A forum where readers can discuss today’s politics and share links to breaking news and to the most interesting politics stories, blogs and tweets on the web
I’m not writing my usual blog today but here, as an alternative, is the Politics Live readers’ edition. It is a place for you to discuss today’s politics, and to share links to breaking news and to the most interesting stories and blogs on the web.
Feel free to express your views robustly, but please treat others with respect and don’t resort to abuse. Guardian comment pages are supposed to be a haven from the Twitter/social media rant-orama, not an extension of it.
One such example [of a way forward] is that all political parties represented in the House could agree a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to the same terms, which would allow their MPs to take parental leave and to formalise pairing arrangements across all parties.
Even a leading remainer thinks the Treasury is trying to hinder Brexit https://t.co/q6XfnKhF4v
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, last week revealed the existence of an unpublished Treasury analysis showing that the costs of leaving without a customs union deal far outweigh any benefits from future overseas trade deals.
“The coalition of forces pushing for a softer Brexit is considerable,” Grant said. “The Treasury, long an advocate of retaining close economic ties to the EU, is newly emboldened.
We’ve now got a third witness saying that Charles Grant’s account of what he said at the Prospect lunch at the Conservative party conference is accurate and, by implication, that the Brexit minister Steve Baker has remembered it wrongly. (See 4.33pm.) These are from the pro-Labour lawyer Jolyon Maugham.
The event took place on 3 October and the note is dated 17 October (the link to the note was emailed to me on 31 October). I attended the event. I would swear a witness statement that Charles Grant did not say to the table that which he is accused by Steve Baker of having said.
The prime minister’s call to limit EU free movement laws has been dismissed, with the EU insisting the terms of transition are not open for debate.
Citizens are part of the transition, so that status quo includes citizens and it is extended for this moment. This is now, not just the position of the parliament, this is the position of the whole union and of the directives adopted unanimously by the council. It is a red line. It is there.
As my colleague Anushka Asthana reports, Number 10 says it has no reason to doubt Steve Baker’s account of what he was told about the Treasury by the Centre for European Reform’s Charles Grant. (See 12.25pm.)
Downing Street has spoken to Steve Baker about his claim re Charles Grant and has “no reason to doubt his account”. Erm – Grant and several people at lunch have challenged it, including a Tory MP.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, has used Twitter to hit back at the Tories who have been criticising civil servants for being too negative about Brexit. Being a civil servant, obviously he is speaking in code, but in Heywood terms (his tweets are normally among the most boring ever recorded in the history of Twitter) this is very strong stuff. Effectively he is delivering a rebuke to Tory Brexiters.
Proud to address @UKCivilService analysts yesterday. Every day their great work supports the Government in making evidence-based policy & helps deliver better public services across the country pic.twitter.com/bNBPcJ4ojb
International trade secretary Liam Fox’s suggestion that we now live in a “post-geography trading world” is challenged by a training manual used to teach government officials basic economics.
A module laid on by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office teaches government officials that the traditional view that “big economies which are close together will trade more” still holds firm.
MPs have passed the backbench motion on baby leave. This is what the motion, tabled by Harriet Harman and Maria Miller, says:
That this House believes that it would be to the benefit of the functioning of parliamentary democracy that honourable members who have had a baby or adopted a child should for a period of time be entitled, but not required, to discharge their responsibilities to vote in this House by proxy.
Two witnesses have now come forward to back up Charles Grant’s version of what he said about Treasury civil servants at the event attended by the Brexit minister Steve Baker. (See 12.36pm and 1.31pm.)
These are from Duncan Weldon, head of research at the Resolution Group.
The thing is… if a credible person such as @CER_Grant had said “I think the Treasury are rigging the numbers”… I’d have mentioned that at the time..
I was at the #Prospect lunch at which @CER_Grant is alleged to have made these comments as was a member of my staff. At NO point did I hear any suggestion of civil servants deliberately manipulating data modelling.
As you are aware the Scottish Government considers that the public have a right to know the impact on jobs and living standards of the UK Government’s decision to pursue the UK’s exit from the EU and therefore that this analysis should be made publicly available. Further, this is not our analysis and we do not see it as our responsibility to make arrangements on confidential handling. I want to be clear that if you send the analysis to us we will make it public.
In this House we set the rules for parents outside the House having babies or adopting a child and we do that because we think that it’s important for the child and it’s important for the parents and we do it because we don’t want new parents to have to ask for favours but to be clear where they stand, but there is no such system for members of this House.
I am sure many women in this House who take time off to be with their baby in the first few weeks want to practise that act of democracy in representing their constituents whilst being a new mother and not denied that by the presentation that they just haven’t voted.
Why should that constituency lose the right for the vote in their name to be cast because their MP is having a baby? When you are in a birthing pool you cannot be voting, but your constituency has a right to be heard.
Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson took her to task for turning Scotland into a “high tax economy” and making the country a less attractive place to invest and work in. Sturgeon responded that “what [she] is really worried about is that we are progressively asking those that earn the most to pay a little bit more to help protect public services.”
The Centre for European Reform has now issued its statement about what its director, Charles Grant, was alleged to have said about Treasury officials. It echoes what Grant himself said earlier about how he had not claimed that officials were rigging the forecasts and how the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg had misrepresented what he had said. (See 12.36pm.)
Steve Baker, the Brexit minister, has been strongly criticised by the FDA, the union representing senior civil servants, for floating the possibility that Treasury civil servants have been rigging their Brexit impact assessments. The allegation was put to Baker in the Commons earlier and, although he did not say it was true, he did not dismiss it either. (See 12.25pm.) In response, the FDA general secretary Dave Penman told the Guardian.
It’s clear that Steve Baker does not understand the responsibilities that come with being a minister of state. It is simply not good enough to stand at the despatch box and peddle the myths being articulated by backbenchers, simply because you share their ideology.
If Mr Baker believes these serious accusations have merit he is obliged to either take action against those concerned or clear their name publicly.
Jeremy Corbyn has said care workers are “grossly underpaid” and pledged £8bn of extra funding for social care if elected. As the Press Association reports, he made the comments during a visit to Milton Keynes University Hospital, where he toured the A&E and cancer wards and spoke to patients. He said:
Care workers particularly are grossly underpaid, do a very important and responsible job and should be better recognised as part of our wider health service.
Charles Grant has just told me that he does recall having a conversation with the Brexit minister Steve Baker about Treasury Brexit modelling, but that he did not say the Treasury was fixing the results. (See 12.25pm and 12.33pm.) Grant said:
I recall staying to Steve Baker at a Prospect lunch at the Conservative conference that I was aware of research the Treasury had done. This apparently showed that the economic benefits of the UK forging FTA’s (free trade agreements) with third countries outside the EU were significantly less than the economic costs of the leaving the customs union. (I may have said customs union and single market).
I did not say or imply that the Treasury had deliberately developed a model to show that all non custom union options were bad, with the intention to influence policy.
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, has just posted a message on Twitter saying his words were misrepresented by Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Commons earlier. (See 12.25pm.)
Let my clarify. What Rees-Mogg said I said is partially true, partially untrue. I never said Treasury officials had deliberately constructed models to show all futures outside the customs union were bad, with the intent of influencing policy. @CER_EU will put out press rel soon. https://t.co/sLnx65pJk2
Here are the main points from Brexit questions in the Commons earlier.
In the joint report which we concluded and got agreement on in December, the European Union agreed that the transition date, the end date for ongoing permanent residents’ rights – not possibilities, rights – will be March 2019.
The citizens’ rights agreement reached in December, and set out in the joint report, does give certainty about the rights of EU citizens already here going forward. But this agreement does not cover those who are arriving after we leave the EU.
This ‘specified date’ should be the date of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Union, without prejudice to discussions, in the second phase of the negotiations, on a possible transitional period and on appropriate adaptations flowing from it as regards the “specified date”. In the Commission’s view, in case of any transitional period implying the continued application of the Union’s acquis on the fundamental freedoms, it is clear that citizens would need to be fully entitled to their rights to free movement as before the United Kingdom’s withdrawal, and that, therefore, the provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement on the content of citizens’ rights and on governance as regards those rights can only become applicable at the end of such transitional period. In other words, in such case, the ‘specified date’ should, in the Commission’s view, be defined not as the date of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal, but as that of the end of the transitional period.
If this is correct, does he share my view that it goes against the spirit of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms that underpin our independent civil service?
At the time I considered it implausible because my direct experience is that civil servants are extraordinarily careful to uphold the impartiality of the civil service. I think we must proceed with great caution in this matter but I heard [Grant] raise this issue. I think we need to be very careful not to take this forward in an inappropriate way. But he has reminded me of something which I heard. I think it would be quite extraordinary if it turned out that such a thing had happened.
Actually, I told the select committee that this work was under way last December.
We are trying to do something which is incredibly difficult. Every forecast that has been made about the period post-referendum has been wrong. What has been going on has been an attempt to find a way of getting a better outcome.
This was a proponent of the negotiation which brought the public claim down from 100bn to 35bn. Part of that was offset by our assets.
China Plus, an English website for China Radio International, has more on the surprise revelation that Theresa May is known as “Auntie May” in China (see 10.57am) – although, given that China Radio International is state-run, it might be of more interest as propaganda than as a proper insight into May’s standing with Chinese youth.
British leader #TheresaMay has a nickname in China: #梅姨, or “Auntie May” in English. The name has been developed by the younger generation in China whom are fond of British culture. pic.twitter.com/8mtquWYaOA
Campaigners for the rights of EU citizens in the UK have predicted “utter chaos” in Britain after Theresa May vowed to stop freedom of movement for all Europeans coming to the country next March, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.
Theresa May has met President Xi Jinping in Beijing in the diplomatic high point of her three-day trip to China, the Press Association reports. Seated opposite President Xi in the opulent Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, May said Britain and China were enjoying a “golden era” in their relationship, and added that she wanted to “take further forward the global strategic partnership that we have established”. She told the Chinese president that the trade side of her visit had been “very successful”.
The links between us go beyond trade. I’m very pleased with the people-to-people links we have been able to build on in education and in culture too.
Also, as you say, we are both significant players on the world stage of outward looking countries.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory Brexiter, told MPs that Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said he had been told Treasury civil servants were determined to produce modelling showing that the UK would be worse off under all Brexit scenarios if it left the EU. He said that that was against the spirit of civil service neutrality.
Steve Baker said it was true that Grant had made that claim. It was an “extraordinary allegation”, he said. But he said he did not know if the civil servants had really said what they were alleged to have said.
Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Commons Brexit committee, says he expects the government’s Brexit impact report, leaked this week, to be handed over to his committee shortly in the light of yesterday’s vote. He says yesterday the Brexit minister Robin Walker said the document did not reflect government policy. So why have officials being modelling the effects of all Brexit outcomes except government policy?
Steve Baker says the report was unfinished. The government is not responsible for it being leaked.
Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, asks what the UK is doing to ensure it gets back its share of EU assets.
Davis says this was an important part of the negotiation on the “Brexit bill” (my term, not his.) He says the the UK got the figure down from 100bn to 35bn, and that part of this was a result of the UK’s share of EU assets being taken into account.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, asks when Davis first knew economic modelling work on Brexit was being done in Whitehall.
Davis says he told the Brexit committee in December that the government would be doing this assessment, and that some of this work had started already.
Labour’s Heidi Alexander says there is a huge gap between what the UK and what the EU think will happen to financial services after Brexit. How will the government protect jobs in this sector.
Davis says the EU has not decided is negotiating guidelines on this. The EU will agree guidelines at the summit starting on 22 March. He says he is talking to EU colleague on this issue, and is going to Luxembourg later for meetings on this topic.
Sir Desmond Swayne, a Conservative, asks David Davis in the Commons if the transition period could be shorter. Yes, says Davis, if he accepted the proposal of the EU, which is for the transition to last 21 months, not two years.
The Today programme also featured an interview this morning with Mairead McGuinness, vice president of the European parliament. Responding to what Theresa May said overnight about EU citizens coming to the UK during the transition not having the same rights as those who came before, McGuinness said this amounted to going back on the agreement reached in December. She told the programme:
There is total illogicality, because the European Union will insist that the rights of UK citizens in that transition period will remain exactly as they are today in terms of their access to new members states and the rights that come with it.
The agreement around citizens rights which we discussed in great detail up to December in the withdrawal agreement apply at the end of the transition period, not at the start. I think what Theresa May is doing is trying to keep the Conservative party Brexiteers online, because at an EU level it is difficult to understand fully what the United Kingdom wants.
Shocked that Mrs May said existing rights of EU citizens in UK won’t be fully respected after next May. What will HMG do if other European governments start mistreating British citizens? Big step backwards for civilised European conduct.
Statement by the PM that ‘we’ have got to take rights away from EU citizens next May because ‘that is what the British people voted for’ is utterly shameful. The face was Mrs May, the words Mr Farage.
So Govt won’t publish position paper on services sector and resists publishing economic analysis until they have no choice in case they ‘reveal UK’s hand in negotiations’ but it’s apparently ok to conduct negotiations about rights of EU citizens in public
In the Commons David Davis tells MPs that talks on Brexit with the EU have been continuing since Christmas. Officials have been discussing technical issues, he says, and he will “shortly” be meeting Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator.
Since George Osborne’s Today interview (see 9.12am) came up at Brexit questions, this is what the former chancellor said about the dangers of leaving the customs union.
We now face a series of choices about the kind of Brexit we want and we have a much clearer idea of the consequences. We should look clearly at the costs and benefits of, for example, leaving the customs union and doing less trade with Europe versus what we might gain from doing a trade deal with America. At the moment the sums don’t stack up for that kind of decision …
These are the choices we face and if we are saying we want out of all of our economic arrangements with our European neighbours then we are embarking on a risky economic course according to the figures that the Government themselves have produced …
Well, I certainly agree with him that it’s a mistake.
Robin Walker, the Brexit minister, says the agreement reached in December at the end of phase one of the talks covered the rights of EU nationals in the UK now. But it did not cover the rights of EU nationals coming during the transition.
In the Commons the Labour MP Barry Sheerman has just asked the Brexit minister Steve Baker if he heard George Osborne on the Today programme this morning and what he thought of Osborne’s warning that British manufacturing would be doomed outside the customs union. Baker said that he missed the interview, but that he did once hear Osborne on the Today programme during the EU referendum, just before he went on the programme himself to argue the opposite case.
In Brexit questions in the Commons Suella Fernandes, a junior Brexit minister, has just told MPs that it is government policy to leave the customs union.
But the Daily Telegraph today claims Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, failed to rule out the UK staying in customs union in an interview he gave in China, where he is accompanying Theresa May on her trade trip. The story is premised on this quote.
[Fox] said British exports to China were up 25 per cent, compared to global trade growth of 3.7 per cent, and was asked by Sky News whether, if Britain is able to strike deals with China while it is in the customs union, “could you live with us staying in a customs union beyond the implementation period?”
He replied: “Self evidently we can do it in a customs union because we can do it now while we are still in the EU.”
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has just started taking Brexit questions in the Commons.
Here are some of the Brexit stories in today’s other papers that might come up. You can find all the Guardian’s Brexit stories here.
The measures, outlined in a presentation to EU27 member states last week, show the bloc wants unprecedented safeguards after the UK leaves to preserve a “level playing field” and counter the “clear risks” of Britain slashing taxes or relaxing regulation.
Brussels describes the UK economy as too big and too close to treat like a normal trade partner and wants to define new ways to enforce restrictions on taxation, state aid, environmental standards and employment rights
Senior figures who support Brexit are already blaming the prime minister for commissioning new analyses showing that the economy would suffer whatever the means of departure.
Tension over Britain’s destination outside the bloc is said to be at a critical level with a showdown in cabinet due over two days next week. Brexiteers want Mrs May to push for the maximum freedom from EU rules and to show that she will accept no deal unless Brussels agrees.
Although it has not yet been discussed formally by diplomats formulating the EU27’s negotiating position, the idea will offer hope to British negotiators desperate for a sign that national officials are willing to be more pragmatic about the Brexit talks than the European Commission and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier. The U.K. has accused Barnier of being dogmatically attached to an inflexible vision of the European project.
Barnier has flatly ruled out any prospect of financial services access under the Canada-style trade agreement the U.K. is seeking, saying before Christmas, “There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn’t exist.”
It’s been a while since George Osborne, the Conservative former chancellor, has had the 8.10 slot on the Today programme but he was there this morning and, true to form, he did his best to stir things up. He was there ostensibly to talk about the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (which he champions, alongside being editor of the London Evening Standard) and a report it has published today highlighting the need for higher educational standards in the north of England, but it did not take long before the conversation turned to the Conservative party and Brexit.
Osborne is on record as saying after the general election that Theresa May was a “dead woman walking”, and joking about wanting her “chopped up in bags in my freezer”, so no one was expecting him to be supportive. In the interview he did not retract his view that at some point she needs to be replaced as party leader. But he did not escalate his personal criticisms of her, he resisted invitations to call for a coup now, and he said wished her well on her trade mission to China (improving relations with Beijing being a cause he promoted when he was in government.)
Well, one of my observations, as someone who was an MP for many years, is that the government does not have a majority. I know that’s a really obvious statement of fact but the first rule of politics is that you’ve got to learn to count. And when you have increasing number of Conservative MPs saying, ‘I’m not happy leaving the customs union’ or ‘I think we should consider Efta membership’, that is going to pose a challenge to the government, of course. But it’s also going to empower parliament.
And the last time I checked, one of the principal arguments for the Brexiters was that they wanted more parliamentary sovereignty.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including PMQs, the debate on publishing the government’s Brexit impact assessment and the debate on renovating parliament
The division list is now available on the CommonsVotes app. This shows how MPs vote on the final vote – on the motion as amended. (See 7.37pm.)
In favour – 234 votes
You can read the division list for the main vote here.
Here is some comment from MPs on the vote
From the Conservative Neil O’Brien
House of Commons just voted for an incredibly expensive restoration programme. I voted against. Yes this building must be safe. But we MUST drive the cost of this programme down.
The right decision. We need to protect, restore and renew this amazing Place for future generations of MPs, staff and visitors https://t.co/G3isOdO0JF
Cross party common sense has prevailed tonight (for once) and defeated irrational arguments based on sentiment https://t.co/Ojq5Kz90RG
The motion, as amended, has been passed, by 234 votes to 185 – a majority of 49.
So the decision taken in the vote 15 minutes ago has been confirmed.
MPs have vote by 236 votes to 220 to press ahead with a “full decant”, would involve moving out of the Commons fully during the renovation. That’s a majority of 16.
Now MPs are voting on the motion as amended, which will probably get passed.
MPs are now voting on the Meg Hillier amendment. (See 5.53pm.) This is the key vote of the evening.
This is what it says:
Delete paragraphs (4) and (5) and at end add:
‘(4) accordingly endorses the unanimous conclusion of the Joint Committee that a full and timely decant of the Palace is the best and the most cost-effective delivery option, as endorsed by the Public Accounts Committee and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority;
The SNP motion has been defeated by 410 votes to 47 – a majority of 363.
Here is the Tory MP Tom Tugendhat on Ian Paisley’s speech. (See 6.56pm.)
On the debate on the future of the Palace of Westminster, John Redwood says many of the Leavers (of #EU) are now Remainers (in Parliament). Perhaps because the #EU#Leavers are prepared to think beyond the box?
MPs are now voting. The first vote is on amendment c to the first Leadsom amendment.
This is an SNP amendment saying any future review should consider the case for moving parliament out of Westminster. It says:
At end of paragraph (2), insert: ‘(2A) regrets that no detailed assessment has been carried out of the cost-effectiveness of relocating Parliament away from the Palace of Westminster, and calls for any future review to include such an assessment.’
The DUP MP Ian Paisley said he sat on the joint committee. He said he was persuaded that renovation was necessary. If MPs really love the building, they should be willing to go ahead with the project, he says.
@ParlyApp has some more highlights from the debate.
Fromthe SNP MP Pete Wishart
Tories shout “rubbish!” as @PeteWishart calls for electronic voting in the Commons #WestminsterRR. He says £3.5m in MPs time was lost in a month of voting in 2010-15 parliament
.@DamianGreen supports that parliament should stay long term but here now we are asking our staff and visitors to come to a building that is not safe #WestminsterRR
It is not remotely conceivable that if this was a normal building people would be allowed to work here or visit @DamianGreen
We will be out of the Palace for ten years with full decant says @EdwardLeighMP
Commons undergoing so many repairs it looks like the colliery I used to work in says @KevinBarronMP#WestminsterRR
Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who sat on the joint committee, told MPs that if they tried to stay in the building while the repairs were carried out, costs could escalate. As an example, he said repairs to the roof at Westminster Hall had to take place at night because of noise complaints.
Guess what that’s done for the budget? It’s tripled it.
In the House of Lords they started saying ‘we can’t hear ourselves think’ when work was being done on the royal gallery so they decided we could only do the work at the weekends and at night. And guess what – it’s added £1m to the work.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, the former transport secretary, is speaking now. He is in favour of a “full decant”. He says the recent renovation at London Bridge station would have been finished much more quickly if the station had been closed.
He also says conditions in the basements at parliament are intolerable.
Pete Wishart, the SNP spokesman on Commons business, told MPs the government should “create a parliament for the 21st century” and convert the Palace of Westminster into a tourist attraction. He said:
I have a very elegant solution for the difficulties and travails of this House. And that is to consider to make this beautiful building a tourist attraction for people from all around the world.
There is immense development opportunities in this Unesco heritage building, and let’s design and create a Parliament for the 21st century.
