UK Politics

Neil Parish resigns after admitting to watching pornography in the CommonsGovernment proposals to sell off housing association properties have been branded “hare-brained” amid warnings they will worsen the shortage of homes for more than a million Britons on waiting lists for affordable accommodation.Boris Johnson is reported to want to grant 2.5m housing association tenants in England the right to purchase their homes at a massive discount, in an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s popular “right to buy” policy of the 1980s which saw a huge proportion of the nation’s stock of council homes sold.Labour branded the plan “desperate”, pointing out that it repeats a policy from David Cameron’s 2015 Conservative manifesto which failed to deliver any sales.And the chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter said the “hare-brained idea” was “the opposite of what the country needs”.Earlier, a minister has rejected calls for an all-women shortlist to find a replacement for disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish. Universities minister Michelle Donelan said that female-only shortlists for parliamentary candidates are “demeaning” to women.Show latest update

1651503053Boris Johnson to be interviewed by Good Morning Britain for first time in nearly five yearsBoris Johnson is due to hold an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain show tomorrow for the first time in nearly five years.“Susanna Reid is going to Downing Street and their interview will be live,” said presenter Kate Garraway, adding that it has been “1,790 days, nearly five years, since he last spoke to this show”.The prime minister infamously was accused of hiding in a fridge in a bid to escape live questioning on the programme during an election campaign visit to the West Yorkshire dairy firm Modern Milkman in December 2019.Ministers were also accused of boycotting the show for more than 200 days during the Covid pandemic, after frequent on-air bust-ups with former presenter Piers Morgan, who earlier tweeted:Andy Gregory2 May 2022 15:501651501409Charities say government’s Rwanda plans failing to deter Channel crossingsThe government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda has done little to deter people from making the perilous journey to the UK, refugee charities have said – as 254 people in small boats were detected yesterday following an 11-day pause in such trips, with another 100 reportedly brought ashore today.The government’s Nationality and Borders Bill – which makes it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and includes powers to process asylum seekers overseas – became law on Thursday.The resumption of crossings at the weekend showed that “draconian policies enshrined in the Nationality and Borders Bill and their Rwanda deal are doing little to deter desperate people jumping on boats because they do nothing to address the reasons people come”, said Enver Solomon, chief executive of Refugee Council.He called on the UK to have a “grown-up conversation with France and the EU about sharing responsibility”, adding: “We need a fair and humane asylum system, with means well thought-out, long-term solutions that address why people are forced from their homes, and provides them with safe routes to the UK.”Care4Calais said that of the 64 people it surveyed, 87 per cent had heard of the plan and 75 per cent said “it won’t put them off crossing to the UK”, calling the plan “just another in a long line of deterrence policies announced by this government”.Such sentiments were echoed by Pierre-Henri Dumont, French National Assembly member for Calais, who told the BBC: “When you leave your country because of flood, because of starvation, because you are not afraid of being hauled and sent back to another country, at least if you have a chance you will try.”You can read more details here:Andy Gregory2 May 2022 15:231651499559Family feel ‘completely abandoned’ by Foreign Office as Briton faces death penalty in IraqThe family of a British man facing the death penalty in Iraq have said they feel “completely abandoned” by the Foreign Office as sentencing approaches.Jim Fitton’s son-in-law told The Independent it was a “cautionary tale” for British citizens abroad to not expect the department “to save you if you get into trouble outside of your control”.My colleague Zoe Tidman has the story: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:521651498505 Tory MP: Too early to know if Rwanda policy is workingIt is too early to know if the government’s Rwanda migrant policy is working, a Tory MP has said.Tim Loughton, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, was speaking after 254 people were detected in small boats crossing the Channel to the UK on Sunday after an 11-day pause in such journeys.”They are depressing scenes and they are going to get worse,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme.”It may seem a very robust, extreme scheme, but it is the first thing that has actually been put forward that would actually practically do something about this problem.”People in the south and up and down the country are just sick and tired of these people smugglers making a fortune out of human trafficking, this misery coming across the Channel.”The Rwanda scheme is an attempt to do something practical about it. But is very early days – it was only announced three weeks ago and it hasn’t started yet.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:351651497044Asda chief warns food prices could remain high for ‘some time’Food prices will remain high for “some time” and the government should intervene to help struggling families, one of Britain’s most experienced retailers has said.Lord Rose, Asda chairman, also accused the Bank of England and ministers of being too “slow” to react to rampant inflation.He said: “We saw the signs last year that inflation was coming. I think the actions that have been taken to curb it have been a bit slow in coming.