Markus Andrews

Culture secretary Nadine Dorries has told British sporting bodies they must follow swimming’s lead and ensure women’s sport is reserved “for people born of the female sex”.Ms Dorries told representives from football, cricket, rugby, tennis, athletics and other sports on Tuesday afternoon that it was “inherently unfair” for woman to compete against someone who was born biologically male.She urged the sporting bodies to follow to lead of Fina, who announced that athletes who had been through any part of male puberty would be barred from elite female competition.Ms Dorries said: “Sport is for everyone, no matter where you’ve come from in life. It allows people to come together and perform on a level playing field, based upon basic fairness and the integrity of competition.“The government has the utmost compassion for people born into a body they don’t recognise. But we can’t pretend that sex doesn’t have a direct impact on a person’s athletic performance. Asking women and teenage girls to compete against someone who was biologically born a male is inherently unfair.“I recognise that this is a complex and emotionally charged issue, so I welcome the support of our domestic governing bodies to protect and show compassion to all athletes. In the interests of sporting integrity, we must bring clarity to protect the future interests of sport around the world.”In a tweet following the meeting she added that the issue was one “that has been ducked for too long” and “we can’t pretend that sex doesn’t have a direct impact on a person’s athletic performance”.It comes just a day after Boris Johnson indicated he supported Fina’s bar on transgender athletes who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s events.However, the decision has prompted anger in the LGBT community, with Olympic gold medal-winning diver Tom Daley saying he is “furious” at Fina’s decision.The 28-year-old, who came out as gay in 2013, told inews: “Like most queer people, anyone that’s told that they can’t compete or can’t do something they love just because of who they are, it’s not on.“It’s something I feel really strongly about. Giving trans people the chance to share their side.”Mermaids, a charity for transgender children, said recent changes by Fina and other sporting bodies “effectively ban trans women from competing in international elite competitions”.In an open letter on its website, the charity said: “We think a blanket exclusion is unfair, unfounded, discriminatory, and we’re calling on the UK’s four sporting bodies to oppose trans-exclusionary approaches, and support sporting bodies to start from a point of inclusion,The ruling came after Lia Thomas became the first transgender swimmer to win a major US national college title in March. She will now be ineligible to compete in elite women’s events. More

Boris Johnson is facing a renewed bid to topple his premiership after a flurry of new no confidence letters were reportedly submitted to the 1922 committee.The fresh rebellion against the prime minister was allegedly provoked by his suggestion earlier today that he is planning to be lead the country into the 2030s.Speaking ahead of today’s G7 summit, Britain’s prime minister insisted he was “thinking actively” about fighting the next two general elections to become the longest-serving post-war leader. More

A Tory donor who helped fund a lobby group campaigning against net-zero climate action will be made a member of the House of Lords, it has been reported.Australian billionaire Michael Hintze, who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), will receive a peerage, according to the Sunday Times.Greenpeace UK accuses the organisation of “spending the last 20 years campaigning to preserve our addiction to fossil fuels”.Green MP Caroline Lucas blasted the appointment as “utter hypocrisy” considering the prime minister’s net-zero climate pledges and called for an investigation.She told DeSmog: “It’s already an insult to democracy that the prime minister is stuffing the House of Lords with his billionaire Tory donors.“But the fact that those billionaires are funding climate denial and delay – barely six months after he claimed we were at ‘one minute to midnight’ in a race to avert the impending climate crisis – exposes the utter hypocrisy of any climate pledge that comes out of his mouth.”Mr Hintze, founder and co-chief executive of the global asset management fund CQS, is a major Tory donor.The GWPF campaigns against the UK’s 2050 net-zero target and recently published a paper claiming that there is “no evidence of a climate crisis” – a claim at odds with the vast majority of climate scientists.The GWPF and the Conservative Party have been contacted for comment.Last month the Independent reported how the GWPF – which has close links to Tory MP Steve Baker – has received hundreds of thousands of pounds from an oil-rich foundation with large investments in energy firms.The GWPF refuses to disclose its donors in the UK and says it does not take money from fossil fuel interests.But US tax documents identified by investigative journalists at the OpenDemocracy website show the lobbyists, who also use the brand “Net Zero Watch”, have a donor with $30 million (£24.2 million) shares in 22 companies working across coal, oil and gas. More