Valerie Vaz, the shadow leader of the Commons, told MPs in her speech that action to renovate Westminster had to be taken “immediately” and that, if the building was not fixed, MPs could be forced to leave the Palace of Westminster against their will. She said the link to the site “might be broken beyond our control and we would have to be forced to leave if there were a fire or any other act of God that takes place.”
Here is the timetable for the renovation programme proposed by the joint committee in 2016.
Near the start of the debate Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who was a member of the joint committee that recommended a “full decant”, criticised Andrea Leadsom for proposing two motions that would allow MPs to avoid a final decision. He told MPs:
In the end this place is here to make decisions on behalf of the nation. It’s time we got a grip and made a decision. I don’t mind what the decision is in the end, but make a decision we must surely to God.
The conclusion we came to – preliminarily favouring a complete decant – was based on the assumption that a temporary chamber could be put up in Richmond House.
We now understand the measurements we were given for that conclusion were wrong and that Richmond House would have to be pulled down completely.
Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, opened the debate on the renovation of parliament.
The Palace of Westminster is the seat of our democracy, an iconic, world famous building, and it is in dire need of repair. Whilst it is our responsibility to safeguard this Unesco world heritage site, it is equally our responsibility to ensure value for taxpayers’ money. We’ve been clear that there can be no blank cheque for this work …
There are some critical risks in the Palace of Westminster. Firstly, the lack of fire compartmentation increases the risk of fire, meaning that 24-hour fire patrols are necessary in order to keep us safe. Over the last 10 years, 60 incidents have had the potential to cause a serious fire …
The Palace of Westminster in all cases will remain the home of our Parliament. That has always been the plan. To make absolutely clear to all [MPs], full or partial decant will not take place until 2025 at the earliest.
While the culture committee has been taking evidence on the pay gap at the BBC, MPs have been debating whether to go ahead with the renovation of parliament, or to delay.
The Houses of Parliament are in a dire state of repair and for at least 10 years there has been talk of getting MPs to move out, to allow full restoration and renewal (R&R, in parliamentary jargon), instead of getting workers to patch things up on an ongoing basis during recesses. In September 2016 a joint committee of MPs and peers said in a report the best option would be a “full decant” – getting the Commons and the Lords to move out to allow a six-year repair programme to go ahead – and that parliament should get on with it “as soon as possible”.
Here is my colleague Graham Ruddick’s story about Carrie Gracie’s evidence.
Q: Do Carrie Gracie and other BBC women deserve an apology?
Hall says he met Gracie last year. He is sorry it went to a grievance. He is sorry it has taken so long. And he is sorry we are in this position.
Q: Do Carrie Gracie and other BBC women deserve an apology?
Hall says he met Gracie last year. He is sorry it went to a grievance. He is sorry it has taken so long. And he is sorry we are in this position.
Turning away from the culture committee for a moment, the BBC’s James Landale has the latest on the bizarre Lord Bates resignation. (See 4.13pm.)
Lord Bates, the International Development Minister, is currently in the Chief Whip’s office in the House of Lords where Lord Taylor is trying to persuade him not to resign for being late for a parliamentary question.
Hall says Gracie’s pay should have been reviewed when the new Washington editor [Jon Sopel, now on between £200,000 and £249,999] was put in place.
Q: How many international editors are there?
Five, says Hall.
Tony Hall says the BBC committed, in the document it published yesterday, to pay transparency. People will know what pay levels are for different jobs in the organisation.
Q: Did you value Gracie’s work as much as that of male editors?
Damian Collins, the committee chair, goes first.
Q: Do you accept Carrie Gracie has been vindicated?
Here is the journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards on Carrie Gracie’s evidence.
Today’s Culture Select C’ee hearing on BBC Pay generates the same phrases applied to previous BBC crises-“byzantine structures”; “layers of managers”;”eye watering managerial pay”. These are the deeper causes of the current crisis as they were the causes of previous crises.
Four BBC executives are now giving evidence.
Tony Hall – director general
The Carrie Gracie hearing was only supposed to last an hour. Two and a half hours later, it has now finished..
Now the culture commitee will be taking evidence from BBC executives.
Asked how the BBC can rebuild, Gracie says the BBC must to back to its core values: truth and transparency.
The more it commits to a better future, the more people will be able to forgive what happened in the past, she says.
Here is the Press Association’s story about Carrie Gracie’s evidence to the culture committee.
The BBC’s former China editor Carrie Gracie has told MPs of her “shock” at seeing the salaries of her peers after insisting on “equal pay”.
Gracie resigned as the BBC’s China editor in a row over unequal pay.
Scottish Labour has ruled that women candidates will be selected 75% of its key target seats for the next Westminster elections after passing a controversial plan to use all-women shortlists in a majority of selection contests.
Documents leaked to the Guardian shows that key Commons seats including a majority of its targets in Glasgow and the central belt, as well as the Western Isles, will have all-women shortlists after a Scottish executive committee meeting on Saturday.
Turning away from the culture committee hearing for a moment, the Lords has just witnessed a very odd resignation. Lord Bates has quit as an international development minister, after apologising for the discourtesy of not being at the despatch box for a question.
Gracie says people off-air at the BBC are “incredibly talented”. The top talent “would look a lot less talented” if they were not there, she says.
Gracie says BBC staff are smart. If they are given the data, they can work out a fairer pay system, she says. She points out the Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East editor, “has been shot at”, implying that that is the sort of thing that would justify higher pay.
Gracie says she remembers trying to get a chance to present the Today programme in 2010. She was told no, she says. She says she is grateful to the current editor, Sarah Sands, for giving her a chance to present over Christmas.
Gracie says that, when she told the BBC that she could no longer stay as China editor while she was pursuing her case against it, she went “from hero to zero in an instant”.
She says she emailed various executives to explain what they were doing. But people like the director general, the deputy director general, the director of news and the foreign editor did not even reply, she says.
Gracie says putting a grievance into the BBC was a “huge” deal for her. By that stage she had already been pursuing an equal pay claim for some months.
She says angry that the BBC was not obeying the law.
Gracie says another pay revision is in the pipeline, because the BBC is talking about reviewing the salary she was on before she went to China.
I’ve beefed up some of the earlier posts to include direct quotes from Carrie Gracie’s evidence, from the Press Association. But you will probably need to refresh the page to get those updates to show up.
Gracie says there is a “toxic work atmosphere” at the BBC.
The BBC will lose if these cases go to tribunal, she says.
Gracie says she wishes she has read the law on pay discrimination when she was younger.
She read tribunal cases, and noticed many BBC cases did not get to tribunal. They were settled in advance, she says.
Q: Why did you not get the pay you deserved?
Gracie says she did think she got the pay she deserved. Her complaint is that she was not getting equal pay.
Gracie says the notes on her grievance hearing were nine pages of misinformation and spin. The day she read them was her worst day at the BBC. That was the point where she realised the BBC was really, really in trouble.
She was distraught by what happened, she says.
The Conservative MP Julian Knight tells Gracie he has been told that she only worked 100 days a year. He asks if she has been briefed against.
Gracie says that is nonsense. But she has noticed people have been briefing against her. A journalist on a Sunday paper called her and told they had been told Gracie was part time.
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, who is giving evidence alongside Gracie, told the commitee that the language used by the BBC was missing the point of the issue. She said:
What has been really frustrating, the language of the BBC – and it’s obviously a deliberate thing because it’s from a lot of executives at a lot of different times – they keep talking about fair pay rather than equal pay.
They have said they believe fair pay is a higher bench mark than equal pay and it kind of misses the point about what a lot of this debate is about.
Some female BBC presenters have been at Portcullis House in Westminster, where the select committee is meeting, to show their support for Carrie Gracie.
Gracie says she is disappointed that some BBC female presenters have not been able to talk about the pay issue on air, because they have expressed views.
She says this is not worthy of the BBC.
If we are not truth tellers, who are we? We are no better than the next news source. The BBC lives or dies by its reputation for telling the truth without fear or favour. That is what we go and and do every day and that is what our bosses should do.
Gracie says she only got the outcome of her BBC grievance procedure at the end of last week, as she was dealing with a family bereavement.
Gracie says the BBC will be reporting on the gender pay gap at other companies in the coming months, as that information gets published. It is important for the BBC to get it right.
We’re not in the business of producing toothpaste or tyres at the BBC. Our business is truth. We can’t operate without the truth.
If we’re not prepared to look at ourselves honestly, how can we be trusted to look at anything else in reporting honestly?
Gracie says the BBC has standards. It pains her that the corporate machine is not living up to the BBC’s standards. There are 19,000 people at the BBC. They are loyal and reliable. If they get the facts, they will sort it out.
It pains me and hurts me that the corporate machine is not living up to our values.
Nineteen thousand people, we are loyal, reasonable, if they honour us with the facts and give us transparency, we will sort it out. The current leadership has not sorted it out for five years.
Here is some Twitter comment on Carrie Gracie’s evidence so far.
From Shelagh Fogarty, a former BBC presenter now at LBC
Not surprised @BBCCarrie was emotional recalling how managers lied to her while pretending to value her. Been there. Felt that. Not on pay. Terrible deceit.
Heartfelt, compelling words from @BBCCarrie at @CommonsCMS select committee. Thank you Carrie for speaking so clearly about pay injustice. Will spur change not just @BBC but for all women at work.
Fantastic storming appearance by @BBCCarrie at DCMS Ctee. Has refused backpay from BBC as they still won’t commit to giving her equal pay with the men. They now claim in her 1st 3 yrs as China editor she was ‘in development’ .
Gracie says she was expected to spend 200 days a year in China.
She says when she was given the job, she was told the Europe editor and the North America editor were on about £120,000.
I thought that I was effectively getting equal pay at that point. In my grievance outcome, it says that Fran [Unsworth, then head of newsgathering] does not recollect the conversation the same way I do, or words to that effect.
I’m puzzled by that, because when I had a pay negotiation with the current head of news gathering, Jonathan Munro, last year in October, that was my first pay negotiation, I said this to him and he said, and I quote exactly his words, ‘Fran remembers the conversation as you do.’
Gracie says the BBC want to pay her nearly £100,000 in back pay.
I’m not an employment lawyer but it sounds to me like a tacit admission that it is pay discrimination in that they want to pay me now nearly £100,000 in back pay.
The thing that is very unacceptable to me is they have basically said in the previous years 2014, 2015, 2016, I was in development.
I’m getting emotional but the thing is, what I really want to say about the equal pay problem at the BBC, is that it forced the BBC to retrofit justifications of the indispensable.
It’s not acceptable to say that because you have an equal pay problem, but you can’t admit it because you don’t want to confront what may be fiscal liabilities, which we all agree they are there.
Gracie says she got her grievance outcome last week – on day 89, when there was a 90-day deadline for a decision.
She says the BBC has said it inadvertently underpaid her from 2014.
So the BBC said it wants to pay me an extra £45,000 for the financial year of 2017, that it wants to pay me more for 2014, 2015, 2016, and it was inadvertent that it left me off when it raised other pay in April 2017.
I have said I don’t want that money. That’s not what it’s about for me. I feel my salary is a good salary, it’s public money, that’s not what it’s about.
Gracie says her conversation about pay, when she insisted on equal pay, happened with Fran Unsworth, the head of newsgathering.
She says when she went to China, a new North America editor was appointed. He earned much more. Until then the Middle East editor was paid the most.
Gracie says she is sorry about the way this has been turned into a contest between herself and the male international editors.
She says she wants to put on record the fact the admires her male colleagues. She respects Jon Sopel, the North America editor.
The hearing is starting.
Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, starts by asking Carrie Gracie how she became China editor.
The Commons culture committee is now about to start taking evidence about the pay gap at the BBC.
Anna Soubry, the Conservative pro-European, is speaking in the debate now. She says the government seems in the grip of “a form of madness”. It needs to get a grip, she says, and decide what it wants to do about Brexit.
Labour whips (an official account) asks why the justice minister Phillip Lee was reprimanded by the chief whip for demanding a Brexit rethink, when nothing similar happened to Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, when he went public with his demands for more health spending.
Must have missed the time that @BorisJohnson was hauled in before the Chief Whip with regard to NHS funding and the briefing around the Cabinet https://t.co/HRxHp8wzZb
Back in the debate Walker says there would be a problem if, every time there was a government leak, the government had to release confidential reports that were unfinished.
He appeals to Hilary Benn, the chair of the Brexit committee, to give an assurance that his committee will not publish the report once it it handed over.
David Lidington has received a light rap on the knuckles from No 10 for telling Emily Thonrberry to “grow up” at the end of PMQs. Asked for May’s view on this, a Downing Street source said: “She would not have used that language.”
Also reprimanded was junior justice minister Philip Lee, for his tweets saying that if analysis saying some forms of Brexit could damage the economy was correct, this should trigger a government re-think. (See 9.13am.) The source said of Lee:
He has been spoken to by the chief whip and reminded that it is best to air views in private.
Walker says the report contains a preliminary analysis and contains “a large number of caveats”.
He says it contains “draft analytical thinking with preliminary results”.
Robin Walker, the Brexit minister, is responding.
He confirms the government will not oppose the motion.
To counter claims that his comments yesterday about government forecasts always being wrong were an insult to civil servants,Steve Baker tweeted this this morning.
Brilliant, jolly conversation with @DExEUgov officials this am on economic forecasting and the book Superforecasting by Tetlock
Happily, they know I still love them and my critique is of economic method, not individuals https://t.co/KUUBEBOo3V
Starmer says Baker’s third argument against releasing the report was that its disclosure could undermine the government’s position in the Brexit talks.
Starmer says Labour accepts that there might be a case for keeping some parts of it secret. (See 11.44am.) But he says there is a difference between what would be damaging to release, and what would be embarrassing to release.
Starmer says Baker’s second argument against releasing the report was that it was not complete.
But if ministers are being shown this report, then it must be ready enough to show MPs, Starmer says.
First, Baker said the report was rubbish, Starmer says. Starmer says Baker had forgotten he was a minister and was acting like a Vote Leave spokesman. The logic of what Baker was saying was not to bother with impact assessments at all. He says it is more sensible to adopt the line taken by the justice minister, Phillip Lee, who said minister should reconsider their policy in the light of the report. (See 9.13am.)
MPs are now debating the Labour motion calling for the release of the government’s Brexit impact report. The motion is going to pass because the government will not oppose it. (See 11.07am and 11.44am.)
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, is opening the debate.
Earlier on the Daily Politics the Conservative MP and Foreign Office minister Mark Field also said he expected the Brexit impact report to be published after the debate this afternoon. Asked if the report would be published in draft form (the government says it is unfinished) or if it would be finalised before release, Filed said:
[It probably makes sense to try and get as much of the draft published at an early a point as is possible.
It will look a mess because it will not look as though we’ve got a sense of a document that is an official government document that takes account of exactly what it is we’re trying to achieve.
On the Daily Politics Mark Field, the Conservative MP and Foreign Office minister, has just said that David Lidington was expressing the views of Conservative MPs when he said he was against votes at 16 at PMQs. (See 12.31pm.) But Field also said he thought that the tide of history was against them, and that he thought eventually the voting age would be reduced.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, used his first question to Lidington to ask about Brexit, and the impact report leaked to BuzzFeed. He asked if Lidington realised how essential the single market was for jobs.
Lidington said the government wants “a new partnership with our neighbours in the EU that ensures we continue to have frictionless trade, which is in the interest not just of our people but the people of every one of the 27 EU countries.”
This is a government in crisis and an international embarrassment … The government is still prepared to make everyone poorer. Where is the leadership?
Vicky Ford, a Conservative, says her constituency is a popular place to live. What is the government doing to help people buy a house?
Lidington says the number of first-time buyers is at the highest level for 10 years. The stamp duty cut has helped. But we need to increase the supply too, he says.
Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative, says MPs will vote on the local government settlement next week. But there is not enough money for adult social care. What should he tell his local council about this?
Lidington says councils have more freedom to put up council tax to fund social care. He encourages Kawczynski to speak to the communities ministry about the conditions in his constituency.
Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westminster, asks about Bombardier. He urges the government to improve manufacturing in Northern Ireland. There are vital decisions outstanding.
Lidington says the sooner Northern Ireland can get back to devolved adminstration, the better.
Lidington says the government will continue to support Manchester. It demonstrated its resilience last year. That will serve it will in years ahead.
The SNP’s Angela Crawley asks why the survivors of domestic abuse have to pay a fee when they use the service to collect child maintenance money.
Lidington says a consultation on this is underway. He urges Crawley to contribute to it.
Labour’s John Mann says Islington has received more Arts Council funding than the entire Midlands coalfields area.
Lidington says he is not sure if that is an attack on Jeremy Corbyn or Emily Thornberry, the two Islington MPs. He says if Mann is aware of any grants being wrongly granted, he should say so. More than half of Arts Council funding goes outside London, he says.
PMQs – Snap verdict: PMQs is so dominated by routine, well-rehearsed sloganising that it is easy to forget how interesting it can by hearing MPs debate a topic where fresh thinking applies, and you can’t alway predict the answers in advance. Votes at 16 is long-established cause, but it is a relatively niche one, and Thornberry did the nation a favour this afternoon by dusting down the arguments in favour and giving them an outing on primetime TV. She was trying to make the point that there is no logical argument against, and largely she succeeded, although Lidington (who used to deal with these issues when he was leader of the Commons) made a decent job of defending the status quo. He only ruined it right at the end when, quite unnecessarily, and with uncharacteristic discourtesy, he said Thornberry should “grow up” because she was not taking the subject seriously. But she was, and that was obvious to any fair-minded observer. And her line about the UK leading the way internationally when it cut the voting age from 21 to 18 – a little blast of progressive patriotism – was probably the highlight of the session. Job well done …
Thornberry says she is surprised by what Lidington has said. She quotes what he said to the youth parliament a few years ago, about how young people should have a voice. Why does he no longer agree with himself?
Lidington says many people at the youth parliament were over the age of 18.
Thornberry says it was this country, and a Labour government, that led the way in reducing the voting age to 18. The same should happen again. Where the UK leads, other follows.
She says Lidington did not give a logical reason why 16-year-olds should not vote. Can he?
Thornberry asks why, if the Tories are so proud of having a woman as leader, they are so keen to get rid of her.
How many more years do we have to wait until the vote is extended to everyone over the age of 16?
Emily Thornberry says Lidington was last standing in for May in December 2016. At the time the Tories were 17 points ahead in the polls. Lidington mocked Labour. What a difference a year makes.
She says next week is the centenary of the women’s suffrage. But there is a long way to go. She is the only Emily elected since 1918. Lidington is one of 155 Davids. What more can be done to increase women’s representation.
Mark Harper, a Conservative, asks for a confirmation that the government’s security review will maintain the money spent on cyber-security.
Lidington says he can give that assurance.
Labour’s Ian Mearns asks if the government will act to stop directors siphoning off money from pension funds, as happened at Carillion.
Lidington says he understand the anxiety Carillion workers feel. Efforts are being made to ensure Carillion apprentices can stay in work. On the general question, it would be wrong for him to pre-empt the inquiry from the official receiver. But the government will publish proposals to protect pension funds later this year.
David Lidington says he is replying because Theresa May is in China, building on the existing strong ties between the two countries.
A robin is flying around the chamber of the Commons at the start of PMQs. “He’s keenly attending to her words” the Speaker tells a distracted MP as others point and chuckle
The robin is still in the chamber. This is from BuzzFeed’s Emily Ashton.
Robin is perched on a microphone wire above MPs’ heads as they gather for PMQs
According to the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman, there was a robin in the chamber this morning. I hope he’s not still there; the shouting at 12pm will come as a bit of a shock.
Here’s the list of MPs selected to ask a question at this week’s special edition of PMQs. Theresa May is in China so it’s David Lidington and Emily Thornberry. pic.twitter.com/jwtDolMwDQ
PMQs is starting soon.
With Theresa May in China, David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, is standing in for her. And Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, gets the Jeremy Corbyn slot.
Westminster kingmakers the Democratic Unionists might be resolute in their opposition to introducing gay marriage into Northern Ireland but the people of the region appear more liberal than the party keeping Theresa May in power.
An Equality Commission survey released today shows a positive shift in public attitudes towards the local LGBT community. Positive views of LGBT people increased from 57% in 2008 to 83% in 2016, the report reveals today.
Here is the Labour motion that the Commons will pass later this afternoon, following the decision of the government not to oppose it. (See 11.07am.)
That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, That she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the EU exit analysis which was referred to in his response to an urgent question in the House on 30 January by the parliamentary under-secretary of state for exiting the European Union be provided to the exiting the European Union committee and made available to all members on a confidential basis as a matter of urgency.
We’ve always accepted the principle that if there is anything that genuinely would undermine the negotiations, that shouldn’t be disclosed. But there is obviously a difference between something that undermines the negotiations and something that embarrasses the government.
British beef will be on the menu in China within six months, decades after it was banned during the BSE crisis. Beyond that, the prime minister and her Chinese counterpart had little of note to announce, though both stressed their commitments to a close future trade partnership.
Premier Li Keqiang made encouraging noises about a future British-China trade deal post-Brexit and signalled a new interest in opening up Chinese markets to British agricultural produce.
The Labour motion calling for the Brexit impact report to be given to the Brexit select committee (with a view to publication) will be passed. According to Tory sources, government MPs are being told to abstain – which means the motion will go through unopposed.
