Markus Andrews

A former MEP has called for Iran’s president to be banned from attending the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow and criminally investigated over claims that he was responsible for “mass murder”.Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi is believed to be considering attending the UN climate change conference, which starts later this month, as his first overseas visit.Struan Stevenson, a former Conservative MEP, is calling on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, foreign secretary Liz Truss and home secretary Priti Patel to ban him from attending.Speaking at a press conference in Glasgow today, Mr Stevenson said he has sent a formal request to the head of Police Scotland, Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, calling for the force to launch a criminal investigation into Mr Raisi under universal jurisdiction into accusations of alleged genocide and crimes against humanity.A parallel action has been raised with the Metropolitan Police.Mr Stevenson said: “This man must not be allowed to set foot in Scotland.“Scotland does not take well to mass murderers coming here.“If this man dares to attend Cop26 he should be immediately arrested by the police.“I would urge the First Minister and Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, and the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to get their heads together and discuss this matter and ensure there is a political initiative taken that there is no way this man must be allowed to come to the United Kingdom, or indeed set foot in any other civilised nation.”The letter to Mr Livingstone was submitted with a letter from five people who are former political prisoners in Iran and their relatives, as well as a dossier of more than 100 pages of evidence – Mr Stevenson added.Among those speaking at the press conference, organised by the UK Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), were signatories to the letter, who told of witnessing a massacre of political prisoners more than 30 years ago.The NCRI said the Iranian president was a member of the “Death Commission” of Tehran, a group in 1988 set up as a result of a fatwa by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime.The fatwa – a formal ruling or interpretation of Islamic law – had called for the annihilation of about 30,000 political prisoners belonging to, or supporting, the left-wing revolutionary group People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).PMOI was declared a proscribed terrorist group by the European Union, Canada, the United States, and Japan – but the designation was lifted by all the countries between 2009 and 2013. It is still declared a terrorist group in Iran and Iraq.Police Scotland has assigned Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham to the case, Mr Stevenson said, but when he contacted the force last week to enquire when the witnesses would be interviewed he was told the case is being “reviewed”.Mr Stevenson added: “We trust that the police will now accelerate their activities and ensure a full investigation is carried out.”A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We have received information which is being assessed.”A Scottish Government spokesman said: “As organisers of Cop26, the UK Government and UNFCCC are responsible for inviting state delegations. The Scottish Government has no plans to meet with representatives from Iran during Cop26.“We wholeheartedly condemn human rights abuses and call on all states to uphold fundamental international standards – including the obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights.” More

Senior Conservative MP David Davis has accused YouTube of censoring him after the platform removed his speech criticising the use of domestic vaccine passports in Britain.The video of the former cabinet minister — speaking on the fringes of the Tory party’s annual conference last week — was uploaded by the civil liberties campaign group, Big Brother Watch.In a notification email, the platform told the organisation: “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organisation (WHO)”.During the speech, Mr Davis hit out at the use of domestic vaccine passports, decrying them as “illiberal, demanding that we an ordinary British citizens produce our papers to do something which is normal in our daily lives”.The Conservative MP suggested the use of vaccine passports was about “trying to push a policy by covert coercion, about pressurising people to get vaccinated”.Just last month, the UK government dramatically shelved proposals to the enforce the mandatory use of vaccine passports at crowded venues such as nightclubs, but has kept the policy option in reserve.Reacting angrily to the move to remove the video, which has now been reinstated on YouTube, Mr Davis labelled it an “outrageous attack on free speech”.“Throughout the pandemic, we have seen blatant attempts by big tech to silence opposition voices challenging the conventional wisdom,” he said.Mr Davis added: “My speech at conference was carefully researched, wholly accurate and backed up with the latest scientific fact.“This unambiguous attempt by YouTube to censor by speech is a warning. If YouTube is happy to attempt to silence elected Members of Parliament, then they are also happy to censor anyone uploading content to their speech”.The senior Conservative also urged the government to look again at the long-delayed online safety bill, which he described as containing “wholly inadequate proposals” handing more power to “unaccountable Silicon Valley giants”.Mark Johnson, the legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch, said the removal of he speech was a “serious act of censorship from a platform with a growing track record of clamping down on free speech”.“If a Member of Parliament and a human rights group can be censored by YouTube, so an anyone. While YouTube have now reinstated our video, it is clear that free speech online is in peril. While we have the means to fight back, not everyone does”.Google, which owns YouTube, has been contacted for comment by The Independent. More