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:101651495805‘Misogynistic dinosaurs’ dragging down parliament’s reputationIt is a small minority of “misogynistic dinosaurs” who are responsible for sexual misconduct at Westminster, a minister has said.Universities minister Michelle Donelan spoke to Sky News earlier about the wave of misogyny claims to hit parliament in recent days.“These are misogynistic dinosaurs,” she said. “They do not represent the majority of members of parliament.More comments below: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:501651493820Boris Johnson slammed over ‘hare-brained’ Thatcher-style plan to sell off housing association homesGovernment proposals to sell off housing association properties have been branded “hare-brained” amid warnings they will worsen the shortage of homes for more than a million Britons on waiting lists for affordable accommodation.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock reports: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:171651493156ICYMI: Tensions over cost of living surface, as Kwarteng sets face against ‘arbitrary’ windfall tax on energy firmsCabinet divisions over the cost of living crisis have been exposed, as business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng argued firmly against an “arbitrary” windfall tax on energy firms just days after Rishi Sunak indicated he was ready to consider the move.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock has the story: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:051651491956ICYMI: Tory MP in row over colleague’s sex assault conviction to quit parliamentA Tory MP who sparked fury by coming to the defence of a colleague found guilty of child sex assault has announced he will stand down from parliament at the next election.Crispin Blunt was forced to apologise and resign as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT+ rights after condemning the conviction of Imran Ahmad Khan as an “international scandal”.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock reports: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 12:451651490156Starmer: Cooperation with France needed to tackle Channel crossingsThe UK needs to work closer with France to solve the migrant crisis, the Labour leader has said while on the campaign trail in Worthing.Sir Keir Starmer said: “Nobody wants to see anybody making that perilous journey across the Channel and everybody wants to crack down on the criminal gangs that are driving this.”The best way to do that is to have an international co-ordinated criminal response.”I have worked on international criminal organisations before when I was director of public prosecutions.”I know what can be done if you’ve got teams working together across Europe all the way along those routes absolutely bearing down on these criminal gangs and working very closely with the French authorities as well.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 12:15 More

A government minister has rejected calls for an all-women shortlist to find a replacemet for disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish.Universities minister Michelle Donelan said that female-only shortlists for parliamentary candidates are “demeaning” to women.Boris Johnson is facing calls from within his own party to ensure that a woman is chosen to fight the by-election in the east Devon seat of Tiverton and Honiton triggered by Parish’s resignation after being caught watching pornography in the Commons chamber.Tory MP Caroline Nokes, who chairs the Commons women and equalities committee, has said the party must pick a female candidate in order to show “real evidence of change”.But Ms Donelan said she did not support all-women shortlists, arguing that it was better to encourage female candidates to get into parliament “on merit”.”We don’t do it by putting in quotas which I find quite demeaning to women. Women can get there on merit,” she told Sky News.”We have seen that in the past in my own party – the first two female prime ministers when Labour haven’t even come close.”We have got the home secretary who is a female, we have got the foreign secretary who is a female: those individuals got there on merit.”Conservative Party chair Oliver Dowden has voiced the ambition of half of the party’s MPs being women, but the Tories have so far drawn the line at introducing all-female shortlists for the selection of candidates in winnable seats.Mr Dowden told the Sunday Telegraph: “I think the single best thing I can do as chairman of the Conservative Party is make sure that we select more good female members of parliament so that the membership of the [parliamentary] Conservative Party reflects the wider country.”Ms Donelan said she had not personally experienced any harassment in Parliament and insisted that reports of misconduct were confined to a small minority of “misogynistic dinosaurs”.”This is not the majority of members of parliament, this is a minority,” she said. “These are misogynistic dinosaurs. They do not represent the majority of members of parliament.”Labour frontbencher Fleur Anderson agreed that sexist misconduct in the Commons was restricted to a “minority” of male MPs, and said she had not experienced it very often.But she told Sky News: “A minority is too much. A minority can make the whole workplace feel unsafe. Even one place in the workplace that you can’t feel that you can you can trust or is inappropriate is too many in the workplace. “To hear that there have been 56 allegations of sexism, bullying, harassment being investigated at the moment is a kind of workplace that I don’t really want to be part of. It’s extremely worrying for me.