Markus Andrews

It would be “colossally stupid” to trigger Article 16 and suspend the Northern Ireland Brexit agreement, John Major has warned.Speaking on Saturday the former Tory prime minister branded the policy – thought to be under consideration by Boris Johnson – “absurd”.It comes after Lord Frost, the UK’s Brexit negotiator, said the drastic course of action was “very much on the table and has been since July”.The EU has warned of “serious consequences” if the protocol is suspended.The agreement was designed to stop a hard border from appearing between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but also puts controls on trade between Britain and the EU.The UK has taken issue with the controls it signed up to and says it wants the protocol to be changed. The EU has presented proposals – but the UK says they do not go far enough.Some reports speculative reports suggest Mr Johnson wants to trigger Article 16 – the agreed mechanism to suspend it – after the Cop26 climate summit is over and Britain is no longer in the spotlight. “I think it would be colossally stupid to do that,” Sir John, who led the government from 1990 to 1997, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.“To use Article 16, to suspended parts of the protocol, would be absurd. This protocol is being denounced week after week by Lord Frost and the prime minister.“Who negotiated the wretched protocol? Lord Frost and the prime minister. They negotiated it, they signed it, they now wish to break it.”The ex-Tory leader, who opposed Brexit, was speaking after Northern Irish business groups and nationalists warned against the approach.Aodhán Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, told The Independent that suspending the protocol “plunges us into more instability, more uncertainty, more negotiations”. Meanwhile SDLP Brexit spokesperson Matthew O’Toole, a member of the Stormont assembly, warned that Boris Johnson and Lord Frost “seem determined to escalate and increase confrontation in a way that people here do not want” – branding the approach “a chilling insight into how little they actually care about the region”.Some unionists and loyalists have however called for the protocol to be ended. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said he expected decisive action to be taken by the end of November.After a meeting between Maros Sefcovic and Lord Frost on Friday, the UK’s chief negotiator said progress had been “limited”. Mr Sefcovic, the EU’s Brexit chief and Commission vice president, said triggering Article 16 would “lead to instability and unpredictability”.Speaking on Saturday Sir John, who faced down Eurosceptic rebels while he was prime minister, added: “At the moment, we are negotiating over the protocol with all the subtlety of a brick.“What is happening week after week is that Lord Frost goes into the negotiations, he gives away nothing, he takes something from the European Union, he goes away, blames them for the fact that nothing at all has happened.”Sir John said he suspected Article 16 would be triggered after the United Nations Cop26 climate summit being hosted by the UK in Glasgow has concluded.“This is a very difficult and dangerous road to go down. It’s not just a question of trade difficulties.“It could, we’ve seen what’s happened in Northern Ireland before, it could become much worse. They should be very, very careful about this.“This is silly politics to placate a few extreme Brexiteers, and the price will be paid by businesses, people in Northern Ireland and the reputation of the United Kingdom.”Talks between Lord Frost’s and Mr Sefcovic’s negotiating teams are expected to resume next week. More

Former prime minister John Major has blasted Boris Johnson’s “politically corrupt” approach to government in the wake of the paid lobbying scandal.Sir John, who led the government from 1990 to 1997, described his party’s conduct as “shameful” and said it had trashed the reputation of parliament.It comes after Mr Johnson ordered his MPs to abolish a standards watchdog after it tried to punish one of his MPs for blatantly breaking lobbying rules. Owen Paterson was facing a 30-day suspension after he was found to have been paid nearly three times his £82,000 salary to lobby ministers on behalf of two private companies.“I think the way the government handled that was shameful, wrong and unworthy of this or indeed any government. It also had the effect of trashing the reputation of parliament,” Sir John said.The former prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today the action of the current government was “damaging at home and to our reputation overseas”.“I’m afraid that the government, with their over-large majority, do tend to treat parliament with contempt. And if that continues, it will end badly,” he said.“They bypass parliament at will and the speaker has expressed his frustration about that on many occasions, and rightly so. But they also behaved badly in other ways that are perhaps politically corrupt.”Sir John said that there is “a general whiff of ‘we are the masters now’ about their behaviour”, adding: “I have been a Conservative all my life and if I am concerned at how the government is behaving I suspect lots of other people are as well.“It seems to me, as a lifelong Conservative, that much of what they are doing is un-Conservative in its behaviour.” More