James Brokenshire was the Conservative MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup and a popular figure among his constituents and parliamentary colleagues.Brokenshire, who has died aged 53 from lung cancer, had held a variety of ministerial positions since 2010, including stints at the Northern Ireland Office, the Home Office and the Ministry for Housing, Communities & Local Government.Boris Johnson described him as “the nicest, kindest and most unassuming of politicians but also extraordinarily effective … If the government needed something done well and speedily – and sensibly explained – James was the man to do it … it is a measure of his resolve that he came back from a first bout with the disease to serve in government again.”James Brokenshire was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex in 1968. He was educated at Davenant Foundation School, Loughton, and Exeter University, where he read law.Writer and broadcaster Tony Horne told The Independent: “James was virtually the first person I met in 1989 at Exeter University. That smile, warmth and confidence of that first meeting – 32 years ago this week – never changed. It was as a leader, a kind man and as a person of integrity that he shone through, whether it was James the lawyer, the politician or the broadcaster.” More

Boris Johnson’s government is set to allow more foreign butchers to work in the UK on temporary visas to prevent a mass cull of pigs.An announcement on visa rules to tackle an acute shortage of butchers causing a crisis in the pig industry is “imminent”, an environment minister has said.Tory minister Lord Benyon told the House of Lords that the steps planned by government would help “fill” the industry’s shortfall in workers.Zoe Davies, chief executive of the National Pig Association (NPA), told The Independent she was “hopeful” the government would relax language rules so hundreds of skilled butchers can come to the UK quickly.She warned: “We need people in a short space of time – we don’t have months on end. It’s about getting the backlog of pigs off farms. As long as they help stop people having to kill animals on farms.”It has been warned that up to 150,000 pigs could be destroyed as the shortage in skilled butchers and meat processing workers has led to a large backlog of animals ready for slaughter.Industry chiefs have said they face a drastic shortfall of around 1,000 butchers, with workers needed soon to help avoid the mass cull.“We hoping that something will come out either today or tomorrow, and we hope it will be good. We’ll have to wait and see,” Ms Davies said.She added: “It is not about wages, because skilled butchers are over the £25,000 threshold. We are hoping for a relaxation in the English level requirement and in the level of bureaucracy required for these visas.”Farmers, meat processors and the government’s recently-appointed supply chain tsar Sir Dave Lewis held talks on Monday about resolving the crisis.The NPA said industry leaders had asked for government help through a scheme known as Private Storage Aid (PSA) – which provides funding for slaughtered pigs to be held in private cold stores – but said she did know whether government would agree.The NPA said earlier this week that around 6,000 pigs had been culled on Britain’s farms in recent weeks.Ms Davies said she detected a change in attitude from government after sending photos of the increasing desperate situation on farms to ministers.She told Radio 4’s Farming Today programme: “It got to the point where we sent some images to various ministers to prove that pigs were reaching an overstocking situation on farm and that’s what triggered a small number of farms to start having to cull animals.”The NPA chief added: “After that, everything changed and for the first time ever, we had someone from the Cabinet Office in one of our regular Defra.”Challenged by Labour on the government’s plans, Tory frontbencher Lord Benyon promised measures to deal with gaps in the workforce soon. The peer said: “I had hoped to be able to come to the House with an announcement – it is imminent.”Promising ministers and officials had been hard at work to help “this industry to get back on its feet,” he added: “There is a deficit of between 800 and 1,000 butchers we want to fill.”“These are principally because, at the end of the Covid restrictions, many of the overseas workers returned home and we are seeking to find ways of bringing large numbers of them back.”The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been contacted for comment. More

German Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted Thursday that achieving European Union targets for slashing emissions that cause global warming will be “very hard work.”The so-called European Green Deal, agreed last December, provides a blueprint for cutting gas emissions by 55% over this decade and becoming carbon-neutral in the 27-nation bloc by 2050.“I predict that it will be very hard work to adopt this Green Deal,” Merkel said, as she received a European prize at a ceremony in Spain She remains in office in a caretaker capacity until a new German government is formed following last month’s elections.“I won’t be there anymore but will watch closely how far the ability to compromise goes,” she told an audience in Cáceres, where she received the Carlos V European Award from King Felipe VI.Merkel appealed for a change on how climate issues are addressed. Referring to deadly floods in Germany last July, she said “people speak much too often about the costs of climate protection and much too little about the cost of failing to protect the climate.”She also urged people to focus on the “new market opportunities, new technologies, new employment opportunities” stemming from the energy transformation.The Carlos V award honors people, organizations or projects that help enhance “Europe’s cultural and historical values”.Previous winners include European feminist politician Simone Veil former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev More

High gas prices will continue throughout winter and UK industry could be forced to “shut down” if supplies run out, the founder of the manufacturing giant Ineos has warned.Sir Jim Ratcliffe blamed the government for a lack of gas storage – warning that a sharp winter could lead to a widespread factory closures as demand outstrips supply.Appearing on ITV’s Peston, he was asked if the country could shut down due to a prolonged cold spell, he replied: “Yeah, in which case then, what you would do is you’d shut down industry.”Asked who was to blame for the gas shortage, Sir Jim said: “That’s [the] government. That’s a strategic issue for energy supplies in the UK – you need some storage, and we’ve got 10 days.”The Brexit-backing industrialist added: “I think it’s quite difficult to predict how long this sort of current situation’s going to last … I suppose if you were a betting man you’d assume it would probably run through at least through the winter because obviously our gas demand increases in the winter.”It comes as chancellor Rishi Sunak appeared to play down the level of support the government can provide for soaring gas costs – saying “it’s not the government’s job” to manage prices.Speaking in Washington after attending a G7 finance ministers, Sunak said: “We’re prepared to work with business and support them as required.”The chancellor added: “But in general I believe in a market economy, as it’s served us very well in this country. It’s not the government’s job to come in and start managing the price of every individual product.”Sunak is set to apply tough “value for money” tests to any financial support given to the steel sector and other major energy users, according to the Financial Times.Urging the government to provide short-term subsidies, major manufacturers, such as steel and chemical makers, have warned they may have to shut down plants this winter if energy levels continue to be high.Energy experts have also warned that a harsh winter could force the UK to restrict business’ energy supplies – shutting down factories in a throw-back to the three-day week of the 1970s.Sir Jim urged Sunak to provide enough support to make sure “the UK economy can’t be held to ransom because we haven’t organised our gas situation very well”.The UK has 10 days’ of storage, the Ineos founder said – labelling that figure “a bit pathetic really for a nation as important as the UK” given countries on the continent have four or five times that amount.“Four years ago when we had the, if you remember, the Beast From The East, we were within a day or two of running out of gas in the UK,” said Sir Jim.“If we had run out of gas it would have been a disaster for, you know, the older people who wouldn’t have been able to get heating in the house, for industry which would have had to shut down. But we were within days, and we did make that point.”Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the government should “come out of hiding” and work with business on the issue. “They’ve put their out-of-office on. Whilst other countries step up and act, the UK is staggeringly complacently sitting back.”The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said ministers and officials were engaging with industry “to further understand and to help mitigate the impacts of high global gas prices”.It comes as two more of the UK’s domestic suppliers collapsed. Colorado Energy and BP-backed Pure Planet were latest of the 11 suppliers to have folded since the beginning of September.Meanwhile, Sunak insisted that here will be a “good amount of Christmas presents available” this year despite the ongoing supply chain crisis.A build-up of cargo in Felixstowe has led to shipping company Maersk opting to divert vessels away from the Suffolk port, while similar logjams have been seen elsewhere in the world including in the US.“We’re doing absolutely everything we can to mitigate some of these challenges,” said Sunak. “They are global in nature so we can’t fix every single problem but I feel confident there will be good provision of goods for everybody.”It comes as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and 41 other trade groups have urged Sunak to slash business rates and make fundamental changes to the system.Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also called for reform, saying the system is no longer fit for purpose. “It penalises high-street shops in favour of online giants and deters businesses from investing in new green technologies,” she said. More