This is what Theresa May said in her press conference about “the British dream”. She used the phrase as a key theme in her ill-fated party conference speech last year. Since then she has not said much about the concept, but she may be tempted to revive it in the face of the repeated criticism she has been getting recently about her alleged failure to have an uplifting vision for domestic reform. May said:
On the domestic agenda, if you look at what we’ve been doing over the recent weeks and months, I think that there are many people in the United Kingdom want to ensure that they are their families can achieve the British dream of ensuring that each generation has a better future than the last.
For a lot of young people, that’s about owning their own home, being able to get their foot on the housing ladder. We’ve cut stamp duty for 95% of first time buyers and I’m pleased to say that figures out only last week show that we have seen the highest number of first-time buyers in the last year for a decade.
There are countless examples of people from humble beginnings who make it to the top: who live the British Dream. So we should talk about it. We should embrace it. We should celebrate it. I want everyone to live the British Dream.
Because all that should ever drive us is the duty we have to Britain and the historic mission of this party – this Conservative party – to renew the British Dream in each new generation.
That dream that says each generation should do better than the one before it. Each era should be better than the last.
Now there is a question from a Chinese journalist.
Q: What measures will China and the UK take to boost globalisation?
There will be two questions.
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg goes first.
Theresa May is speaking now. She says it may be winter, but she has had the warmest of welcomes.
She says she is committed to intensifying the golden partnership with China.
Li Keqiang says China will open its markets to the UK, including for agriculture products.
On Brexit, Li say this is a situation both countries face. But bilateral relations have been going forward, and that will not change because of Brexit, he says.
The press conference in Beijing is starting.
Li Keqiang, the Chinese prime minister, starts by describing what he and Theresa May talked about at their meeting earlier.
Here are some pictures from Theresa May’s China trip.
When prime ministers embark on major trips abroad, they expect to spend a few days focusing on foreign relations. But invariably domestic politics catches up with them (not least because they take lobby journalists with them who are much more interested in Westminster than abroad – they are paid to be) and so when Theresa May holds a press conference in Beijing this morning, she is likely to be grilled about leadership and Brexit.
Today Labour will use a Commons vote to try to get the government to publish the Brexit impact report that Steve Baker, a Brexit minister, was so scathing about yesterday. Baker might not think much of its conclusions, but another minister, the justice minister Phillip Lee, used Twitter last night to urge May to rethink her Brexit strategy in the light of what the secret report says. He implies she should reconsider her decision to rule out keeping the UK in the single market or the customs union.
The next phase of Brexit has to be all about the evidence. We can’t just dismiss this and move on. If there is evidence to the contrary, we need to see and consider that too. https://t.co/A0MeP9BCJr. 1/3
But if these figures turn out to be anywhere near right, there would be a serious question over whether a government could legitimately lead a country along a path that the evidence and rational consideration indicate would be damaging. This shows the PM’s challenge…2/3
The PM has been dealt some tough cards and I support her mission to make the best of them. It’s time for evidence, not dogma, to show the way. We must act for our country’s best interests, not ideology & populism, or history will judge us harshly. Our country deserves no less 3/3
Here is the full statement from Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, on the leaked Brexit impact report. She said:
The UK government’s own analysis makes clear that leaving the EU will, in all circumstances, harm the economy of every nation and region in the UK – and underlines the case that remaining in the single market and customs union is the best way to minimise that economic harm.
When the Scottish government published our own impartial analysis a few weeks ago, showing an extreme Brexit could cost each person in Scotland £2,300 a year, the Tories accused us of scaremongering – now we find out that behind the scenes they agreed with us.
And while we’re on the subject of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory MP and chair of the European Research Group, the Conservative group pushing for a hard Brexit, has described Philip Hammond, the chancellor, as “a semi-detached member of the cabinet”. Speaking on his ConservativeHome “Moggcast” podcast, he said:
The chancellor seems to me to have become a semi-detached member of the cabinet, opposing policy from within it and not following the norms of collective responsibility.
If we know where we are going at the end of it, there are many things that Eurosceptics such as me could accept in a genuine implementation with a clear end point that are very troubling if we don’t know the end point.
In the House of Lords debate Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader, accused the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has called for the Lords to be flooded with new peers if it tries to block Brexit, of acting like a Robespierre. Campbell said:
Those who want us to leave the European Union have already got their own committee of public safety. Mr William Rees-Mogg bids to be Robespierre, and he has threatened this House … [Correcting himself] Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg. One Rees-Mogg is very much like another. He’s threatened us. Well, my answer to threats from Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg is this.
I’m not here to thwart the will of the House of Commons. Like the Noble Lord who’s just spoken, I spent 28 years at the other end of the building asserting the primacy of the Commons, and I will not depart from that simply because I’ve been sent here.
Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, told peers in the Lords debate that the first line of the EU withdrawal bill, which repeals the European Communities Act, “strikes a dagger to my soul”. He explained why:
I have been conscious of the benefit which our country has derived from membership of what has now become the European Union.
Having said that I do think I understand why the 52% voted as they did. The rush towards a federal union is a mistake and may lead to disaster.
I shall, however, support any amendments which may be necessary to ensure that a further referendum will be among the options when Parliament is given a meaningful vote at the conclusion of the negotiations.
The opening of the House of Lords debate on the EU withdrawal bill is now on Hansard. The online report will be updated during the evening. Generally speeches go up about three hours after they have been delivered.
Back in the Lords committee Carney tells peers that the fall in the value of the pound after Brexit will continue to have an impact on inflation. Inflation has already gone up as as result, but the process is not over, he says. There is more to come.
Robert Peston’s post on his Facebook page on the government’s Brexit impact analysis is well worth reading in full. But here’s an excerpt.
The point is that the analysis shows UK growth and prosperity would be significantly greater if UK rules and regulations for business were closely aligned to those of the EU, and never diverged to any significant extent – because this would be expected to deliver cheaper and less cumbersome access for UK goods and services to the EU’s giant single market.
In other words, the civil service economists are underwriting the political position of Hammond, Amber Rudd and Greg Clark that it is worth sacrificing a degree of national control over rules and regs for the sake of becoming a bit less poor or a bit more rich (depending on what else is transpiring in an economic sense).
Norman Lamont, the Conservative former chancellor, asks if there are some areas were diverging from EU rules could benefit the UK.
Carney says he is reluctant to comment on a negotiation that has not yet formally begun. But he says there are some areas where the UK has opposed EU proposals covering financial services.
Here are some lines from Mark Carney’s evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee so far. These are from the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed.
Mark Carney @bankofengland says business investment is 4% below where it would have been without referendum decision. Global growth high, monetary conditions easy, balance sheets strong
Mark Carney says with greater certainty will see greater business investment by 2019 @bankofengland
Carney says @bankofengland is considering stronger global economic environment and greater 2019 certainty ahead of its next Inflation Report Feb 8. Many will take that as suggesting an UK growth upgrade.
Carney says that a “disorderly Brexit” is unlikely @bankofengland
Here are some proper excerpts for Lord Bridges of Headley’s speech. It is probably the highlight of the Lords debate so far.
What is the country we wish to build once we have left the European Union? Only once we have answered this question can we properly and fully answer the second question – what agreement do we want to strike with the European Union? What do we value more, parliamentary sovereignty and control, or market access and trade?
Four months on, and there are still no clear answers to these basic, critical questions. All we hear, day after day, are conflicting, confusing voices. If this continues, and ministers cannot agree among themselves on the future relationship the Government wants, how can this prime minister possibly negotiate a clear, precise heads of terms for the future relationship with the EU?
My fear is that we will get meaningless waffle in a political declaration in October. The implementation period will not be a bridge to a clear destination. It will be a gang plank into thin air.
The EU will have the initiative in the second stage of the negotiations and we shall find ourselves forced to accept a deal that gives us access to EU markets, but without UK politicians having a meaningful say over swathes of legislation and regulation.
“Some may say this outcome would not be the end of the world. Some may say it’s inevitable.
The government must be honest with themselves and the public about the choices we face. And then the Prime Minister and her cabinet must make those choices. As has been said, to govern is to choose, and as we face the biggest challenge this country has faced since the Second World War, keeping every option open is no longer an option.
Turning back to the Lords debate for a moment, Lord Bridges, who was a Brexit minister until he resigned after the general election, has launched a withering attack on the government’s handling of Brexit. He said it could amount to “a gang plank into thin air”.
These are from the BBC’s Esther Webber, the Telegraph’s Jack Maidment and the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn.
Former Brexit minister Lord Bridges says the Brexit years “are like dog years – each one feels like seven”
Lord Bridges going for it: Last four months have brought “no clear answers to critical questions” and we are looking at “a gang plank into thin air”
Lord Bridges says on Brexit “all we hear are conflicting confusing voices” and if this goes on “how can the PM negotiate clear heads of terms?”
Tory former Brexit minister Lord Bridges gives the Government both barrels. Says he is fearful “we will get meaningless waffle in a political declaration in October” and transition period “will not be a bridge to a clear destination, it will be a gang plank into thin air”.
Best Lords speech yet: a withering attack from ex-DexEU minister Lord Bridges on Cabinet’s Brexit dithering: “We cannot indulge in that very British habit of just muddling through. The Prime Minister must make choices. Keeping every option open is no longer an option”.
The Tory peer Michael Forsyth asks Carney about Andrew Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, saying last year that economists’ failure to predict the collapse of Lehman Brothers as a Michael Fish moment. Carney says Haldane did not quite say that. Forsyth says he is quoting from the Guardian. Carney says even the finest papers sometimes get it wrong, and that having spoken to Haldane, he knows the point he was trying to make.
It is non-stop today. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, has just starteding giving evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee.
The committee has sent out a note about the four topics they want to cover. In the light of what Steve Baker told MPs at lunchtime, conveniently one of the topics is forecasting. The committee is interested in answers to this question.
Why were the Bank’s projections for the economy in August 2016, particularly for business and housing investment and imports and exports, substantially different from the reality?
How confident are you that the UK and EU will be able to reach a deal on financial services?
If there is no deal on passporting, is there sufficient time to authorise all the European firms trading in the UK in time and how important is a transition period to that process?
The Labour council leader behind a controversial housing scheme opposed by Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s national executive committee has announced she will stand down at the local elections.
Claire Kober said she would leave the decision on whether to proceed with the public-private scheme to her successor, after Labour’s national executive committee unanimously voted to ask Haringey to drop the project.
The Brexit minister Steve Baker has been accused of insulting civil servants with his comments about forecasting. (See 2.47pm.) This is from Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, which represents senior civil servants.
Steve Baker’s comments in Parliament are supposed to represent the considered view of the government. His remarks today not only insult the dedicated professionals working in his department and across the civil service, but they epitomise the current state of affairs in government.
How can civil servants in his department, who are working harder than ever before, have confidence in a minister who stands at the despatch box and openly questions their professionalism? The real question, however, is how can a minister prepared to undermine the government he serves retain the confidence of the prime minister?
Some 47 MPs from various parties have signed an open letter to David Davis, the Brexit secretary, calling for the publication of the leaked Brexit impact report. The letter has been organised by Open Britain, which is campaigning for a soft Brexit, and the signatories include the Conservatives Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Antoinette Sandbach.
The letter also includes 10 questions about the report. Here they are.
1 – Why does the analysis not consider the impact of a ‘bespoke trade deal’, given the government claims this is the most likely outcome? Has an analysis of such an outcome been carried out separately?
2 – Has the Treasury shared the analysis with No 10, and has the prime minister read it?
Here are some highlights so far from the Lords debate on the EU withdrawal bill.
Lord Mandelson, the Labour former business secretary and former European commissioner, said that in 2016 he thought the government had to implement the results of the referendum but that now he was not so sure.
I no longer believe this to be axiomatic. The government cannot behave as if it has a blank cheque to take Britain out of the EU in just about any vandalistic way it chooses.
So a referendum on a new question about the future relationship may become unavoidable – although this is not something on which we should be voting at this stage.
I want it to go back to the Commons amended in a variety of areas, not least giving the people the choice to leave or remain based on the evidence of facts, not lies from a soapbox. The key is that the bill is amended in the interests of the whole nation, not a political tribe.
The leadership of my tribe does not have clean hands on this issue, because it has been tribe before country. The big political tribes are not the same as they were before June 23 2016. Within each tribe there is a flock that has more in common with each other than with the tribe they are part of.
[The government’s] worst mistake is under-estimating the strength of our hand in Brexit’s four main issues – mutual residence, trade, security and cash – which should be taken in that order and not the other way around. The government have allowed the Eurocrats to take these issues back to front.
Here are the main points from the urgent question on the leaked Brexit analysis.
I can confirm that, when we bring forward the vote on the final deal that we agree with the EU, we will ensure this house is presented with the apt analysis the government has done so this House can make and informed decision.
No, I’m not able to name an accurate forecast, and I think that they are always wrong, and wrong for good reasons.
The article is a selective interpretation of a preliminary analysis. It is an attempt to undermine our exit from the European Union.
I can understand why [Starmer] and those behind him want the reports in the press to be accurate – fundamentally they don’t wish to leave the European Union. For them and for him good news is a disaster and bad news is a welcome confirmation of their world view.
They care passionately about remaining in the European Union and they want to overturn the result. But their strategy is becoming clear – demoralisation, delay and revocation. That is not what our parties stood for at the last election. Our parties were clear that we would respect the result of the referendum.
Quite frankly minister I take exception to being told that it is not in the national interest for me to see a report that allows me to best represent my constituents.
Baker says Jaguar Land Rover does not sell as many cars as he would like. He says the government will conclude trade deals to help it.
Tom Pursglove, a Tory, says the “naysayers” talking up this report are those who predicted disaster after the Brexit vote. Brexit will not be all plain sailing, he says. But he says the public want the government to just get on with it.
Baker agrees.
Baker says he would advocate a “healthy scepticism” towards the use of mathematical economics for forecasting.
Labour’s Barry Sheerman says his constituents were misled by the lies on the Brexit bus. The report seen by BuzzFeed shows that Yorkshire will suffer, he says.
Every UK region would also be affected negatively in all the modelled scenarios, with the North East, the West Midlands, and Northern Ireland (before even considering the possibility of a hard border) facing the biggest falls in economic performance.
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson says these long-term economic forecasts are about as useful as newspaper horoscopes.
Baker says Wilson reminds him that JK Galbraith, the great economist, once said the only purpose of economic forecasting was to make astrology look respectable.
Labour’s Alison McGovern says Baker should not question Labour’s patriotism. She says the government should asks the Office for Budget Responsibility to do an analysis by the time of the spring statement.
Baker says he did not use the word patriotism. But he repeats the point about Labour not accepting the result of the referendum.
Owen Bennett’s HuffPost highlights some inconsistencies in the arguments Baker has been using.
Baker says the incomplete Brexit studies which should be ignored forecast growth which shouldn’t be ignored but it is a forecast so under the Baker Doctrine it should be ignored. Simples.
Heidi Allen, a Conservative, says the government allowed MPs to see the sectoral analysis reports in private. Why can’t MPs see this latest report under the same terms?
Baker says this report is different. He says a report will be published in due course.
Labour’s Luciana Berger asks for an assurance that Brexit will not wreck car manufacturing on Merseyside.
Baker says growth is forecast under all scenarios. But he says the government is aware of the special needs of manufacturers with complex supply chains.
Here is ITV’s political editor Robert Peston on Baker’s response to the UQ.
It beggars belief that @SteveBakerHW critique of government’s own forecasts that Brexit will make us poorer is that civil servant economists have not modeled the PM’s nebulous “cake-and-eat-it” trade deal with EU which the EU 27 regard as less plausible than the tooth fairy
Here is Paul Blomfeld, a shadow Brexit minister, on Baker’s response to the UQ.
Extraordinary to listen to Minister @SteveBakerHW rubbishing the analysis of his own Government. In denial and in chaos.
Baker says he considers himself an “old English liberal”. He is not an economic nationalist, he says.
Here is the start of the Press Association story about Steve Baker’s response to the UQ.
A minister accused Labour of adopting a Brexit strategy of “demoralisation, delay and revocation” as he attempted to play down a leaked analysis.
Brexit minister Steve Baker hit out at the opposition after the government was forced to reply to an urgent question in the Commons.
Here is Tom Brake, the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman, on Baker’s statement.
Minister Baker’s treating MPs like chumps. He knows, we know, the leaked report confirms it, #Brexit will harm British jobs and families. Time the Govt and Jeremy Corbyn agreed to a vote on the deal so people can choose whether to leave and damage our prospects or stay in #FBPE
Labour’s Chuka Umunna says the analysis shows that the least worst option, staying in the customs union, has been taken off the table.
Baker says, if you look on the Sun’s website, there is video there of Umunna saying during the EU referendum that leaving the EU would mean leaving the single market.
William Wragg, a Conservative, asks Baker to name a single accurate government forecast.
Baker says he cannot do that. They are always wrong, for good reasons, he says.
The SNP’s Joanna Cherry asks why it is so difficult for the government to set out what it wants.
Baker says Theresa May has set that out in the Lancaster House speech.
Labour’s Ben Bradshaw asks why the government has explored the impact of three possible outcome, but not the one it wants, “the fantasy have-cake-and-eat-it one”.
Baker says the analysis is still evolving.
Antoinette Sandbach, a Conservative, says she takes exception to being told it is not in the national interest for her to see a report that would help her to take decisions.
Baker says MPs will see the analysis before the final vote.
For the UK the losses average between 1.31% and 4.21 % of GDP for the optimistic and pessimistic scenarios respectively, or 0.13% to 0.41% of GDP annually. Among the different models it is also notable that the losses for the UK are higher than average in the case of two models (OECD and UK Treasury) that capture negative impacts on foreign direct investment (FDI), which is redirected in some degree away from the UK into the EU 27. In their pessimistic scenarios the losses cumulate to about 7.5% of GDP, or 0.75% annually, which are highly significant amounts in macroeconomic terms.
Here is the Labour MP David Lammy on Baker’s response to the UQ.
Brexit Minister Steve Baker tells Parliament one minute that we shouldn’t take the Brexit impact studies seriously and then the next minute says “in all of those scenarios there’s economic growth”. Which is it @DExEUgov?
Chris Leslie, the Labour MP, says the refusal to publish the report is “deeply irresponsible and dishonest”. It is a cover-up, he says.
Baker says Leslie does not accept the results of the referendum.
Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Commons Brexit committee, says David Davis told the committee last year that the government had not conducted a sectoral Brexit impact analysis. Yet the report leaked to BuzzFeed does look at the impact on different sectors of the economy. How can Baker explain this discrepancy?
Almost every sector of the economy included in the analysis would be negatively impacted in all three scenarios, with chemicals, clothing, manufacturing, food and drink, and cars and retail the hardest hit. The analysis found that only the agriculture sector under the WTO scenario would not be adversely affected.
To kick off this morning’s cabinet meeting, Theresa May talked her ministers through the government report about the potential economic damage of various Brexit scenarios leaked to Buzzfeed, we were told. This is what May’s spokesman said:
At the beginning of cabinet the prime minister noted media coverage of a report purporting to show the economic impact of Britain leaving the EU.
The PM said this was initial work, not approved by ministers, which only considers off-the-shelf scenarios. No analysis was made of the bespoke arrangement we seek as a matter of government policy, as set out in the Florence speech.
Ken Clarke, the Conservative pro-European, says Baker is refusing to publish the report to protect the government from political embarrassment.
Here is the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn on Baker’s statement.
Brexit blue on blue – DD v Robbins: Steve Baker uses Despatch Box to thoroughly demolish the veracity of impact assessment… compiled by Oli Robbins’ Cabinet Office unit.
Sir Keir Starmer starts his response with the words: Not good enough.
He says the government denied having produced a Brexit impact analyis.
Steve Baker says it would be wrong to publish the impact analysis now, before it has been concluded.
He says what BuzzFeed reports was a “selective interpretation” of a preliminary analysis.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit statement, asks for a statement about the impact analysis.
Steve Baker, the Brexit minister, is replying. He says the government will publish an economic analysis when MPs vote on the final deal.
The Tory MP Stephen Hammond is also calling for the UK to join Efta. (See 12.24pm.)
Just spoke on @daily_politics about the Government’s leaked Brexit analysis. It proves we should be seeking Efta membership, which is the least damaging option. The Government should publish this analysis without delay
Lord Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, told peers in his speech that the government had achieved “virtually nothing” on Brexit over the last year. He said:
It is now a year since your lordships House began its debate on the bill triggering Article 50 and 10 months since the article was triggered.
It is generally agreed that both the withdrawal agreement and the agreement on our future relations with the EU have to be concluded before the end of the year and so we are approximately half way through the entire period available for our exit negotiations. What has been achieved so far?
On the Daily Politics Bernard Jenkin, a Tory Brexiter, has joined those MPs (see 10.53am) calling for the publication of the Brexit impact report. He said publication would allow people to see and assess the methodology used in the analysis.
George Osborne’s Evening Standard is calling for the UK to join Efta (the European free trade association) after Brexit – aka, the Norway option or the Swiss option to be more precise. In a punchy editorial, the paper says the leaked Brexit impact report shows that the government know how much damage its Brext policy will cause.
Here’s an excerpt.
Governments do harmful things all the time by accident or out of ignorance — but to do so willingly, consciously and without telling the public the truth is different.
Every time we hear the prime minister tell us that her plan is to build a strong economy, we know that she is being advised that the plan will cost Britain dear.
In her speech to the Lords Angela Smith, the Labour leader in the Lords, said it was important for peers to adopt a questioning approach to the bill. She said:
I want to re-emphasis a point I have made before. The process of Brexit is too important and complex to be left to those who have no doubt. Because only doubt brings questioning. And it is only through questioning that we examine an issue enough to get the detail right.
