Reeves’s planning overhaul stalls as senior adviser quits after four months
Rachel Reeves’s attempts to overhaul Britain’s planning laws have been dealt a blow after a senior lawyer whom she appointed as an adviser decided to leave the government after just four months.Catherine Howard will leave the Treasury when her contract ends on 1 January, despite having been asked informally to stay on indefinitely.Howard is understood to have warned the government against pushing ahead immediately with some of its more radical proposals to sweep aside planning regulations in an effort to encourage more infrastructure projects.Her decision to leave the post comes amid disagreements at the top of government about how far to push its deregulation agenda, with some senior officials warning that Keir Starmer’s latest attempt to kickstart major building schemes could damage EU relations.Disquiet is also growing among some Labour MPs, with 30 writing to the prime minister this week urging not to push ahead with some of his more radical planning reforms.
Howard said in a statement: “Over the past four months I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as the chancellor’s infrastructure and planning adviser, and in my time have had the ability to advise HM Treasury and help steer the important steps the government is taking to improve the planning system to support economic growth.“I look forward to continuing my engagement with HM Treasury and government as I return to the private sector.”Starmer and Reeves have put planning at the heart of their push for economic growth, which has so far struggled to gain traction, with figures released on Friday showing the economy shrank 0.1% in the three months to October.Howard was appointed in September to help advise Reeves on planning changes leading up to the budget, in a move welcomed by senior government officials and some Labour MPs.
Chris Curtis, the co-chair of the Labour Growth Group, said at the time she would be an “exceptional addition” to the Treasury.Curtis told the Guardian: “Catherine has made a major contribution during her time at the Treasury, not least in ensuring the largest changes to planning in a generation will soon be passed into law.Her expertise has been a great asset to government.”Howard was then asked to stay on as long as she could because the Treasury found her advice helpful, but she decided to leave in January to return to her role as a partner at the private law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.While in government she is understood to have disagreed with Starmer’s decision to announce he would fully adopt the recommendations of a review into building nuclear power stations more quickly, written by the economist John Fingleton.
Starmer said in a post-budget speech last week: “In addition to accepting the Fingleton recommendations, I am asking the business secretary to apply these lessons across the entire industrial strategy.”Fingleton made a number of suggestions, including changing rules around protected species and increasing radiation limits for those living near or working in a nuclear power plant.He suggested that infrastructure projects should pay a large, pre-agreed, upfront sum to government quango Natural England in lieu of protecting or replacing habitats lost to development.His review also recommended making it more costly for individuals and charities to take judicial reviews against infrastructure projects.Fingleton told the Guardian earlier this week: “We need to have a more mature relationship with risk.
Projects often do not go ahead because of concerns about safety but often all you are doing is moving the risk somewhere else,”Howard believed Starmer should not have accepted his recommendations to rip up EU derived habitats laws before taking legal advice on whether they complied with legally binding nature targets and trading arrangements with the EU,She was bringing forward concerns shared with government departments including the Cabinet Office and the environment department, which said the review could jeopardise trade with the EU and lead to widespread habitat destruction,Those concerns are also shared by some Labour backbenchers,Chris Hinchliff, Labour MP for North East Hertfordshire, has been leading a campaign against the review.
He said: “It’s time our Labour government stopped pitching nature as the enemy of a better life for ordinary people in this country and realised that, for the vast majority, it is a measure of it.”
Who is Al Carns? Former Marine and Labour minister with sights on leadership
A former special forces colonel, government minister Al Carns was this week on manouevres warning that the UK needs to be preparing for war with Russia.“The shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door once more. That’s the reality. We’ve got to be prepared to deter it,” he said, in comments that go beyond previous warnings by his boss, the defence secretary, John Healey.“Collectively, everybody – what is their role if we get caught in an existential crisis, and what do they need to be aware they need to do and what they can’t do, and how do we mobilise the nation to support a military endeavour?”It was stark language from the 45-year-old Scottish-born MP, who has had an exceptionally swift rise to his role of armed forces minister
Starmer to pick new US ambassador as relations with Trump tested
Keir Starmer is poised to choose a new ambassador to Washington from a shortlist of three as relations with the US are tested over Ukraine and Donald Trump’s attacks on European leaders.The prime minister held interviews with three finalists for the role this week, the Guardian has learned, with Downing Street preparing to make an appointment before the end of the year.The trio of candidates seen by Starmer were Varun Chandra, his business adviser who has helped negotiate a series of deals with the Trump administration, Christian Turner, a diplomat due to become ambassador to the UN, and Nigel Casey, the British ambassador to Russia.Whoever is chosen will be taking up the role at a critical stage in US-UK relations, with insiders warning of rising tensions over Ukraine and the White House’s pugnacious national security strategy.Chandra, a former managing partner at the corporate intelligence firm Hakluyt, has played a central role in negotiating bilateral deals with the US on trade, tech and pharmaceuticals and is seen as the frontrunner
Infighting, broken promises and insisting on the national anthem: what seven months of Reform UK in charge actually looks like
Nigel Farage’s party is gunning for power – so what is it like in the places where they’ve already got it? We embedded with Lancashire county council to find out what happens when rhetoric meets reality22 May 2025: a new dawn for Lancashire. Outside Preston’s grand old county hall, 53 brand new Reform UK councillors in turquoise ties – and one petite woman with an enormous turquoise hair bow – are hot-footing it past a gaggle of protesters for their first full council meeting. Most keep their heads down and get into the building as quickly as possible. But Joel Tetlow, a first-time politician who has made a few unfortunate headlines before even taking his seat, is intrigued. He stands in the doorway, vaping, as a demonstrator bellows: “Reform is a far right party and Nigel Farage is a racist and a fascist!”Tetlow – late 40s with a full head of vertiginous hair, wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit – insists he isn’t bothered
Government’s process behind tackling violence against women ‘worse than under the Tories’
Leading organisations have criticised the development of the government’s flagship violence against women and girls strategy, calling the process chaotic, haphazard and “worse than under the Tories”.Ministers are gearing up for a policy announcement blitz before the publication of the long-awaited plan next week.Important voices in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector have privately accused ministers of sidelining first-hand expertise and expressed concern that the strategy will not be sufficiently radical to achieve the government’s flagship manifesto promise to halve the rate of VAWG in the UK in a decade.Initially expected in spring, the VAWG strategy was delayed until summer and then autumn.On Friday it emerged that schoolboys would be the target of the strategy, which the BBC reported would be built around the pillars of preventing radicalisation of young men, stopping abusers and supporting victims
Reform UK claims it has overtaken Labour as Britain’s largest party
Reform UK says it is now the largest political party in Britain and has overtaken Labour, which has reportedly seen its membership fall below 250,000.Nigel Farage’s party says it has more than 268,000 members on the live tracker displayed on its website.Farage said: “As we have suspected for some time, Reform has overtaken Labour to become the largest political party in British politics – a huge milestone on our journey to win the next election. The age of two-party politics is dead.”Meanwhile, the Times reported that, according to internal figures, the Labour party’s paid-up membership had fallen below 250,000
‘There’s been a Badenoch bounce’: is the Tory leader finally cutting through?
At a Conservative donors event last week, Kemi Badenoch was asked for a selfie by the former Spice Girl Geri Horner. The Tory leader was, her allies say, a little bemused. But they were clear about what the approach meant: cut-through.Badenoch’s leadership got off to a poor start. Still reeling from the Tories’ worst general election defeat, she took over a diminished and disheartened party, which was languishing in the polls and facing an existential threat in the form of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK
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