Sikh festival and Remembrance Sunday on the same day. But shouting “Bandi Chhor Divas!” during the 2 minute silence is cringe and disrespectful.

An SNP government so desperate to look inclusive, instead exposed its extraordinary cultural ignorance. Thousands of Sikh soldiers fought and died alongside British servicemen in two World Wars. Their sacrifice is part of our shared national history. Remembrance Sunday belongs to them too.

As people of every colour, faith and background fell silent to remember those who died for our freedom. The SNP govt’s official account wanted to make it extremely clear to everyone that it had a different message to send.

What they posted at 11am was so naff, it might as well have said “Remembrance Sunday is for everyone else. You minorities can have your own little celebrations.”

There has been a slight shift in the Tory line of attack. Originally Cross accused the Scottish government of not acknowledging Remembrance Sunday on its official X social media account. Now the Tories are focusing entirely on the decision not to post about it at 11am, when the nation marked the two-minute silence, but to instead post about a Sikh festival at that particular moment.

A suspended Reform UK councillor who said on Facebook that Nigerians should be melted down and used to fill potholes has been convicted of a malicious communication, despite telling a court it was a “tongue-in-cheek” joke, the Press Assocation reports. PA says:

Sunderland city councillor Glenn Gibbins, 66, denied breaching the Communications Act by posting a grossly offensive message on Facebook in March 2024, two years before he was elected.

He was convicted following a trial South Tyneside magistrates’ court, with sentencing due later. He has been told he will not be jailed.

His legal team will appeal against the verdict at the crown court later.

His post came to light when the group Hope Not Hate went through his social media posts after Gibbins was announced as a Reform UK candidate for Sunderland City Council.

Police were informed after he was successfully voted in.

Gibbins posted: “Carnt believe the amount of nigerians in town… should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes!!”

Emma Dowling, prosecuting, said: “The comment about melting them down conjures up despicable images.”

She said it implied that Nigerians were “somewhat less than human, stripping people in that group of humanity”.

Gibbins was suspended by Reform UK after the post came to light.

Gibbins, a divorced former salesman who runs a stall in Sunderland city centre printing novelty gifts, told the court: “I thought it was a tongue in cheek joke.

“It was an unreal scenario. No-one took it literally.”

He explained how he had set up his business in the Bridges shopping centre and recalled on the day he made the post that some Nigerians had approached him about buying some of his printing equipment.

Gibbins said he had “banter” with the Nigerians at his stall and that the conversation was good fun.

That night, after “a couple of cans of beer”, he said he saw a post on Facebook about Nigerians which he tried to share without success, so he typed it out himself and posted it to his public Facebook profile.

When Dowling asked him what reaction he intended to cause, he said: “It was tongue-in-cheek, a bit naughty, but I thought it was fun.”

He explained he was not particularly political and when he was approached by Reform UK about becoming a councillor in March this year, he considered it would be a source of income “to tide me over” when business was quieter in the summer.

He also said he enjoyed helping residents in the brief period when he was not suspended.

Adam King, defending, said the post was “unfunny” and “an unpleasant joke/non-joke”.

He said professional comedians such as Jo Brand had joked about throwing acid on Nigel Farage and Jimmy Carr about gypsies in the Holocaust and they had not been prosecuted.

Giving her verdict, district judge Zoe Passfield said Gibbins now accepted that his post was offensive, but not grossly so, and maintained it was a joke.

She said he had no previous convictions, had not offended since the post more than two years ago and she had read character witnesses in his support.

She said: “The post was nothing more and nothing less than a grossly offensive comment about members of the Nigerian community in Sunderland and Mr Gibbins’ views as to their status, or otherwise, as human beings.”

The district judge said she had considered Gibbins’ right to free expression as per article 10 of the European convention on human rights, but decided the post was not a genuine expression of political views.

The latest episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast is out. It features Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talking about how Andy Burnham will have to choose between policies that will bring down carbon emissions and policies that might help cut the cost of living.

Andy Burnham has urged hospital consultants to resume talks with the government in a bid to avoid a two-day strike going ahead at the end of this month.

Consultants in England are due to go on strike on 25 and 26 November in a dispute over pay and conditions.

Asked about this during a visit to Watford general hospital today, Burnham said:

I would say it’s not a case of ‘dig in’; more a case of, ‘let’s get back around the table’.

There’s always a conversation to be had about how we can address the concerns, but address them in other ways.

I’m not saying the thing that politicians often say about there being no money, but it’s just a fact, we have eked out what we could at the budget for the NHS.

Asked how many such strikes the NHS could tolerate, Burnham said it would be a “struggle” for the NHS to manage. He said:

It’s not a great time of year to be considering that prospect, but I’m always one who wants to talk things through and listen where people have genuine concerns.

I know the health secretary has made that offer, to get back around the table, and I think, let’s have the conversation before we jump to industrial action.

In an interview this morning, asked if consultants would be paid more, Karin Smyth, a health minister, replied: “No. The consultants have had significant pay rises in the last few years.”

As the Press Association reports, Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta, co-chairs of the BMA’s consultants committee, said they met Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, and said the strikes would not be necessary if ministers would agree to “genuine negotiations”. They explained:

We have lost a quarter of our pay since 2008, a quarter of us are taking time off due to stress, and we lack the time to innovate and make the health service better.

