Markus Andrews

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe Post Office is an “atrocious organisation” which was run by “thugs in suits” and was willing to do “anything and everything” to hide Horizon IT failures, former subpostmaster and campaigner Alan Bates has said.In damning testimony to an official inquiry, Mr Bates also said the Post Office had spent more than two decades trying to silence him and terminated his contract because he stood up to it.He said this led to him being branded “unmanageable” and later dismissed. He renewed his call for the company to be taken over by a bigger firm with the resources to mend it, suggesting Amazon could pick up the business for £1.Rishi Sunak described the scandal as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”.Hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft and false accounting because of the faulty Horizon computer system made by Fujitsu.Earlier this year the prime minister announced he would bring forward legislation to exonerate the wrong Post Office workers after an ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, highlighted their plight. Mr Bates said the Post Office was seemingly willing to do “anything and everything to try and keep the failures of Horizon hidden“ regardless of who it has to “trample” in the process.He also accused the government of allowing the “once great institution” to be stripped by “little more than thugs in suits” who have been acting with “impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict”.He told the inquiry he thought the Post Office was “definitely trying to outspend” campaigners as part of its “aggressive” tactics at the High Court. He said the mediation scheme set up to address the scandal was part of a “cover-up” and a “fishing expedition” to discover what evidence subpostmasters had.And he called for the government to be held responsible for its part, after “pumping huge amounts of money” into the Post Office.He added: “I have spent the last 23 years campaigning to expose the truth, and justice, not just for myself, but for the entire group of wrongly treated/wrongly convicted subpostmasters.“I have dedicated this period of my life to this cause which, sadly, has been necessary since Post Office Limited has spent this entire period denying, lying, defending, and attempting to discredit and silence me and the group of SPMs [subpostmasters] that the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) represents.”Former subpostmaster and lead campaigner Alan Bates arrives at the inquiry on Tuesday More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailWatch live as David Cameron holds a joint press conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Washington DC on Tuesday 9 April.The foreign secretary has already held talks with Donald Trump in Florida amid his push to shore up US support for Ukraine.Lord Cameron met with the presumptive Republican presidential candidate on Monday ahead of his trip to DC to appeal to Congress over a stalled package of aid.On his visit to the US capital, he will warn that success for Kyiv in defeating Russia is “vital for American and European security” as he urges lawmakers across the Atlantic to approve “urgent” further assistance for the country.Lord Cameron will push for Ukraine to be given the resources needed to “hold the line” and “go on the offensive” in 2025, the Foreign Office said.He will meet with Mr Blinken as well as Congressional leaders, who he will urge to “change the narrative” on support for Ukraine while a multibillion-dollar aid package remains held up on Capitol Hill. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailArtificial intelligence (AI) can be a “sword and a shield” against harmful content, not just a tool to spread it, Sir Nick Clegg has said.The former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister is now the head of global affairs at tech giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.Speaking during an AI event at Meta’s London offices, Sir Nick said that while it was “right” to be “vigilant” about generative AI being used to create disinformation to disrupt elections, he said AI was the “single biggest reason” Meta was getting better at reducing the spread of “bad content” on its platforms.I would urge everyone… to think of AI as a sword, not just a shield, when it comes to bad contentSir Nick CleggIn 2024, billions of people are set to go to the polls with elections due in a number of the world’s largest democracies, including the UK, US and India.It has led some experts to warn of the potential threat posed by the rapid rise of generative AI tools – including image, text and audio content apps – and the possibility of them being used to spread misinformation and disinformation with the aim of disrupting democratic processes.A number of senior UK politicians have already been the subjects of so-called deepfakes, which have spread on social media.And on Tuesday, fact-checking charity Full Fact said the UK was currently vulnerable to misinformation, and more government intervention was needed on the issue with elections on the horizon.Sir Nick said focus on the issue was important, but argued that good AI was potent protection against bad AI, and that Meta and others had the tools needed to fight the spread of harmful material.“I would urge everyone – yes, there are risks – but to also think of AI as a sword, not just a shield, when it comes to bad content,” he said.“If you look at Meta, the world’s largest social media platform, the single biggest reason why we’re getting better and better in reducing the bad content that we don’t want on Instagram and Facebook is for one reason; AI.”He added that the use of AI to scan Meta’s platforms to find and remove harmful content had reduced the levels of bad content by “50 to 60% over the last two years” meaning that now “for every 10,000 bits of content, one bit of content might be hate speech”.“Some of the work teams have been doing inside Meta to improve the way that we use our most advanced AI tools to triage content, so that we make sure that the 40,000 people we have working on content moderation really look at the most acute edge cases and they don’t waste a lot of their time looking at stuff that is inoffensive or not a problem has really improved rapidly in recent months,” he said.“It is right that there is an increasingly high level of industry wide cooperation, particularly this year because of this unprecedented number of elections.“We should be vigilant, but I would urge you to also think of AI as a great tool to navigate that difficult landscape and I’m quietly optimistic that the whole industry is trying to really lean into this as cooperatively as possible.”During the event, Sir Nick also announced that Meta’s next AI large language model – used to power AI tools, including chatbots built by Meta and other firms – would be released shortly.Sir Nick said the new model, known as Llama 3, would begin to roll out “within the next month, hopefully less” and would continue over the course of the year. