Biden and Sunak to hold press conference as US president says special relationship in ‘good shape’ – live

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During their meeting at the White House, Joe Biden accidentally referred to Rishi Sunak by his own title.

Biden called the UK’s prime minister “Mr President”.

He quickly corrected himself and joked he had “promoted” Sunak.

Biden said: “Well, Mr president – Mr president, I just promoted you. Mr prime minister, it’s great to have you back.”

Sunak appeared to laugh off the error.

The Guardian’s Peter Walker is among the reporters at the White House eagerly awaiting the press conference.

Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak, fresh from their meeting at the White House earlier, are due to hold a joint press conference shortly.

It’s scheduled to start at 6.30pm BST but may, in reality, be closer to 6.45pm.

We’ll have a live stream at the top of the blog (you’ll need to refresh the page at 6.30pm) and we will provide live text updates as well.

Peers have inflicted three defeats on the government over the controversial strikes (minimum service levels) bill.

In the first round of “ping pong” – the process where MPs and peers keep voting on bills that have gone through all their parliamentary stages, until one side backs down, to resolve outstanding differences – peers voted by a majority of 30 for an amendment that would render much of the legislation toothless.

The bill says that, if unions want to stage strikes in six sectors (health, education, fire and rescue, transport, border security, and nuclear decommissioning), the government would be to require minimum services to operate on strike days.

It originally cleared the Commons in January and last month, after it went through the Lords, MPs voted to take out anti-government amendments passed by peers.

Today, by 180 votes to 150, peers voted for a Labour amendment that saying workers could not be sacked if they were ordered to work on strike days, under the MSL provisions, and refused.

The amendment was proposed by Frances O’Grady, the former TUC general secretary, who told peers:

This amendment seeks to uphold a principle long-established in British law that workers on strike are protected against the sack.

Lord Callanan, the energy minister responding for the government, said that the bill was not meant to be about sacking workers, but that employers should be able to take disciplinary action if workers put the public at risk by going on strike.

The government was defeated on two other amendments.

Peers voted by a majority of 32 for an amendment saying ministers would have to meet a series of conditions, including conducting an impact assessment and holding further consultations, before imposing minimum service regulations.

And by a majority of 31 they voted in favour of an amendment saying unions should be entitled to tell members to ignore orders telling them to work on strike days under the MSL legislation.

That’s all from me for today. A colleague is now taking over.

Joe Biden has insisted that the special relationship with the UK is “in good shape” in his first public remarks alongside Rishi Sunak.

My colleague Peter Walker posted the following on their brief exchange in the Oval Office.

Biden and Sunak are holding a press conference later. This seems to have been what in the US they call a “pool spray” (basically a photocall, but with reporters getting the chance to try the odd question).

Rishi Sunak has arrived at the White House for his meeting with President Biden.

Permission to berth a barge housing asylum seekers at an east London docks has been rejected, PA Media reports. PA says:

London’s Royal Docks said it had informed the Home Office last month that water beside City Airport would not be appropriate as a potential location to moor one of its floating accommodation vessels for refugees.

The use of barges is part of government efforts to deter asylum seekers from embarking on dangerous Channel crossings in small boats and to reduce the amount spent on hotels for those arriving in Britain via unlawful routes.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, had set out his objections publicly to the suggestion that a location in the capital could be chosen for such a vessel. He has since written to Suella Braverman, the home secretary, to express his support for the Royal Docks’ decision to deny permission for a barge.

“I am writing to you following the recent decision by the Royal Docks Management Authority to reject the use of King George V Dock as a berth to accommodate people seeking asylum,” he told her in a letter seen by PA.

“I wish first to put on record my support for this decision and secondly to outline my absolute opposition to the government’s policy of housing asylum seekers on vessels.”

Asked about Royal Docks’ stance, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The pressure on the asylum system has continued to grow and requires us to look at a range of accommodation options which offer better value for the British taxpayer than expensive hotels.

“This is why we continue to source new alternative sites and vessels to accommodate migrants, which are more manageable for communities, as our European neighbours are doing. We understand the concerns of local communities and will work closely with councils and key partners to manage the impact of using these sites, including liaising with local police to make sure appropriate arrangements are in place.”

Teachers in England are abandoning their profession in record numbers, according to official figures, with Labour claiming that “incompetent” government policies were to blame, Richard Adams reports.

The Conservatives have broken a manifesto promise by failing to strike a free trade deal with the US, Keir Starmer has said.

The government has been playing down the prospect of a free trade deal with the US ever since Joe Biden became president, and in remarks to journalists on his flight to Washington Rishi Sunak implied this was no longer even an ambition.

Today Starmer pointed out that this meant Sunak has accepted that a Tory manifesto promise has been broken. The 2019 manifesto said:

We aim to have 80% of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

When it was put to Sunak that this amounted to a broken promise, he claimed that the economic situation had “evolved” since 2019. He told Sky’s Beth Rigby:

I think you have to look at the macroeconomic situation. It’s evolved since [2019] and it’s important the economic partnerships evolved to deal with the opportunities and threats of today.