One in 15 Conservative MPs still does not believe that climate change is real, exclusive polling for The Independent shows.A survey of more than 100 MPs from across parties found scepticism about global warming remains relatively strong among Tory politicians.Five per cent of Conservatives surveyed said the scientific phenomenon of the climate crisis – currently mobilising world leaders at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow – is “a myth”.And 9 per cent of Tory MPs said they did not accept that there is a scientific consensus on human activity causing climate change, according to the poll by Savanta ComRes, while no Labour MP said the same.It also found that one-third of Tory MPs (37 per cent) do not believe that the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events come from climate change – despite agreement among scientists that the impacts can already be seen.Friends of the Earth said the poll showed that Boris Johnson had “failed to convince members of his own party” of the scientific consensus on the climate crisis, despite the “glossy announcements” made at Cop26.“This calls into question his ability to act in line with the scale of the climate disaster on our doorsteps,” said Connor Schwartz, climate lead at the pressure group. “Clearly the prime minister has work to do behind the scenes.”Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay told The Independent it was “extremely worrying to see such climate denialism” in the Tory party.He added: “It is no wonder that Boris Johnson is nowhere near delivering the sort of transformational change required, if so many of his own MPs don’t even believe the science.”Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, said the poll suggested “tiny but stubborn pockets of climate denial have managed to persist in the Conservative party”, and added: “This minority of MPs is out of step with the overwhelming scientific consensus, with public concerns, and with their own party’s leadership.”There was less scepticism about the climate emergency facing the planet from Labour and other opposition parties.A stark divide between the two main parties emerged on the question of eating less meat as a means of cutting carbon emissions, due to the fact that the meat industry contributes a large amount to global greenhouse gases. Almost two-thirds of Tory MPs (66 per cent) do not accept adopting a more plant-based diet as a means of tackling climate change. But only 9 per cent of Labour MPs were sceptical about the impact of a plant-based diet, with 91 per cent saying it could make a positive difference.While Cop26 has seen new commitments to reverse deforestation and end nations’ dependence on coal, campaigners have been underwhelmed by the pledges made so far, many of which have been set decades away or are voluntary.The survey of MPs also found pessimism about the chances of the summit leading to the changes needed to keep global warming in check.The poll found that half (51 per cent) of MPs – rising to 69 per cent of those in Labour – think leaders will fail to meet the goal of keeping global warming below the 2C limit set by the Paris Agreement.Almost as many (42 per cent, again rising to 69 per cent of Labour MPs) think it is unlikely that the UK government will hit its net zero carbon emissions target by 2050.While 94 per cent of Labour MPs said Mr Johnson’s government should prioritise the cutting of emissions as part of the Covid recovery, only 55 per cent of Tory MPs think a “green recovery” should be a priority. More

Keir Starmer has been urged not to ditch Labour’s longstanding promise to ban MPs from having second jobs – after the policy went missing in action.The opposition party had previously promised to restrict MPs taking outside employment – in a bid to clean up politics and prevent episodes like the Owen Paterson scandal.But the Labour leader this week appeared to bin the promise – arguing instead only for a more limited jobs ban on those holding “ministerial office”.The broader pledge, which was first floated by Ed Miliband and expanded in the 2019 manifesto, was not mentioned by Labour frontbenchers responding to this week’s events.Since Thursday The Independent has repeatedly approached Sir Keir’s office and the Labour press office to clarify whether the policy has formally been dropped, but not received an answer.Pushed on the matter, a Labour spokesperson would only say: “We’ll be setting out our position in the debate on Monday.”But in an article for the Guardian this week Sir Keir laid out his position at length and listed “a number of simple things that could be done to clean up politics”.Among the policies, Sir Keir said he would “ban anyone who holds ministerial office from selling themselves to companies that want to write legislation in their own interests”.But the MP jobs ban policy was nowhere to be seen among the proposed remedies.The policy banning MPs from having second jobs would have prevented Owen Paterson from being paid tens of thousands of pounds by companies he went on to lobby for in parliament. Sir Keir’s commitment for those in “ministerial office” would have had no effect on the case, as Mr Paterson does not hold ministerial office. One source suggested the leader did not feel he could commit to the longstanding policy because he had earned £70k working as a lawyer while an MP, including £30k while in the shadow cabinet.Labour’s most recent manifesto said: “We will stop MPs from taking paid second jobs, with limited exemptions to maintain professional registrations like nursing.” In the 2015 manifesto the policy was to restrict “directorships and consultancies”.Labour MP Nadia Whittome, who worked as a care worker during the Covid pandemic but donated the earnings to