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLord Cameron held a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump in Florida as part of a charm offensive designed to secure more US funding for the war in Ukraine.The foreign secretary visited the former US president at his Mar-a-Lago resort despite previously calling him “protectionist, xenophobic, [and] misogynistic” and denouncing one of his policies as “divisive, stupid and wrong”. It was the first meeting between a senior minister and Mr Trump since he left office in 2021. As well as Ukraine, the two men are understood to have talked about the strength of the UK-US relations, the so-called ‘special relationship’, and other foreign policy issues. Lord Cameron is on a high-profile visit to the US to press Republicans to pass the blocked aid package for Ukraine and will also discuss Israel’s war in Gaza.It is the latest in a series of interventions made by the foreign secretary over the support for Ukraine’s battle against Russia.Earlier this year, he warned Congress not to show “the weakness displayed against Hitler” in the 1930s.That comment drew the ire of right-wing congresswoman and staunch Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told him to “kiss my ass” and “worry about his own country”.Lord Cameron flew to Florida to meet Mr Trump on Monday night. The Foreign Office insisted that it was “standard practice for ministers to meet with opposition candidates as part of their routine international engagement.”But it is not the first time Lord Cameron’s decision to meet a presedential candidate has raised eyerbrows. In 2012, when he was prime minister, he met the Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney during a campaigning and fundraising trip to London. During his visit, Lord Cameron is hoping for a breakthrough with Republicans who have been blocking a $60bn (over £47.5bn) military aid package for Ukraine, now into the second year of its war with Russia.He will hold talks with US secretary of state Antony Blinken and key figures across Congress on Tuesday to call them to “change the narrative on Ukraine this year” and release the funding.He will tell the American leaders that the “success for Ukraine and failure for [Vladimir] Putin are vital for American and European security”.“This will show that borders matter, that aggression doesn’t pay and that countries like Ukraine are free to choose their own future,” the Foreign Office said.“The alternative would only encourage Putin in further attempts to re-draw European borders by force, and would be heard clearly in Beijing, Tehran and North Korea.“US support for Ukraine has massively degraded the military capacity of a common adversary, Russia has lost half of its pre-invasion land combat power, and a quarter of its original Black Sea fleet, while creating jobs at home and strengthening the Western alliance and Nato.”Republicans within the US Congress have blocked the latest tranche of the package to Ukraine for months. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have demanded concessions on border security before supporting the bill.The former president, who has claimed he would end the war in Ukraine “in one day”, has long been critical of the huge amount of economic and military aid the US has given Ukraine. Last month he appeared to soften his tone on Nato in the wake of uproar after he said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to members who don’t pay their fair share.In 2015, Mr Cameron described the former Republican president’s “Muslim ban” travel policy as “divisive, stupid and wrong” and criticised his disagreement with Ukraine aid as “not a sensible approach”.Ms Taylor-Greene’s outburst came in response to an article by Lord Cameron cautioning the US against mirroring “the weakness displayed against Hitler in the 1930s”.The Foreign Office said the talks with Mr Blinken and other Biden administration officials will also focus on the ceasefire in Gaza and the delivery of more aid to the region.He will also “push for a full, urgent, and transparent investigation into the terrible events in Gaza” after the “completely unacceptable” deaths of three British men working for aid organisation World Central Kitchen in the Israeli drone strike. Both Mr Trump and the White House have been approached for comment. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailFormer home secretary Suella Braverman has defended Israel’s actions in Gaza and insisted the country is doing a “huge amount” to comply with international law.Her comments come amidst mouting international and domestic pressure on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respond to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine and the death of three British aidworkers last week.The Tory MP for Fareham said she “strongly rebuts” suggestions that Israel is in breach of international law: “I have probed and I have tested, I’ve been very near to the border in Gaza and I am convinced – and I say this as a former attorney general who dealt with matters of international law and military action – that I very strongly rebut suggestions that Israel is in breach of international law, that there’s a genocide, that there’s a forced starvation.“Quite the contrary,” she told told LBC radio . “Israel is doing a huge amount using technology, sophisticated methods, and a lot of care to minimise civilian casualties, to get aid into Gaza and to comply with international law.”Former home secretary Suella Braverman has defended Israel’s actions in Gaza More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLiz Truss has revealed the late Queen Elizabeth II told her to “pace yourself” during their first and final meeting as prime minister.In her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, Truss admitted she did not take the monarch’s advice when they met in September 2022 to confirm her as Britain’s new prime minister.Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland, which occured just two days before the monarch’s death, Truss says the 96-year-old the Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics. She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty,” she writes.“Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”At the meeting, the Queen was pictured using a walking stick and smiling warmly as she greeted Ms Truss in front of an open fire in her sitting room.At the meeting, the monarch, using a walking stick, was pictured smiling warmly as she greeted Ms Truss in front of an open fire in her sitting room at the castle More