Markus Andrews

Empty gas pumps, worker shortages, gaps on store shelves. It’s an autumn of inconvenience in Britain, if not quite a winter of discontent.But this week, Boris Johnson is in his element. The prime minister has shut his problems outside during the Conservative Party’s annual conference, speaking to supportive crowds, posing for selfies and clowning around on a bicycle inside a vast convention center in Manchester Johnson ends the four-day conference Wednesday with a speech promising that Britain will emerge from Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic as a stronger, more dynamic country — even if the road is slightly rocky.“There is no alternative,” Johnson said Tuesday, adopting a phrase used by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an iconic figure for Conservatives. “The U.K. has got to (become) — and we can do much, much better by becoming — a higher-wage, higher-productivity economy.”Britain has been through a turbulent time since the party last met in person two years ago. Then, Johnson vowed to “get Brexit done” and take the U.K. out of the European Union after years of wrangling over exit terms.That promise won Johnson a huge parliamentary majority in December 2019. He led Britain out of the EU last year, ending the U.K.’s seamless economic integration with a trading bloc of almost half a billion people. Britain also has been hammered by a coronavirus pandemic that has left more than 136,000 people in the U.K. dead, Europe’s highest toll after Russia.The pandemic, which put much of the economy on ice, and Brexit, which made it harder for EU citizens to work in the U.K., combined to throw the economy out of sync.While not as dire as Britain’s infamous “Winter of Discontent” in 1978-79, when thousands of striking workers crippled essential services and led to Thatcher’s election, the country has seen the most widespread economic disruption in years.A shortage of truck drivers, due partly to a testing backlog and partly to an exodus of European workers, has snarled British supply chains. That has left supermarkets with some empty shelves, fast-food chains without chicken and gas pumps out of fuel.After more than a week of fuel-supply problems, the government called in the army this week, getting scores of soldiers to drive tanker trucks. It also says it will issue up to 5,500 short-term visas for foreign truckers to come to the U.K.Other struggling parts of the economy say they aren’t getting the same quick action. Pig farmers protested outside the Conservative conference, saying a shortage of abattoir butchers means thousands of pigs may have to be slaughtered on farms, ending up in landfills rather than the food chain.Meryl Ward, a pig farmer from central England, said it was “complete madness” that the government was refusing to issue visas to a small number of skilled European butchers to ease the crisis.“It’s a complete and utter waste,” she said.Johnson says businesses will have to tough it out by raising wages, improving pay and conditions to get British workers to fill the empty jobs. He said that too many sectors of the British economy relied on Eastern European workers willing to do tough jobs for low pay, and vowed the U.K. would not go back “to the old, failed model where you mainline low-wage, low-skilled labor.”While Johnson argues that EU membership pushed down U.K. wages — a claim many economists contest — he has downplayed Brexit’s role in the country’s current economic woes, pointing out that the United States and China also have shortages of truck drivers. Critics say those countries don’t also have the gaps on supermarket shelves that Britain is experiencing.Johnson said supply-chain problems are just the “stresses and strains you’d expect from a giant waking up,” adding that Britain is rebounding fast after suffering the sharpest contraction of any major economy in the pandemic. Unemployment is under 5%, though the ending this month of a program that paid the wages of millions of furloughed workers could drive that number up.Many Conservatives are worried the winter could bring a hit on voters’ pocketbooks due to rising fuel costs from a global surge in natural gas prices and a cut to welfare benefits for millions that kicks in this week.That could make it harder for Johnson to meet his key goal of “leveling up” the U.K. by spreading economic opportunity beyond the south of England, where most business and investment is centered. That promise helped him win working-class votes in areas that long were strongholds of the center-left Labour Party.“The Conservative Party has changed,” said Michael Gove, the government’s grandly titled Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.He said the party that slashed public spending for a decade after 2010 under Johnson’s predecessors had rejected an economic model “in which the fruits of growth were not equally shared and the talents of all were not equally valued.”One day, voters will judge whether the Conservatives have delivered on their promises. But for now, with most opinion polls giving the party a lead over a demoralized Labour Party, delegates in Manchester were as buoyant as their famously irrepressible leader. They packed meeting halls and sipped warm white wine at sweaty receptions, as if Britain’s pandemic-plagued months of lockdowns, masks and social distancing were a bad dream. The Johnson-led Conservative Party was visibly younger, more diverse and less dominated by affluent residents of southern England than it had been for years.“You wouldn’t have seen this even 10, 15 years ago, the north turning out in such droves to support the Conservative Party,” said Max Darby, a delegate who was born in the northern England town of Scunthorpe. “I think Boris has to be doing something right if people like me are more than happy — in fact proud — to vote Conservative.” More