charity, told The Independent: “This government is so used to acting with impunity that it is now brazenly open in its attempts at institutional corruption. “Now is the time to double down on our 2019 manifesto commitment that would ban MPs from having second jobs except where those jobs were for a public service, for example a nurse or carer.”She added that the policy should be “only the start” and argued that there needed to be a review of “the structural safeguards and checks and balances in place to guard against corruption”. When she was elected Ms Whittome pledged to only take £35,000 of her £80,000 MPs’ salary, donating the rest to charity on the basis that she should be paid a workers’ wage.Asked about the leadership’s move, MP Jon Trickett, who wrote the second jobs ban policy as shadow cabinet office minister, told The Independent: “It’s a bit complicated but the general principle ought to be that there ought to be no perception that outside financial interests influence MP actions. Labour – above all parties – should hold to this principle. This means not jettisoning the manifesto commitment.”According to figures reported by the OpenDemocracy website MPs have earned at least £6 million from second jobs since the start of the pandemic. Andrew Scattergood, chair of left-wing campaign group Momentum, said trust in politicians was at an “all time low” and that abandoning the policy “would signal to the public an acceptance of a status quo that is rotten to the core”.”The case of Owen Paterson proves that the current rules do not work and tweaking them simply will not be enough,” he said. “Politicians are extremely well-paid and they are there to serve the public only. It is absolutely right they should not have a second job, and Labour should continue to campaign for this popular policy.” More

Recent changes to universal credit made by Boris Johnson’s government will leave 3.6 million families across the UK worse off, according to leading economists.The combined impact of cutting the £20-a-week universal credit uplift and reducing the so-called “taper rate” will push 120,000 people into poverty, according to the Resolution Foundation.The think tank said positive changes made by the chancellor Rishi Sunak at last week’s Budget were not enough to make up for the “damage” by the decision to axe the uplift payment in October.Mr Sunak announced that the taper rate – the number of pence in every £1 lost when a claimant takes on work – will be reduced from 63p to 55p in a bid to help those in work keep more of their earnings.The Resolution Foundation said the chancellor’s “welcome” move would benefit around 1.3 million working families and leave them better off than they were even before the £20-a-week uplift was cut last month.But for 3.6 million families – including the unemployed, as well as some of those in work on very low incomes – these changes will not compensate for the £86-a- month loss.Karl Handscomb, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said Mr Sunak had made “very welcome major changes” in the Budget which boost the incomes of families.But he added: “The changes are not enough to offset the damage from the recent £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit. While 1.3 million families on universal credit will be better off, almost three-quarters of universal credit families will see their incomes fall this autumn as the cost of living crunch bites.”There will now be 40,000 fewer people in poverty in working families, but 160,000 more people in poverty in out-of-work families, according to the think tank’s analysis of recent changes.The Resolution Foundation did praise the chancellor’s decision to increase the eligibility for Universal Credit. His Budget changes will mean 330,000 more families will be able to claim the benefit while working.A home-owning couple with two children can now claim universal credit if they earn up to £37,700, compared to £32,800 prior to the latest Budget changes.But the think tank warned of the grim impact of rising energy and food costs ahead – saying cuts in welfare mean “our basic safety net remains far too weak to support families facing economic bad news”.Citizens Advice has also warned that the tape rate changes do not “cushion the blow” of the £20-a-week cut for those still looking for work, or the 1.7 million unable to work because of disability, health issues or caring responsibilities. More

The British government has approached Qatar to ask if the Gulf state could become a “supplier of last resort” amid gas shortages in Europe which have led to record prices, according to a report.The Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday that ministers had held talks with the country, which is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, to ensure a stable source of gas if global supplies become tight.It added that Qatar had re-routed four large tankers to the UK over the past two weeks, with the decision reportedly taking place after Boris Johnson asked Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for help.