In a message to colleagues announcing his decision to stand down at the end of the year, Simon Case said he hoped civil servants would in future remain “servants of others”, leaving party politics to politicians. He said:

Those who choose public service deserve thanks for the choice they have made, whether that service be in politics, the civil service, the armed forces, the emergency services, our National Health Service, local government and beyond. I have seen truly motivated people doing remarkable things in the pursuit of their nations’ and communities’ interests through a pandemic, wars, a change of reign, economic emergencies and unprecedented demand for modern public services. I have seen so very many colleagues committed to their purpose, displaying tenacity and ingenuity, whilst sacrificing their own personal interests for others.

As the civil service continues its journey forwards, I hope those who make up our number now and in the future can continue the pursuit of that necessary balance of continuity and change. The world is changing fast and so must the civil service. The global context, the relentless evolution of technology, increasing public expectations of the services they consume and many more factors require us to keep adapting.

At the same time, the core values of our United Kingdom have not changed and so I hope that the civil service will hold onto its fundamental purpose and values in the never-ending task of serving the government of the day and, through them, the people of our country. We must remain servants of others. We should resist the temptation to become the arbiters of, or participants in, legitimate democratic debate, leaving party politics to politicians and demonstrating our enduring and profound belief in democracy through the service of the elected government of the day.

This is what Simon Case has said about his resignation.

This morning, I informed the prime minister of my intention to step down as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service at the end of the year.

As many of you know, I have been undergoing medical treatment for a neurological condition over the last 18 months and, whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not. It is a shame that I feel I have to spell this out, but my decision is solely to do with my health and nothing to do with anything else.

He said the prime minister would appoint his successor following a “full, open and transparent process which will be run by the First Civil Service Commissioner,” adding:

It has been an honour to serve two sovereigns, four prime ministers and over 120 cabinet ministers in this role.

There have been far more ups than downs along the way and by far the greatest highlight has been the privilege of working with so many remarkable public servants, across the length and breadth of our country, in our overseas posts and with counterparts from our close allies and partners around the world.

Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, has announced he will stand down at the end of the year on health grounds, saying “whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not”.

This announcement is has been expected for a while, and it will be welcomed by Labour figures who believe that he has not been an effective cabinet secretary, particularly because his relations with Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, are strained.

The announcement means Starmer can now activate the process of choosing a successor.

Q: Should we bring forward the date the contest ends?

Badenoch says the party have set the date and should stick with it. If they keep changing their mind, they will look “not serious”. She says she does not accept the argument that the new leader needs to reply to the budget.

We have a prime minister who’s never been in the Treasury. We have a leader of the opposition who used to be chancellor. We have a shadow chancellor who knows that building [the Treasury] inside out. We can do this. It’s not about who’s becoming leader a few days later. It is about us using all of the talents within our party.

Asked how it would feel to be the first black Tory leader, Badenoch said:

I don’t know, I’ve never done it before. I’m sure it’ll be interesting but I am somebody who wants the colour of skin to be no more significant than the colour of our hair or the colour of our eyes.

Hope asks Badenoch about her comments about maternity pay yesterday, and suggests voters will think the Tories want to cut it. Badenoch implies she was deliberately misrepresented.

She says Margaret Thatcher is well known for saying ‘There is no such thing as society”, even though the full quote shows that she was stressing the importance of people acting collectively. [Thatcher said: “Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”]

Badenoch says that is a good example of how a reply “got cut down into a sound bite that was used to attack her”. She suggests the same thing happened to her.

When you are a leader, when you are a Conservative, when you are making the argument for Conservative principles, your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else. We need to decide who’s going to be leader of the party, not the left, not the Guardian, not the BBC, just Conservatives.

In fact, Badenoch was not misrepresented yesterday. She did say that maternity pay was excessive, although she later clarified that this was not her considered view.

Q: Will you redefine what it is to be Tory?

Badenoch says her mission is about restating Conservatism, not redefining it. She says they all believe in personal responsibility.

Q: What did you mean when you told me on my podcast they working in McDonalds made you working class?

Badenoch replies:

It wasn’t working at McDonald’s that made me working class. It was an example of how I had become working class.

I wasn’t working there as a weekend job or part time. That was my job. I was going to college, part-time, going to an FE college, and I had left Nigeria, where I’d had a middle class life, driven to school every day, and the first time I ever went on a bus was in this country. But I couldn’t even afford bus money most of the time. I had to walk everywhere.

Sometimes I was hungry. I was on my own. I had a place to live, but I had to do everything myself at a very young age. If that is not working class, I didn’t know what working classes is.

The working classes are the people who have to work for a living, otherwise they will be in trouble. They are people who don’t necessarily have big savings or a family that can look after them.

The Tugendhat Q&A is over, and Christopher Hope is now interviewing Kemi Badenoch.

Q: When did you decide that you could be leader?

Badenoch says she stood in 2022 and did better than expected. After that contest, she thought she could win in a future contest.

Q: Are your family in favour of this?

Badenoch says her husband is fully supportive. Her mother does not understand why she is doing this. She says others are in between.

Tories will lead campaigns against onshore wind infrastructure, former minister says

Helena Horton

Voters do not understand how much the last government did on the environment and decarbonising the energy system, the Tory MP and former energy minister Graham Stuart told a fringe meeting.

He said:

Three or four people out of 10 over the last few years saw the UK as doing more than other countries to tackle climate change, and polling showed that 50% of the population consistently said we weren’t spending enough on reducing emissions. Given our records, the fact that we didn’t promote that among the people who care about this was problematic.

He praised Labour for lifting the onshore wind ban but said the Conservatives would be opposing onshore energy infrastructure.

He said:

We now have a government which has made in my view some correct early moves, like getting rid of the effective moratorium on onshore wind – that was always mad to do that – and we’ve got onshore wind back.

But it seems to want to take an approach to developing the infrastructure which is sticking its fingers in its ears and screaming and not listening and railroading everyone.

If you do that, from pylons to solar to other energy, you’re going to get a massive backlash, and we, inevitably in opposition, are going to be championing that and using that for a great deal of local electoral advantages.

Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho accuses Labour of ‘lying’ about being able to cut energy bills by £300

Helena Horton

The shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho accused Ed Miliband, her opposite number, of “lying” to the electorate about their energy bills.

Speaking at a fringe meeting, she said:

One of the difficulties Labour are having is they spent an election campaign promising they’d save people £300 off their energy bills and now they are in power they cannot repeat that claim as it is not based on anything.

Emma Pinchbeck, the CEO of Energy UK, was also on the panel and agreed it was unwise to make claims about energy bills, particularly as the renewables which drive down bills are still being built and connected to the grid.

Pinchbeck acknowledged it will be a “crunchy decade for energy bills”.

Coutinho added that it was foolish of Miliband and Labour to focus so much on wind and solar for their plans to decarbonise the grid and said we should wait and try and develop technologies such as nuclear fusion “to sell around the world”.

She also claimed the British public do not put environmental concerns above other worries, adding:

We need to be very careful when we talk about that the public care about because predominantly they care about cheap energy. Renewables are not cheap in all circumstances. My view is that you have to prioritise cheap energy in your country.