Boris Johnson made a personal promise to “tear up” the Northern Ireland Protocol once a Brexit deal with the EU was agreed, the senior DUP figure Ian Paisley Jr has claimed.It follows remarks made by the prime minister’s former adviser Dominic Cummings, who said Downing Street’s plan was always to “ditch the bits we didn’t like”.Confirming Cummings’ claim, Paisley Jr said Johnson gave him a guarantee before the 2019 general election that protocol commitments in any withdrawal deal with the EU would later be dropped.“Boris Johnson did tell me personally that he would, after agreeing to the protocol, he would sign up to changing that protocol and indeed tearing it up,” the DUP MP told BBC’s Newsnight.The unionist also claimed the prime minister referred to the legal commitments governing trade arrangements for Northern Ireland outlined in the protocol as “semantics”.Paisley Jr added: “The fact of the matter is, I do believe, that the government didn’t really want this to happen to Northern Ireland and they took a short-term bet.“The trouble is, this has cost the business people of Northern Ireland £850m which we can’t afford so it’s got to be fixed and it’s got to be fixed well.”Johnson never understood what his Withdrawal Agreement finally signed with the EU in January 2020 really meant, his former chief adviser said in a series of tweets. “He never had a scooby-doo what the deal he signed meant,” wrote Cummings.The row comes as the EU laid out measures to slash 80 per cent of checks on goods and dramatically cut customs processes between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.It follows a series of demands made by Brexit minister David Frost, who urged the EU to agree to fundamental changes to the protocol – and the end the European Court of Justice (ECJ)’s role in trade arbitration.EU ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida said Brussels has gone the “extra mile” and cannot go any further following Wednesday’s proposals.“We went to the limits of what we can do to address the problems of Northern Ireland because we care for Northern Ireland,” he told Newsnight.Brussels is said to be “preparing for the worst” after the UK signalled the EU’s offer was not enough. A British source told The Independent: “Without new arrangements on governance the protocol will never have the support it needs to survive.Labour’s shadow international trade secretary Emily Thornberry called for “a bit of grown-up politics” in ongoing Brexit negotiations. “Stop the dogma, sort out some realistic answers to these problems,” she told Sky News on Thursday.Asked about Cummings’ claims on plans to ditch the protocol, Thornberry said: “I think it’s appalling that people would even think of representing our country as signing up to an agreement knowing that they weren’t going to implement it – I think it’s appalling.” More

Norway’s new center-left Cabinet has taken office after the incoming prime minister presented a center-left minority government Thursday, a day after a deadly bow-and-arrow attack in a small town.Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, the leader of Norway’s center-left Labor Party, stood outside the royal palace with his 19-member team — 10 women and nine men — that includes the leader of the euroskeptic Center Party, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, who becomes finance minister. Emilie Enger Mehl became Norway s youngest-ever justice minister at age 28, while the foreign minister portfolio went to another woman — Anniken Scharning Huitfeldt.Gahr Stoere said it was “a special day” because of the “outrageous event” in Kongsberg, a small town outside Oslo in which a Danish man was taken into custody after Norwegian police say he killed five people with a bow and arrows and wounded two others on Wednesday. “It is horrible what has been revealed, it is shocking to think about what people have experienced,” Gahr Stoere told reporters before the swearing-in ceremony of the new government, pledging the new Cabinet’s full attention on the Kongsberg case. Authorities suspect that the attacker is a Muslim convert who was previously flagged as having been radicalized. Norway’s domestic security agency says the attack appears to have been an act of terrorism.“But although the backdrop is heavy, this is still the day to present a new government,” the 61-year-old Gahr Stoere said before a cheering crowd after the ceremony was over.He took over after Erna Solberg was ousted in the Sept. 13 election after two four-year terms.In line with tradition, the outgoing and incoming governments were greeted by family members and well-wishers, and received flowers and Norwegian flags, after formally meeting King Harald V. On Wednesday, Gahr Stoere and Slagsvold Vedum, the leader of the Center Party that is Norway’s third largest, unveiled a 83-page policy program for 2021-2025 where climate and the environment are among key areas. In the September vote, the Labor Party — the largest party in non-European Union member Norway — won the election with 26.3% of the vote while the Center Party finished third with 20.4%. More