“The Qataris have indicated a willingness to agree longer-term supply deals to deliver…  gas to the UK in an emergency scenario – a sort of ‘supplier of last resort’ arrangement,” a UK government insider told the newspaper.However, Downing Street insisted that the UK had not “requested or secured any additional shipments from the Qatari government” as it insisted that the energy supply remained secure for the winter.Energy prices have soared in recent months due to a worldwide gas supply shortage, caused in part by a surge in demand and Russia restricting gas exports to western Europe, which has hit suppliers.The FT also reported that foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, had been involved in talks with Qatari leaders this month to discuss how to improve the UK’s energy security.A government spokesperson told the newspaper that ministers held “regular discussions” with “key energy partners around the world” ahead of the winter.In October, the head of Scottish Power warned that at least another 20 UK suppliers were likely to go bust in the next month as the crisis presented a “real risk” that just five or six energy companies could survive.On Wednesday, CNG Energy became the latest UK energy supplier to collapse, bringing the total number of company failures since the start of September to 19.Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, has said that it will consider changes to the price cap on bills in a bid to prevent more suppliers going out of business.“The unprecedented rise in energy prices this year has changed the perception of risk and uncertainty in this market,” the regulator said last week.“In order to protect the interests of consumers, we must ensure that the regulatory frameworks, including the price cap, fully reflect the costs, risks and uncertainties facing the supply companies we regulate.” More

A man with HIV who was awaiting deportation to Jamaica is being denied life-saving treatment in an immigration detention centre, The Independent has learned.The 42-year-old man relies on daily medication to manage his condition, and says the dosages for his other ailments, schizophrenia and depression, have been reduced by staff at Colnbrook Immigration Centre.He has lived in the UK for more than 30 years and was detained on Monday after enforcement officers “kicked his door off” and seized him at his home in the early hours of the morning.The Birmingham resident was scheduled to be deported to Jamaica next Wednesday, but Home Office staff have now said he won’t be removed, following enquiries from The Independent.“They haven’t given me any medication for my HIV at all despite my asking. I’d usually take one of these tablets every day and it helps me to manage my condition,” the man told The Independent from his cell at Colnbrook prior to the government’s U-turn.“They’ve stopped my depression tablets completely which I’ve been on for over ten years. For some reason, it’s like they want me to shout and kick off, but I’m not going to do that.”He added: “You can’t let someone suffer the way they’re making me suffer. What else do I need to do to show them that how they’re treating me is wrong?”The man also has a heroin addiction and must regularly take methadone to manage withdrawal symptoms.As a consequence of the reduction in his methadone, he is suffering from severe symptoms. He says that he has been vomiting frequently and has been unable to properly eat and sleep for days.Seth Ramocan, Jamaica’s high commissioner in London, told The Independent he was making “immediate” enquiries with the Home Office about the case. More

Boris Johnson was today facing the prospect of two fresh sleaze inquiries into his own behaviour, as signs grew that his botched attempt to save a senior Tory MP from punishment for paid lobbying had shaken his authority within his own party.Labour demanded a probe by Commons standards commissioner Kathryn Stone into Mr Johnson’s failure to declare a freebie holiday in Spain, as the guest of recently ennobled Zac Goldsmith, in the MPs’ register of interests, as Downing Street refused to reveal the value of the luxury break.And the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, wrote to Ms Stone urging her not to allow pressure from the PM to deter her from launching a delayed inquiry into the funding of his Downing Street flat refurbishment at a reported cost of £200,000. Ms Rayner said it was “vital” that the commissioner launched the investigation, which has been put on hold since Labour’s initial complaint in April, pending the outcome of a separate Electoral Commission inquiry.The commission confirmed that it had sent its initial findings to the Conservatives to allow the party a chance to respond before publishing its report. Downing Street refused to say whether the PM had seen the findings.Mr Johnson’s abortive attempt earlier this week to establish a Tory-dominated committee to rewrite the Commons standards procedures was “a blatant attempt to prevent the commissioner from investigating his latest breaches of the rules”, said Ms Rayner.“It is absolutely vital that the parliamentary commissioner for standards is now able to conduct this investigation without any further attempts by the prime minister to block this investigation, override or abolish the commissioner or the standards committee, and the bullying, threats and intimidation from Conservative ministers must stop immediately.”Mr Johnson’s former top adviser Dominic Cummings has described Wednesday’s attempt to get former minister Owen Paterson off the hook as a “pre-emptive strike” against Ms Stone. Today he urged her to call witnesses to answer questions on the flat funding, saying: “The Electoral Commission – like [Downing Street ethics adviser Lord] Geidt – has so far interviewed NONE of the people who know/involved in PM’s illegal secret donations”.After business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng came under fire for suggesting that it was “difficult to see a future” for the independent commissioner, Downing Street said that Mr Johnson accepted Ms Stone should not be put under political pressure.Asked if the PM would condemn any MP trying to put pressure on her to drop the complaint, initially made by Margaret Hodge in April, the spokesperson said: “Obviously we wouldn’t want to see that happening.”The developments came amid indications of a growing mood of assertiveness among the younger 2019 intake of Tory MPs, who have largely been loyal to the PM after being elected on the back of his popular “Get Brexit Done” campaign but have been infuriated by his mishandling of the Paterson affair.One MP told The Independent that the disastrous bid to tear up Commons standards rules on Wednesday had crystallised dissatisfaction among younger MPs at being used as lobby fodder by Conservative high command.