Markus Andrews

Technical problems temporarily overshadowed the final prime minister’s questions before the summer recess, with Boris Johnson forced to communicate with MPs virtually during a period of self-isolation at Chequers.As the prime minister attempted to accuse Sir Keir Starmer of wanting to keep England in lockdown, the speaker of the Commons was forced to intervene, complaining: “Prime minister, we’re really struggling on the sound levels”.Attempting to continue his response to the Labour leader, Mr Johnson replied: “Do you want me to have another go, Mr Speaker?” Can you hear me, Mr Speaker?”After a brief pause, Sir Lindsay Hoyle finally responded: “We can you loud and clear prime minister”.The prime minister then asked the speaker whether he wanted him to “give that answer again”, to which a frustrated Sir Lindsay replied: “Just complete the end bit”.The technical blip comes as both Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak were forced into a humiliating U-turn over the weekend, after being contacted by test and trace services following a meeting with health secretary Sajid Javid, who recently tested positive for Covid-19.No 10 first said the prime minister and chancellor would avoid self-isolation by participating in a trial testing scheme trialling daily testing — sidestepping the requirement of 10 days’ quarantine.But with hundreds of thousands of people across the country forced to quarantine in similar situations, the move prompted an immediate political backlash, resulting in both Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson saying they would follow the instruction to self-isolate.Raising the issue during the debate, Sir Keir asked: “If somebody’s pinged by the NHS app, as millions will be over coming weeks, should they isolate yes or no?”“Can I wish the prime minister, the Chequers one, well in his isolation. With half a million people self-isolating, I think we were all a bit surprised that the prime minister, the chancellor and the Cabinet Office minister were all randomly chosen for a get-out-of-isolation-free card.“But it’s good that the prime minister finally recused himself, even if it took a public outcry, for the communities secretary to be humiliated on live TV and a trip to a country estate. If somebody’s pinged by the NHS app, as millions will be over coming weeks, should they isolate yes or no?”Responding virtually, Mr Johnson replied: “I think that everybody understands the inconvenience of being pinged, as he rightly says here I am, I wish I was with you in the Commons chamber today. “I apologise to everybody in business up and down the land in all kinds of services, public sector or otherwise who are experiencing inconvenience.“We will be switching, as the House knows, to a system based on contact testing rather than contact isolation, but until then I just must remind everybody that isolation is a vital tool of our defence against the disease.” More

Hungary’s government wants to hold a national referendum in an effort to showcase public support for a new law that the European Union says discriminates against LGBT people.The government says the law aims to protect children, but many have criticized it as an attack on LGBT rights.In a video posted on Facebook Wednesday, Prime Minster Viktor Orban said the referendum was necessary to counter strong opposition to the measures by the EU, which he said had “abused its power” by launching legal action against Hungary over the law.“Brussels has clearly attacked Hungary in recent weeks due to its child protection law,” Orban said. “When the pressure against our homeland is so strong, only the common will of the people can defend Hungary.” Orban has remained defiant on the issue, even as he faces increasing scrutiny at home and abroad over democratic backsliding and allegations of spying.The law passed last month by Hungary’s parliament bans the depiction of homosexuality or gender reassignment to minors in school education programs and media content. Its passage set off a heated confrontation between Orban’s right-wing government and the 27-member EU, which argued it discriminates against LGBT people and contravenes the bloc’s fundamental values. The referendum, Orban said, will feature five questions. They will cover such issues as whether children should be introduced to topics of sexual orientation in schools, and whether gender reassignment should be promoted or depicted to children. It will also ask whether gender reassignment procedures should be made available to minors, he said, and urged Hungarians to vote “no” to each of the questions.The announcement of the referendum comes as Orban, a frequent critic of the EU, faces intense pressure on several fronts ahead of elections next spring that are forecast to be the closest since he came to power in 2010.His government is currently under fire over findings by an international investigation published last weekend that it used powerful malware to spy on critical journalists, politicians and business figures through their smartphones. Opposition lawmakers have demanded an inquiry into the alleged spying by the