Too often, the government appears to put off tough decisions. For example, as we’ve heard in our questions, the financial services sector is crying out for the government to publish a future partnership paper, to provide some certainty to allow for future planning. Yet, none has been forthcoming and ministerial responses are complacent at best.
With 19 months passed since the referendum, it is unacceptable that the government has not yet got a grip of the issues facing Northern Ireland, our crown dependencies and our overseas territories. We have not yet seen a credible way of solving the Northern Ireland border issue given the prime minister’s flawed ideological position against a customs union.
My colleague Gaby Hinsliff has written a First thoughts article for Guardian Opinion saying the leaked impact assessment should encourage Labour to take a firmer stand against Brexit.
And here is some reaction to the leaked Brexit impact report from MPs.
From Labour’s David Lammy
This is a farce. The Government should immediately publish all these reports, un-redacted and in full. If the Government continues to keep the public in the dark about Brexit, Parliament should take back control and force a vote to force the Government to publish them this week. https://t.co/HGhtZDSpSl
The people deserve to know what the government think will happen as a result of its decisions, especially on an issue as important as Brexit. They must release the full impact report. @Emmabarnett@bbc5livepic.twitter.com/hsbTqqxEhH
The latest leaked reports about slower future growth have all the reliability of those Treasury forecasts of a recession in the winter of 2016-17 which proved to be so wrong.
More than a little embarrassing for Ruth Davidson and her Scottish Conservatives that they rubbished SNP Government analysis on Brexit only a few weeks ago only to have the Conservative Government’s leaked analysis confirm it pretty much number by number.
This comes as no surprise but what’s really disgraceful is that I & other MPs & the House of Commons have repeatedly been told by Ministers of the Crown that economic impact assessments do not exist. We won’t let this lie #BrexitShambleshttps://t.co/Bpz4pQUfUL
Here is Paul Mason, the journalist and vocal Labour supporter, on the leaked Brexit impact report.
Key implication for Labour from @BuzzFeedNews leak: if growth down 2% even under EEA that cannot be offset by attacking labour standards…
If Labour chancellor were handed this document on day after election it would provide prima facie rationale for ripping up Tory Brexit deal
My colleague Dan Roberts has a good analysis of the leaked Brexit impact report.
The Commons urgent question on the leaked Brexit impact analysis will come at 12.30pm.
Here is the Telegraph’s Peter Foster on the leaked Brexit impact analysis.
One more thought on the #Brexit Economy analysis leaked to Buzzfeed.
This was NOT from Treasury Or Team Hammond.
This was DexEU analysis. A department captained by @DavidDavisMP – an arch Brexiteer.
It comes from one of their own. As a warning to their own: tread softly.
Lord Adonis, the Labour peer, is speaking now. He gets to go second in the debate because he has tabled an amendment to the second reading motion. It says:
The order paper describes the amendment saying:
Lord Adonis to move, as an amendment to the motion that the bill be now read a second time, at end to insert “but that this House regrets that the bill makes no provision for the opinion of the people to be secured on the terms on which Her Majesty’s Government proposes that the United Kingdom withdraw from the European Union.”
Here his Lord Hunt, a Labour frontbencher peer, responding to Evans’ speech. (See 11.16am.) He is not impressed.
Tory Leader, Bns Evans treating Euro Withdrawal Bill as a technical Bill which also seeks she said to correct EU law of 40 years. No vision and certainly no clue as to our future relationship with the EU. Deeply dispiriting
Natalie Evans, the leader of the Lords, and a leave voter in the referendum, is opening the debate. She says the EU withdrawal bill is “vital to a smooth and orderly exit” from the EU. She says passing the bill should not be able revisiting the arguments of the referendum. And the bill is not about making policy change, she says.
On the devolution aspects of the bill, she says it will not take powers away from the devolved administrations. The government expects them to get more powers after Brexit, she says.
Peers are about to start the two-day second reading debate for the EU withdrawal bill. Some 188 peers have put their names down to speak – a record for a second reading in the Lords.
The speaker, John Bercow, has granted an urgent question on the leaked Brexit analysis, Sky’s Beth Rigby reports.
NEW; Kier Starmer’s UQ granted. Baker will respond for govt. Going to be a very rowdy afternoon in HoC. Tory civil war moves up a gear? (Is that possible?)
An historic first takes place today in a break between the talks aimed at restoring power sharing to Northern Ireland – the Democratic Unionists will hold their first ever meeting with gay rights campaigners.
The Love Equality coalition will meet the DUP over the party’s opposition to gay marriage equality in the region.
The Conservative Stephen Hammond told BBC New a few minutes ago that the government should now publish its Brexit impact report. He said:
I think if it has been leaked, [the government] should now publish it. It may have wanted to keep it confidential, but now it is out there and it’s been leaked, the best thing the government could do this afternoon is to announce that they are going to publish it.
Cleary it has been leaked by someone who thinks it bolsters the softest possible Brexit.
I agree with Stephen Hammond. You might as well publish the report., and also the methodology of the report.
Here is Rupert Harrison, George Osborne’s former chief of staff, on the leaked forecasts. He has posted this tweet in response to a BuzzFeed tweet summarising what the leaked report says.
As any economist will tell you its basically impossible to come up with any other conclusion based on standard trade impacts. To the extent there are any valid arguments for Brexit they are almost all non-economic https://t.co/qqXEzoH0PF
I can’t forecast what you will weigh in 10 years time but I can predict that if you eat a lot of burgers and don’t do any exercise you will weigh more than if you eat healthily and go to the gym
Here is George Osborne, the former chancellor, on the leaked Brexit impact report.
#Brexit latest economic analysis versus 2016 Treasury forecasts: WTO 2018 analysis 7.5% lower (v 8% 2016); FTA 5% lower (v 6.2% 2016); Norway style single market deal 2% lower (v 3.8% 2016). h/t @AlbertoNardelli
In an interview with the Sun today Liam Fox, the international trade secretary and one of the cabinet’s leading Brexiters, said Tory Eurosceptics, such as those calling for the resignation of Philip Hammond, the chancellor, over the weekend, will have to learnt to “live with disappointment”. He told the paper:
It doesn’t help us for people to be involved in this sort of briefing they were over the weekend against individual colleagues because nothing that would happen would change the parliamentary arithmetic.
We don’t have a working majority, other than with the support of the Democratic Unionists and we need to accept the reality of that. I know that there are always disappointed individuals but they’re going to have to live with disappointment.
Plaid Cymru is also calling for the Brexit impact report to be published. Liz Saville Roberts, its leader at Westminster, said:
These leaked assessments should have been made public from the beginning. They show why the two Westminster parties are wrong to pursue a hard Brexit and why maintaining our economic links with Europe is so important for people’s standard of living.
Labour is calling for the government’s Brexit impact report to be published in full. Matthew Pennycook, the shadow Brexit minister, has just issued this statement.
Labour has made clear since the referendum that Tory ministers cannot withhold vital information from parliament and the public about the impact of different Brexit scenarios on jobs and the economy.
Ministers should publish this information immediately and allow for a full debate in parliament about its implications.
Discontent with Theresa May among the Conservatives’ financial backers boiled over at a fundraising event last Thursday, according to a donor. An account of the event — where about a quarter of the 50 donors present were said to have demanded her resignation — has been circulating among Brexit-supporting Tory MPs.
I think it’s obvious now there is no future for her. She needs to go. And as I’m being honest, the quicker the better. We have all lost confidence in her and it is bad for business for her to linger on in there. We all know she is going to go. She may as well just book the removal lorry and move on.
Here is Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, on the BuzzFeed leak.
When @scotgov published analysis two weeks ago showing the cost of Brexit, some Tories accused us of scaremongering. Thanks to this leak, we now know the UK government is sitting on analysis which comes to precisely the same conclusions. https://t.co/kDkwp5Bg3Y
Now BuzzFeed has seen a fresh government analysis of the economic impact of Brexit, “EU Exit Analysis – Cross Whitehall Briefing”, and it is saying much the same as the Osborne one. You can read Alberto Nardelli’s scoop here and here’s an excerpt.
Under a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, UK growth would be 5% lower over the next 15 years compared to current forecasts, according to the analysis.
The “no deal” scenario, which would see the UK revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, would reduce growth by 8% over that period. The softest Brexit option of continued single-market access through membership of the European Economic Area would, in the longer term, still lower growth by 2%.
I think the timing in this is highly suspicious in the sense that suddenly in the midst of all this conversation about the European Union we have a leaked document. But,I would observe that almost every single forecast coming from government, and most of the international organisations, has been completely wrong. I think we should take this with a pinch of salt.
Here are the main points from Michel Barnier’s press conference and David Davis’s evidence to the Lords EU committee.
During transition the UK will continue to take part in the single market, to take part in the customs union. It will continue to have all the economic benefits therefore it must also apply all the EU rules. The single market cannot be a la carte.
We will start talking about that next week. We will face an objection against it, I’m sure. We take the view that it is not particularly good democratic practice to have your country accept without any say-so anything, and particularly if the EU takes it upon itself to do something which is actively disadvantageous to a major British industry, or something like that.
There will be an argument about the right to negotiate free trade agreements. There will be an argument, I’m sure, about the issue of whether or not we can object to new laws that we haven’t had a say in. There will be discussions about issues like representation on technical committee. Bear in mind, we are very often the prime mover in areas like aviation, pharmaceuticals; the regulators tend to be Brits because we are good at that. What else? I guess those are the main ones.
I don’t think UK and EU are necessarily as quite as far apart as portrayed on implementing new acquis. Remember Davis called for a “dialogue”, not a veto. pic.twitter.com/FVo7udHTeb
Mr Barnier has said that he hopes to conclude [in] October, the autumn of this year. We are also seeking, of course, the future relationship and the withdrawal agreement in parallel. That may push it a little later, because we will not want to sign the withdrawal agreement until we have got the substance of the future relationship ironed out as well. So the last quarter of the year I think is about where we are aiming at.
We cannot go too close to the end of the year. It is not a matter of being too fussy about a week or so. But we’re working towards the end of October.
As part of the transition, the UK will remain bound by the obligations stemming from all existing EU international agreements, for instance on trade and aviation. This is crucial for the good functioning of the single market and the customs union. And we can agree on this in the article 50 agreement between the EU and the UK.
But we cannot ensure in the article 50 agreement that the UK keeps the benefits from these international agreements. Our partners around the world may have their own views on this, for instance the 70 countries covered by trade deals.
As well as binding the UK to the EU’s single market and customs union, the draft proposal seeks to ensure that the UK continues to apply the bloc’s external tariff rates and performs the same border checks with non-EU countries.
This could easily result in a scenario in which UK exporters are no longer able to take advantage of the EU’s existing free trade agreements, but exporters located in countries with EU FTAs [free trade agreements] would continue to benefit from preferential access to the UK market on the same terms as now. To give a practical example: during the proposed transition, Korean car exporters would still be able to sell cars into the UK without being subject to border tariffs under the provisions of the EU-South Korea free trade agreement. UK car exporters selling into Korea, on the other hand, would no longer be covered by the agreement and would face Korea’s tariffs of 8 per cent.
In the course of this second phase we will have to translate into legal terms the commitments that we had in the joint report. These have to be put into legally binding language. That is a sine qua non condition for progress in this second phase. It is all a big package. If we have no agreement on the withdrawal issues there will be no transition.
It is very important that the UK voices its position on what it wants in this future relationship.
Twenty one months may be fine, plus or minus a few months is neither here nor there. But we are not talking about extending to three years. It isn’t necessary.
The European commission has tweeted this.
“The EU position is very clear: the transition will last for 21 months until the 31st of December 2020. The whole EU acquis will continue to apply to the UK, as well as the jurisdiction of the EU Court of Justice”. @MichelBarnier#Brexithttps://t.co/L30op7XgBtpic.twitter.com/ydEqtX1VSc
Italy’s Europe minister Sandro Gozi has cast doubt on British hopes to vet EU legislation during the transition period.
The most controversial part of the Brexit transition paper adopted in Brussels today are the “vassal state” clauses, which require the UK to obey EU rules without any role in the decision-making processes.
I think it is difficult, because once you leave you leave … The British people decided not to decide anymore and that it is it.
We will see in the negotiation [whether this changes] but it is not us who decided the British should not decide anymore. It is the Brits who decided through their decision-making process.
We cannot waste our energy on shaping a bespoke transition. We have to concentrate our energy on the future relationship.
It is clear that the first move has to come from the British side, because the British decided to get out, so it is up to the British to decide how they want to get out and see their future relationship with the EU. The sooner they do so, the better. The time at our disposal is sufficient, but it is not very long.
Each of us have an idea how we would like to see the future relationship with the Brits,” he said. “Until we have a clear idea on what is the British position, there can only be a discussion on general lines, but there cannot be a detailed discussion and the future relationship requires detail.
This is what Paul Blomfield, the shadow Brexit minister, said during the Commons urgent question on Brexit.
Would the minister agree that it would be right to reach out to that majority instead of letting the European Research Group call the shots?
This is what Michel Barnier said at his press conference when asked what the UK would be able to do if it did not like EU decisions taken during the transition. (See 3.54pm.) It was a long-winded way of saying “nothing”, but it is worth quoting in full because it reveals rather well his exasperation at the latest manifestation of British cake-itis (the desire to have one’s cake and eat it, exemplified in this instance by the notion that the UK might be willing to accept EU rules during the transition except the ones it doesn’t like.) Barnier said:
I tend to think very logically, very logically. You’ve probably seen how I’ve been working over the past year and a half. I’ve tried to keep things calm, objective and logical.
So the UK asks us to have this transition period, which is very important obviously for the UK, which gives the time for the administrative preparations it needs before leaving definitively, so that all various players, stakeholders and so on can prepare for this. Time is passing very, very quickly. Obviously we also need time to prepare and we need time to negotiate on our future relations. The UK has asked us for this and our positive response, at this time, is, ‘We say that all of the acquis, the economic status quo, the European policies, will be maintained between 30 March 2019 and 31 December 2020.’ During that period the decisions will apply. And the UK must acknowledge and accept these rules of the game from the outset.
While Michel Barnier and David Davis were speaking, there was an urgent question in the Commons about Brexit. It was tabled by the Tory Brexiter Sir Bill Cash, and he used it to urge the government to reject the Brexit transition rules proposed by the EU in their guidelines today. (See 2.41pm.) Cash said:
Given that we’re leaving the EU and therefore the customs union, the single market and the provisions relating to freedom of movement, is the government going to reject this new EU ultimatum – including that the EU court of justice will continue to apply to the UK?”
Will [the minister] reject the idea of their enforcement mechanisms as set out in the document?
WATCH | Bill Cash MP tears into EU’s negotiating position agreed this afternoon which insists Britain remains de facto within the Customs Union and Single Market during the implementation period, rightly asks the government whether it will be rejecting this latest EU “ultimatum”. pic.twitter.com/fO6Yh29gBC
I want to be very clear, the UK will be leaving the EU on March 29, 2019. We will then have a strictly time-limited implementation period, which will be as short as is practicable – we currently expect that to be in the region of two years.
Q: You say you will provide a guidance documents on when the UK can sit in on EU meetings. How detailed will that be?
Barnier says the EU will clarify this. The occasions where the UK can attend will be limited, and on a case-by-case basis.
Q: Davis wants the UK to be able to negotiate trade deals during the transition, and he wants the UK to be represented on EU committees. Do you accept that?
Barnier says he accepts that the UK will want to talk to third countries during the transition.
Q: David Davis told the House of Lords earlier this afternoon that he sees the end of the year as the deadline for the Brexit talks, not October. Do you accept that?
Barnier says they are working on two legal texts, one covering withdrawal and one covering the transition. And there will be a political agreement covering the future relationship. That will not be a legal text, he says; it will be a political agteement.
Barnier says the EU spent a lot of time in January working on what it wants for the future relationship.
But negotiating with the British will not start until after the March European council – assuming the British say what they want.
Barnier is now taking questions.
Q: If decisions are taken by the EU during the transition which are not acceptable to the UK, what can it do?
Barnier says the EU has been making progress on discussions on the future trade relationship. The European council should take a decision on guidelines in March.
But it is very important that the UK says what it wants.
Michel Barnier is speaking now.
He says the European council has adopted clear negotiating directives.
The Michel Barnier press conference is starting. You can watch a live feed here.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, is about to give a press conference in Brussels. When that starts, I will switch to that (not least because, if phase one of the talks was anything to go by, what Michel Barnier is demanding re Brexit is a better guide to the eventual outcome than what Davis is demanding.)
Q: Who will negotiate for Brussels?
Davis says that is for the EU to decide. At the end of the day the European council takes the decision. He imagines Michel Barnier will head up their team.
Q: Are we going to be leaving the EU in March 2019 before we know the basis on which we will be leaving?
Davis says the UK wants to agree the substance of the future relationship before the UK leaves. He says he thinks this will be “tight”, but it can be done before the end of this year.
Q: There is speculation the transition period could last for three years. Is that true?
Davis says “this weekend has been a spectacular weekend for bogus stories”. The PM has said the transition will last about two years. Plus or minus a few months is neither here nor there. Extending the transition to three years “isn’t necessary”, he says.
Q: Has the government decided not to publish a position paper on financial services?
Davis says the government has not decided yet what further papers it will publish. It published 14 last summer. He knows, because he had to cancel his holiday to sign them off.
Q: Do you have a response to the guidelines that have come out today?
Davis says the government has seen the draft guidelines. He does not expect there has been much change. But he is not going to respond to them now.
Davis says the UK is working on the premise that the implementation period and the deal on future trade will cover Gibraltar.
Q: What will be the main differences between the UK and the EU on the transition?
Davis says there will be an argument about whether the UK can negotiate new trade deals during the transition? There will be an argument about whether the UK can object to new laws? There will be arguments about whether the UK can be represented on bodies coming up with regulatory rules. He says the British often play a leading role on these committees, because they are good at regulation.
Q: In your speech last week you implied you want the UK to have the power to object to EU proposals during the transition?
Davis says the UK has not engaged on this yet. The EU has just published its guidelines. There will be resistance to what the UK wants, he says.
Q: What happens if someone refers the withdrawal agreement to the European court of justice?
Davis says the government has considered this. The best defence against this is compliance with article 50, he says.
Q: What will happen if third countries say the UK no longer benefits from EU free trade deals?
Davis says the government has looked at this a lot.
Davis says the transition will be “very, very similar” to EU membership for the UK.
Q: Have you sought legal advice as to whether article 50 is a good basis for the withdrawal agreement?
Q: You talk of alignment of outcomes. What happens if the UK and the Irish government agree on “alignment”, but a third party, say a trader, takes a different view. Who will arbitrate?
Davis says the plan is to put in place an arbitration agreement.
Davis says the UK wants a customs partnership with the EU.
If there are no tariffs, then goods will not have to be stopped at the border for tariff reasons.
The committee is now asking Davis about Ireland, and particularly what the December agreement at the end of phase one of the talks said about alignment.
The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom’s intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the allisland economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.
Lady Neville-Rolfe, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: Will we only pay the EU if there is a final deal?
David Davis is giving evidence to the Lords committee now.
Lord Boswell, the peer who chairs the committee, goes first.
Here is the EU press notice about the guidelines for the Brexit transition adopted today.
EU ministers have agreed the EU’s guidelines for the Brexit negotiations on the transition, according to Sabine Weyand, deputy to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator.
BREAKING: EU General Affairs Council adopts guidelines for #Brexit negotiations within 2 min: status quo transition without institutional representation, lasting from #Brexit date to 31 December 2020 pic.twitter.com/3BSrNY3qbF
In an interview with BloombergLiam Fox, the international trade secretary, said Conservative MPs minded to trigger a leadership contested “would be foolish to do anything to destabilise the government and the prime minister.” A new leader would not be in a stronger position in the Commons, he argued. “Nothing will change the electoral arithmetic,” he said.
According to ITV’s political editor Robert Peston, in a post on his Facebook page,Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, mocked Theresa May’s refusal to say what she wants from Brexit in a background briefing for journalists at Davos last week.
There are three urgent questions today, the first of which will come from Sir Bill Cash, the Tory Brexiter, who is asking a question about Brexit policy.
3 Urgent Questions: 1. Sir William Cash – Government policy on leaving the EU 2. @SDoughtyMP – Recent Taliban and ISIS attacks on civilians in Afghanistan 3. @DianaJohnsonMP – Inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal No statements.
Here is a full summary of the Number 10 lobby briefing.
The formal directives [setting out the EU’s position on the Brexit transition] will be released this afternoon. This will be a negotiation and there will naturally be some distance in the detail of our starting positions.
The analysis, drawn up using contributions from across Whitehall, is likely to cause a dispute since cabinet ministers expect it to show that hard Brexit options will stall the economy for years to come. “The impact analysis will put the cat among the pigeons, assuming you believe in experts,” one government source said.
The chancellor is doing a good job. Look at the economic statistics, in terms of borrowing being lower than expected and record levels of employment.
Campaigner Gina Miller is threatening court action over payments to Northern Ireland under the £1bn deal with the DUP to prop up the minority Conservative government, the Press Association reports. Lawyers acting for Miller and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain have issued a legal letter to the government in relation to £50m made available in this financial year to address immediate health and education pressures. They argue that this breaches a previous assurance that cash support offered at the time of last year’s post-election agreement would not be spent until it has been approved by parliament in a vote. And they warned that if ministers do not provide assurances by February 2 that they intend to recover the money, they will take the issue to court. Miller, who previously defeated the government in a supreme court case to win MPs the right to vote on the Article 50 letter triggering Brexit, said:
It beggars belief that this government is once again putting itself above the law and seeking to undermine the normal constitutional and legal processes.