We are currently waiting to hear from government if negotiations that address both the value of consultants’ work and the unsustainability of our working lives are on offer.

We still have two weeks to avoid strike action.

Chatham House, a thinktank, has also expressed concern about reports that the government is set to water down its electric vehicle (EV) targets. It says that investors need “policy certainty”.

In a statement, Chris Aylett, a senior research fellow at Chatham House’s Environment and Society Centre, said:

Despite mixed signals from the government, the UK public is clear: EVs are going mainstream. The share of people who either already own an EV, or are actively looking to buy one, has increased from 19% in 2025 to 27% in 2026. British people understand that EVs cost less to run, produce less pollution outside our schools, pump fewer greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and offer independence from overseas oil producers.

Remarkably, despite the cost-of-living crisis being the public’s top concern, anxieties about EV costs are also falling. The share of people in the UK who say they are interested in buying an EV, but worry it would be unaffordable, has fallen from 26% in 2025 to 19% in 2026.

With the public on board, the government’s fluctuating policy agenda risks wasting a golden opportunity. Without policy certainty, Westminster will stifle, rather than encourage, the investment in new manufacturing and infrastructure vital to the country’s electrification journey.

Chatham House has, along with GlobeScan, just published a report on global attitudes towards clean technologies. It found “growing consumer openness to Chinese-made clean technologies in several major markets, while fewer consumers say that the cost of solar panels and EVs is a barrier”.

As the National reports, John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has hit back at the shadow Scottish secretary Harriet Cross after she accused the Scottish government of ignoring Remembrance Sunday on its social media account. (See 10.11am.)

Swinney’s official X account as first minister carried a post about Remembrance Sunday, that was reposted by the Scottish government’s account, and Swinney also featured it on his personal X account. Other Scottish government social media accounts featured posts about Remembrance Sunday.

Addressing Cross, Swinney said:

It is not credible to believe that you missed all of this. You are knowingly perpetrating a falsehood.

Frankly, I find it disgusting that you have sought to politicise an occasion where the whole country rightly comes together to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of our freedoms.

You should withdraw this false claim now and apologise – not to me, but to the many veterans and their families.

The UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, which represents people in the finance sector committed to sustainable investment, has said that it will be “highly disappointing” if the government does water down its electric vehicle (EV) targets.

Commenting on our story today (see 9.26am), James Alexander, its CEO, said:

Rumours that the government is set to substantially slash the ZEV [zero emission vehicle] mandate will be highly disappointing to investors backing the rapid electrification of the UK’s road transport system.

The mandate has underpinned this flow of capital, as it has offered a clear sense of the size and trajectory of the future EV market.

But a third change to the framework in just three years could severely dent its credibility and put future allocation decisions at risk.

Andy Burnham has been criticised for hiring a controversial consultancy firm to help No 10 with work on his 10-year plan.

As the Sunday Times reported yesterday, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms, has been asked to contribute. James Purnell, Burnham’s chief of staff, worked for BCG briefly after standing down as an MP in 2010.

No 10 says the support it is getting from BCG is “limited, short-term and focused on specific specialist advice”, and it has been reported that just one consultant is involved.

But the appointment is controversial because consultants from the company worked on plans being drawn up by the Trump administration for the post-conflict reconstruction of Gaza. BCG said that that work was unauthorised, and that the two partners involved in the project – dismissed by critics as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing – were later “exited from the firm”.

Commenting on the story, Neil O’Brien, the Conservative’s policy renewal spokesperson, said:

Amazing that Burnham is so lacking in vision that he has to ask management consultants what his own vision is

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, said in a statement:

Aside from an obvious point that you don’t appoint companies like the Boston Consulting Group if you have any actual intention of ending 40 years of neoliberalism, Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ blueprint is clear ethnic cleansing and the idea that Andy Burnham has invited these people into the heart of Downing Street shows contempt for the victims of the genocide.

Andy Burnham has said that the bravery shown by Russell Brand’s accusers should hasten efforts to improve the support that rape and sexual assault victims get from the criminal justice system.

Acknowledging that more needed to be done, Burnham said:

I’ll be honest and say I don’t think you ever can do enough to get the right support in place for victims to give them the confidence to come forward, because we know that still isn’t there in the way that it should be.

But I have already taken a decision to make sure there are rape and serious sexual offence teams in every police force by the end of next year. It was going to be 2029, I brought it forward, and I lean back on my work as mayor of Greater Manchester in this regard. There is so much that needs to be done. We have to bring it forward.

Obviously today, everybody will be thinking about the women who had the courage to come forward. Their bravery will, I believe, change the system more broadly, and we will be relentless in making whatever improvements we can.

But there’s no complacency here. There’s a lot more that needs to change.

Andy Burnham has described reports that the government will water down its electric vehicle (EV) targets as “speculation”.

Asked about the story on a visit to a hospital in Watford, Burnham said:

The consultation on the mandate for zero emission vehicles concluded only a fortnight ago, so obviously that is being looked at now. The range of responses to the consultation … so these reports are just that: they’re reports, they’re speculation and no decision has been made at this point.

(In Westminster, when stories get described as “speculation”, that normally means that they are true – but that people just aren’t ready to say so yet.)