parliament’s national security committee, but delegates from Orban’s Fidesz party indicated they will prevent the committee from convening, calling the reports “unfounded.” Other high-ranking officials have refused to confirm or deny that the government used the spyware against Hungarian citizens.Minutes after the announcement of the referendum, several opposition parties called for a boycott of the vote. Peter Jakab, president of the right-wing party Jobbik called the referendum plan a “clear diversion” from the spying allegations. The president of the centrist Momentum party, Andras Fekete-Gyor, said it was “a mockery of democracy and nothing more than gratuitous hate-mongering.”On Tuesday, the EU’s executive commission issued a report on EU members’ adherence to the rule of law, where it outlined the erosion of democratic standards in Hungary, including inadequate anti-corruption measures and a deterioration of media pluralism. The Commission has also opted to withhold payment of billions of euros (dollars) in EU economic recovery funds to Hungary until it implements judicial reform and strengthens anti-corruption frameworks, according to European justice commissioner Didier Reynders.Orban cast the moves as an attempt by the EU to force Hungary to amend its controversial law on the depiction of homosexuality, though the rule of law report made no mention of that legislation. More

Priti Patel has been accused of a “troubling” refusal to accept the government’s Covid border failed — despite the surge of the Delta variant in the UK that was first detected in India.During a grilling at the Home Affairs Committee, the home secretary insisted that health measures imposed at the border had “not failed” and a “comprehensive” policy was in force.Defending the decision to place India on the “red list” on 23 April — 17 days after Pakistan and Bangladesh — Ms Patel said it was “entirely wrong” to suggest ministers delayed a move to enforce mandatory quarantine at government-designated hotels for travellers from the country.But committee chair and senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper told her: “I don’t think there’s anybody in the country who thinks that your border policy worked to prevent the Delta variant spreading right across the country and we can see the evidence.”During the first week of July, the number of Covid infections linked to the now-dominant Delta variant increased by over 54,000 cases (a 34 per cent rise), according to figures from Public HealthJust last month, the chairman of the government’s Nervtag advisory group professor Sir Peter Horby suggested stronger border measures may have “delayed” or “even prevented” the spread of the Delta variant in the UK.“It’s clear that the Delta variant started to transmit within the UK because of introductions from other countries,” he told the BBC. “So I think there is a case to be said that that did happen and stronger border measures may have delayed it, may even have prevented it.”But speaking on Wednesday, Ms Patel told MPs: “The fact of the matter is we do have an end-to-end comprehensive approach when it comes to border security, but importantly health measures at the border.“That is through the 100 per cent compliance of checks we have in place and of course as the country will be very well aware, with the red, amber, green traffic light system that is put in place”.Pressed by the committee chair Ms Cooper, who said the system “clearly did fail” due to the surge in cases of the Delta variant, Ms Patel added: “We have a comprehensive end-to-end system when it comes to managing health measures at the border.“The government has had a longstanding record and policy of managing health measures at the border, which is very well publicised and well aware.“On top of that we have the largest genomic sequencing capacity in the world effectively, which has been able to spot these variants of concern that have been coming into the country.”The home secretary added: “It is entirely wrong to suggest we delayed putting India on the red list, which is effectively the suggestion that is being made.“There were other countries that were put on the red list, including Bangladesh and Pakistan early in April and that decision was taken on the basis of the positivity rate of people entering the country and the data showing the proportion of people testing positive.“The date of the India red-listing — the ban was the 23 April — with everyone arriving from India then being put into quarantine in a hotel for 10 days and that is also five days before the Delta variant was formally put under investigation on 28 April and two weeks before it was labelled a variant of concern on 7 May.”But, Ms Cooper said: “Unfortunately home secretary I don’t think there’s anybody in the country who thinks that your border policy worked to prevent the Delta variant spreading right across the country and we can see the evidence.“Therefore it’s quite troubling you’re effectively saying the policy did work and isn’t being changed in order to react more swiftly.” More