Spending public money requires proper parliamentary scrutiny and accountability – and the making of these payments is no different.
The Number 10 lobby briefing is now over. It went on for ages, and covered quite a range of topics, but two lines stood out.
The formal directives [setting out the EU’s position on the Brexit transition] will be released this afternoon. This will be a negotiation and there will naturally be some distance in the detail of our starting positions.
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s story about Claire Perry’s comment about hardline Brexers being “swivel-eyed”.
At the Resolution Foundation the BBC’s Eleanor Garnier asked Nick Timothy when he was last “in direct contact” with Theresa May. The question was prompted by suspicions amongst some Tories that Timothy is still exerting an influence over May despite resigning after the general election. The sacking of Justine Greening in the reshuffle was seen as potential evidence for this; Greening was removed after Timothy used his Sun column to criticise her performance very strongly.
When Timothy was working in Downing Street, he and his co chief of staff, Fiona Hill, were remarkably influential. Reading the two best books published so far on this period, Fall Out by Tim Shipman and Betting the House by Tim Ross and Tom McTague, one is left with the impression that the 11 months until June 2017 was really the era of the Timothy/Hill premiership, not the May premiership.
I haven’t seen the prime minister since I resigned at the general election. Of Conservative prime ministers past and present, I see David Cameron more often than I have Theresa May, because I’ve seen him once.
Sky’s Faisal Islam has tweeted some highlights from Nick Timothy’s speech at the Resolution Foundation event. Timothy said the government’s current focus on the environment as one of its top priorities was “strange”.
Nick Timothy tells @resfoundation that “political strategy of Government from July 2016 to beginning of election campaign was a success.. we were 20 points ahead in the polls.. in every social class and region”
The PM’s former chief of staff @NickJTimothy : “We blew the election campaign because we fought a campaign that was different to that strategy.. we didnt take the lessons of that strategy into the General Election”
“Election campaign was wrong, it presupposed desire for continuity talking about Brexit constitutionally and even in nationalistic terms, not about changing the country” says Timothy.
“country is tired of austerity & public services are starting to feel the strain a little bit… school spend one of the big issues, NHS needs reform and more money… plus inv in infrastructure.. fiscal policy ought to change” says shadow Ch… err the PM’s former chief of staff
“Alighting on the environment is a strange thing to do and reflects some kind of strategic confusion” says Timothy about current Govt strategy
Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former co chief of staff, is speaking at the Resolution Foundation event about the future of Conservatism now. There is a live feed here.
Justine Greening, who quit the cabinet earlier this month after refusing to accept Theresa May’s proposal that she should move from education secretary to work and pensions secretary, was interviewed on the Today programme this morning. She urged Tory MPs to support May, telling the programme:
I remain a strong backer of the prime minister, so I’ve been very disappointed to see the soundings off, I think they need to stop, I think people need to get behind her. I think she’s doing an important job for our country and we need to support her in that impossible almost task she has negotiating Brexit.
There’s a maintenance loan that has now replaced the grant. And that means, I think wrongly, to be perfectly frank, young people from more disadvantaged poorer backgrounds are coming out, like for like on the same course, with more debt than their better off peers.
I think we have to have a student finance system that’s progressive, not regressive.
The so-called youthquake that fuelled support for Jeremy Corbyn at the general election was a myth, according to a study. As the Press Association reports, academics have found that turnout among young voters was broadly similar to the 2015 poll and may even have decreased. Voters under the age of 25 were more likely to vote Labour than ever before but were no more likely to turn out than in previous years, the British Election Study discovered. It said:
The Labour ‘youthquake’ explanation looks to become an assumed fact about the 2017 election.
The Oxford English Dictionary even declared ‘youthquake’ their word of the year. But people have been much too hasty. There was no surge in youth turnout at the 2017 election.
Brexit has its own lexicon. There are words that have their own meaning in the Brexit context (hard, soft, transition etc) but then there is also a category of words that only ever get used by diehards on one side of the debate or the other. For example, there is probably no recorded use of anyone using the term “vassal state” in modern times other than a Brexiter referring to the relationship between the UK and the EU. And, on the other side, the term “swivel-eyed” almost always means the speaker is referring to Eurosceptics – and not favourably.
Claire Perry, who is now energy minister, has been caught deploying the term to refer to party colleagues. The Daily Telegraph has splashed on the story, which quotes a message Perry sent to colleagues on WhatsApp referring to Brexiter Tories using the term “traitor” to describe those backing the government’s decision to pay the EU a “divorce bill” of up to £39bn. In response to a colleague who said he was getting criticism “from the usual suspect about sell-outs and traitors”, Perry replied:
The ‘sell out traitor mob’ should be ignored. Listening to them means wrecking the economy in the short term and via a Corbyn Government delivering a long steady slow decline for the country we love.
And I would hypothesise that they are mostly elderly retired men who do not have mortgages, school-aged children or caring responsibilities so they represent the swivel-eyed few not the many we represent.
(1/3) The conversation with my MP colleagues was had at a time when we were all working so hard to get the Brexit Bill passed last year. Passions were running high and mine spilled over. No excuses but it was painful to see hard working, loyal colleagues branded as “traitors”.
(2/3) My comments were exclusively directed at those using the term of “traitor” to describe my colleagues, and to suggest that I am somehow applying them to anyone else is 100% wrong.
(3/3) Whether one voted Leave or Remain in 2016 no longer matters. There is a unity of purpose to deliver the smooth and orderly Brexit that the PM and Brexit Secretary are negotiating.
A forum where readers can discuss today’s politics and share links to breaking news and to the most interesting politics stories, blogs and tweets on the web
I’m not writing my usual blog today but here, as an alternative, is the Politics Live readers’ edition. It is a place for you to discuss today’s politics, and to share links to breaking news and to the most interesting stories and blogs on the web.
Feel free to express your views robustly, but please treat others with respect and don’t resort to abuse. Guardian comment pages are supposed to be a haven from the Twitter/social media rant-orama, not an extension of it.
1) For months the Government has dodged the question of what their desired Brexit end-state is. Internal discussions have considered both a so-called “EEA minus” or “CETA plus” model but publicly the PM has insisted that she wants a bespoke deal – unlike Canada or Norway
Earlier I flagged up Gary Gibbons’ Channel 4 News blog about the draft of new EU guidelines for the Brexit transition he has seen. He has posted them in full on his blog.
Here is some Twitter comment on them.
Just look at that difference between Para 18 of the draft transition guidelines, published on Dec 20, and the ones agreed by ambassadors yesterday. Not going to help the blood pressure of those MPs already furious about us becoming a ‘vassal state’ for (at least) 2 years. pic.twitter.com/Qjt6QqxbrY
Here’s what the EU means by a transition deal. As expected: UK not at the table, but bound by all the EU’s rules, including any that come into force during the transition. Not comfortable, but I expect we will settle for something close to this. https://t.co/fcwOM82iWI
I have just told Gary of @Channel4News that the UK will have to accept the transition on the EU’s terms. The UK – and its businesses – need the transition. But it may turn out to be 3-5 years long, rather than 2, IMHO. @CER_EUhttps://t.co/xFyd6IR2qE
Negotiation mandate leaked on transition: As expected, EU27 goes full monty on demands to turn UK into rule taker with no representation, no votes but fully bound by EU legal framework, incl full membership of single market and customs union. #brexithttps://t.co/EaLG9pd7Rc
Here are extracts from Tessa Jowell’s speech. Her brain cancer is very serious, the Lords was packed for her speech and peers listened to her in silence and with great respect. Afterwards (very unusually for parliament, where applause is not meant to be allowed) she was given a long standing ovation.
For what would every cancer patient want? To know that the best, the latest science was being used – wherever in the world it was developed, whoever began it.
What else do they want? They need to know they have a community around them – supporting and caring. Being practical and kind.
Cancer is a tough challenge to all health systems, and particularly to our cherished NHS.
We have the worst cancer survival rate in Western Europe. Partly because diagnosis is too slow. Brain tumours grow very quickly. And they are hard to spot.
Usually, drug trials test only one drug at a time, take years, and cost a fortune.
New adaptive trials can test many treatments at the same time. They speed up the process and save a lot of money.
Let me tell you what happened to me.
On 24 May last year, I was on my way to talk about new Sure Start projects in East London. I got into a taxi but couldn’t speak. I had two powerful seizures. I was taken to hospital.
A major factor in survival is successful surgery.
The gold standard is to use a dye to enable the surgeon identify the tumour. But it is only available in about half of the brain surgery centres in England. It must be extended to all of them.
Tessa Jowell, the Labour former culture secretary who has brain cancer, is speaking in the House of Lords now about her condition, and her call for patients to have better access to experimental treatments. She spoke about this in an interview for the BBC broadcast yesterday and now she is elaborating on what she said when speaking to Nick Robinson. The Lords is packed for the speech.
Downing Street has just put out a read-out of Theresa May’s meeting with Donald Trump. It confirms that Trump will be visiting the UK later this year.
A Downing Street spokesperson said:
Prime Minister Theresa May today met with President Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The two leaders began by discussing Bombardier, with the PM reiterating the importance of the company’s jobs in Northern Ireland.
More evidence that the Brexiter push-back is now on: in a blog, Sky’s Faisal Islam says Brexiter Tories are gearing up to rebel on the taxation (cross border trade) bill because they fear it could become an instrument for effectively keeping the UK in the customs union. As he says, this would be “the first time leave-backing Tories will have rebelled on Brexit legislation.”
One of the surprising features about Brexit last year was how much the Tory Brexiters were willing to tolerate as Theresa May unveiled details of what she was accepting in the negotiations. A two-year transition that some of them thought was unnecessary? No one minded at all. Payments of up to £40bn to the EU for the “divorce bill”? The Brexiters swallowed that too with very little protest. The European court of justice having some ongoing role in relation to the rights of EU nationals? They did not mind much about that. Even the inclusion of full regulatory alignment as a fall-back position for Ireland did not trigger much of a protest.
It seemed as if the Brexiters felt almost any transition concession was worth putting up with for the sake of ensuring that the UK actually leaves. They still worry about Brexit being reversed, but they think that once the UK has quit the EU on 29 March 2019, people will never vote to go back in.
NEW Jacob Rees-Mogg: “The government’s tone on Brexit needs to fundamentally change. If [Brexit’s opportunities are] taken off the table then Brexit becomes only a damage limitation exercise. The British people did not vote for that. They didn’t vote for management of decline.”
NEW Rees-Mogg: “If we are timid and cowering and terrified of the future, then our children will judge us in the balance and find us wanting. ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin’ – as the writing on the wall said at the feast of Balthazar. We have our future and destiny in our hands.”
Rees-Mogg: “There is a great Brexit opportunity and some really obvious benefits that we can get that improve the condition of the people. This is … at risk. The negotiations … sound as if they aim to keep us in a similar system to the Single Market and the Customs Union.”
Rees-Mogg: “The Customs Union is worse. It protects industries that we often do not have and helps continental producers on the back of UK consumers. The EU-funded CBI, that lover of vested interests, wants it to favour inefficient encumbrance against poor consumers.”
NEW Rees-Mogg: Whether it is ‘a’ or ‘the’ Customs Union it is a protectionist racket that damages the interests of the wider economy.”
2. Backbench Brexiteers getting their say before David Davis makes his speech on transition tomorrow – think what you like about Rees Mogg but as head of the ERG group he has a lot of sway, and ministers know he is popular with Tory grassroots
BIG MOMENT KLAXON This is effectively a declaration of war by at least 60 Eurosceptic backbench Conservative MPs on Theresa May and her team at 10 Downing Street over the Brexit talks. https://t.co/3MPlkZjDh7
David Meller, the Presidents Club co-chairman who resigned as a Department for Education director yesterday after the revelations about sexual harassment at the club’s charity dinner, has now taken leave of absence from his own trust, the Meller Educational Trust, which runs several schools. In a statement it said:
The trust is absolutely committed to equality of opportunity and respect for all members of society. We are appalled to hear reports of what happened at the Presidents Club dinner. We, as trustees, wish to express our sympathy to those women who have been so badly treated. David Meller is taking leave of absence as a trustee with immediate effect. The trustees will continue to support the academies within the trust.
In an article for the New European,David Miliband, the Labour former foreign secretary who now runs the International Rescue Committee, says opposition will have to choose later this year between backing a Tory Brexit and calling for a second referendum. Here’s an extract.
The transitional period, while necessary, offers false comfort. It delays the choices but does not remove them. Slow Brexit does not mean soft Brexit …
Labour needs to prepare for a life-changing question next autumn: will it vote to give a license for a Conservative Brexit, or will it insist that the voters be given a final say on the Brexit deal? Leave, and we take our chances on the choppy, laissez-faire open seas. Far from freeing ourselves to intervene, subsidise and reform, we will neuter our ability to do so.
In the Sun todayHarry Coles claims Sir Graham Brady, chair of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, has asked colleagues not to submit any more formal letters demanding a leadership contest – prompting speculation that he has already received close to 48, the number that would trigger a no confidence vote in Theresa May. Cole says:
One senior backbencher told The Sun the top Tory was “ashen faced” at the prospect of getting one more letter recently – which he has intimated could spark a bitter leadership election and plunge Brexit talks into chaos.
The party grandee’s terrified reaction suggests the number of letters he has already received may now have reached the mid 40s, as anger with “dull, dull, dull” Theresa May spirals on the Tory benches.
#KLAXON I hear two Tory MPs have indicated to collegaues they will be writing letters to Sir Graham Brady this weekend.
Although a confidence vote is not thought imminent, a Tory says the local elections will the “maximum danger point” for Theresa May
We do need to look at getting additional resources for our armed forces so they have the capability to protect and truly defend Britain’s global interests – both near and far.
The subject came up when a guest at the breakfast asked Mr Carney what the “delta” of voting to leave the EU had been so far. In economics, a delta is a ratio used to measure the difference between actual and potential growth.
The guest requested that he measure it in “Brexit buses”, a reference to the £350 million a week that Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign claimed the UK could recover by scrapping budget contributions to Brussels.
These comments by the governor of the Bank of England reveal the truth: there is no Brexit dividend, only a Brexit deficit.
Brexit is already costing this country hundreds of millions of pounds a week, which means less money for public services and less money for the NHS during a winter crisis when it needs it most.
Those with an interest in Brexit’s impact on the devolution settlement will be glued to the Lords this lunchtime, where peers are debating just that.
This discussion is given extra urgency following last week’s vote in the Commons to pass the EU withdrawal bill even though the Westminster government failed to bring forward amendments to a highly contentious clause that centralises more than 100 European powers in Whitehall after Brexit, although they involve policy controlled by the devolved parliaments.
According to my colleagues Graeme Wearden and Nick Fletcher, cowbells are ringing at the Davos conference centre to alert delegates to the fact that Theresa May’s speech will be starting soon.
Gary Gibbon, the Channel 4 News political editor, has got hold of a draft of the EU’s guidelines on how they want the Brexit transition to operate. As he explains on his blog, the proposals will be “every bit as annoying to Jacob Rees-Mogg and fellow Brexiteers” as Rees-Mogg suggested at the Brexit committee yesterday.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is planning to deliver a speech tomorrow that will give details of how the Brexit transition might operate, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports. Here is an excerpt from the blog she’s written about it.
I’m told that he will make clear the UK intends to negotiate and complete trade deals with other countries during the transition, to be ready to sign on the dotted line the moment the transition is over.
He’s also expected to make plain the UK wants to remain within existing agreements that the EU has stitched together with other countries too.
Theresa May is to look into the issue of how women working at Presidents Club events were asked to sign forms requiring them to not reveal details of what took place, her spokesman has said. Asked at the Downing Street lobby briefing whether women should be told to not report harassment, he said:
Questions have been raised about the operation of non-disclosure agreements. The prime minister will look into the way these non-disclosure agreements are applied to see if changes are required.
One of the lots on offer at the charity auction at the Presidents’ Club dinner was lunch with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary. Johnson did not know about this but, as my colleague Peter Walker reports, at the Number 10 lobby briefing it was explained how his name came to end up in the prize brochure.
Also, we finally know where the Boris Johnson lunch that was auctioned at the event came from – he donated it to the Ian Botham Foundation, and it was passed on without his knowledge.
The Institute for Government Whitehall Monitor report mentioned earlier (see 9.12am) also includes an assessment of how Theresa May is doing in terms of getting more women into government. Here is the relevant passage.
Part of the prime minister’s stated intention behind the January 2018 reshuffle was to make the government look ‘more like the country it serves’ and to introduce a ‘new generation’ of ministers. With regards to gender balance this appears to have been a moderate success.
Following the January 2018 reshuffle, nearly a third of all ministers are women, only one department (the Ministry of Defence) has no female minister, and in three departments half or more ministers are women (they are in the majority at the Home Office). This is an improvement from the reshuffle after the 2017 election, where only a quarter of ministers were female and five departments had no female ministers. In particular, there has been an increase in female ministers of state – from 15% to 27% – the pool from which the next generation of cabinet ministers are most likely to come. The percentage of women in the cabinet also rose, from 28.6% before Damian Green’s departure to 34.5% (although largely because more women are now allowed to attend cabinet rather than them being full members).
In her Bloomberg interview Theresa May that the revelations about sexual harassment at the Presidents Club charity dinner showed there was “a lot more work to do” to combat the “objectification” of women. Asked about her reaction to the story, she said:
I was frankly appalled when I read the report of this Presidents Club event. I thought that that sort of attitude of the objectification of women was something that was in the past. Sadly, what that event showed is that there is still a lot more work for us to do.
I will continue to work, as I have done in my time in politics, to a point where we really can say women are respected and accepted and treated as equals.
Sadly, what we saw from this Presidents Club is this is about attitudes. It’s about saying that actually women are not objects just to be used by men. Actually we are equals, we have our own position, our own abilities and that should be respected.
So I will continue to work – I’ve done it in politics, I’ve done it in business – to ensure that people recognise the value that women can bring to business, can bring to politics … just in general, that attitude that says that women are objects, that we erase and eradicate that attitude. It’s so important that women are able to take their place as equals.
I understand that Nadhim was uncomfortable about what happened at the dinner and left the dinner on that basis.
These are from Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton.
* May: “Frankly appalled” at #PresidentsClub. * “I thought that that sort of attitude of the objectification of women was something that was in the past.” * “Women are not objects just to be used by men.”
#PresidentsClub: May accepts @nadhimzahawi‘s explanation for his presence. “I understand that Nadhim was uncomfortable about what happened at the dinner and left the dinner on that basis.”
This is from the Telegraph’s Jack Maidment.
Theresa May backs Philip Hammond on regulating Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies. “We should be looking at these very seriously precisely because of the way they can be used, particularly by criminals,” she tells Bloomberg in Davos.
Bloomberg has now released the footage of a TV interview it has conducted with Theresa May this morning in Davos.
Breaking: Irish PM Varadkar hints at bespoke FTA btn EU-UK, but says Ireland wd want “Norway Plus”. “It’ll be a new agreement…Britain is a big place. It’s 60m people, compared to Norway which is relatively small…or a country like Canada which is on a different continent.”
Taoiseach Varadkar in Davos: “It will be a specific agreement for the UK, but of course as Ireland we want that to be as close as possible, so we wd have it as ‘Norway Plus’ but I think we need to get into the detail as to what that means.”
Varadkar: It’s been some time now since the referendum happened. We need to get down and dirty with the detail.
Varadkar: There is a proviso in that, and it does require the UK to understand and appreciate fully that it’s not possible to cherry pick. You can’t have the benefits of the EU and access to the single market and all those things and not bear the responsibilities and obligations.
Varadkar contd: Britain is one of our major trading partners. We actually trade more with the eurozone than Britain, but it’s next door, it’s really important particularly in terms of goods + merchandise, so we’re very enthusiastic about having an FTA and customs union.
And here is Alan Travis’s story on the crime figures.
Here is my colleague Alan Travis, the Guardian’s home affairs editor, on the crime figures.
Rise in crime is accelerating with 14% increase recorded by police forces in England and Wales in 12 months to September inc 21% rise in knife crime, 20% rise in gun crime and 29% rise in robbery. However 10% fall in crime rate shown by Crime Survey of England and Wales.
Police recorded figures show 20% rise in violent crime, 29% rise in robbery, 21% rise in knife crime and 20% rise in gun crime in 12 months to Sept. Crime Survey however shows 9% fall in violent crime.
The bulletin contains two types of figures: from the crime survey, which measures people saying they have been a victim of crime when asked by researchers; and crimes recorded by police.
Our assessment of the main data sources is that levels of crime have continued to fall consistent with the general trend since the mid-1990s. However, these figures cover a broad range of offence types and not all offence types showed falls.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) shows that many of the high-volume crimes, such as lower harm violent crime, criminal damage and most types of theft, were either estimated to be at levels similar to the previous year or to have fallen. It also shows that crime is not a common experience for most people, with 8 in 10 adults surveyed by the CSEW not being a victim of any of the crimes asked about in the survey.
Rough sleeping in England is now at its highest level for this decade, according to the Ministry of Housing figures (pdf). Here are three charts from their report illustrating the figures.
A record number of students from the poorest backgrounds are entering top universities, but the richest 18-year-olds are almost six times more likely to be placed, figures show. As the Press Association reports, applications from the most advantaged students were also at a record high last year, according to equalities data from Ucas.
