UK politics live: Labour granted urgent question on Suella Braverman’s resignation as Tory turmoil grows

The international trade secretary Kemi Badenoch says she has no plans to resign from her post.

Asked if she will step down, she added:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s quite clear there is quite a lot of turmoil in the party, but what we all need to do is keep calm heads and work to resolve it. I’m confident that we can do that.

She refused to answer when asked if Liz Truss will resign today.

The veteran Tory MP Charles Walker, who appeared visibly furious over last night’s chaos in the Commons, said he expects Liz Truss to resign “very soon”.

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Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight late last night, he said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I am really pleased that the home secretary has resigned, because I didn’t think she was up to the job. So let’s not beat around the bush here. And I expect the prime minister to resign very soon because she’s not up to her job either.

Walker said he would “shed no tears” for either Truss or Braverman.

Asked about how soon she should quit, he said he hoped by Thursday, adding:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}She needs to go. She shouldn’t have been made prime minister. It’s chaos and most of my colleagues have had enough. There may be 30 out there that still feel that somehow this shambles is recoverable. But about 330 of us have now given up all hope that the current PM can navigate her way out of this.

We need to take ownership of this as a political party… the grown-ups in our party, and a few do exist, need to meet in a papal conclave over the next 24 hours and decide on a coronation. I don’t want any nonsense of votes I want the best person we’ve got to become prime minister.

Asked what would happen if Truss refuses to quit, he replied:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}She will be removed then. I am in no doubt that she will be removed… We will find a mechanism.

Dozens of Conservative MPs are facing potential disciplinary action or losing the party whip after Downing Street announced that a chaotic vote on fracking was being treated as a confidence issue.

It was widely reported that Liz Truss’s chief whip, Wendy Morton, and the deputy chief whip, Craig Whittaker, had stepped down after disorderly scenes, with MPs alleging ministers physically pulled some wavering Tories into the voting lobbies.

The vote, on a Labour motion that would have set in place a future decision on potentially banning fracking in England, had been billed in advance as a confidence motion, meaning Tories who did not back it could be stripped of the party whip and forced to sit as independent MPs.

After a series of MPs said they would rebel nonetheless, including Chris Skidmore, the former minister who heads up Truss’s review into net zero policies, the climate minister, Graham Stuart, told the Commons: “Quite clearly this is not a confidence vote.”

But in yet another apparent policy reverse in recent days, a No 10 statement on Thursday morning said Stuart had been incorrectly informed about this, and confirmed that the whips remained in place.

In total, 40 Tory MPs did not vote with the government, although none voted with Labour, meaning the government defeated the Labour motion by 326 votes to 230. Some of these would have had permission to be away, and some seemingly did not have their votes properly recorded. But it leaves open the prospect of a large number of MPs being reprimanded or losing the whip.

Read the full story by my colleagues, Peter Walker and Jamie Grierson:

Supporters of Boris Johnson are putting pressure on Tory MPs to tell Sir Graham Brady they want to bring him back, the Guardian’s Aubrey Allegretti writes.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has announced he has asked the serjeant at arms and other parliamentary officials to investigate allegations of “manhandling” in the Commons last night.

In a statement to MPs, he said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I wish to say something about the reports of behaviour in the division lobbies last night. I have asked the serjeant at arms and other senior officials to investigate the incident and report back to me. I will then update the house.

I remind members that the behaviour code applies to them as well as to other members of our parliamentary community, and this gives me another opportunity to talk about the kind of house I want to see and I believe that the vast majority of MPs also want to see. I want this to be a house in which we, while we might have very strong political disagreements, treat each other courteously and with respect, and we should show the same courtesy and respect to those who work with and for us.

To that end I will be meeting with senior party representatives to seek an agreed position that behaviour like that described last night is not acceptable in all circumstances.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant has said “the lettuce” or “the tofu” might as well lead the government, referencing a livestream from the Daily Star that asks viewers whether Liz Truss’s premiership will last longer than a head of lettuce, and Suella Braverman’s recent tofu remark.

Bryant on Wednesday raised a point of order, accusing senior Tories of “bullying” backbenchers to vote with the government. He called for an investigation and provided a photograph of the incident to the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, who is said to be taking it “very seriously”.

The Conservative MP for South East Cornwall, Sheryll Murray, says she has submitted a letter to Sir Graham Brady.

Labour has been granted an urgent question in the House of Commons on Suella Braverman’s departure from the government.

The question from the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, will be take place at around 10.30am.