Two Windrush campaigners have claimed they were refused access to the Conservative party conference on Tuesday, leaving them “humiliated and disgusted”.Julia Davidson, who works with Windrush families in Peterborough, and Anthony Brown, co-founder of Windrush Defenders Legal, both reportedly faced difficulties in trying to access the conference centre at Manchester Central despite paying for full accreditation.Mr Brown told The Guardian that when he went to collect his pass he was met by one of Boris Johnson’s advisers, who allegedly told the lawyer he could only attend if he was chaperoned.“It was like when journalists go to China and they’ve got a minder. I thought – is this for real?” Mr Brown told the newspaper.Mr Brown said he could “guess why” he might not have been allowed in without an escort, adding: “I just think they don’t want Windrush to be an issue, that we might detract from what the conference is meant to be about.”Ms Davidson, meanwhile, said she was allowed into the four-day event on Sunday, but turned away on Monday after the adviser said there were concerns she might protest in the venue.She claimed that the adviser told her: “You’ve got to know about the Ts and Cs [terms and conditions] about banners, whistles, those kind of things.”Ms Davidson insisted that she did not have any such items on her, and just wanted “to talk to people, like lots of groups do”.The pair were eventually allowed in on Monday, but claim they were escorted by the adviser who they said introduced them to attendees of his choosing.However, they were reportedly told they would not be permitted to re-enter on Tuesday and Wednesday despite having bought a full conference pass for £225, as well as accommodation and travel.An email sent to Ms Davidson by the adviser, seen by The Guardian, said that she and Mr Brown had only been given entry on Monday “as day guests” because there was capacity.“We will refund the payments you have each made for your passes,” it added. “The passes you have won’t work tomorrow or the day after.”Reacting to the incident, the Manchester-based group Windrush Defenders tweeted: “For three days attempting to attend Tory Party conference, we find the hostile environment is in full swing.”The Windrush scandal erupted in 2018 when British citizens, mostly from the Caribbean, were wrongly detained, deported or threatened with deportation, despite having the right to live in the UK. Many lost homes and jobs and were denied access to healthcare and benefits.A Conservative party spokesperson said on Tuesday: “Windrush Defenders Legal were able to attend Conservative party conference yesterday.”The Independent has approached the Conservative Party for further comment. More

On the day he slashes £1,040 a year from the incomes of 6 million of the UK’s poorest people, Boris Johnson will insist that his “levelling up” agenda is the key to bringing hope and opportunity to left-behind communities around the country.The prime minister will deliver his keynote speech to the Conservative Party’s annual conference against a chorus of protest from charities warning that the £20-a-week cut in universal credit coming into effect on Wednesday will drag half a million more people, including 200,000 children, below the poverty line and inflict hardship on millions more.Mr Johnson will tell delegates in Manchester that his administration has the “guts” to deal with the biggest issues facing the country.But after more than a week of queuing at empty petrol pumps, sharp spikes in energy costs and warnings from retailers that the country faces shortages of food and other goods in the run-up to Christmas, the prime minister denied that the UK was in crisis.In response to concern that his demand for business to ramp up wages to attract recruits to shortage occupations like HGV drivers risks pushing up inflation and triggering rises in interest rates, he replied: “There is no alternative.”And he laughed off warnings from farmers that they will soon be forced to cull and destroy as many as 120,000 pigs because of a lack of workers in meat-processing plants after Brexit ended free movement for EU staff, joking that the animals would have died anyway to provide bacon sandwiches.The NFU’s Tom Bradshaw said the PM’s jokes showed “no empathy at all” to desperate farmers and “a lack of respect for what is going on out there”.“I’m afraid the cull has started today,” Mr Bradshaw told Times Radio. “This is a tragic waste of food, which has never happened before. It’s absolutely needless, and we have been highlighting this issue to government for many months. There’s 120,000 pigs backed up on farms and if we don’t get a solution then it’s just an absolute disaster.”On the final day of the first in-person Conservative conference since the Covid pandemic, Mr Johnson will attempt to distance himself from Tory predecessors like David Cameron and Theresa May, saying that the UK has suffered from “decades of dither and drift” under previous governments.Implicitly condemning all earlier Conservative administrations, he will say that his “reforming government” is “dealing with the biggest underlying issues of our economy and society, the problems that no government has had the guts to tackle before”.He will try to reassure the largely southern Conservative delegates that his government’s focus on “levelling