But the gap between the most advantaged and disadvantaged students entering higher education remains, as richer students are 2.3 times more likely to enter university, than the poorest students. Researchers found that, since 2012, there has been a rise in the proportion of poorer students entering top institutions – an increase of 67% – but that overall, one in 25 students from the poorest backgrounds gains admission. This compares with roughly one in five among the most advantaged students, who are 5.5 times more likely to aim for higher tariff universities – institutions with higher entry requirements, the PA reports.
Theresa May is in Davos today, where she will be delivering a speech and trying her best to get a word in edgeways (if this very good Bloomberg article is to be believed, which it should be) when she meets Donald Trump. My colleague Graeme Wearden is in Davos writing a live blog and he will be taking the lead in covering May, although I will probably give it some coverage here too.
Preparations for Brexit have been disrupted by the election, by turnover in personnel and by difficulties in parliamentary management …
[The relative stability at cabinet level after the post-election reshuffle in 2017] was not matched at junior ministerial levels: 44% of all ministers across government were new to their roles after the post-election reshuffle. This upheaval came less than a year after May’s first set of government appointments in 2016, when 11 cabinet attendees left government, three new departments were created, and only at the Ministry of Defence did more than half of ministers stay in post.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including calls for Nadhim Zahawi to step down for not reporting what happened at dinner
The bickering between David Davis & Jacob Rees-Mogg is the starkest evidence yet that a Brexit transitional deal is far from secure under this government.https://t.co/DnO8V8sNmK
There is nothing that would make me change my mind in thinking that [Brexit] is a regressive move for the country. But I think the country would proceed with Brexit if the government succeeded in bringing forward a deal that retained the benefits of our single market membership without the obligations. It is just that I think that is an impossible thing to negotiate.
Will the public really shift in its position once it sees the deal the government is bringing forward? We don’t know.
The Labour party feels – for reasons I understand – that it’s got to say ‘We are still in favour of Brexit’. But when you see how the Labour party is moving, it is moving very much towards a ‘let’s keep the single market’ position.
It nuances that in what it says, but I think in the end there is a majority within the Labour party for keeping a close relationship with Europe.
New piece on the NHS Brexit dividend. It does not exist. In fact we would need to spend £1bn a year more just to compensate NHS staff for the higher prices already seen since the referendum. https://t.co/s3vPihypfNpic.twitter.com/1BNiqEAUJ1
Here is the Presidents Club statement in full.
The trustees have decided that the Presidents Club will not host any further fundraising events. Remaining funds will be distributed in an efficient manner to children’s charities and it will then be closed
The Presidents Club is being disbanded, Sky’s Kay Burley reports.
BREAK: “The trustees have decided that the #PresidentsClub will not host any further fundraising events. Remaining funds will be distributed in an efficient manner to children’s charities and it will then be closed.’
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, thinks David Cameron’s comments about Brexit admit to an admission that he exaggerated the dangers. (At least, that’s how I interpret this tweet.)
Imagine the reaction if David Cameron was going round Davos telling business leaders that Brexit is a disaster and Britain is screwed
The prime minister still has full confidence in Nadhim Zahawi, her junior education minister, we have been told. Asked at the regular media briefing if this was the case, May’s deputy spokesman replied simply: “Yes”.
Overall, it seems No10 are very keen to give the idea that the matter is closed and we should stop asking about the Presidents Club event.
5News has released some footage of the former prime minister David Cameron talking about Brexit. He was talking to Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon and he said.
It’s frustrating. As I keep saying, it’s a mistake, not a disaster. It’s turned out less badly than we first thought. But it’s still going to be difficult.
The man who called the EU referendum says what he really thinks about Brexit…
The Bank of England has issued a statement about the Presidents Club story. According to the FT report, tea with the governor, Mark Carney, was one of the lots in the charity auction. The bank says Carney is “deeply dismayed” that a dinner of this kind took place and that it had not agreed to offer a prize. What seems to have happened is that a tour of the bank offered as a prize for the Lord Mayor’s appeal charity auction had been passed on without the bank’s permission.
This is from the BBC’s Mark Broad.
Mark Carney is not happy that tea with him was offered at the #PresidentsClub event
With the odds stacked against a deal soon that would lead to the restoration of the devolved parliament in Northern Ireland and the return of power sharing government, there has been an interesting development today in the local civil service. A senior civil servant within the Northern Ireland Office has been appointed apparently with task of seeing how gay marriage equality law can be introduced into the region.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where gay marriage is not legal. The Democratic Unionist party, which has an influential evangelical Christian base, has used a veto power aimed at protecting minority rights in the province to shoot down attempts to introduce gay marriage equality when the Stormont assembly was up and running.
The secretary of state [Karen Bradley] should now make clear her intentions to the Northern Ireland public, including the many same sex couples trying to plan their future.
The Love Equality campaign looks forward to an early meeting with the secretary of state to discuss how best to bring Northern Ireland into line with the other jurisdictions in these islands with the legal recognition the right of same sex couples to marry.
Here is my colleague Suzanne Moore on the Presidents Club scandal.
Nothing is going to stop these wealthy ferals behaving badly, but let this not be done in the name of charity. Let it not be done by our public representatives or by CEOs who boast of getting more women in the boardroom.
And if you want a good cause, here’s one: equality for women. Indeed one might have thought, post-Weinstein, that getting your penis out in front of a student at a fundraising dinner is not the wisest of moves. But the gentlemen’s agreement that it somehow is has been busted. The cover is blown, to reveal that the top of society looks like a bunch of lowlife men who reinforce each other’s scummy behaviour. This isn’t about a few men, though. An entire structure enables this – one that turns giving to charity into a circle jerk over the bodies of young women.
Just caught up with Jess Phillips a few minutes after the conclusion of her urgent question on the “men only” Presidents Club dinner. The Labour MP said she was going to press for more disclosure from government and start asking parliamentary questions in an effort to establish which ministers have attended the controversial event in previous years. Nadhim Zahawi, the children’s minister, was present last night although he has said “I didn’t stay long”. But the Labour backbencher is determined to see if there is more to be disclosed.
If it transpires that the minister did not report his concerns and that he was there on previous occasions it is absolutely surely obvious that he needs to resign – our women are too important, our young girls are too important to get this kind of message from our leaders and to think that it’s acceptable.
Will [the minister] take away the message from this House that we do not have confidence in the minister for children and who is meant to be in charge of child protection?
His department is responsible for safeguarding millions of children and caring for thousands of victims of child sexual exploitation and abuse, and for tackling sexual harassment and violence in our schools, for colleges, for universities and for educating another generation of both girls and boys. Isn’t it time that they started leading by example?
I have spoken to my fellow minister in the department, he didn’t stay at the event long and I know that he found the event extremely uncomfortable. He left and he was truly shocked by the reports that have emerged.
I thought things had changed and it is absolutely clear that it hasn’t changed. I think there is an association between rich, wealthy people and this sort of behaviour. We have to send a clear message that this is unacceptable.
What happened is that women were bought as bait for men who were rich men, not a mile from where we stand, as if that is an acceptable behaviour – it is totally unacceptable.
Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman said that reports of the Presidents Club event were “appalling” and that women clearly felt threatened there.
“It’s a gross example of sexual harassment under this organisation’s umbrella,” the spokesman said. He went on:
Clearly there were different parts of the evening but we need to know more about what took place there and if necessary that should be looked at by the Charity Commission. People who attended need to give an account of what they were present for and how they reacted.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education minister facing calls for his resignation over his attendance at the Presidents Club dinner, has used Twitter to say he is shocked by what he has read about what happened and that he will never attend a men-only function every again.
I do unequivocally condemn this behaviour. The report is truly shocking. I will never attend a men only function ever.
David Walliams, the comedian who hosted the Presidents Club event, has tweeted about the story. He says he did not witness any of the sexual harassment that reportedly occurred.
1) Last Thursday night I hosted the Presidents Club annual charity fundraiser. I agreed to host as it is one of the biggest charity fund raising events of the year. I was there in a strictly professional capacity and not as a guest.
2) I left immediately after I had finished my presenting on stage at 11.30pm. I did not witness any of the kind of behaviour that allegedly occurred and am absolutely appalled by the reports.
Theresa May backed David Meller’s resignation (see 12.50am), Downing Street said. “Yes, he has been asked to step down and the prime minister thinks that is the right decision,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. He said:
The PM was uncomfortable at the reports she read this morning, I say reports because clearly this is an event to which she would not be invited.
My understanding is that Mr Zahawi clearly did attend the event briefly and has himself said he felt uncomfortable at it at the point at which the hostesses were introduced by the host.
The UQ is over. But the Labour MP Gareth Snell asks Anne Milton was not able to answer questions directly about Nadhim Zahawi. How can MPs question him about what happened?
John Bercow, the Speaker, says Snell can table a question to the minister, or raise the issue in other ways.
The SNP’s Lisa Cameron says it is “incongruous” for Nadhim Zahawi to be a child protection minister when he attended an event like this.
Labour’s Sarah Jones says Nadhim Zahawi should resign if he did not report what was happening.
Milton ignores the point, and responds by talking about the importance of using appropriate language.
Labour’s Melanie Onn asks why Nadhim Zahawi did not report his concerns about this event.
Milton says Zahawi submitted a report to her first thing this morning (ie, after the story appeared in the FT, not after the event took place on Thursday last week).
Milton says, although lunch with Boris Johnson was one of the lots in the charity auction, Johnson did not know about that. And he was not involved in the event at all, she says.
Milton says Nadhim Zahawi was attending the event in a private capacity.
Milton says she is robust and angry about this. But a little bit of her is extremely said about it too, she says.
Labour’s Paula Sheriff says it is not enough to say that the education minister Nadhim Zahawi only stayed at the dinner for a short period of time.
Milton says Sheriff will have to accept what she says. She saw Zahawi this morning and he was deeply shocked by what was happening at the event.
Labour’s Lucy Powell says this is not just a misjudgment; this was about sticking two fingers up to people concerned about sexual misconduct.
Milton says young people must be brought up to realise this behaviour is unacceptable. She says it is disappointing that young men attended this event and thought that behaviour was okay.
Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem deputy leader, says some mean feel entitled to women. That a charity is prepared to tolerate “beggars belief”. She says the Charity Commission should investigate this.
Milton says Great Ormond Street hospital has said it will not take the money raised from the event set aside for it.
Labour’s Angela Eagle says the Fawcett Society published a report recently saying two thirds of women over 16 have suffered harassment. She says the women working at this event were expected to suffer harassment. That must be against the law, she says. Will that be investigated?
Milton says she does want to ensure that this gets looked at.
Justine Greening, the Conservative former education secretary, says she is shocked too. But she welcomes the fact that business leaders at that event will now have to publish gender pay information.
Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the Commons home affairs committee, says the disclaimer issued by the President Club shows that the organisers knew what was going on. She says they should all resign.
Milton says this is really shocking. She is appalled as all MPs are, she says.
Milton says this behaviour does not fall far short of payment for sex. She says she is worried that women are encouraging other women to take part in events like this.
The SNP’s Carol Monaghan says this event was billed as the most un-PC event of the year. So the organisers did know what they were doing. She says the reference to women staff being called out of the toilets and taken back to the ballroom shows what was really going on. It was not just sexism, she says; it was slavery. She asks who can teachers fight sexism when the education department is appointing people like this to senior roles.
Milton says she is extremely robust on these issues.
Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, asks why the education minister Nadhim Zahawi was at the event.
Milton says Zahawi was at the dinner. He did not stay long and he felt uncomfortable about what was going on.
Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP, says as the mother of daughters about the age of the waitressing staff at the event, she was appalled by what she read. She felt as protective as a lioness. She says there were not just Conservative politicians there.
Milton says the Commons must send out a message that this is unacceptable.
Jess Phillips asks her question.
Anne Milton, an educatoin minister, is responding.
UQ granted at 12.45 to @jessphillips to ask @DamianHinds if he thinks it is appropriate that David Miller remains a Non-Exec Director in @educationgovuk following revelations about the men’s only President’s Dinner.
Nicky Morgan, the Conservative chair of the Treasury committee, asks if the government will publish details of its plans for financial services after Brexit.
May says the government wants financial services to have a bright future after Brexit.
The SNP’s Deidre Brock asks if the government will publish details of benefit claimants who have taken their lives after having their benefits cut.
May says the government does not give details of individual benefit claimants.
Labour’s Tracy Brabin asks about a constituent who is a teacher who is having to wait six weeks for a universal credit payment. She is having to rely on food banks.
May says changes have been made, availability of advance payments has increased, and the size of them has increased too.
David Evennett, a Conservative, asks May to congratulate his local rugby on his anniversary.
May says sport is very valuable. She does congratulate the club.
Labour’s Julie Elliott asks about a constituent who was repeatedly denied a smear test. Will the government change the law so women under 25 can get a smear test when they are symptomatic. It could be called Amber’s law, after her constituent.
May says too many women do not take up smear test. She knows they are not comfortable, she says. But she wants to encourage women to have them.
John Hayes, a Conservative, asks May to back reducing the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals.
May says the maximum stake will be cut. The government consultation on this has just closed. She says the government also wants to stop children being drawn into gambling.
May says everyone will send her the best wishes. The government does want to ensure the best treatments are provided. Jeremy Hunt will be happy to meet Jones and May.
PMQs – Snap verdict: One reason why Number 10 has reportedly been resistant to Boris Johnson’s call for an announcement about more money for the NHS is that Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, thinks the Tories can never win on health, and these exchanges seemed to confirm that. Jeremy Corbyn started with two excellent questions – classic unanswerable zingers. He might have been better to stick with these lines of attack (unsurprisingly, May just sidestepped them), because his later questions did not have quite the same potency, but they still amounted to a solid and persuasive case for higher NHS funding that May couldn’t answer very effectively. May came off worst, as she normally does on the NHS, but in some respects these changes were different. She did not try to pivot into an argument about the economy, as she usually does, perhaps sensing that attacking Labour’s tax policy doesn’t help much in a debate about the NHS. Instead she tried to make an argument about how the NHS needs not just money, but best practice. That may be true, but in the face of the extensive evidence cited by Corbyn about NHS failings, it sounded a tad irrelevant. You could tell May was in difficulty because by question three she was going on about Wales. Normally Corbyn just brushes aside the complaints about the NHS in “Labour Wales”, but this time he made a decent stab at blaming it on Westminster under-funding, and that helped him too.
Corbyn says Labour would not be under-funding the NHS. As many as 80 patients were harmed or died as a result of ambulance delays this winter, according to a whistleblower. What investigation is being carried out?
May says these reports are alarming. They will be properly investigated. If there are lessons to be learnt, they will be learnt, The government is backing the NHS with more funding. Survival rates for cancer are better than ever before. And waste in the NHS is being reduced. That’s a plan for the NHS, but one that puts patients first.
Corbyn says the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Trust agree the NHS needs an extra £4bn. Now it has emerged that waiting figures may be even worse than stated because the figures have been fiddled. When will figures be published that are comparable with previous years.
May quotes waiting figures for Wales, where Labour is in power.
Jeremy Corbyn backs what May said about Holocaust Memorial day.
Does May agree with Boris Johnson that the NHS needs an extra £5bn?
Stephen Metcalfe, a Conservative, asks about getting more women into engineering.
May says she has been promoting this for some time. The year of engineering allows people to promote careers in engineering, she says.
Theresa May starts by saying MPs will want to remember Holocaust Memorial day on Saturday.
She says later today she will go to Switzerland for Davos. She may even bump into John McDonnell, she says.
Here are the main points from the David Davis hearing.
If on the 30 March 2019 the UK is subject to the European court of justice, takes new rules relating to the single market, is paying into the European budget, are we not a vassal state?
Transition is different, because transition means that we are de facto inside the European Union for that period. We are only actually out at the end of the transition. That is a big shift in government policy, and a big move away from the vote in June 2016.
If that were going to be the case in perpetuity, my answer would probably be yes. But the answer, for a short time, no.
What happens if that is not exactly right, if it does not work out quite that way, we’ll see when we come to it.
I don’t really care what the outcome is, so long as 1) it does not require us to meet some of the other treaty duties. We are happy to accept ECJ oversight for that period. There will be questions about what happens about subsequent laws. So it will be bespoke.
That is what matters, that is what people will think about and judge us on in 10, 20, 30 years’ time.
It would be unwise to get sucked into a negotiation during the transition period itself which is substantive, major. Why? Because the balance of power in the negotiation alters. The aim then on the part of the commission would be to spin out the negotiation.
I never used the phrase ‘red line’ at all … Any idiot who goes into a commercial negotiation with the phrase ‘red line’ determines one thing. He does not determine he will hit his red line. He determines he will hit no more than his red line.
Nicola Sturgeon has issued a furious rebuttal of claims in the Daily Telegraph and Scottish Daily Mail that she has banned all Scottish government buildings from flying the union jack, save for Remembrance Day and armed forces day.
Alongside a dispute on Twitter with the radio journalist Iain Dale, the first minister issued a detailed and categorical denial of the claims, insisting a decision to use the lion rampant rather than the union jack on royal occasions was taken eight years ago, and she had no part in it. In Scotland, the lion rampant is used as an alternative royal standard.
This rather flies in the face of what @Nicolasturgeon is denying in tweets 2 me this morning. As I say, happy to correct if wrong, but this seems to prove the @Telegraph story is bang on. Or is @NicolaSturgeon denying responsibility for a document issued in her government’s name? https://t.co/KQ5OiQx4Yo
1/ since the truth doesn’t seem to matter very much to some, let me set out the facts on this ridiculous flag story…
I changed the policy on flag flying back in 2010 after an audience with Her Majesty the Queen at Balmoral the previous year…
[I] remember the occasion very well. Her Majesty asked me if the lion rampant was a popular flag in Scotland. I was able to assure her that it was and indeed much beloved of Scottish football and rugby fans. Thus I brought the new policy into effect and left the union flag flying as appropriate, at armed forces day and Remembrance Sunday…
Talks begin today in Northern Ireland aimed at ending over a year of political deadlock in the region and restoring power sharing government at Stormont.
But while the two main political parties in the currently suspended Northern Ireland assembly vowed on Wednesday to seek a positive outcome to the discussions, sources in two of the smaller parties were less optimistic.
We do not see the need for stand-alone legislation which is exclusive to the Irish language. There are multiple languages and cultures in Northern Ireland, we should seek to embrace and support that diversity.
Hilary Benn concludes by thanking Davis for coming. If he were to come more often, the hearings would be shorter, he says.
And that’s it.
Davis says he has got another meeting at 11am.
The Conservative Craig Mackinlay is allowed one question.
Here is the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, a member of the committee, on the Davis/Rees-Mogg exchanges.
Is huge row brewing in Tory Party abt transition period, played out in @CommonsEUexit Committee@DavidDavisMP just told us govt accepts ECJ jurisdiction & full application of Single Market & Customs Union throughout transition@Jacob_Rees_Mogg says that makes us a “vassal state”
Davis says a no deal Brexit is now “highly improbable”.
Labour’s Seema Malhotra goes next.
Q: There is a high turnover of staff in your department. Are you concerned about that?
Davis told Rees-Mogg earlier only an “idiot” would go into a commercial negotiation with red lines, because if you do that, the red lines are all you will get.
That prompted HuffPost Ned Simons to dig out this.
David Davis says anyone who goes into negotiations with ‘red lines’ is an ‘idiot’. pic.twitter.com/WbhHRipAxd
Q: Will we continue to pay money to the EU during the transition?
Davis says he expects the UK to pay during the course of the transition.
Q: Will the UK accept new EU rules during the transition?
Davis says it takes two years for new EU rules to come into force. But the EU is talking about a 21-month transition. So any new rules coming into force would have been formulated while the UK was a member.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory Brexiter, goes next.
Q: If after Brexit the UK is paying into the EU budget, and subject to its laws, won’t the UK be a vassal state?
Here is the start of the Press Association’s story about the opening of the hearing.
Brexit Secretary David Davis has said that he wants “substantive” negotiations on Britain’s future relationship with the EU to be concluded by the time it leaves the bloc in March 2019.
Giving evidence to the Commons Exiting the EU Committee, Davis said it would be a mistake to allow negotiations to carry on into the proposed transition period following Brexit.
This is from the Economist’s John Peet.
On NI, DDavis keeps on about smoothness of Canada/US border. But December deal promised no physical infrastructure and no associated checks or controls on Irish border. US/Canada has all three as does Norway/Sweden
Davis says he “suspects” the government will publish a paper on financial services after Brexit, but it has “no explict plan” to do so.
David Davis just told @CommonsEUexit the Govt never promised a financial services position paper.
But here’s what Miles Celic, Chief Exec of TheCityUK, said on Monday:
“The industry was led to believe such a paper was always just a couple of weeks away.”https://t.co/t4mddFCS9m
Labour’s Stephen Timms goes next.
Davis says the UK will be happy to accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ during the transition.
Open Britain, which is campaigning for a soft Brexit, has put out this in response to Davis’s admission that he has changed his mind about the UK staying in the customs union after Brexit. (See 9.31am.)
WATCH: David Davis just admitted at @CommonsEUexit committee that he “changed his mind” on his previous support for the Customs Union.
If Davis can change his mind, so can the British public. Please RT so everybody knows they can keep an open mind on Brexit: pic.twitter.com/KUbTsVSr8K
The DUP MP Sammy Wilson goes next.
Q: One of the aims of the December deal was to protect “this mythical all-island economy”. What do you understand by that?
Labour’s Emma Reynolds has tweeted about the Davis speech mentioned earlier in which Davis some years ago backed staying in the customs union.