Rebel Tory MPs fear defections to Labour could strengthen Boris Johnson’s hand in the battle to oust him from Downing Street.Three MPs are reported to be considering crossing the floor to Sir Keir Starmer’s party.In January red wall Tory MP Christian Wakeford defected to Labour just weeks after the partygate scandal erupted. As he did so he publicly called on the prime minister to resign and leave No 10.But the move served only to shore up Mr Johnson’s leadership as other Tory MPs turned their fire away from the prime minister and on to Labour.One rebel Tory told the Independent: “A defection would strengthen the prime minister’s position – like it did the last time”.Conservative MPs also rolled their eyes at a tweet by minister Nigel Adams in the wake of reports of possible defections.In it he can be seen pointing at arch Johnson loyalist Jacob Rees-Mogg. The caption reads: “It’s important no stone is left unturned as we aim to identify potential defectors”.Labour sources played down the idea that the party could secure another defection from the Conservatives. A source suggested the reports should be taken with a “pinch of salt”.Earlier Mr Johnson refused to comment on the possibility of three of his MPs deserting to Labour.Asked how talk of defections made him feel, the prime minister said: “I think this really falls into the category of political commentary which I leave to distinguished journalists such as yourself.”He added: “I think it is my job to talk about our policies, what we have to do, what we are doing for the country, what has been going on at the G7. There are plenty of people who can offer an opinion on that.”Sir Keir said that after last week’s result in Wakefield, when the party took back the seat won by the Tories in the 2019 general election, “if I was a Tory MP I’d be pretty worried about the next general election, because that was a fantastic result for us.”And the Labour Party is in good spirits, in high hopes and we’ve got a real belief about what we’re doing. Wakefield showed us at a general election, there may well now be a Labour government.”Political parties see defections as a very strong signal to the electorate that their party can win the next general election, but there is little incentive to make them public until the very last minute. Mr Wakeford’s decision only became known moments before he crossed the floor just before Mr Johnson faced MPs during his weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the Commons. More

No investigation has been launched into allegations that Boris Johnson tried to appoint his then-girlfriend to a senior government role, the head of the civil service has confirmed.Simon Case told a House of Commons committee that it was a decision for the prime minister himself whether to order an inquiry into his reported attempt to appoint Carrie Symonds – now his wife – his £100,000-a-year chief of staff as foreign secretary.To laughter from members of the cross-party Public Administration Committee, committee chair William Wragg asked the cabinet secretary: “Is he not keen?”Labour committee member John McDonnell said that the allegations amounted to “a potential flagrant abuse of power” and demanded to know why no investigation had been conducted to establish whether they were true.Mr Case responded: “An investigation under the ministerial code, under the current rubric, can only be authorised by the prime minister.“I don’t have any right of initiative of investigations.”Mr McDonnell said that the PM’s former independent adviser on ethics, Lord Geidt, had described reports of the job offer as “ripe for investigation”.And he asked Mr Case: “Haven’t you any responsibility, as the most senior civil servant in government, to uphold standards?“Here we have a potential breach of basic standards by someone in high office and a former ethics adviser advises this is ‘ripe for investigation’ and you have not even raised it with the prime minister.”An apparently annoyed Mr Case insisted that he had shown responsibility and said that he would not reveal whether he had discussed the issue with Mr Johnson.All conversations between ministers and civil servants must remain private, he told the committee.Mr McDonnell retorted: “I’m interpreting that as meaning you have had that conversation. We all have a cross to bear.” More

Nicola Sturgeon has set the date for a proposed Scottish independence referendum. The first minister said she wanted the process to be “legal” and “constitutional” as she laid out steps the Scottish government would take to bypass Boris Johnson’s discretion if he chooses to block a vote as he has done before.She told MSPs a bill would be brought before Holyrood setting out plans for a referendum to be held on 19 October 2023, with the question to be asked the same as in the 2014 vote: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”Mr Johnson’s spokesman said the prime minister continued to think it was not time for a referendum. The prime minister and his Conservative party strongly oppose a referendum, saying the issue was settled in 2014 when Scots voted against independence by 55 per cent to 45 per cent.He previously refused to issue a Section 30 order, which would give authority to the Scottish parliament to hold a referendum.Ms Sturgeon said the legality of a referendum without such an order from the UK government was contested, and so she had already asked the Lord Advocate, the senior Scottish Law Officer, to refer the question to the UK’s Supreme Court.A general election is expected in the months after the chosen date. Ms Sturgeon said if it there is no legal way for a referendum to be held, her Scottish National Party will fight the next election on the single issue of whether Scotland should be independent. She said she would be writing to Mr Johnson to inform him of her plans, adding she would make clear she was “ready and willing” to negotiate the terms of a Section 30 order with him.In light of the prime minister’s previous refusal to grant Scotland the power to hold a vote, she said: “What I am not willing to do, what I will never do is allow Scottish democracy to be a prisoner of Boris Johnson or any prime minister.“My determination is to secure a process that allows the people of Scotland, whether yes, no or yet to be decided, to express their views in a legal, constitutional referendum so the majority view can be established fairly and democratically.“The steps I am setting out today seek to achieve that.”More follows… More

Pupils have AirDropped nudes to each other or used Google Drive to store non-consensually shared images, MPs were told.In a Women and Equalities committee hearing on attitudes to girls and women in schools and other educational settings, Soma Sara, founder and chief executive of Everyone’s Invited (EI), a movement against sexual violence, said that in one reported case, pupils were “AirDropping nudes in a maths class to other students”.AirDrop is a service that allows Apple users to wirelessly transfer photographs and videos between their devices, including iPhones.And she said Google Drive, a cloud-based storage system, has been used to host “non-consensually shared images”.