up” disadvantaged areas in the north and Midlands will also be good for affluent Tory heartlands by reducing pressure for development in the leafy shires.Providing opportunities for aspirational individuals to prosper in their home areas rather than feel forced into moving to employment hotspots will “take the pressure off parts of the overheating southeast, while simultaneously offering hope and opportunity to those areas that have felt left behind”, he will say.Mr Johnson will say that, after completing the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, he is now embarking on “a change of direction that has been long overdue in the UK economy” to create a “high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy”.He will again accuse business leaders of contributing to the wage stagnation of the past decade of Tory austerity by relying on cheap migrant labour rather than investing in the innovation and skills of the homegrown workforce.Resisting appeals for relaxation of the post-Brexit visa regime to resolve the current labour shortages, he will vow that the UK will not return to “the same old broken model” or “reach for the same old lever of uncontrolled migration to keep wages low”.“The answer is to control immigration, to allow people of talent to come to this country but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people, in skills and in the equipment or machinery they need to do their jobs,” Mr Johnson will say.Levelling up was “the greatest project that any government can embark on” and will “work for the whole country”, he will say.“There are all kinds of improvements you can make to people’s lives without diminishing anyone else, and they are the tools of levelling up,” Mr Johnson will say.“If you want the idea in a nutshell it is that you will find talent, genius, flair, imagination, enthusiasm – all of them – evenly distributed around this country, but opportunity is not, and it is our mission as Conservatives to promote opportunity with every tool we have.”Mr Johnson’s speech comes after new Ipsos Mori polling which found that just 17 per cent of voters think the Conservatives are “concerned about people in real need in Britain” and only 22 per cent think the Tories look after the interest of “people like me”.A new survey by Savanta ComRes found that a majority of Conservative supporters fear the party will pay an electoral price for the wave of cost-of-living issues hitting the UK, with 53 per cent saying continued issues with supply chains will worsen their chances and the same number saying that large increases in gas and electricity price would harm them at the ballot box.The anti-poverty Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that Wednesday’s removal of the £20-a-week uplift to UC payments will bring the main rate of out-of-work support to its lowest level ever as a proportion of average earnings and suck £6bn out of the economies of disadvantaged areas.The think tank’s deputy director Helen Barnard said the PM was “abandoning millions to hunger and hardship with his eyes wide open” while Save the Children chief executive Gwen Hines said the move would “devastate families up and down the country”. Both urged chancellor Rishi Sunak to reinstate it in his Budget later this month.“People we work with tell us they’ve been relying on this £20 lifeline to buy essentials like food and clothing for themselves and their children,” said Ms Hines. Without it, tens of thousands more children are facing a cold and hungry winter.” Oxfam GB’s chief executive Danny Sriskandarajah said: “Removing this safety net, despite warnings from across the political spectrum, will cause immense hardship to families who are already barely keeping their heads above water. Many people who rely on universal credit are carers, both unpaid and paid, who contribute so much to our society for little reward or recognition.”And the National Residential Landlords Association said the UC cut would hit almost 1.5 million renters across England and Wales, many of them already struggling to pay high levels of arrears which have built up during the pandemic.“Today’s cut to universal credit is a short-sighted move that will only serve to worsen this ongoing rent debt crisis,” said the association’s Meera Chindooroy.Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “Any promise the prime minister makes to raise the living standards of people in this country rings hollow while this cut goes ahead.“Under this government prices are up, bills are up and taxes are up, yet the prime minister has pressed ahead with the biggest cut to social security ever in the face of widespread opposition.” More

Lord Frost has criticised a French minister for threatening to cut off the UK’s imported energy supply amid escalating tensions over post-Brexit fishing licences. The Brexit minister claimed it was “unreasonable” to suggest the UK was acting in bad faith when it came to allocating post-Brexit fishing licences to French boats and urged Paris to “keep things in proportion”. It came after Clement Beaune, France’s Europe minister, said on Tuesday it would “take European or national measures to exert pressure on the UK” after it emerged that the UK had rejected a number of applications by French boats to fish in British waters. The government confirmed last month it had approved just 12 of the 47 applications it had received from French small boats, though Lord Frost suggested that Britain had been “extremely generous” to European Union requests. Mr Beaune told French radio station Europe 1 that the Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) agreed as part of the Brexit divorce deal should be “implemented fully”. Asked how Paris would retaliate if it was not, he responded: “The UK depends on our energy exports, they think they can live alone while also beating up on Europe and, given that it doesn’t work, they engage in aggressive one-upmanship.”Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday, Mr Frost accused France of being disingenuous over the UK’s position on fishing access.“We have granted 98 per cent of the licence applications from EU boats to fish in our waters according to the different criteria in the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, so we do not accept that we are not abiding by that agreement,” he said. “We have been extremely generous and the French, focusing in on a small category of boats and claiming we have behaved unreasonably, I think is not really a fair reflection of the efforts we have made.”The Cabinet minister conceded that Britain “would have liked a different sort of fisheries deal” in the Brexit deal but said the UK was striving to deliver on the agreed terms.“We agreed this deal and we are implementing in good faith, so I think it is unreasonable to suggest we are not,” he continued.“If there is a reaction from France, they will have to persuade others in the EU to go along with it, and it does need to be proportionate.”It follows a long-running dispute between the UK and France over post-Brexit fishing rights. In May, Boris Johnson dispatched two Royal Navy patrol boats to protect Jersey from a feared blockade by French fishing vessels.Paris was also enraged after figures revealed that the Jersey government had rejected 75 of the 170 licence applications it had received from France. Jersey gets 95 per cent of its electricity supply from France, with just under half of the UK’s electricity imports, as of 2020, coming from the same source.A spokeswoman for the government of Jersey said: “Jersey has followed the process set down by the Trade and Co-operation Agreement throughout the process of allocating licences.“Jersey’s electricity service is underpinned by a long-term contract with EDF and we do not anticipate any interruptions in supply.” More

Sajid Javid has said health and social care “begins at home” and people should rely on their families in the first instance rather than on the state.The health secretary’s comments came during his speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Tuesday.Mr Javid said: “The state was needed in this pandemic more than any time in peacetime. But government shouldn’t own all risks and responsibilities in life. We as citizens have to take some responsibility for our health too.“We shouldn’t always go first to the state. What kind of society would that be?“Health – and social care – begins at home. Family first, then community, then the state.“If you do need support, we live in a compassionate, developed country that can afford to help with that. There are few higher callings than to care for another person.”The remarks come after the government announced the introduction of a new health and social care tax in September, which will begin as a 1.25 per cent rise in national insurance from April next year.The controversial plans were met with much criticism from leaders in social care, warning the promised extra £12bn a year would not be enough to address the current crisis.During his speech, Mr Javid recalled his work volunteering in a care home.He also warned that NHS waiting list times are set to “get worse before they get better”, promising “the biggest catch-up fund in the history of the NHS”, with a focus on prioritised elective recovery, check-ups, scans and surgeries.The minister reiterated that when he began his role in June he was told the NHS waiting list could reach 13 million.Mr Javid said: “My priorities are simple: Covid, recovery, reform. Covid: getting us, and keeping us, out of the pandemic. Recovery: tackling the huge backlog of appointments it has caused. And reform of our health and social care systems for the long term.“No reform is easy, otherwise it would’ve been done already. But if we get it right, no, when we get it right, we won’t build back the way things were.“We’ll build a future where our health and social care systems are integrated more seamlessly together, where British life sciences lead the world on new treatments, where we have not only the best surgeons, but robots performing life-saving surgeries.”Deepening health disparities were also touched upon by the health secretary, who said the gap in healthy life expectancy between Blackpool and Richmond-upon-Thames is almost 20 years. “It’s time to level up on health,” he said.Chancellor Rishi Sunak also touched upon the changes made to fund health and social care, calling the decision to raise national insurance the “least worst option”.Mr Sunak dismissed VAT for being too regressive, citing instead the “historic link” between National Insurance and healthcare, the former set up originally to pay for the NHS. More