David Davis said some very sensible things about advantages of staying in customs union a few years ago. He tells @CommonsEUexit that he has changed his mind. His new opinions fly in the face of the evidence from business including car industry #Brexitpic.twitter.com/vTzILimpl0
This is from my colleague John Crace, the Guardian’s sketchwriter, who is watching the hearing.
David Davis repeatedly saying at select committee he doesn’t want to be held to what he said in the past. Which must cast doubt on what he is saying now as he could change mind later
Q: Why are you setting up a new unit to deal with EU nationals after Brexit, and not leaving it with the Home Office?
Davis says this was a means of showing how serious the government is about protecting their rights.
Richard Graham, a Conservative, goes next. He asks about the rights of EU nationals.
Davis says the EU may be holding back a concession about allowing British nationals living in one EU country to move freely to live in another after Brexit as a “bargaining chip” for a later stage of the negotiation, he says.
Davis says the UK will not pay “danegeld” to the EU to get access to the single market.
Q: What about spending the Brexit dividend on health?
Davis says he used to be a director of a public company. He says in that job you were not allowed to talk about spending a dividend until you had it.
Stephen Crabb, the Conservative former work and pensions secretary, goes next.
Q: Do you expect the UK to remain part of the EU’s excise movement and control system during the transition?
Labour’s Emma Reynolds is asking the questions now.
Davis is talking about a trip he made recently to the US-Canada border. When a trusted trader scheme was introduced, customs takings went up $1m a month, he says.
Earlier Davis mocked the Bank of England’s forecasts about what might happen after the vote to leave the EU.
The Tory Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg, a member of the committee, thinks Davis should have gone further.
In evidence to the Brexit Committee @DavidDavisMP ridiculed the useless Bank of England forecasts on the consequences of a vote to leave. Too polite to say they were politically motivated.
John Whittingdale, the Conservative former culture secretary, goes next.
Q: What is the difference between a transition period and a deferral of Brexit?
Q: Last week this committee was told that a Ceta-type deal (Ceta is the EU-Canada free trade deal) was not compatible with keeping the border open in Ireland.
Davis asks why.
The SNP’s Joanna Cherry is asking the questions now. She asks about the UK-EU deal at the end of phase one of the Brexit talks.
She asks about the UK internal market. The UK is assuming, in the deal it struck in December, that Westminster will have the power to regulate over matters that are devolved.
Here is the Economist’s Brexit editor John Peet on Davis’s trade claims.
DDavis arithmetic doesn’t add up. Hard Brexit, says LSE, cuts 45pc EU share of exports by 40pc. 20pc exports to US: no FTA likely. 15pc to EU FTA countries. Only 20pc left: so even 40pc increase offsets only half lost EU trade
This is from my colleague Rowena Mason.
But Davis still claims all of substantive issue of future deal with EU will be done in next year before March 2019 as it would be “unwise” to get dragged into negotiations during transition period- which is what EU believe will happen
@EU_Commission would “spin out” negotiations about future relationship with UK if they took place during transition phase, claims DD
Q: You have just given a quantitative assessment of how much trade could increase. But at the last hearing you said you had not done an quantitative Brexit impact assessments.
Davis says the government has done sectoral analyses.
Q: A few years ago you wrote a speech saying the UK should stay in the customs union after Brexit?
Davis says he has changed his mind.
Speech just cited to @DavidDavisMP by him at Brexit Committee where he backed Customs Union membership to protect Europe trade and allow other trade freedoms: (seems to be 2012) https://t.co/T9QSE6LkOn
These sessions tend to be wide-ranging and informative – Davis is more prone to actually engaging with the questions he is asked than many of his colleagues in government – but last night the former Number 10 spin doctor Matthew O’Toole (who worked on the EU referendum campaign when David Cameron was prime minister) took to Twitter to give Davis some PR advice.
David Davis surely needs a story for tomorrow’s select committee. He should probably exert some control over it and try to make the story that the UK will accept full acquis and therefore free movement during the transition….
Because a) that is already the government’s position, though not explicitly b) they are better saying it themselves rather than waiting for the EU to make hay with it and c) a row over this is better than a row over either future relationship or the meaning of ‘full alignment’
The broad issue that I was trying to address was that there are a lot of people, particularly in places like Mansfield, who work very hard and have to make very difficult decisions financially about whether they can afford to have kids. And I found that people find it frustrating when a very small minority of people appear to take advantage of the benefit system. Now we have the benefits cap and we have a two-child limit on child benefit and hopefully those things can’t happen anymore. But language aside that was the broad point I was trying to make and I still stand by that.
The health committee hearing is now over.
Q: Are you winning the argument for more money for the NHS?
Hunt says the government understands the pressures the NHS is under. But it is also under pressure to ensure government money is spent well. There is still waste in the NHS that needs to be tackled, he says.
Hunt says the NHS does not just require universal access; there must be universal access to quality care, not just any old care, he says.
Hunt says Italy and Spain spend less than the UK on social care, but seem to have fewer problems. There may be societal reasons for that, he says.
He says he does want to look at what happens in other countries as part of the review of social care.
Sarah Wollaston says she is pleased to hear Hunt say health funding and social care funding are linked. Will the review cover both?
Hunt says all he can say is that it does not make sense to look at the funding for one without looking at the funding for another.
Labour’s Ben Bradshaw goes next.
Q: Did you support Boris Johnson’s call for extra health spending?
That is a question you will have to ask the foreign secretary.
Hunt says the risk pooling part of the social care system does not work at the moment. It is very random. If you get dementia, you could end up in a care home and having to pay for everything. That does not happen with other illnesses, he says.
Hunt says it does not make sense to look at health funding separately from social care funding. They are connected, he says.
Q: What do you think of the call from MPs for a cross-party commission on health funding?
Sarah Wollaston, the committee chair, says they have finished the Brexit questions.
Now they want to ask about the change to the department’s name, and to Jeremy Hunt’s role. He is now secretary of state for health and social care.
A few minutes ago Labour’s Ben Bradshaw asked Jeremy Hunt about the NHS and the government’s migration target (getting net migration below 100,000 a year). Hunt said the home secretary, Amber Rudd, was sympathetic to the needs of the health and social care sector. He said she totally understood the needs of the sector.
Bradshaw said it sounded as if the target were going, which he said would be “very good news”. Hunt did not respond.
Jeremy Hunt tells @CommonsHealth Home Office “very sympathetic” to the NHS & Social Care’s need for migrant labour in wake of #Brexit vote. Sounds like Govt’s net immigration target’s on the way out.
This is what Jeremy Hunt said earlier (see 3.19pm) about favouring “close regulatory alignment” with the EU.
In terms of the regulatory alignment, I think the situation is this. There is I don’t think any intellectual problem or incompatibility with totally close regulatory alignment and the UK agreeing to do that on an ongoing basis. Obviously parliaments cannot bind future parliaments, but saying this is what we intend to happen for ever.
I think the issue is the legal underpinnings to that. If that regulatory alignment is agreed between two sovereign powers, the EU and the UK, with international arbitration, or an agreed arbitration if one party thinks the other party is breaching that agreement, then I think that is completely acceptable and I think that is the kind of relationship that could work every well, not just in pharmaceuticals but also in life sciences, also financial services as well.
The national security council has agreed to hold a separate, stand-alone defence review, the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn reports. Currently defence is being considered as part of the national security capability review, which also covers counter-terrorism.
Breaking: Defence cuts have been suspended, at least for now. The NSC have just agreed to hold a fresh defence review (which they’ll call a Modernising Defence Programme).
Someone just told me Amber Rudd was one of 8 cabinet ministers ticking off Boris. Source said she argued there had to be “trust” between ministers, before adding: “I’m talking to you, foreign secretary.” Ha!!
Hunt says Brexit has been a catalyst for thinking about how the NHS treats its staff. He says relying on recruitment from overseas to fill NHS posts was never a sustainable position.
But the government has committed itself to responding to motions like this with a statement. Today Tobias Ellwood, a defence minister, has issued a written ministerial statement about the defence pay vote. He says:
The 2015 spending review and autumn statement budgeted for 1% average basic pay and progression pay awards. However, the government recognises that in some parts of the public sector, more flexibility may be required, particularly in areas of skill shortage and in return for improvements to public sector productivity. There continues to be a need for pay discipline over the coming years to ensure the affordability of the public services and the sustainability of public sector employment.
Hunt says staying in the single market would not be compatible with the vote to leave the EU. That would leave the UK as a rule-taker. Many people who voted leave would find that completely unacceptable, he says.
On regulatory alignment, he says he does not see any problem with “totally close regulatory alignment”.
Back at the health committee the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw asks Jeremy Hunt who is holding up a Brexit transition deal. Hunt says there will be one.
But we could agree one now, Bradshaw says. Who is holding it up? Boris Johnson?
Grant Shapps, the former Conservative party chairman, has just told BBC News that, while he disagreed with Boris Johnson’s decision to brief the newspapers about his NHS spending demands, he thought Johnson’s argument was a sound one. Shapps said he thought the public were now in favour of spending more money on the NHS.
Does anyone know what the Conservative MP Julian Knight has done wrong? Envoy to Mongolia used to be a joke job that no one would ever want, but it turns out this afternoon that it is a real post, and it’s just gone to Knight.
Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, made the announcement in written ministerial statement. Fox said:
The prime minister has approved two new appointments to the trade Envoy programme. Ranil Jayawardena MP has been appointed as the trade envoy for Sri Lanka and Julian Knight MP, as the trade envoy for Mongolia. These new trade envoys take the total number to 30 parliamentarians covering 59 markets.
The trade envoy programme is an unpaid and voluntary cross-party network, who support the UK’s ambitious trade and investment agenda in global markets. They have contributed to business wins worth around £19.5bn.
My colleague Gaby Hinsliff has a good column on Boris Johnson and the NHS. Here is an excerpt.
[Johnson] has also acknowledged a formidable space opening up for Labour. Ambitious Tories used to signal leadership intentions by promising tax cuts and a war on waste. Now they compete to spend money (witness the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, unleashing the chiefs of defence staff to do his lobbying for him). They sense the public mood shifting, approaching the tipping point that historically propels Labour into power; an emerging consensus even among voters not directly affected by austerity that it’s gone too far now, that public services need a break.
All the stars are aligned, in other words, for a lifesaving injection except one; thanks partly to Johnson’s undoubtedly brilliant campaigning skills, the economy may be headed for a brick wall. Even if Brexit miraculously turns out to cost nothing – if a perfect deal materialises from nowhere, if GDP doesn’t miss a beat, if we spend virtually nothing on replicating what the EU used to do and thus free up the £350m a week we never actually sent to Brussels because some of it came home in a rebate – that money still won’t be available until the transition period ends in 2021. The NHS needs help now, which means it realistically must come from the same place it always comes: voters’ pockets, or fellow cabinet ministers’ budgets. We’re about to see how keen they are to save Boris Johnson from himself.
Jeremy Hunt says the government wants to settle the transition agreement by the end of March, but adds “it may take a little longer.”
This is significant because, for business, the end of March has been almost an absolute deadline for a transition deal. For example, Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general, said in a speech yesterday that business needs a “transition deal agreed, in writing within 70 days, by the end of March”.
Here is some more on what happened at cabinet.
From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg
Hearing there was support for Johnson’s NHS plea at Cabinet this morning from some quarters, as well as the telling off from others – importantly principle was agreed that money that won’t go on EU payments after Brexit should be spent, at least in part, on the NHS
Asked one cabinet member whether Boris got a ticking off in cabinet. “He got a complete bitch slap”. Not once, but twice by PM. And also slapped down by other cabinet members including Jeremy Hunt.
Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, starts by saying she wants to spend 15 minutes at the end of the session on other topics.
Jeremy Hunt introduces himself. He is the health secretary, he says, before remembering his new title and correcting himself; he is the health and social care secretary, he says.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is about to give evidence to the Commons health committee. The hearing is supposed to be about Brexit and the regulation of medicines, but MPs often use these sessions to ask about topical issues and so NHS funding generally may come up.
You can watch a live feed here. I will be covering the highlights.
First of all when it comes to the precise conditions those are operational matters that are decided at an operational level. But let me reassure him that nearly a fortnight ago I wrote to the relevant authorities stressing the needs to ensure that the concerns of victims are put at the heart of this process, and ensuring that the most stringent measures are taken in place in terms of the conditions.
What became increasingly obvious is that where there should have been clarity, there was ambiguity. It got worse post-2017 election, of that there is absolutely no doubt.
This [loneliness] is one of the most pressing social issues of our time, with research showing that nine million people say they always or often feel lonely. And of course it is charities and civil society who will play a crucial part in our plans to tackle it.
More from the Times’ Sam Coates.
Further updates on cabinet this morning paints different picture: interventions by Michael Gove, Chris Graying and Jeremy Hunt were seen (by some) as helpful to Johnson. Lots of anger at Johnson allies briefing op BUT no disagreement that brexit dividend should be used for NHS
Here is some more from the lobby briefing.
Here is the Times’s Sam Coates on today’s cabinet.
Asked if today’s cabinet meeting was a humiliation for Boris, one observer said: “pretty much”. They added: “Let’s just say he didn’t have much support”
This is that the prime minister’s spokesman told the lobby in his read-out about what was said at cabinet about the NHS
The cabinet then received a winter update on the NHS. Ministers were told the health service had been placed under significant pressure by the worst flu outbreak for a number of years. In the first week of 2018 flu admissions were approaching that seen in the highest week in 2010-11, which was the time of the swine flu epidemic, but staff were doing an excellent job in treating patients.
Cabinet were told the most extensive preparations ever had taken place due to enhancements to the 111 phone line, with more doctors and nurses on the end of the line. An estimated 2.3m people have been diverted away from A&E. An extra 1m people were also given flu vaccinations.
The prime minister and a large number of cabinet ministers made the point that cabinet discussions should take place in private.
Here is the Spectator’s James Forsyth on what happened at cabinet.
Understand Boris didn’t mention specific figures at Cabinet, and pulled his horns in a bit after those who spoke first emphasised that these conversations should take place in private not public
Cabinet today another reminder of how Theresa May sees Liam Fox as a bridge between her and the Brexiteers, look at how early on she called him & how he delivered for her by emphasising that these conversations should take place in private
I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing about today’s cabinet. Here are the key points.
Boris Johnson said nothing as he left Cabinet -Other members of Cabinet looked less than delighted to be asked about what he had to say
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, has accused Boris Johnson of using the NHS just to advance his own standing in the Conservative party. Ashworth told the BBC
He’s calling for an extra £5bn. It’s just Boris Johnson playing games, isn’t it? He’s weaponising the NHS, if you like, for his own internal Tory party games.
He’s calling for an extra £5bn for the NHS. That’s actually what we’ve been calling for. But where’s he been these last two years? We had a budget last autumn where the Tory government completely failed to give the NHS the funding it needs. Where was he ahead of that budget?
Norman Smith has also spotted a remoaner fox …
In other news.. .a fox scuttled along Downing Street earlier and cocked its leg on the railings outside David Davis’ Brexit dept.
Today’s cabinet is over, the BBC’s Norman Smith reports.
Boris Johnson first to leave cabinet. Says nothing.
Here are some of the most interesting Brexit stories around today.
Last autumn, senior City figures say they were promised a detailed position paper in a matter of weeks setting out Britain’s negotiating priorities for a sector that employs more than 1m people across the country.
But delivery of the paper was delayed repeatedly and now ministers are considering not publishing it at all, according to business executives and government officials involved in the discussions. The government remains unable to agree a detailed position on the sector, and some officials are still reluctant to show Brussels their negotiating hand, they added.
The environment secretary told cabinet that the big companies of today may be eclipsed by businesses that don’t even exist yet as he made the case for a clean Brexit …
During a recent cabinet meeting Philip Hammond, the chancellor, highlighted the demands of business as he made the case for “high-alignment” with the EU after Brexit.
The European Commission president will agree to pay Home Office bills of up to £230 million for EU citizens to secure their permanent residency rights in Britain, a source in Brussels said.
The proposal to pick up the bill, tabled by Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s negotiator, and senior MEPs as a way for the EU to win the moral high ground in Brexit talks, had been “positively received” by Mr Juncker, the source added. “Juncker was open to the idea, which puts the EU on the side of citizens in Brexit and makes the British look petty for charging,” they said.
When we turned to what would happen next, his words implied that Britain’s problems are only beginning: “The new parallel talks [on how negotiations on the future relationship will be structured] will probably start in March. The actual negotiations on the future relationship will only begin once the UK leaves the EU.”
What about the transition that is supposed to avoid a “cliff-edge” Brexit, I asked. “There is no mandate to discuss the transition period yet, but it will be short. Prime Minister May has stated that it should take two years. It cannot last longer for legal reasons.” That sounds like it could mean unwelcome inflexibility for Britain, now that even Davis is talking about transition lasting “about” two years. Much of Whitehall is banking on (or praying for) something much longer …
In his Facebook post ITV’s Robert Peston says the government now seems to be on course for a softish Brexit. (See 10.26am.)Nick Macpherson, the former permanent secretary at the Treasury, is saying much the same. He posted these on Twitter this morning.
1/2 A reason for cautious optimism. What HMG has said and what it has done on EU negotiations are very different.
2/2 We will end up more integrated with EU than Brexiteers hope and Remainers fear. #freetrade
Henry Bolton, the Ukip leader, told Sky’s All Out Politics that he expects the extraordinary general meeting that will decide whether he can remain as leader to be held on Saturday 17 February.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston has written an interesting blog about Boris Johnson. He is speculating that Johnson’s NHS manoeuvring is in part be about Johnson positioning himself to be ready to resign if Theresa May ends up opting for a softish Brexit.
Sir, As the second phase of the UK’s negotiations with the EU start, I gather from friends at the European Commission that thanks to Boris Johnson, “cake” has entered Brussels bureaucratic slang for a ridiculous position or demand, one that is so far from being realistic that the other side doesn’t even bother to respond.
For example, a civil servant may say to his or her minister: “Minister, I fear that may be seen as cake.” Or a negotiator may respond to another’s demand with: “Thank you for that piece of cake.” It is marginally more polite than “Get real” but has much the same meaning.
Here is Boris Johnson arriving for cabinet.
Nick Timothy, who was Theresa May’s co-chief of staff until he resigned after the general election, has used Twitter to accuse Boris Johnson of disloyalty.
Breaching collective responsibility and leaking cabinet discussions are bad enough but part of political life. But pre-briefing your disagreement with government policy ahead of cabinet?
Turning away from the cabinet and Boris Johnson for a moment, the Ukip saga rumbles on. Henry Bolton, the embattled leader, and Nigel Farage, his more accomplished predecessor, have both been giving interviews this morning. Here are the main points.
I am not saying that I support Henry Bolton. What I do support is him saying to the NEC ‘I’m not going to take your judgment, I will move this on to a full extraordinary general meeting of the Ukip membership’. And that gives us a huge opportunity.
If there was an EGM tomorrow Henry Bolton would lose it very heavily indeed. But he has a month in which to make his case. If he is able in the space of a month to put together a new constitution, and a new management structure for the party that shows that the leader needs to be able to lead and not be held back by a failed organisation he might just win the day.
It’s the NEC that has failed to address internal disciplinary matters, it’s failed to unite the party and it’s full of people who have always backed different people in the party and added to the fractionalisation of the party. We cannot politically afford another leadership contest and what’s really important going forward is we bring some stability to this. I’m attempting to do that.
The romantic side of the relationship is on hold. It won’t go any further if indeed that is a problem for the party. Who knows what the future contains? Most probably it will not come back together.
UKIP resignations still rolling in this morning. Jonathan Bullock tells me he’s quitting as energy spox, here’s his letter to Henry Bolton pic.twitter.com/6MxWYw4bs1
The Conservative pro-European Anna Soubry has renewed her call for Boris Johnson to be sacked.
Any decent For Sec wld have stepped down re Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe but then any decent For Sec wouldn’t have behaved as Boris did https://t.co/3f5uqgEUfe
Caroline Lucas, the Green party’s co-leader, has joined other pro-Europeans in attacking Boris Johnson for his stance on the NHS. In a statement she said:
It seems that brass neck Boris has struck again. Not only does this brexiteer-in-chief keep repeating lies about mythical savings from leaving the EU, but now he’s trying to position himself as a saviour of the NHS after his party’s extreme brexit stance has caused EU nurses to leave the UK in droves.
Here is the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on today’s cabinet.
Q for this morning is how many ministers weigh in behind Boris Johnson at Cabinet, if any – tumbleweed down the table or some agreement? Watch this space….
But certainly worries about NHS are stoking concerns about May – one MP told me ‘she’s like a Soviet leader who comes to the window to be seen but no one is sure if they are alive’ – #withfriendslikethese
Open Britain, which is campaigning for a soft Brexit, has also criticised Boris Johnson. It has put out this statement from the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, a former health minister.
Few ministers in modern history have done more to undermine our NHS than Boris Johnson.
His lies about how Brexit would deliver £350m a week for the health service have fatally damaged public trust. And the reality of Brexit so far has been a weakened health service with fewer resources and a Brexodus of nurses and doctors.
Here is the pro-European Labour MP Chuka Umunna on Boris Johnson’s NHS intervention.