“We should be setting the highest standards for the country. And even more important, we’re the ones making the decisions about rules for the whole country. I have joined politics, for politics to be a force for good – to tackle sexism, to tackle discrimination. To find that it’s in Parliament and it’s still not being tackled fast enough is very, very concerning. “I hope this will be a wake-up call and that we will now tackle sexism with much more vigour and root it out.”Ms Anderson voiced support for Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s proposal that MPs should no longer be the direct employers of their office staff, saying that this created a “power imbalance” which could act as “a door for abuse”.She said that one of the best ways of tackling the culture of misogyny would be to bring male and female representation in parliament closer to parity.“We can definitely increase the number of women in parliament,” she said. “We are still nowhere near that 50/50 level that we should be toequal to society. We are in the Labour Party, we’ve got 54 per cent of MPs who are women. The Conservative Party is still only 24 per cent, and there are ways that that can be changed, but they’re just not putting those rules in.”Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said that the answer to misogyny lies in changing men’s behaviour.She told BBC1’s Breakfast: “Not all men are misogynist, but all women do experience misogyny and it is a problem of male behaviour.“It shold be younger men that we are talking to, rather than trying to tell young women what they have to do to cope with misogyny. We should be trying to educate and talk to young men about behaving in a way that doesn’t subject young poeple to that kind of conduct and behaviour.”Ms Sturgeon said that after years in politics she felt she was personally “inured” to the sexism she encounters, but that in her younger days she had consciously adapted the way she dressed and the way she behaved in the hope of protecting herself against sexist commentary.She warned that politicians “run the risk of making politics and public life somewhere that women just don’t want to be”, which she said would be damaging to democracy. More

Government proposals to sell off housing association properties have been branded “hare-brained” amid warnings they will worsen the shortage of homes for more than a million Britons on waiting lists for affordable accommodation.Boris Johnson is reported to want to grant 2.5m housing association tenants in England the right to purchase their homes at a massive discount, in an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s popular “right to buy” policy of the 1980s which saw a huge proportion of the nation’s stock of council homes sold.But Labour branded the plan “desperate”, pointing out that it repeats a policy from David Cameron’s 2015 Conservative manifesto which failed to deliver any sales.And the chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter said the “hare-brained idea” was “the opposite of what the country needs”.“There could not be a worse time to sell off what remains of our last truly affordable social homes,” said Polly Neate.“The living cost crisis means more people are on the brink of homelessness than homeownership – nearly 34,000 households in England became homeless between October and December last year, more than 8,000 of them were families with children.”Ms Neate said that the original right to buy scheme tore “a massive hole” in England’s stock of social housing, as less than 5 per cent of the homes sold were ever replaced with new affordable homes to rent.“These half-baked plans have been tried before and they’ve failed,” she said. “Over one million households are stuck on social housing waiting lists in England, and with every bill skyrocketing, the government should be building more social homes so we have more not less.”Details of the scheme were floated just days ahead of local elections in which Tories are thought to be heading for a drubbing – and during the period of “purdah” when government departments are banned from policy announcements that may impact on voting.An unnamed government source said Mr Johnson was keen to find ways to help the “generation rent” of under-40s who have been priced out of the housing market to become home-owners.Conservatives have long viewed home ownership as a key driver for voting Tory, and party strategists are concerned at the prospect of a generation coming into middle age without any stake in the housing market.”The prime minister has got very excited about this,” the source told the Daily Telegraph. “It could be hugely significant.”In many ways it is a direct replica of the great Maggie idea of ‘buy your own council flat’. It is ‘buy your own housing association flat’.”But shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy said: “This is desperate stuff from a tired government, repackaging a plan from 2015.”Millions of families in the private rented sector with low savings and facing sky high-costs and rising bills, need far more ambitious plans to help them buy their own home.”These proposals would worsen the shortage of affordable homes.”And the chief executive of the Demos thinktank, Polly Mackenzie, said that the proposals would disadvantage some of the groups of younger voters whose support the Tories need to attract.Right to buy offers huge financial benefits to those who qualify for social housing, while providing nothing for those – often young professionals – who pay much higher rents in less secure private tenancies, she said.“Half of tenants are in the social sector and half in the private,” said Ms Mackenzie. “I cannot fathom the politics – let alone the justice – of helping one group with a subsidy of up to £100,000, while offering the others only a tiddly Help to Buy ISA and equity loans that have to be repaid.Those who got by on their own, and never had to fall back on state housing, get the worst deal. Extending Right to Buy is a really good way to p*** off young renters, a group the Conservatives really need to stop letting down.”Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Christine Jardine said: “Instead of copying and pasting from old manifestos, Boris Johnson should be helping families on the brink. “Instead of talking up policies of the past, Boris Johnson should be slashing taxes right now and ensuring every pensioner can afford to heat their home.” More

