Boris Johnson news – live: Rees-Mogg denies 90,000 job cuts mark return to austerity

Conservative MP Lee Anderson caused uproar this week when he claimed there wasn’t ‘this massive use’ for food banks in the UK and that people could really do with a few cooking lessons instead, writes Cathy Newman.

Read Cathy’s piece here:

The prime minister’s unpopularity is about to be brought home to Conservative MPs in dramatic fashion, writes John Rentoul.

Read John’s full piece here:

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will meet with Boris Johnson today and demand answers as to why it took the government so long to secure her release from detention in Iran.

She will be joined by her local Tulip Siddiq. Ms Siddiq said her constituent “deserves to hear directly” from the prime minister.

She said: “We will use the meeting as an opportunity to raise the plight of British citizens like Morad Tahbaz who are still being held hostage in Iran and push the Prime Minister to do much more to secure their release.

“He has a responsibility to ensure that others do not have to endure the six years of torment that Nazanin was put through.

She added: “I will also be submitting evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry on hostage taking, which I hope will get the bottom of the Government’s abject failure in handling cases like Nazanin’s.

“Never again must the government allow British citizens to be taken hostage with so little done to secure their release and so few reprisals for those responsible.”

Former Tory MP Neil Parish who admitted watching pornography in the Commons chamber is taking “soundings” on standing in a by-election triggered by his own resignation.

It comes after Mr Parish stood aside in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency in April after becoming the focus of a political storm when two female MPs reported him to party whips.

Our politics correspondent Ashley Cowburn reports:

The Foreign Office has announced further Russian sanctions, with President Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife, family members and inner circle hit in the latest tranche of measures designed to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign secretary Liz Truss said: “We are exposing and targeting the shady network propping up Putin’s luxury lifestyle and tightening the vice on his inner circle.

“We will keep going with sanctions on all those aiding and abetting Putin’s aggression until Ukraine prevails.”

Mr Putin’s official assets are modest, according to the Foreign Office, with his lifestyle “funded by a cabal of family, friends and elites”.

The minister for government efficiency has rejected suggestions of a return to austerity after Boris Johnson tasked his cabinet with cutting around 90,000 Civil Service jobs.

The prime minister told ministers on Thursday that the service should be slashed by a fifth, as he moved to free up cash for measures to ease the cost of living crisis with possible tax cuts.

Jacob Rees-Mogg defended the plan on Friday, saying the job cuts would bring numbers back to 2016 levels after extra staff were brought in to help deal with the pandemic and the “aftermath of Brexit”.

He told Sky News: “I know it sounds eye-catching but it’s just getting back to the civil service we had in 2016 … since then, we’ve had to take on people for specific tasks.

“So dealing with the aftermath of Brexit and dealing with Covid, so there’s been a reason for that increase, but we’re now trying to get back to normal.”

Rishi Sunak is under fire after an extraordinary claim that “computer says no” forced him to impose real-terms benefits cuts in his spring mini-budget.

The chancellor has been strongly criticised for increasing payments to struggling people by only 3.1 per cent last month – far below the inflation rate of 7 per cent and rising.

Our deputy politics editor Rob Merrick has more details:

Boris Johnson’s favoured candidate to oversee the civil service has hit out at Jacob Rees-Mogg’s attacks on staff, saying his efforts to force them back to the office full-time is “counterproductive.”

Baroness Stuart, who is responsible for maintaining impartiality in the civil service said briefings against staff were “wrong”

She told The Times: “We should all speak up when we see integrity and professionalism being undermined,” she said.

“To my mind briefings and anonymous attacks, they’re not just wrong, they’re also counterproductive,” she said, arguing that they “prevent people who want to join the civil service … from wanting to be part of that system”.

A champagne bottle signed by Boris Johnson was auctioned off at a charity event “as a souvenir of partygate”.

Food critic Jay Rayner tweeted an image showing a description of the bottle from what appeared to be the page of an auction catalogue.

My colleague Chiara Giordano reports:

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator has warned that Brussels will not give in to threats or blackmail, as the furious row over the Northern Irish border took a step closer towards sparking a trade war.

Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock has the story: