Sunak criticises Nato defence spending and doubles down on UK arm exports to Israel – UK politics live | Politics

Here is my colleague Sarah Butler with a little more on those new shoplifting plans which the government has announced:

The government is investing more than £55m in expanding facial recognition systems – including vans that will scan crowded high streets – as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting.

The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker.

The new law, under which perpetrators could be sent to prison for up to six months and receive unlimited fines, will be introduced via an amendment to the criminal justice bill that is working its way through parliament. The change could happen as early as the summer.

The government said it would invest £55.5m over the next four years. The plan includes £4m for mobile units that can be deployed on high streets using live facial recognition in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police – including repeat shoplifters.

That investment follows the development of Project Pegasus under which some of the UK’s biggest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Boots and Primark run their CCTV images through police databases using facial recognition technology.

Read more here: Shoplifting crackdown to include £55m for facial recognition tools in England and Wales

Rishis Sunak has told retail workers he has “got their backs” and spoke of his own experience of his parent’s business dealing with shoplifters while announcing a crackdown on the crime which will invlove money to use facial recognition technology in stores.

Speaking on LBC, Sunak said “It’s not acceptable. It’s absolutely not right” about a rise in shoplifting figures. He said:

That’s why we’ve said we’ll introduce a new crime of assaulting retail workers shop workers, because it’s not right. They should be able to go about their day to day lives without fear of being assaulted by people. That’s why we’re introducing a brand new offence to target people who do that, and we’re working closely with [retailers and the police] to make sure that prolific offenders actually are not able to come into their shops in the first place, with the use of tags and things like that.

Sunak said he saw shoplifting in his parent’s pharmacy, and said “for a small family business it’s obviously financially affecting but it’s also very distressing. I know what it feels like.”

It isn’t clear that assaulting a retail worker wouldn’t be covered by existing law. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the victims and safeguarding minister Laura Farris said the Government had spent “quite a lot of time going back and forth” on making assaulting a shopworker a separate criminal offence. She said:

The reason we’re changing the law today is because first of all we accept that this continues to be a problem and that it has increased.

And secondly because we think that it will work well for the purpose of recording the offence, this specific offence, and also because we’re attaching bespoke sanctions to it, different sanctions that would apply to ordinary assault.

Farris went on to say in a separate interview on Times Radio that “We’re not hearing from the retail sector that this is sort of individuals stealing a loaf of bread, we’re hearing something far more sinister and organised and methodical that’s been taking place. They say that they think it’s by and large organised crime.”

Rishi Sunak has tried to deflect criticism of his handling of the William Wragg sexting scandal by saying that Keir Starmer has been weak about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs.

William Wragg announced yesterday that he had voluntarily given up the Conservative whip in parliament, days after it had emerged that he had passed on details of colleagues in what appears to have been a sexting sting. Earlier on Tuesday he also resigned as chair of the Commons’ public administration and constitutional affairs committee and as vice-chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs.

“There are wider things happening and he rightly apologised for what happened,” the prime minister told LBC. “There’s a police investigation that’s happening it’s important that we work through these things in due time. The important thing here is that we let the police investigation run their course.”

Sunak, whose wife agreed to end her non-dom status and start paying UK tax in 2022 when he was chancellor after an outcry, said of claims that he had been weak in dealing with it:

People can judge me if they want to judge me on that, that’s fine, I accept that. When it comes to weakness I know Keir Starmer still hasn’t answered any questions properly about what’s going on with Angela Rayner. When it comes to me and my affairs people are very happy to ask lots of questions, including Angela Rayner herself.

The Conservative party chair, Richard Holden, yesterday said it was quite clear that Wragg’s “career in public life is at an end”. Wragg remains the MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester.

Rishis Sunak has criticised Nato allies for failing to increase defence spending, while defending his own record on the issue.

The government is committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, above the 2% target for Nato allies.

He told listeners of LBC:

The world is sadly a less certain and a less safe place and it’s important that we invest to keep the country safe. That’s what we’ve been doing … we’ve seen the largest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war. I authorised that as chancellor.

He went on to say only the US in Nato spent more on defence than the UK, adding “There are dozens of other members of Nato who are not even spending the 2%, we have shown British leadership on this. Our job is always to set a lead and that’s what we have done.”

A Washington Post analysis in February showed that the UK was tenth in the table of countries spending a proportion of the their GDP on defence in Nato, with Poland (3.9%), the US (3.49%) and Greece (3.01%) being the only countries to spend above 3%. Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary and Latvia all spent a higher proportion of GDP than the UK. 19 allies did not spend more than 2%, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Yesterday former armed forces minister James Heappey urged both the Tories and Labour to put a committment to spending 3% of GDP on defence in their manifestos for the next general election.

Rishi Sunak has doubled down on the UK’s decision not to suspend arms sales to Israel, echoing foreign secretary David Cameron’s words from yesterday by saying that “none of our closest allies” have stopped existing export licences.

Cameron had made the comments in Washington during a joint press conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken.

On LBC this morning, Sunak said the UK has a “long-established process” relating to the arms export regime and “we review these things regularly”.

“That’s led to no change. Actually none of our closest allies have currently suspended existing arms licences either, so we continue to discuss these things with our allies.”

He said the government has a “strict set of criteria” and an “obligation to act in accordance” with legal assessments when it comes to arms exports, and dismissed suggestions that civil servants might refuse to process licences.

He suggested it would not be “appropriate” for officials to stop work relating to the sale of arms. “That’s not something I’m familiar with, I don’t think that would be appropriate,” he told LBC. “We have a civil service code. All civil servants should work to the civil service code.”

Sunak described the deaths of humanitarian aid workers caused by multiple Israeli airstrikes on their convoy as a “shocking tragedy”, saying:

It was a shocking tragedy what happened to our veterans when they were selflessly carrying out aid missions into Gaza and I’ve also said repeatedly the situation in Gaza is increasingly intolerable, you know, the humanitarian suffering that people are experiencing isn’t right and prime minister Netanyahu needs to do more to alleviate that. I’ve made that very clear to him.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak has been on the radio this morning, where he has criticised Nato allies for not spending enough on defence, doubled down that the UK won’t change its position on arms sales to Israel, and defended his handling of the William Wragg sexting scandal. More on that in a moment, first your headlines …

• A shoplifting crackdown is to include £55m for facial recognition tools in England and Wales. Minister Laura Farris has suggested that shoplifting is “by and large” linked to “organised crime” rather than the cost of living

• After a Sky News investigation into serious offenders who have applied for asylum in the UK, Farris criticised what she described as a “merry-go-round”. Labour’s Yvette Cooper said rules needed to be tightened around sex offenders

• William Wragg has finally resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on

• More than 7.4 million people in the UK struggled to pay a bill or a credit repayment in January, according to a financial regulator

• Former Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith called on the Department for Work and Pensions to stop hounding people for the repayments and investigate its own responsibility for the errors

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry continues today, albeit with less star-power than Alan Bates. Former minister James Arbuthnot and retired judge Anthony Hooper are the witnesses. Westminster, the Scottish parliament and Senedd are on recess. There is some business scheduled in the Northern Ireland assembly.

It is Martin Belam here with you this week. I do try to read all your comments, and dip into them where I think I can be helpful, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – [email protected] – especially if you have spotted my inevitable errors and typos, or you think I’ve missed something important.