A Tory MP who sparked fury by coming to the defence of a colleague found guilty of child sex assault has announced he will stand down from parliament at the next election.Crispin Blunt was forced to apologise and resign as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT+ rights after condemning the conviction of Imran Ahmad Khan as an “international scandal”.First elected as MP for Reigate 25 years ago in 1997, Mr Blunt has been one of parliament’s loudest defenders of gay and transgender rights since coming out in 2010.In a statement announcing his decision to step down, he said he would use his remaining time in parliament to “continue to call out long-established populist views on policy shibboleths that continue to cause damage to our society and beyond”.After serving as an army officer and then an adviser to then foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind – who he later backed in a Tory leadership battle – Mr Blunt was chosen to fight the Surrey seat after predecessor Sir George Gardiner defected to the anti-EU Referendum Party.He served on the Conservative frontbench in opposition under Iain Duncan Smith, but quit his role in 2003, arguing the leader was a “handicap” to the party’s fortunes.After serving as an opposition whip under Michael Howard, he joined the coalition Tory-Lib Dem government as prisons minister in 2010.His separation from his wife and decision to come out as gay in 2010 is believed to have prompted a vote by his local party executive in not to endorse his candidacy for the next election, but the decision was overturned in a postal ballot of constituency members.In 2016 he raised eyebrows in parliament by stating during a Commons debate on proposals to ban poppers that he was a user of the substance.In a post on his website, 61-year-old Mr Blunt – the uncle of actress Emily Blunt – said he wanted to “use this 25th anniversary to make public, what those closest to me have known privately for some time, that after seven increasingly tumultuous parliaments, this will be my last”.Mr Blunt’s departure will spark a scramble among would-be Tory MPs to be selected candidate in the ultra-safe seat of Reigate, which has been Conservative since 1910 – apart from Gardiner’s brief stint as Referendum Party MP – and recorded a majority of 18,310 in the 2019 election. More

Water companies dumped sewage in public swimming spots for more than 160,000 hours last year, research released by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.Data from the Environment Agency showed that 25,000 sewage releases took place in coastline bathing spots in areas popular with families and holidaymakers, such as Scarborough South Bay in Yorkshire and Clevedon Beach in Somerset.The research comes after water companies admitted to discharging raw sewage into England’s rivers, estuaries and seas around 1,000 times a day during the last year.The government has been trying to clamp down on spills due to their potentially harmful impact on the country’s ecosystems and has launched a new consultation on sewage spill proposals.Just last week environmental campaigners, organised by Surfers Against Sewage, marched in areas such as Newquay and Worthing to protest the worsening state of Britain’s waterways.Data released by the Environment Agency in 2020 showed that every river in England is polluted and only one in seven of them meet a “good” ecological standard.Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron said water companies were “making billions in profits” while the UK’s rivers and lakes are pumped full of sewage and called for a sewage tax on water companies profits in order to clean up seas, rivers, and coastlines in the country. In 2020-21, water companies made £2.8bn in operating profit and paid out £27m bonuses to senior executives.Last week the Liberal Democrats proposed a new Sewage Discharge Bill in the House of Commons which would have named and shamed water companies who were found to have poisoned animals with sewage dumps, but the idea was blocked by the government.Mr Farron said: “It is now or never to save families from swimming in sewage infested waters this summer.“Children should be free to enjoy Britain’s great coastlines and lakes yet Conservative ministers are letting water companies get away with shameful sewage dumps. This is an environmental scandal.“The whole thing stinks. Water companies are making billions in profits whilst our rivers and lakes get pumped full of sewage.“This week voters can send the Conservative government a message to finally get tough on water companies. Every vote for the Liberal Democrats puts more pressure on the government to stop this sewage scandal.” More

Candidates from left-of-centre parties will outnumber those on the right by more than two to one in this week’s local elections in England, creating an inbuilt advantage for the Conservative Party, new research has shown.In almost half (43 per cent) of wards being contested, the Conservatives are the sole right-of-centre party against three contenders from the left of centre – Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens – effectively splitting the “progressive” vote in a way that makes it easier for Boris Johnson’s party to win.And in another third (36 per cent) of battles, the Tories are the sole “conservative” representative fighting candidates from two “progressive” parties. Out of almost 3,000 council seats up for grabs, only 15 (0.5 per cent) will see more conservative than progressive parties on the ballot paper.The research, by trade union campaign Politics for the Many, emerged a day after Tory chair Oliver Dowden accused Labour and the Liberal Democrats of engaging in a secret pact – denied by both Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Davey – to help each other out in Thursday’s elections.Pointing to statistics suggesting that Labour was standing fewer candidates than usual in the southwest of England, and the Lib Dems fewer in the northeast, Mr Dowden claimed the parties were conspiring to “deny the voters a proper democratic choice”.Politics for the Many said its analysis, using data collated by Democracy Club, showed that England’s winner-takes-all voting system means voters on the left are in effect being punished for having a choice of parties to vote for, whereas voters on the right see their chances of success boosted by there being fewer candidates to choose from.Campaign coordinator Nancy Platts said it meant many voters from the left of the political spectrum had to “hold their noses” and vote for a party they did not support in order to pursue the priority of preventing a Tory victory.