As Boris Johnson prepares to launch a new round of hostilities with Brussels with the publication of a command paper setting out demands for change to the Northern Ireland protocol, businesses have issued a warning of higher prices and less choice for customers in the province if the prime minister’s Brexit deal is implemented in full.The latest warning, echoed by Marks and Spencer chair Archie Norman, comes ahead of government ministers unveiling their plans for the future of the agreement – which Britain is no longer happy with. Brexit minister David Frost will outline a “new approach” under which the UK will demand the elimination of most checks on the Irish Sea customs border created in January.The Tory peer – who negotiated the arrangements which he now says are “unsustainable” in the 2019 Northern Ireland protocol – will warn the UK is ready to suspend the deal if the EU does not make concessions.Lord Frost is expected to say that the disruption of trade between Northern Ireland and the British mainland and transfer of supply chains to the Republic of Ireland since January mean that the UK would already be within its rights to invoke Article 16, suspending elements of the deal.But he will not take that step – which could trigger retaliatory tariffs from Brussels – today, instead saying that the UK is seeking progress before the expiry of “grace periods” on the implementation of checks on chilled meats, parcels and supermarket supplies due to expire in September.His approach is likely to infuriate Brussels, which insists it will not move outside the terms of the Northern Ireland deal laboriously negotiated in the years following hte Brexit referendum and hailed by Mr Johnson at the time as an “oven-ready” success. Under the terms of the deal signed by the prime minsister – designed to avoid the need for a “backstop” arrangement which would keep the UK in the EU’s single market and customs union without creating a hard border on the island of Ireland – all goods shipped from Great Britain to the region must follow the EU’s rules for customs and agrifood products.The new checks demanded by Mr Johnson’s protocol have added significant frictions to trade between different parts of the UK. There have been supply shortages of some goods in the province, with some businesses pulling out entirely due to the new Brexit bureaucracy.EU officials say there is no ambiguity in the text and that the UK is acting like an unreliable partner. And Labour’s Baroness Chapman of Darlington said: “The Prime Minister negotiated this deal just months ago and yet today communities and businesses in Northern Ireland are being subjected to another round of brinkmanship.“The government and the EU must urgently find a sustainable way forward to reassure everyone affected by this political stalemate.”In a letter to Lord Frost, M&S chair Mr Norman said “pointless” checks with the Republic of Ireland were “threatening” to its business there.And he warned that when grace periods on applying more checks to Northern Ireland end in September, the chaos extending to that part of the UK could deepen. He said new less flexible current customs and regulatory arrangements between the UK and EU, which were favoured by Boris Johnson’s government during talks, are “totally unsuited and were never designed for a modern fresh food supply chain between closely intertwined trading partners”.Unlike most major countries that sit outside the EU, the UK has refused to sign up to single market or customs union rules – a decision which has made trade with the bloc much more difficult.”There is no other outcome for consumers in Northern Ireland in the end other than higher prices, given the inflationary pressures being put on to retailers by the regulatory regime,” Mr Norman wrote.”Being able to keep the show on the road, let alone growing, is going to be very challenging.”The EU has proposed a temporary Swiss-style veterinary agreement to remove the vast majority of the checks, but the UK has rejected the idea. The British government says aligning with EU rules in this area would be a breach of sovereignty, and ministers – who are fixated on doing trade deals with other countries – worry that aligning to this part of EU law would make it harder to sign agreements with countries like the US and Australia. The UK is yet to explain how it will solve the problems while meeting the objectives of protocol. More

Boris Johnson faces a potential major rebellion over Covid vaccine passports from his own MPs.More than 40 Conservatives have signed a declaration by campaign group Big Brother Watch saying they are opposed to using “Covid status certification to deny individuals access to general services, businesses or jobs”.And the Guardian newspaper reports that more MPs from the governing party are privately minded to vote against the plan.It comes as the prime minister quickly U-turned on his pledge to irreversibly lift all legal Covid restrictions on Monday.Downing Street is now pushing for vaccine passports to be required for nightclubs from September – amid fears that allowing large numbers of unvaccinated people to dance in an enclosed space could spread the virus. With a government majority of 80 it