UK Politics

Russia could smuggle female agents into the UK among Ukrainian refugees to carry out biological or chemical terror attacks, home secretary Priti Patel has claimed.Defending the UK’s decision – alone among European nations – to demand visas from Ukrainians fleeing war, Ms Patel said that a handful of individuals infiltrated by Vladimir Putin into the flood of innocent refugees could “wreak utter havoc” in the UK.And, with the majority of refugees made up of women and children as men stay in Ukraine to fight, she warned it would be “naïve and misguided” to think that only men were capable of unleashing terror attacks on British soil.In a speech to the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool, Ms Patel said the security checks conducted as part of the refugee visa application process would help avoid a repeat of the Novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury which killed British citizen Dawn Sturgess in 2018.Ms Patel told activists that calls for the UK to follow the EU in offering visa-free access to Ukrainians seeking sanctuary had “grown louder in recent weeks”.But she said: “I’ve been asked why couldn’t we suspend security checks on people escaping Putin’s war?“Times of conflict, my friends, emphasise our need to remain watchful.”Ms Patel said that she had been warned in security and intelligence service briefings that global instability brings with it greater threats to the UK from terrorism, serious organised crime and state threats.“Only four years ago, the Russian military intelligence services used a chemical weapon on British soil,” she said. “It happened in Salisbury, a beautiful city, whose inhabitants would have felt completely safe. Dawn Sturgess could never have imagined that she would lose her life to Novichok“The truth is that a very small number of people can wreak utter havoc and Russia has a history of covert hostile activity.”And she added: “I’m afraid it is naive and misguided to think that only men can be covert operatives. Or that refugee flows would not be subject to some form of exploitation.“There are those who would come to our country – to this country – who would mean us harm and would plot to strike at our very way of life.“The processes that we have put in place closely follow the advice of our intelligence and security services. They mean we can help Ukrainians in need without making our country less safe.“State threats and terrorism take many forms. They also thrive on indifference and on appeasement and now we are seeing them supplemented by new types of targeted biological, chemical, cyber warfare, ransomware and online threats.“Our duty is to safeguard our country’s interests and we will never take our eye off the ball when it comes to the safety and security of our country.” More

Angry protests against P&O Ferries were held across Britain on Friday as the government announced it is investigating whether the firm broke the law with its “appalling” decision to sack 800 seafarers.Demonstrations were held in Dover, Liverpool, Hull and Larne in Northern Ireland and outside the London head office of Dubai-based parent firm DP World amid growing anger at the sudden sacking of staff with no notice.Attempts are being made to replace them with cheaper agency workers, but the company is facing a backlash, including calls for a boycott of its services.Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told the firm it had “lost the trust of the public and has given business a bad name”.He wrote to the company’s chairman Robert Woods, saying the way the staff have been treated “has been appalling”.“It is particularly depressing that this should happen given the millions of pounds of British taxpayer support P&O companies received from the furlough scheme,” the minister added.However, a Downing Street spokesperson was forced to admit that senior officials in the Department of Transport were informed by the P&O chief executive on Wednesday evening of the company’s plans.Ministers are investigating whether P&O Ferries broke the law by sacking the workers on the spot, after criticism that it was washing its hands of the controversy.Labour leader Keir Starmer said he was “furious” over the sackings. “The Tories have created an environment where a bad employer thinks they have licence to tear up staff contracts,” he tweeted. “Labour will introduce a new deal for working people to make work more secure.”In Dover, there were cries of “seize our ships” as hundreds of union members and supporters set off from Maritime House – the Dover office of the RMT union – to the docks.Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, and the former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, headed the march.“We want the government to bring the company in and insist on reinstatement for the workers,” said Mr McDonnell.The Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington told The Independent: “If they don’t think they’ve got power to do that, bring forward emergency legislation to enable that to happen.“But also if necessary stop these ships going out until we get a settlement, because this isn’t just about jobs and the future of our ports – it’s about the future security of our country as well.“This is a critical issue. The government’s got to act. It can’t sit on the fence.”Mr Lynch said the transport minister, Robert Courts, had revealed to him that the DfT had been told about P&O Ferries’ intentions on Wednesday night but declined to reveal the plans to the union.“I would expect him to pick up the phone and tell the representatives of the workforce what’s happening so we can get straight on to the company,” Mr Lynch told The Independent.“He never picked up the phone. He went to bed.”There were angry scenes as the local Tory MP was jeered by angry demonstrators who chanted “shame on you”.Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, was heckled by union members, with other protesters shouting: “You voted for fire and rehire.”In a new statement on Friday, P&O Ferries defended its actions, saying: “We took this difficult decision as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options but, ultimately, we concluded that the business wouldn’t survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements, which in turn would inevitably result in redundancies.“We also took the view, in good faith, that reaching agreement on the way forward would be impossible and against this background, that the process itself would be highly disruptive, not just for the business but for UK trade and tourism.”The company acknowledged that the sackings “came without warning or prior consultation, and we fully understand that this has caused distress for them and their families”.The statement added: “The changes we’ve made bring us into line with standard industry practice.”Our aim is to have the first of our services running again in the next day or two as we lose £1m a day for each day they are not moving. The teams escorting the seafarers off our vessels were totally professional in handling this difficult task with all appropriate sensitivity.“Contrary to rumours, none of our people wore balaclavas nor were they directed to use handcuffs nor force.”Around 400 protesters gathered outside the Port of Liverpool, including metro mayor of Liverpool Steve Rotheram and Sefton Central’s Labour MP Bill Esterson.Mr Rotheram said: “It’s an absolute disgrace that in this day and age a company, just overnight, can say, ‘That’s the end of your job. That’s the end of your loyal service. You’re sacked and you’ve got no right to appeal’.” More