Economists and the head of the UK’s energy regulator have thrown doubt on Boris Johnson’s assertion that inflation fears are “unfounded”. The prime minister played down concerns about price rises and the cost of living in a range of TV interviews on Tuesday, the day before univeral credit – a major pillar of the social benefits system – is due to be cut by £20 per week. His remarks came as gas prices breached £3 per therm in the UK for the first time, while also climbing across Europe. Tuesday’s rise now means prices have tripled in the last two months and broader measures of the cost of living are also rising sharply.  Consumer prices rose 3 per cent in the 12 months to August, while the Bank of England expects inflation to reach 4 per cent by the end of the year, potentially outstripping what experts at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) believe is the best guess at true pay growth of between 3.2-4.4 per cent.The prime minister told Sky News that supply pressures and rising costs were symptomatic of the global economy “coming back to life very rapidly” after the Covid-19 pandemic.“People have been worrying about inflation for a very long time, I am looking at robust economic growth, and by the way, those fears have been unfounded,” he said, adding: “Supply will meet demand.” However, his remarks flew in the face of analysis from economists across the political spectrum, and the head of the UK’s energy regulator, Ofgem. Chief among concerns shared by economists and interest rate setter the Bank of England is that prices are rising while economic growth shows some signs of stalling. Measures of wage growth which appear to show an uptick in pay, and which the prime minister has repeatedly used to justify a hard line of immigration post-Brexit, have been distorted by the pandemic, according to independent experts at the ONS. They argue that they do not show wage growth which is as robust as the prime minister’s choice use of some figures suggests. This paints a falsely positive picture due to the slump in pay earlier in the pandemic and limits on how to measure pay rolls amid furlough and sudden lockdowns.“The public policy discussion this week has lost all touch with reality,” tweeted Torsten Bell, head of think tank the Resolution Foundation. This was because while wages in a few sectors had risen, price rises were taking hold across the economic spectrum, creating a cost-of-living squeeze, he added. Meanwhile Ofgem’s chief executive told the Scottish parliament that soaring natural gas prices will be “pretty difficult” for customers to contend with. The effect would last through this winter and beyond, he told MSPs.Energy bills for 15 million households were set to increase by at least £139 under the price cap introduced at the start of October, as suppliers grapple with soaring wholesale prices following the collapse of many smaller firms. For those consumers on prepayment meters, average prices will rise by £153.Natural gas prices have climbed sharply this year, adding to pressure on energy suppliers who may not have hedged their entire portfolio of customers, by locking in fuel prices ahead of time and forcing some out of business.Ofgem’s CEO, Jonathan Brearley, told Holyrood’s energy committee that “unprecedented changes” in the gas prices “were putting strain on the wholesale market”, but he argued that the price cap was still offering customers good value for money.Mr Brearley added that “a series of factors internationally” were “constraining supply”. He said: “It looks like there is little over and above long-term contracts coming from Russia and equally there are some issues with some of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals – all of which means supply is constrained and demand is higher than you’d expect.“In terms of duration, it is very, very hard to tell and our view is we need to be open-minded about how long it might last, and for a range of scenarios.”Meanwhile hopes among some analysts that Russia might increase its gas supply to Europe in order to ease the pressures on supply going into winter, at a time of depleted reserves in the UK and continental Europe, appeared misplaced.Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that the supply crunch in Europe and beyond was the result of “unbalanced decisions” and “drastic steps” in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. “You see what is happening in Europe. There is hysteria and some confusion in the markets. Why? Because no one is taking it seriously,” he said.“Some people are speculating on climate change issues, some people are underestimating some things, some are starting to cut back on investments in the extractive industries. There needs to be a smooth transition.” More

Boris Johnson says there is ‘no alternative’ to inflationIn a series of TV interviews on Tuesday, Boris Johnson said there is “no alternative” to wage-fuelled inflation – and brushed off concerns that increasing pay for HGV drivers will drive up prices in the shops.The PM’s comments came amid warnings of 1970s-style inflation sparked by reduced EU workers due to Covid and the end of free of movement post-Brexit. Inflation is currently running at 3 per cent and is forecast to spike higher.However, Mr Johnson argues that, following Brexit, the UK is going through a “transition” from a low-wage, low-productivity economy reliant on cheap labour from overseas to a higher-wage, higher-productivity model.In his speech at the Tories’ conference, Sajid Javid said health and social care “begins at home” and people should go to family for support before the state.The health secretary said: “The State was needed in this pandemic more than any time in peacetime. But government shouldn’t own all risks and responsibilities in life.“We as citizens have to take some responsibility for our health too.“We shouldn’t always go first to the State. What kind of society would that be?“Health – and social care – begins at home. Family first, then community, then the State.“If you do need support, we live in a compassionate, developed country that can afford to help with that. There are few higher callings than to care for another person.”Follow our live coverage belowShow latest update