would take a vast Tory rebellion to sink any proposals – though even unsuccessful major opposition could be embarrassing for the PM. But even if Conservative MPs do line up against the proposals, the prime minister’s plan could yet be saved by Labour, which is undecided on which way to vote on the issue.Keir Starmer has previously said Covid certificates would be against “British instinct” but the party is yet to commit to voting against the plan. But some of Sir Keir’s top team reportedly believe the situation has change since he made this assessment, with a rising number of cases as restrictions are lifted. Ministers have hinted that the passports, currently mooted for clubs and large ticketed events, could be further extended to other services. Business minister Paul Scully said the government was not “ruling anything out”.Asked if the scheme could be extended to venues such as theatres and cinemas, he said: “We’re not ruling anything out. We’ll work through the detail, but what we want to do is give fair warning now, so that we can work through the detail with operators over the next few weeks.” More

Sending unsolicited explicit images to another device without the person’s consent should be made a specific sexual offence as part of a major shake-up of rules governing online abusive behaviour, according to the body responsible for reviewing legislation.The Law Commission has recommended that the Sexual Offences Act be amended to include cyberflashing – when someone sends an unsolicited sexual photo, or “d*** pic”, through file-sharing functions such as Apple’s AirDrop.There is currently no specific offence of cyberflashing, although the behaviour can be considered within the offences of harassment or public nuisance.“Pile-on” harassment over the internet, when more than one person sends harassing communications to a victim, should also be criminalised as part of the changes to existing laws, which the body said were “ineffective” at preventing “genuinely harmful behaviour”.Its recommendations include adapting the laws relating to encouraging or glorifying self-harm, and raising the threshold for “false communications” offences, to target those who deliberately spread theories about medical treatments which are known not to be true.A new law should also be considered which would criminalise the deliberate sending of flashing images to people with epilepsy with the intention of triggering seizures, the Law Commission said. Professor Penney Lewis, the organisation’s criminal law commissioner, said: “Online abuse can cause untold harm to those targeted and change is needed to ensure we are protecting victims from abuse such as cyberflashing and pile-on harassment.“At the same time, our reforms would better protect freedom of expression by narrowing the reach of the criminal law so it only criminalises the most harmful behaviour.”Caroline Dinenage, the digital and culture minister, said: ”We are putting new legal responsibilities on social media companies to protect the British public. But we have to be confident we can hold the individuals using these sites to threaten, abuse and spread hate accountable too.“I thank the Law Commission for its detailed recommendations which we will carefully consider as we update our laws for the digital age, protecting freedom of speech while making sure what is unacceptable offline is unacceptable online.” The first case of cyberflashing to be investigated by police came in 2015 after a commuter received two pictures of an unknown man’s penis on her phone via Airdrop as she commuted to work.Since then, reports of cyberflashing have increased year on year, with data suggesting the numbers have risen since Covid due to the digital nature of life in lockdown.A report by the University of Leicester found a third of women had complained of being cyberflashed, while a UN Women report said: “These incidents are likely to be rising as women and girls spend more time online during the pandemic.”A separate survey carried out by Glitch, an internet safety charity, last summer found 17 per cent of women or non-binary people had been sent unsolicited pornography.In March, the government announced it was seeking help from the public on how to tackle violence against women and girls in response to an outpouring of anger following the Sarah Everard case. The Home Office reopened a public consultation that it said would help shape an update of its strategy on tackling violence against women and girls after the home secretary, Priti Patel, acknowledged behaviour such as cyberflashing and upskirting had become a more pervasive problem in the last decade while the law had not been changed to reflect this. Additional reporting by PA More