Nobody believes a word @BorisJohnson says. First it was £350m extra p/w for the NHS which he promised in 2016 and voted against in 2017. Now it’s gone down to £100m extra p/w in 2018. He must think we’re all idiots. https://t.co/wYDdfCkynn
In his clip for the broadcasters (see 8.49am)Philip Hammond, the chancellor, also said the uncertainty generated by Brexit was damaging the economy. Asked if Brexit was having a negative effect on the UK economy, he replied:
Because of the negotiations that are going on there’s a degree of uncertainty about our future direction and our future arrangements for trading with our European partners, and that’s bound to have an impact on thinking about the economy. The sooner we can generate certainty, the better, and that’s why we are keen to build on the momentum that we generated in December and get the negotiations moving forward now in a steady way so that we can see real progress over the course of the coming months.
Here is Philip Hammond speaking to reporters when he arrived for the Ecofin meeting in Brussels. I posted his words at 8.33am. Withering is probably the best way to describe his tone as he delivered the line: “Mr Johnson is the foreign secretary.”
Here is Labour’s Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, on Boris Johnson’s intervention.
There have been many times when the Cabinet leaked after its meeting. There have been some times when there was a leak enquiry. I don’t remember a time when the leak occurred before the meeting and we knew the leakers identity #Boris#WeakAndWobblyPM
Theresa May will chair a cabinet meeting this morning. Her normal practice is to invite ministers to make contributions on the topic under discussion when they are sitting around the oval table in Number 10 but this morning her team will arrive knowing that Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has already made his intervention in the manner, as a former journalist, he knows best – a briefing from his allies to newspapers.
Mr Johnson is the foreign secretary. I gave the health secretary an extra £6bn at the recent budget and we will look at departmental allocations again at the spending review when that takes place.
Here is this week’s Guardian Politics Weekly podcast. It features Heather Stewart, Anushka Asthana, Sonia Sodha, Torsten Bell and Neal Lawson discussing the government reshuffle and the concept of a universal basic income.
According to a report published by the Demos thinktank yesterday, “a relatively significant proportion of leave voters” are starting to change their mind about Brexit.
The report, Citizen’s Voices, is based on the findings of an extensive series of focus groups conducted in the last three months of last year. The research was not primarily about Brexit, but Demos says the topic came up repeatedly. It says leave voters divided into three groups.
Over the course of these focus groups, we observed the emergence of three clear schools of thought amongst leave voters about the Brexit negotiations and Britain’s future after Brexit: those who remain tremendously buoyant about Brexit and its opportunities; those who are increasingly concerned with the process of negotiations and becoming somewhat anxious about its material impacts; and those who are regretful about their decision to vote leave.
This series of focus groups distinctly captured an emergent sense of regret amongst a relatively significant proportion of leave voters. We saw a growing anger at having been forced to take such a momentous decision, without sufficient understanding of the consequences. Many of these participants challenged the purpose of a referendum such as this in a parliamentary democracy, feeling it was too complex and beyond the remit of citizens. They perceive the negotiations are not playing in Britain’s favour, and are becoming acutely fearful about the future.
Over the last year polls have consistently shown that only around a third of voters are in favour of a second referendum. Around 50% of voters are opposed. The excellent What UK Thinks website has the figures here. And this chart sets out how opinion has shifted (or not).
David Miliband, the Labour former foreign secretary who now runs the International Rescue Committee aid organisation in America, says remainers should back a second referendum.
Many journalists agree with Iain Duncan Smith (see 3.38pm) and think Nigel Farage’s support for a second Brexit referendum is just a ploy to keep his name in the news.
From the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour
If Farage’s deep strategic aim was self-publicity, mission accomplished. https://t.co/kiPY9CjZAe
my guess is that Nigel Farage just craved more attention, without thinking through how this would galvanise Remainers who until now thought Brexit couldn’t be stopped https://t.co/0GEHnGvMhQ
Did Farage say a controversial thing? Can we all give him lots of attention as a reward?
Farage’s 2nd #EUref call not just attention seeking. Also a perceptive realisation about the coming impasse between Parliament and Govt. It’s more than likely imho.
Just catching up with video tape version of this bombshell. The body language is almost as interesting as the verbal language. Game changer. https://t.co/YyLLhZHRpg
Jonathan Isaby, editor of the pro-Brexit BrexitCentral website, says Nigel Farage’s backing (of sorts – his actual quote is equivocal) for a second referendum is “epically stupid”.
The Brexit minister Steve Baker, a leading figure in the leave movement, thinks Nigel Farage’s call for a second referendum is harmful to the Brexit cause.
Further confirmation of my long-held view that Nigel Farage is one of the greatest impediments to a successful Brexit https://t.co/d8y85PSRW2
Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory Brexiter and former work and pensions secretary, thinks Nigel Farage is backing a second referendum as an act of Trump-style attention seeking. This is from the Evening Standard’s Kate Proctor.
Iain Duncan Smith told me that Nigel Farage’s bid for a second referendum was “straight out of the Trump playbook”. Be in the media at all costs and say the most controversial thing you can think of. His remarks have had no truck with Brexiters.
Labour has announced that Chris Williamson, the Derby North MP, is leaving the front bench. He was shadow fire services minister.
Explaining his move, he said:
I will be standing down from my role with immediate effect so that I can return to the backbenches, where I will be campaigning on a broader range of issues. I will continue to loyally support the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn from the backbenches and hope to be a voice for the party’s members.
Nicola Sturgeon also faced tough questioning on Scotland’s health service at first minister’s questions today, with three out of four opposition leaders demanding answers in the light of some shocking personal stories of poor performance by the ambulance and A&E services.
Sturgeon was explicit about the difficulties facing the service, with flu cases doubling over the past week alone, but insisted that the service was “coping admirably” and repeatedly describing it as “the best performing NHS in the UK”.
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon described as “disgraceful” the UK government’s failure to bring forward amendments this week to the EU withdrawal bill relating to powers already devolved to Holyrood.
At today’s FMQs Sturgeon told the chamber “clause 11 of the Bill is a power grab”, adding: “We need to see amendments without further delay.”
Nigel Farage has split Ukip. Although the former leader has said he is warming to the idea of a second referendum (see 2.30pm), the party’s current leader, Henry Bolton, said it was a bad idea. In a statement Bolton said:
I am convinced that the Leave side would win a second referendum, should one be held, with an even larger majority than before. Many remain voters can now see that the campaign led by the then prime minister and Chancellor as deliberately misleading. We have also seen greater investment and growth in a number of sectors since the summer of 2016. We are already seeing the benefits of leaving the European Union.
None the less, to hold such a referendum would be to call into question the decisive importance of the largest democratic exercise ever held by this country and the unambiguous mandate the people gave the government on that day – the mandate take us out of the European Union. Such a second referendum would set a precedent for revisiting any democratic decision made in future; it would undermine the fabric of our democratic principles and would weaken the clarity and effectiveness of democratic decision.
As my colleague Rowena Mason reports, the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has said that he is warming to the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum. It was a surprising intervention because most Brexiters are strongly opposed to the idea, which they say is unnecessary and which they fear could lead to Brexit being reversed.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Nigel Farage is making a valid point.
In a democracy like ours, the British people have every right to keep an open mind about Brexit.
Tony Blair and Nigel Farage aren’t two people I’d normally like to be put in a group with, but on this issue they are speaking sense.
But Farage shouldn’t be so confident of winning. People are now far more aware of the costs of Brexit and the fabrications of the Leave campaign.
A second referendum: my message is clear – bring it on.
This is something that the country needs. Every day we see the disaster of Brexit as we see its impact on our economy, jobs, communities and our society.
It pains me to concede it but [Farage] has shown that instinct for populism again today by calling for a second referendum. Of course, Farage believes that a second vote will vindicate him and his hard Brexit comrades. He is asking not for a plebiscite so much as some sort of reckoning, with violent language to boot (he said: “I think that if we had a second referendum on EU membership we would kill it off for a generation”). But the underlying argument he makes is essentially correct – Brexit is not a done deal, the future is still up for grabs and the debate about Britain’s place in the world continues.
What I propose is what I call a square deal for the NHS whereby we give it a separate stand-alone funding basis; that we convert National Insurance, which people currently pay when they are employed, or self-employed, we convert it into National Health Insurance.
It goes into a separate national health fund and it funds the NHS and probably the public contribution towards the cost of social care in perpetuity.
Interesting, Graham Brady, top brass of Tory backbenchers, says he might well support separate tax for NHS like @NickBoles and supports Royal Commission
It is no longer a winter crisis – it is a 12-month crisis in the NHS. The prime minister told the House of Commons that the NHS was fully prepared for all eventualities over winter. That was three weeks ago. We have had three weeks of crisis.
Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff has been accused of meddling in education policy after he claimed Justine Greening had to be sacked because she had blocked attempts to reduce university tuition fees and frustrated schools reform, my colleague Rowena Mason and Patrick Greenfield report.
So wrong, this stuff re Justine Greening – she supported me in every single reform we undertook of our universities, was a terrific colleague and faultlessly loyal. https://t.co/9vvJdzGl7I
As you know I like a lot of your uni reforms, Jo, but what you say doesn’t contradict what I say in my piece.
1. Those not obsessed with SW1 machinations, look away now but this turning into a bit of a rumpus this morning https://t.co/Iw8grISaGq
The government’s appointments watchdog has said that Toby Young’s offensive social media tweets should have been taken into account before he was considered for a position on the board of the new regulator, the Office for Students.
Peter Riddell, the commissioner for public appointments, has made the point in a post on his blog about the appointment, which led to Young resigning this week in the face of repeated claims that sexist and homophobic comments he had made in the past on Twitter made him an unsuitable candidate. Riddell says he plans to publisher a fuller report on this in due course.
As @publicapptscomm I have been looking into issues raised by Toby Young role on Office for Students since the announcement on January 1st. I have published a preliminary blog on my website and will report more fully to Parliament and publicly.
Jo Johnson, the then minister for universities, science, research and innovation, said that neither he nor the department were aware of the offensive tweets before the appointment was made, but there is nothing unusual about that. Many of the remarks were made years – in some cases, decades – ago and it is not reasonable or proportionate for the government to trawl through tens of thousands of tweets over many years when making public appointments’.
The problem with that view is that in Mr Young’s case, some of his offensive tweets were unearthed publicly almost as soon as his appointment was announced, and had been the subject of media coverage in the past …
Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News the Labour would put more money into the NHS now. Commenting on the A&E figures, he said:
We would put more resources, money, into the NHS straight away, but also look at the wider question of why those figures are so high, and in part it’s a symptom of lots of other things. Some of those people going into A&E have come from care homes where there was not sufficient support for them. Some of those people have come in because of a level of desperation in their lives and they need that support. But there has to be more resources put in.
Because it also means there is a very quick quantum leap. If you’ve got a car park full of ambulances with highly skilled paramedics and ambulance staff in the ambulance trying to treat the patient [who] ought to be in the hospital, but can’t go in because the A&E is full and there are no beds to move people on to, then down the line there’s a whole lot more people with chest pains, with strokes, who are not being treated because nobody can get to them. Very quickly you get into a pretty big disaster.
Here are the main points from Theresa May’s Q&A after the speech.
Look, I think that the impact of this vote would undermine high-quality journalism and a free press. I think it would particularly have a negative impact on local newspapers which are an important underpinning of our democracy. I believe passionately in a free press. We want to have a free press which is able to hold politicians and others to account, and we will certainly be looking to overturn this vote in the House of Commons.
This is an issue that I have looked at previously, I’ve been a shadow environment secretary as well, so this is not something that is new to me.
Theresa May’s enthusiasm for protecting the environment may not be insincere but it is certainly new. The pretext for today’s speech is the 25-year environment plan. When I was at No 10, Andrea Leadsom, then the environment secretary, was told to make the plan as boring as possible.
She duly delivered, and it sat on a shelf gathering dust. Michael Gove’s arrival, and his insight that Tory redemption lies in challenging producer importance in the interests of the environment, have changed everything. Under Ms Leadsom, staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs walked around Westminster with a stoop. Now they swagger, the new lords of Whitehall.
We will certainly be making sure that we are recycling as much as possible.
I’m proud of the fact that we have put a barn owl box, bird boxes and bat boxes up in our garden.
This is what Theresa May said when asked about the NHS. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg said the A&E waiting figures out today showed performance at a record low. Referring to the NHS Providers’ call for NHS spending to rise significantly, and the fact that even some Tories are calling for increased NHS spending, Kuenssberg asked May if she thought they were wrong. Here is May’s reply in full.
As we know, every year in winter the national health service comes under additional pressure. We have seen the extra pressures that the NHS has come under this year.
One of the issues that determines the extent of that pressure is flu and we have seen in recent days an increase in the number of people presenting at A&E from flu, and the NHS today has launched their national flu campaign. And I would encourage people to act on the advise that the NHS is giving, and also encourage NHS staff who haven’t had the flue vaccine yet to have that vaccine.
Q: What do you say to the claim you have only adopted this agenda recently for electoral reasons?
May says she has a long-term interest in this. She used to be shadow environment secretary, she says.
Q: [From the Daily Mail] What impact has the Mail’s campaign on plastics had? And do you and your husband plan to change your plastic use habits?
May says the Daily Mail has done a good job on this.
Q: Why do most the plans you have announced refer to consumers having to change their conduct, not producers?
May says everyone has to play their part in improving the environment.
May is now taking questions.
Q: This plan was designed in 2015. We have found it was originally meant to be boring. Are you serious about it?
May confirms the govenrment will extend the 5p plastic bag charge.
But I want us to go step further.
We have seen a powerful example over the last couple of years of the difference which a relatively simple policy can make for our environment.
May returns to plastics.
We look back in horror at some of the damage done to our environment in the past and wonder how anyone could have thought that, for example, dumping toxic chemicals untreated into rivers was ever the right thing to do.
In years to come, I think people will be shocked at how today we allow so much plastic to be produced needlessly.
May says she wants more children to visit the countryside.
Today, more than one in ten young people do not spend time in the countryside or in large urban green spaces, meaning they are denied the benefits which spending time outdoors in the natural environment brings.
These young people are disproportionately from more deprived backgrounds and their effective exclusion from our countryside represents a social injustice which I am determined to tackle.
It will be a new community woodland for Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, provide a new and enduring amenity for the growing population of the north of England, and act as a carbon sink for the UK.
Decades from now, children as yet unborn will be exploring this forest, playing under the shade of its trees and learning about our natural world from its flora and fauna.
May says the government wants to increase protections for trees and woodlands.
A tree is a home to countless organisms, from insects to small mammals.
They are natural air purifiers. They act as flood defences.
May turns to plastic waste.
While the water in our rivers and beaches are cleaner than ever, around the world eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into the oceans each year.
The problem was vividly highlighted in the BBC’s recent Blue Planet II series, which was public service broadcasting at its finest.
May turns to animal welfare.
When animals are mistreated, our common humanity is tarnished.
So we are pursuing policies to make Britain a world leader in tackling the abuse of animals.
May says the UK has already gone beyond EU requirements in environmental protection.
Our record shows that we have already gone further than EU regulation requires of us to protect our environment.
Thanks to action we have taken, 7,886 square miles of coastal waters around the UK are now Marine Conservation Zones, protecting a range of nationally important, rare or threatened habitats and species.
We will use the opportunity Brexit provides to strengthen and enhance our environmental protections – not to weaken them.
May says the government will not lower environmental standards after Brexit.
Because we recognise their value, we will incorporate all existing EU environmental regulations into domestic law when we leave.
And let me be very clear. Brexit will not mean a lowering of environmental standards.
We will set out our plans for a new, world leading independent statutory body to hold government to account and give the environment a voice. And our work will be underpinned by a strong set of environmental principles.
May says the Conservatives have a good record on the environment.
In the nineteenth century it was Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative government which passed the River Pollution Prevention Act, providing the first legal environmental protections for our waterways.
A Conservative government in the 1950s passed the Clean Air Act, making the Great Smog of London a thing of the past.
May says the “clean growth revolution” is at the heart of the government’s industrial strategy.
And she says Britain already has a good record in this area.
The UK is already home to around half a million jobs in low carbon businesses and their supply chain.
We are a world-leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles.
May says she does not accept that protecting the environment is incompatible with promoting growth.
It is sometimes suggested that a belief in a free market economy which pursues the objective of economic growth is not compatible with taking the action necessary to protect and enhance our natural environment.
That we need to give up on the very idea of economic growth itself as the price we have to pay for sustainability.
May goes on about the value of the environment.
In the United Kingdom, we are blessed with an abundance and variety of landscapes and habitats.
These natural assets are of immense value.
The natural environment is around us wherever we are, and getting closer to it is good for our physical and mental health and our emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
Millions of us visit the countryside, the seaside, a local park or places like this, every week to recharge our batteries, spend time with friends and family, and to exercise.
May says conservatism and conservation go together.
Britain has always been a world leader in understanding and protecting the environment, she says.
Conservatism and Conservation are natural allies.
The fundamental understanding which lies at the heart of our philosophical tradition is that we in the present are trustees charged with protecting and improving what we have inherited from those who went before us.
Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is introducing Theresa May.
He says she has ensured that the resources, the policy and the idealism has been in place to make the government’s 25-year environment plan a success.
Here is my colleague Denis Campbell’s story on the A&E waiting times.
Here is some more comment on the A&E waiting time figures.
From the Health Service Journal’s James Illman
BREAKING: official @NHSEngland A&E data shows 4 hour A&E performance for December was 85% — equally the worst ever month recorded for NHS A&E (Jan 2017). Watershed moment for NHS? Details here: https://t.co/gIR9H8KKtD
This chart from @gooroohealth puts today’s A&E in stark perspective. Bear in mind the A&E performance is traditionally worse in January than December, the deterioration probably hasnt hit the bottom yet #watershedmomenthttps://t.co/apcHqLBeMH
WOW. Blackpool’s 4 hr performance on Type 1 (the proper major A&E performance metric) slumped to 40% against 95% target, @NHSEngland data says – here is table of worst Type 1 4 performance for December 2017 http://pic.twitter.com/4Y7kNZ6Vsi
A +VE in @NHSEngland A&E data: Progress appears to have been made on cutting trolley waits/waits longer than 12 hours in A&E. 497 in Dec 2017 down fro 553 the previous Dec
Performance at Type 1 A&Es – full A&Es – was 77.3% in December, the worst ever. Performance in January 2017 (the previous low) was 77.6%.
Lots more people waiting four hours to get a bed than December last year – but fewer people waiting more than 12 hours. 12 hour waits were a big priority for national bosses. http://pic.twitter.com/YabUjooPkf
Average will have been brought up by the beginning of December. Last week of December and first of January substantially worse
The number of A&E patients being treated within the politically important four-hour target target has reached its lowest ever level, with hospitals managing to care for just 77.3% of patients within that time last month – far fewer than the 95% target.
Fewer than four out of five (77.3%) patients were treated and then admitted, discharged or transferred by emergency departments based at hospitals in England during December, what the NHS calls type 1 A&E units. That was the worst performance since records began and even worse than the previous low of 77.6% recorded in January 2017 and the 79.3% seen in December 2016.
The total number of attendances in December 2017 was 2,016,000, an increase of 3.7% on the same month last year. Of these, attendances at type 1 A&E departments were 1.0% higher. Attendances over the latest twelve months are higher than levels in the preceding twelve month period (an increase of 0.5%).
There were 520,000 emergency admissions in the month, 4.5% higher than the same month last year. Emergency admissions via type 1 A&E departments increased by 5.6% over the same period. Emergency admissions over the last twelve months are up 2.9% on the preceding twelve month period.
The latest NHS England A&E waiting figures are out. And the Health Service Journal has the headline numbers, for December.
All-types A&E performance was 85.1% in December – equalling the worst ever recorded, in January 2017 http://pic.twitter.com/X6ZVfMuXBc
I will be looking at it in a bit more detail a bit later.
Theresa May is keen to show that her government has an agenda that goes beyond Brexit and today she will be publishing a 25-year environment plan. Green issues were not a priority for her when she set out her core priorities when she stood for Conservative party leadership in 2016, but the Tories were surprised during the general election by how much damage was caused by their stance on fox hunting, and their lack of credibility on the environment and animal welfare generally, and since then they’ve been keen to make amends by embracing eco-politics with enthusiasm.
May’s speech has been well trailed, and our preview story is here. As Peter Walker reports, she will declare a war on plastic waste, with proposed policies including plastics-free aisles in supermarkets and a tax on takeaway containers.
This announcement was billed as a major push to tackle our plastic problem, but it looks more like a missed opportunity. It’s good that the government wants to make tackling plastic waste a priority, but the specific measures announced today don’t match the scale of the environmental crisis we face.
Encouraging more water fountains, extending charges on plastic bags and funding for innovation can all be part of the solution, but the overall plastics plan lacks urgency, detail and bite.
We welcome any step to reduce the plastic waste we produce, and policies like [having plastic-free aisles in shops] can spur change. But if we really want to solve this problem, we need to think bigger and ultimately move towards an end to single-use plastics.
This plan, years behind schedule, is a cynical attempt at rebranding the Tories’ image and appears to contain only weak proposals with Britain’s plastic waste crisis kicked into the long grass. This is all simply too little too late to reverse the damage of the Tories’ inconsistent and failed approach to environmental policy.
The Conservatives should be eliminating all avoidable plastic waste now – a target of 2042 beggars belief. They ramped up expectations only to disappoint.
The Conservatives have shown a complete lack of ambition. Notably, they have failed to deal with the excessive waste of coffee cups through the levy proposed by the Liberal Democrats and recently embraced by a powerful group of cross-party MPs. This is only a small step rather than the leap that is needed. Even the extension of the 5p tax on plastic bags only closed exemptions unnecessarily introduced by the Conservative party.
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