A member of the 1922 Committee has told ITV News’s Paul Brand that the “odds are against” Liz Truss surviving the day as prime minister.

Another Tory MP has told him that Truss will last until 31 October because there is no agreement on how to remove her from office.

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the commons defence select committee, has called for Liz Truss to “honestly address the question of her leadership” with cabinet and the 1922 committee after Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal statement on 31 October.

He told viewers of Sky News that if Conservatives “don’t park the blue-on-blue action” they could be out of government for a generation. Speaking in what Kay Burley described as “a very angry tone I’m picking up this morning”, he said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re here to serve the British people who are watching this day by day and they want leadership. In my view this crisis requires a two phase plan if we want to prevent a collapse of government. Stage one is the collective discipline to allow the chancellor to complete his economic update that both the markets and indeed the nation are waiting for. So we get some stability and predictability about energy bills, about pensions, about benefits, about mortgage interest rates. Sorting the economy out must be our priority.

During this time, I say to colleagues, that the steady very public drip feed against the prime minister is not in the national interest. By all means submit your letter to Graham Brady if you are inclined, but let Jeremy Hunt complete his task. Because if we implode before then, the instability would lead to a run on the pound, interest rates climbing further, and it would put us into opposition for a generation.

And the second phase would be for the prime minister to show and commit now to honestly addressing this question of her leadership with the 1922 Committee and the cabinet. But after that fiscal statement next week.

This would help move the entire debate behind closed doors, rather than the reputationally damaging public soap opera that this is now becoming, and in worst case, triggering an early general election. Let’s grip the situation. Let’s start to control the agenda.

The chief whip, Wendy Morton, has been spotted entering Downing Street this morning following rumours that she had resigned from her role last night.

ITV News’ Robert Peston writes that there is a collective will among cabinet ministers that Liz Truss should stay in office till 31 October.

According to one minister, the PM may not be able to rely on her cabinet’s support to stay on till even then.

Any stay of execution gives Truss hope that she might be able to remain PM past Halloween, he writes. These 10 days are therefore a “theoretical lifeline”.

Here is the agenda for the day:

9.30am: The House of Commons will begin with digital, culture, media and sport questions.

10am: The public accounts committee will quiz senior HMRC officials on their annual accounts.

10.10am: Attorney general questions in the Commons. Urgent questions/statements will follow, including business questions.

10.45am: The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will deliver its conclusions after a five-year national inquiry into decades of child sex abuse in Britain.

11am. The House of Lords will begin with questions on energy bills support for community spaces, unemployment figures and the responsibilities of the equalities minister.

11.45am. Debates in the Lords on the current level of violent crime and on the impact of the cost of living on public wellbeing.

10.10am: The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, will speak at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual congress in Brighton. He is expected to accuse Liz Truss of “insulting” British workers while pledging a Labour government will repeal any new Conservative legislation restricting the right to strike.

2pm: The UK Health Security Agency is expected to publish its weekly Covid-19 surveillance report.

Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chairman, is due to meet other 1922 officers today to discuss next steps.

The Conservative peer Ed Vaizey has echoed calls for Liz Truss to stand down and for somebody to be appointed as prime minister by Tory MPs.

It was clear from Suella Braverman’s resignation letter that Truss regards herself as a credible candidate to be prime minister, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In terms of kind of shocking self-belief there will be at least five or six people out there who genuinely believe they could be the next prime minister. So if the Tory party cannot have a degree of self-knowledge and realise that the only way forward is to appoint someone they’re pretty much sunk.

The transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, has insisted that she is still part of a functioning government.

Asked if Liz Truss is the best person the Conservatives can offer as prime minister, she told BBC Breakfast:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Yes, she was selected through a long and tortuous process over the summer.. by our members and that’s how the Conservative party system works to choose a leader and we stand firmly alongside her.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she admitted yesterday was a “turbulent” one with the resignation of Suella Braverman, but said Grant Shapps will now “pick up the reins” in the Home Office.

Asked to explain what happened at last night’s chaotic fracking vote, Trevelyan said the fracking vote “remained a three-line whip all the way through”.

The cabinet minister also told LBC that people should have confidence in the Conservative party because they are delivering an “important package of work” to provide “stability”.

She said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Jeremy Hunt is the new chancellor, bringing in… a full package at the end of the month, so we want to give him the space to do that.

The Conservative MP Gary Streeter has become the latest Tory to call for Liz Truss to go.

Streeter becomes the seventh Tory MP to publicly call for a change in leader.