1633416357Good morning, and welcome to The Independent’s rolling coverage of UK politics. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest developments coming out of the Conservative Party conference as it enters its third day in Manchester. Sam Hancock5 October 2021 07:451633417058Patel to unveil new powers against activists travelling to protestsPriti Patel will unveil draconian new powers to stop climate activists travelling to protests and to allow police to search them for equipment such as glue, handcuffs or chains.The measures, to be called criminal disruption prevention orders, will bar repeat protesters from going to demonstrations, the home secretary will say – reviving memories of the targeting of striking miners attempting to reach pickets in the 1980s.And a second crackdown will introduce stop-and-search powers in respect of people who are suspected of carrying items that would allow them to attach themselves to motorways.The plans come amid growing Conservative fury about the way the group Insulate Britain has continued to block major roads, evading attempts to stop it.Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports:Sam Hancock5 October 2021 07:571633417186Dramatic increase in round-the-clock tagging for ex-offendersDominic Raab is set to announce a dramatic escalation in the use of GPS tags to track ex-offenders, with almost double the number of offenders set to be tagged over the next three years in a bid to curb reoffending and protect victims.In his first speech as justice secretary to the Conservative conference in Manchester, Mr Raab will set out plans to spend £183m to increase the use of satellite location devices to track the movement of released offenders around the clock, with the number tagged at any one time rising from 13,500 this year to about 25,000 by 2025.And he will announce a £90m plan to increase to 8 million hours a year the community work carried out by offenders in what Boris Johnson has referred to as “fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs”.Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has the full report:Sam Hancock5 October 2021 07:591633417553Johnson says UK has granted 127 HGV drivers visas – not 27Let’s get straight into it. Boris Johnson has given BBC Breakfast an interview in which he discussed everything from the HGV driver shortage, anger over the murder of Sarah Everard and worries around supply shortages in the lead up to Christmas. In one particularly shocking revelation, the PM denied reports first published by The Times last night which said only 27 EU lorry drivers had taken up the government’s temporary visa offer.Instead, he claimed, 127 of the 300 visas for tanker drivers to come to the UK immediately had been granted. They are among 5,000 visas overall on offer for HGV drivers.“It’s a fascinating illustration of the problem of the shortage,” Mr Johnson told BBC Breakfast. “What we said to the road haulage industry was, ‘fine, give us the names of the drivers that you want to bring in and we will sort out the visas, you’ve got another 5,000 visas’.“They only produced 127 names so far.”He added: “What that shows is the global shortage.”Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:051633417717PM ‘not focused’ on making misogyny a hate crime after Everard murderSome more from Boris Johnson’s interview with BBC Breakfast now.The PM said the “anger over Sarah Everard’s murder is a symptom” of a “wider frustration that people feel”, but refused to be drawn into whether misogyny should be prosecuted as a hate crime.“I think that what we should do is prosecute people for the crimes we have on the statute book,” he told the morning programme. “That is what I am focused on. To be perfectly honest, if you widen the scope of what you ask the police to do, you will just increase the problem.“What you need to do is get the police to focus on the very real crimes, the very real feeling of injustice and betrayal that many people feel.”Mr Johnson also said he wanted to see a culture change in police forces by training more female officers.Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:081633417936Closer look: PM claims making misogyny a hate crime would overload policeFollowing my last post, our deputy political editor Rob Merrick takes a look Boris Johnson ruling out making misogyny a hate crime “because it would overload the police”. Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:121633418140Johnson insists Christmas will be better than last yearThe PM has insisted that despite supply chain problems, Christmas would be better than last year after it was “cancelled” for much of the country due to coronavirus.“Christmas this year will be very considerably better than last year,” he told the BBC. “I think we have very reliable supply chains in this country.”Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:151633418602PM stumbles when asked ‘who will pay’ for corporation tax hikesDoing the media rounds this morning, Boris Johnson is now speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.Before any questions were put to him, presenter Nick Robinson stressed it was the first time the PM had appeared on the show “for two years”.“Has it really been that long? Gosh time goes quickly,” Mr Johnson said, before he was quizzed about issues including the cost of living this winter. “Do you accept that is a crisis?” Mr Robinson asked. “Who will pay, for example, for the biggest hike in business taxation that we’ve seen in years – £12m – the highest corporate tax levels seen since 1989 under a Conservative government.”The PM responded by saying “corporation taxes have been delayed” before he was cut off. “I’m asking who’ll pay for it,” Mr Robinson said.