“We were dragooned into trying to save the skin of someone who probably wouldn’t recognise us in the corridor,” said the MP. “We are flexing our muscles now and we are not going to take any more of this nonsense from the old guard.”There were calls for the dismissal of chief whip Mark Spencer, with one MP saying that “his authority is not there any more” after the humiliating U-turn, which saw MPs subjected to a three-line whip on Wednesday, only to see the government about-turn just 19 hours later. One of the 2019 intake – Guildford’s Angela Richardson – was sacked as a parliamentary aide for defying the whip, only to be reinstated the following morning when the government’s position changed.Another MP said she had been “flung under a bus for one man”, and asked “Was it worth it?” And another criticised “huge party mismanagement” by the whips. Reports suggested that a member of the 2019 intake confronted Paterson to his face with a four-letter rebuke as they went through the voting lobby.York Outer MP Julian Sturdy said: “I cannot avoid being critical of the government, who reassured backbenchers that there was a clear plan for reform, yet subsequently turned the matter into a party-line debate. Reform of the Committee on Standards is needed, but I pledge not to support any reforms that do not bring all sides of the house together, as we need to build a fair system that not only has the support of MPs but the confidence of the public also.”Downing Street failed to deny claims that MPs had been told government funding for their constituencies could be at risk if they defied the whip. And a No 10 spokesperson was forced to insist that Mr Spencer, along with leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, a driving force behind the plan to save Paterson, continued to enjoy the prime minister’s “full confidence”.As polls suggested a sharp fall in Conservative support following the sleaze debacle, senior Labour MP Margaret Hodge told The Independent that the “only logical explanation” for the PM’s actions was that he was worried about the prospect of fresh inquiries into his behaviour and that of other senior Tories.Dame Margaret – who initially asked Ms Stone to look into the “cash-for-curtains” flat refurbishment in April – said: “The only logical explanation for deliberately ignoring a clear case of corruption [in the Paterson affair] is that there are more cases coming down the line, and they wanted to stop them happening. Mine is one of them.”And in a separate letter to Ms Stone, Ms Rayner said that the PM’s failure to register his Marbella break “appears to be a breach of the house code of conduct”.Downing Street insisted that the PM had “met transparency requirements” by making a declaration under the separate ministerial code, and that there was no need to repeat it in the MPs’ register of interests.“This was a family holiday at the home of long-standing family friends, and is unconnected with the prime minister’s parliamentary and political activities,” said a spokesperson.“The prime minister has written to the House of Commons registrar to set out that this holiday has been declared under the ministerial code because the arrangement is with another minister.”Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson had “piled the reputations of 248 of his own MPs on his bonfire of corruption” by forcing them through the Aye lobby on Wednesday, and that he would pay the price at the ballot box.“Boris Johnson truly believes there should be one rule for him and his friends, another for the rest of us,” said Starmer.“As director of public prosecutions, securing the interests of ordinary people against the crooked and the powerful, I’ve seen this attitude many times before. It is the hallmark of every out-of-touch, arrogant, condescending elite that thinks they should be above scrutiny.“But something I’ve learned over the years is that pride comes before a fall. You might get away with it for a while, but it always catches up with you in the end. If the prime minister continues down this path – of sleaze, cronyism, corruption – the lesson from this week is that it will be on the ballot box at the next election.”Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi insisted it was “absolutely not true” that Mr Johnson had tried to nobble the standards commissioner, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Kathryn Stone and her duties are the responsibility of the House of Commons, and the speaker of the house.”Mr Zahawi defended the PM’s U-turn on reform of the standards process, telling the LBC radio station: “When you make a mistake, I’d much rather have a government and a prime minister and the chief whip who says, ‘Hold on a second, let’s go back, because I think we’ve made a mistake here.’” More