It’s just become so normalised that it’s accepted as what happensPupils socialise at house parties and after school, she said, saying it is “very challenging” for teachers to “get a hold on behaviour that is happening outside of school and also on young people’s phones”.Ms Sara said “the rise and the mainstreaming of hardcore pornography” and the ways in which young people conduct much of their lives online has led to new kinds of abuse emerging in recent years.“A lot of young people I’ve spoken to, they don’t really understand that it’s wrong or understand the impact it’s actually having on them,” she said.“It’s just become so normalised that it’s accepted as what happens.”Ms Sara said when young people try to report harassment and abuse they are told to “shrug it off and move on”, which serves to “perpetuate that same cycle of abuse”.Keziah Featherstone, headteacher at Q3 Academy Tipton in the West Midlands, said lockdown, with some children being “almost entirely online that time, mixing with people they don’t know, on servers that aren’t monitored, has been very frightening for everybody that works in schools”.She said she saw “extreme attitudes and behaviours” from some younger pupils that her school had to work hard to change.Ms Sara said the victims of both online and in-person misogyny and abuse are predominantly women and girls but can be men and boys too – with male sexual abuse more “stigmatised”.Suzie McDonald, chief executive of charity Tender Arts & Education, said that because there is no “clear guidance for schools about how to manage these incidents”, teachers will try to support both the alleged perpetrator and victim and do not always hold boys accountable for abusive behaviour if police do not proceed with a criminal case.Ms Featherstone said there should be a yearly safeguarding audit of schools, separate to Ofsted inspections, to investigate issues of harassment. More

A Tory MP has attacked the BBC for using the term “anti-abortion” rather than the phrase pro-life.Peter Bone, the MP for Wellingborough, told LBC radio station he is “disappointed” the BBC are using term “anti-abortion” over “pro-life” – adding that he is in the so-called pro-life category.Mr Bone is deemed to be on the right of the Tory Party and previously voted to reduce the abortion time limit to 12 weeks – a point at which some women do not even know they are pregnant – from the current legal cut-off point of 24 weeks of pregnancy.Jonathan Lord, medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices UK, one of the leading abortion providers, criticised Mr Bone’s comments as he warned media publications should never use the term pro-life when discussing abortion.“Pro-life is a misnomer because restricting abortion puts women at risk for their lives as was recently shown by the US woman on holiday in Malta who was refused a possibly life-saving abortion by doctors,” Dr Lord told The Independent. He noted the woman was blocked from having an abortion even though doctors said her baby had a “zero chance” of surviving after she had to go hospital with severe bleeding while she was 16 weeks pregnant. Malta has a complete abortion ban, Dr Lord added.“The term pro-life sugarcoats extreme beliefs that few agree with. It is a manipulative phrase which implies that those who believe in choice over abortion aren’t pro-life,” he said.“Anti-abortion activists impose their belief on others rather than allowing the individual to make a choice about what is best for their health.”Dr Lord argued the BBC are “precisely right” to use the term anti-abortion rather than the phrase pro-life.A study, carried out by YouGov and MSI Reproductive Choices UK, previously found nine in 10 UK adults think women should be able to access abortion services in Britain and specifically identify as being “pro-choice”.Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the US, explores the difference between the phrases pro-choice and pro-life in a post on their website.The provider states: “Generally, people who identify as pro-choice believe that everyone has the basic human right to decide when and whether to have children.“When you say you are pro-choice you are telling people that you believe it’s okay for them to have the ability to choose abortion as an option for an unplanned pregnancy — even if you wouldn’t choose abortion for yourself.“People who oppose abortion often call themselves pro-life. However, the only life many of them are concerned with is the life of the fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus.”Those who are pro-life “are much less concerned about the life of women who have unintended pregnancies or the welfare of children after they are born”, Planned Parenthood says.“In fact, many people who call themselves ‘pro-life’ support capital punishment (AKA the death penalty) and oppose child welfare legislation,” the non-profit organisation adds.A representative for the BBC has been contacted. More