“We’ve seen all too many times how our voting system serves as a barrier to progressive change, amplifying the votes of some while casting others on the scrap heap,” said Ms Platts. “The result – a winner-takes-all system that gifts unearned majorities to the government of the day… governments that are all too often conservative.“It’s a system that forces voters to vote tactically, often supporting the ‘least worst’ candidate in order to try and game the broken system. In these local elections, the odds are once again stacked against progressives, and the results will likely reflect that in seats up and down the country. “Labour must get serious about electoral reform to overcome the structural advantage our electoral system gives the Conservatives. Only then can progressive views be given a fair chance at the ballot box.” The campaign’s analysis found that, across all 2,859 wards being contested, there were an average of 2.2 Labour, Lib Dem or Green candidates standing for every Conservative, Reform UK or Ukip candidate.Some 43.3 per cent of wards will see one party from the right facing three from the left, while 35.5 per cent will see one from the right against two from the left. In a further 2.4 per cent of wards, two right-of-centre parties will face three “progressives”.No wards were found in which all three right-of-centre parties were standing, and only 15 will be contested by more parties on the right than on the left. In only 16.1 per cent of wards were equal numbers of parties from each side standing.Proportional voting systems, such as those used in Scottish and Northern Irish local elections and parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales, allow voters to number candidates in order of preference, eliminating the problem of “split votes”. Most council ballots in England use a straight first-past-the-post system, while in some areas residents have as many as three votes but no means of ranking candidates by preference. Major parties in these areas tend to run three candidates in the hope of scooping all three Xs.Boris Johnson’s triumph in the 2019 general election was hugely assisted by Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit Party candidates to avoid splitting the right-of-centre vote, allowing Tories to claim a landslide victory to “get Brexit done” in an election that saw a majority vote for parties offering a second referendum. More

Labour is demanding an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs to clear up whether any government minister with responsibility for tax policy has ever benefitted from undeclared tax arrangements as a result.The call comes after The Independent revealed the non-dom tax status enjoyed by chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty, as well as questions over health secretary Sajid Javid’s use of an offshore trust while working as a Treasury adviser.In response to queries from The Independent, just five out of 22 cabinet ministers were prepared to confirm publicly that they and their families do not benefit from the use of tax havens or non-dom status.In a letter to HMRC, seen by The Independent, Labour Treasury spokesperson James Murray called for an investigation to provide “full clarity that no sitting government minister who has been involved in any way with shaping tax policy has benefitted from those policies through personal and previously undeclared tax arrangements linked to offshore tax havens”.And he asked for reassurance that steps would be taken to ensure that no ministers with such links are involved in future decisions on tax policies in these areas – and that Mr Sunak would recuse himself until questions over his own links to tax havens have been resolved.The Treasury has said that it “does not recognise” reports that Mr Sunak was listed as a beneficiary of trusts linked to his wife’s family located in the tax havens British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands in 2020.And Ms Murty gave up her non-dom status after it became public knowledge, hitting her husband’s status as leading contender to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister.Among a list of eight questions to HMRC, Mr Murray demanded to known whether the chancellor has ever benefitted from the use of tax havens – including before his time in parliament – and whether any of the investments in the blind trust he set up when appointed a minister are held offshore.He asked for a list of ministers who have used tax havens to manage their affairs or non-dom status to minimise tax bills.“These questions are of critical public interest,” wrote the Labour frontbencher. “Not only to make sure basic standards of transparency are met, but also because our country is in the grips of an escalating cost of living crisis.“In the midst of this crisis, millions of working people and businesses are seeing their tax burden rise. As they pay more tax because of ministers’ decisions, it is right that they should know whether or not minister have been using offshore tax havens to reduce their personal tax bills.“While it should be obvious, given recent stories of links to tax havens and loopholes from the chancellor and health secretary, taxpayers need to be reassured that ministers are in no way influencing tax policy for their own personal gain. We need an urgent investigation now.” More