When Rigby asked him if he accepted that this was a broken promise, Sunak replied:

Since then we’ve had a pandemic. We’ve had a war in Ukraine and that has changed the macroeconomic situation.

The right response to that is to ensure that we’re focusing our engagement economically on the things that will make the most difference to the British people.

Rigby pointed out that the pandemic and the war had not stopped the UK signing other trade deals.

Keir Starmer claimed today that Labour has a plan to revitalise the British steel industry. Speaking at a British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, he said:

There’s going to be a huge demand for steel in the future, and I want that to be British steel.

Just at the moment, British steel is struggling, and we need to move to a new model, to green steel, and here it’s been made absolutely clear to me that customers of the future want that green steel.

The government’s doing nothing on this, it’s sitting on its hands, so we’ve put forward a plan that will help that transition with the investment that’s needed, the partnership that’s needed, and the opportunity then is not just to save steel but to provide it with a fantastic future, which is clean steel, which is secure steel used for contracts here in the UK, and to secure the jobs of thousands of people in this sector.

There are some details of Labour’s plan in its industrial strategy. It says:

As part of our step-change in green investment, Labour government would match-fund investment in a decade-long plan to drive innovation in the sector, including in hydrogen and electric arc furnace technology. This will be combined with our energy security plan to lower energy costs and drive long-term competitiveness.

Nearly one in four pupils at state schools in England are now eligible for free school meals, while a record one in five have a first language other than English, PA Media reports. PA says:

Eligibility for free school meals stood at 23.8% of all pupils in January this year, the equivalent of 2 million children – up from 22.5%, or 1.9 million, in January 2022.

The figure has increased every year since January 2018, when it stood at 13.6% or 1.1 million, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

Children in state-funded schools in England can receive free meals if a parent or carer is receiving one of a number of benefits, including universal credit, child tax credits or income support.

Free meals can also be available to households unable to claim benefits but which meet certain criteria, such as children of work visa holders or families holding a British National Overseas passport who have moved to the UK from Hong Kong.

In his Times story saying Rishi Sunak has accepted Boris Johnson’s honours list, Steve Swinford says that Tories hope this decision will “help bring to an end months of acrimony between the two men”.

There is fresh evidence out today indicating quite how acrimonious the relationship between Johnson and Sunak has been. Guto Harri, who was the director of communications for Johnson in the final months of his premiership, has been recalling his time at No 10 in his podcast, Unprecedented, and in the latest episode he says that when Johnson appointed Jacob Rees-Mogg as the Brexit opportunites minister in February 2022, he encouraged him to create problems for Sunak, the then chancellor. They also joked about Sunak’s size, Harri recalls.

Harri, who was in the cabinet room with Johnson when Rees-Mogg accepted the job, says:

[Rees-Mogg] warned the prime minister that on Brexit he thought the government had got to the point where it was trying to keep the UK deliberately in what he called the ‘lunar orbit of the EU’. He warned that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, had ‘gone native’. Boris asked him to give it all a ‘massive kick’. Jacob Rees-Mogg warned then that he would have to ‘tread on some big toes’ actually, ‘little toes’, he added, patronisingly, with a sort of dig at Rishi Sunak’s size. And Boris, after a little chuckle, gave him carte blanche to be a pain in the backside for the Treasury and for Rishi Sunak. His words quite simply, ‘go ahead’.

There is more evidence of the extent to which the Johnson/Sunak relationship had broken down by 2022 in Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell, easily the best account of the Johnson premiership in print and bursting with high-grade insider info. They quote Johnson as saying this about his chancellor as his time in office was coming to an end:

I want him to make thing happen, reduce tax, produce a growth plan. But all I get is blancmange.

In an interview in the US with Sky’s Beth Rigby, Rishi Sunak refused to comments on the report that he has now accepted Boris Johnson’s honours list. (See 1.13pm.)

It is not just hospital waiting lists that are getting longer. (See 9.58am.) HM Courts and Tribunals Service has published figures today showing that the backlog of cases in courts is growing too.

The backlog in crown courts in England and Wales rose from 61,180 in March 2023 to 61,712 in April 2023. In April 2022 it was 57,768.

And in magistrates courts the backlog went up from 337,367 in April 2022 to 347,769 in April 2023.

Lubna Shuja, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, which highlighted the figures, said:

It is extremely concerning to see the case backlogs in the magistrates courts and crown courts continue to grow. It is unacceptable that victims and defendants are still having to wait years for trials to take place.

Decades of underinvestment and cuts mean there simply aren’t enough judges and lawyers to tackle this huge volume of cases.

The Ministry of Justice is likely to miss its unambitious March 2025 target to get the court backlog down to 53,000.

Urgent funding must be injected into our criminal justice system immediately to restore it to its former health. This is necessary to ensure victims and defendants can access timely justice.