“No-one on Earth” knows whether Brexit was a good idea for Britain, the driving force behind the Vote Leave campaign has admitted.Dominic Cummings, who went on to mastermind Boris Johnson’s election victory on a “get Brexit done” platform, said that he personally regards EU withdrawal as “a good thing” but admitted it could have been “a mistake”.But, in an interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, he said that anyone who claims to be certain whether the 2016 decision to quit the 27-nation bloc will turn out to be good for the UK would have to have “a screw loose”.Mr Cummings also said that he and his Vote Leave colleagues had “taken over” the Conservative Party in order to “try and bend it to something that’s different”, in order not only to deliver EU withdrawal but also to “disrupt” the UK’s power structures.And he admitted that the notorious “We send the EU £350m a week” slogan painted on the side of Mr Johnson’s Vote Leave campaign bus was deliberately chosen to “drive the Remain campaign crazy”.Asked whether he was sure EU withdrawal was the right thing for Britain, Mr Cummings said: “I think anyone who says they’re sure about questions like that has got a screw loose, whether you’re on the Remain side or our side.“In Vote Leave we didn’t think that we’re definitely right and Remainers are all idiots or traitors.”Mr Cummings said he was confident on judgements of people’s ability, but added: “Questions like is Brexit a good idea? No-one on Earth knows if that’s, what the answer to that is.”“Obviously I think Brexit was a good thing… I think that the way in which the world has worked out since 2016 vindicates the arguments that Vote Leave made in all sorts of ways. I think it’s good that, that Brexit happened.”Mr Cummings said the £350m slogan painted on the side of Mr Johnson’s red battlebus during the referendum campaign was effective because it was based on a “true figure”, derived from the gross contribution towards EU budgets notionally required from the UK.But it did not take into account the effect of the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher or of sums returned to Britain by Brussels. The UK has in fact never sent the EU £350m a week.As suspected by many Remain supporters, the higher figure was used intentionally in order to provoke them into discussing the UK’s payments to Brussels rather than the benefits of membership.Asked if it was a “deliberate trap”, Cummings said: “Yeah … the point of using that really was to try and er, to try and drive the Remain campaign and the people running it crazy.“It helped everyone discuss what is the balance sheet?  What’s the true balance sheet?“The reason why that figure worked and the reason why it drove everyone crazy and the reason why people are still talking about it now is that we were using true figures.” More

Priti Patel has announced a fresh crackdown on migrants crossing the Channel with a £54m agreement with France to increase patrols to prevent boats reaching the UK.The home secretary announced the signing of the new UK-France cooperation agreement with French interior minister Gerald Darmanin on Tuesday evening.The new accord – which comes into force in the coming days – means that the number of police patrolling French beaches will double for the second time in a year and additional surveillance technology will be deployed on the coast.It also means that officials will patrol wider areas of coastline across northern France between Boulogne and Dunkirk and further northwest around Dieppe.The concord between the two countries comes after a spike in migrants crossing the Channel, with 430 landing in the UK on Monday, a new record for a single day.The annual figure for 2021 has passed at least 8,452 — already ahead of the total for all of 2020 with more than five months left.Ms Patel has previously vowed to make the route “unviable” under her Nationality and Borders Bill, which will be able to send asylum seekers to a “safe third country”.The home secretary said: “The British people have simply had enough of illegal migration and the exploitation of migrants by criminal gangs. “Illegal immigration is driven by serious organised criminals and people smugglers. The public are rightly angry that small boats are arriving on our shores, facilitated by appalling criminal gangs who profit from human misery and put lives at risk.”As part of the agreement both nations have agreed to a long-term plan for a “smart border” along the coast using new “cutting edge” surveillance technology.Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said: “These are yet more empty words from the Conservatives about agreeing a deal with France to address trafficking gangs. “As long ago as August 2020, ministers promised a new ‘joint operational plan’ with France would be in place ‘in the coming days’. Yet almost a year later they are still making empty promises, letting down victims, and allowing criminals to continue their evil trade.”The numbers of crossings – which are often undertaken in small boats not suitable for the journey – have shot up in recent years, with last year’s total more than quadrupling the number of arrivals in 2019.Despite this, the UK continues to see far fewer boat arrivals and asylum claims than many of its European counterparts.At least 44,230 people have arrived in Europe via land and sea so far this year, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).Also, despite the sharp rise in small boats arrivals on the south coast, asylum applications in the UK fell in 2020 to 29,456. More