“Well, eventually corporations will pay but what we have now – which is what I was trying to explain when you asked me to stop talking earlier … what we are doing in the meantime is giving businesses a super deduction to enable them to invest in capital and equipment,” Mr Johnson replied.Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:231633419060‘We want to help low income families’: PM defends Universal Credit cuts We’re staying on Radio 4’s Today interview with the PM for a moment. Turning to Universal Credit cuts, presenter Nick Robinson asked how the Tories could justify their £20-a-week cut to claimants when they are “paying £20 for a main course steak” while in Manchester for their party conference.Boris Johnson responded by saying: “I know it’s tough for people and I understand that people on low incomes are working very hard at the moment to make ends meet, and we want to do everything we can to help them.”“But what I think is wrong is taking more money in taxation to subside low pay,” he added. Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:311633419428‘Return to work or get gossiped about,’ says JohnsonLooking towards his Tory conference speech, which is expected on Wednesday, Boris Johnson today ordered young workers to return to the office or risk being “gossiped about”.“The data I see at the moment is very clear that we are right to stick to Plan A which is what we’re on. That means opening up and encouraging people, always continuing to do sensible things like washing your hands, having ventilation, all that kind of thing,” the PM told LBC Radio this morning.“But we are certainly encouraging people to get back to work in the normal way, and I think that’s a good thing, and let me tell you why. For young people in particular it’s really essential, if you’re going to learn on the job, you can’t just do it on Zoom. You’ve got to be able to come in and sit at the … you’ve got to know what everybody else is talking about.”He added: “Otherwise you’re going to be gossiped about and you’re going to lose out. You need to be there and you need to have the stimulus of exchange and competition.”Despite this, when asked if he himself had “100 per cent” of Downing Street staff back behind their desks, the PM admitted he did not.Sam Hancock5 October 2021 08:37 More

Carrie Johnson has praised government plans to ban conversion therapy, despite campaigners repeatedly expressing frustration over multiple delays on the issue since a commitment was first made in 2018.The environmental campaigner, who is married to the prime minister, made the remarks at an LGBT+ reception on the penultimate day of the Conservative Party conference, and also stressed “there was still a long way to go” on LGBT+rights.Defending her husband’s track record on LGBT+ rights, with the prime minister often criticised over his reference to gay men as “tank-top bum boys” in a newspaper column, Ms Johnson claimed he was “completely committed” to protecting the gains of the community and extending them further.“The government he leads is banning conversion therapy, rolling out PrEP on the NHS in England to eliminate HIV transmission,” she told delegates in her only public remarks at the conference.The commitment to ban so-called conversion therapy — a discredited practice which seeks to suppress an individual’s sexual or gender identity — was first made by Theresa May in 2018, but the government is yet to introduce legislation.The equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, told MPs a consultation would begin on the issue in September, but it is now not expected to start until at least the end of October, leading to renewed criticism over the extra delay.And just last week a major report into the issue, signed by leading lawyers and cross-party MPs, demanded swift action from the government, warning that further lives risk being damaged and lost by the “inhumane” practices.Ministers have also faced intense criticism from LGBT+ campaigners after the decision last summer to drop plans to allow transgender people to self-identify without a medical diagnosis — two years after minsters signalled the change.While referencing the work the government has done and plans in the future on LGBT+ issues, Ms Johnson went on: “But for all the progress we have made as a society, we know there is still a long way to go.”“The LGBT+ community still faces stigma, harassment and discrimination, with hate crimes still a fact of life.“Around the world being LGBT+ is still a crime in 71 countries — in 11 counties it is punishable by death, just because of who you love. None of this is acceptable obviously, but it is up to all of us to stand up and say so as loudly as we can.“That’s why it is so important that the UK will be hosting its first ever global conference of LGBT+ rights next year. So whether it’s about ending prejudice at home or abroad, LGBT+ Conservatives champion all these issues — so please keep doing what you are doing.”To huge applause on Tuesday, Ms Johnson also said it was “blatantly untrue” that being LGBT+ and being a Conservative was “somehow incompatible”.“The idea that sexual orientation or your gender identity should determine your politics is now as illogical as saying your height or hair colour should,” she added.“Whether you are LGBT+, or an ally like me, we are all committed to equality and acceptable for everyone, whoever you are, and whoever you love.” More