Jacob Rees-Mogg has been slapped down by Conservative chair Oliver Dowden for dismissing the row over Downing Street parties as “fluff”.Speaking to activists at the Tory conference in Blackpool, the Brexit minister said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had exposed the Partygate row as trivial.But, asked about his comments, Mr Dowden insisted that the allegations of lockdown-breaching gatherings at No 10 during the Covid pandemic must be taken seriously and cannot simply be dismissed.Just days before the Ukraine invasion, Boris Johnson’s position was under threat, as Tory MPs submitted letters demanding a confidence vote and police launched a criminal investigation into the parties.But at least two of his backbench critics have since withdrawn their letters, saying that it was not right to seek to remove the prime minister while war is raging in Europe.Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, who has taken back his call for the PM to go, had the awkward job today of welcoming him on stage at the party’s conference in Aberdeen.Mr Ross, who in January said the PM’s position was “no longer tenable”, today praised his “leadership” in the Ukraine crisis and the two men shared a brief and chilly handshake as Mr Johnson took the stage.Mr Rees-Mogg told a meeting hosted by the ConservativeHome website on the fringe of the Blackpool conference that the Ukraine crisis had brought “a new seriousness” to politics which made rows over “woke” language look trivial by comparison.He added: “I would say the same about Partygate. All of that is shown up for the disproportionate fluff of politics that it was, rather than something of fundamental seriousness about the safety of the world and about the established global order.”Mr Rees-Mogg compared the Partygate affair to the row over Westland helicopters which he said had shaken Margaret Thatcher’s government 36 years ago, but was little remembered now.“When we look back in 36 years at Partygate, people will think ‘What were they on about? They were moving from Covid to Russia and Ukraine, yet they were distracted by whether or not the PM spent five minutes in his own garden’,” he said. “It’s fundamentally trivial.”But asked whether he agreed with his cabinet colleague’s assessment, Mr Dowden said: “I’ve always felt that it’s incumbent on politicians who set the rules to abide by the rules and therefore I think any allegations that politicians have not done so should be taken seriously.“There is this ongoing police investigation, we’ve had the interim Sue Gray report and the prime minister has similarly expressed remorse at how these kinds of events could have happened. I think it’s right to do so. I don’t dismiss them.”Mr Rees-Mogg also said that the Ukraine war had provided Conservatives with an opportunity to roll back the progress of “wokery”, which he claimed had overtaken much of modern life.The Brexit minister told activists that Putin’s “evil” invasion had created a “new seriousness” in political life which made debates over whether particular words and phrases should be shunned as offensive look like “nonsense”.He said Conservatives should take advantage of the situation by taking a “robust” approach and refusing to accept the use of “socialist” vocabulary, like saying chair rather than chairman or Beijing rather than Peking.However, he immediately disobeyed his own instruction, saying he was willing to say “Ukraine” rather than “the Ukraine” in recognition of the bravery of its people, many of whom object to the use of the definite article because it suggests it is part of Russia rather than a country in its own right.Mr Rees-Mogg said the Ukraine crisis was “a reminder that the world is serious, and that there are serious things to be discussed and serious and difficult decisions for politicians to take, whether this is about reopening and having new licences for oil wells in the North Sea, or whether it is about getting away from the wokery that has beset huge sections of society”.In the aftermath of Putin’s invasion “nobody cares” about rows over words which may offend people, Mr Rees-Mogg said.“All that nonsense is shown up for the trivial nature of it, and that we are now looking at serious, difficult decisions that have to be made.” More

Conservative chair Oliver Dowden has come under fire today for saying that “net zero dogma” should not get in the way of new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.Mr Dowden said that ending reliance on Russian energy in response to the invasion of Ukraine would require not only investment in renewables and nuclear, but also “re-incentivising new oil and gas exploration in this country”.And he won applause in his speech to the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool as he told activists that voters wanted pragmatism not “dogma” over Boris Johnson’s legally-binding commitment to bring overall emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to zero by 2050.Mr Dowden was accused by Labour’s climate change spokesperson Ed Miliband of “pandering to fringe elements” on continued fossil fuel use, while Green MP Caroline Lucas told The Independent that it appeared Tories were ready to “hold the country to ransom over their anti-climate ideology”.Mr Johnson has signalled he is ready to sanction new exploration and drilling in North Sea oil fields in a new energy security strategy, due for publication by the end of the month as part of a drive to wean western nations off what he terms an “addiction” to Russian energy. And he this week visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a failed attempt to secure commitments from the Gulf states to open the oil taps to speed the move away from Russian fuel.Mr Dowden – who took time out from the conference to ride on the Icon rollercoaster at Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach and try his hand at driving one of the resort’s famous trams – blamed the UK’s continuing reliance on Russia for part of its energy needs on the failure of Labour governments prior to 2010 to invest in a new generation of nuclear plants.And he said: “It falls to the Conservatives to deliver energy independence for the first time in a generation.“Phasing out the import of Russian oil by the end of the year. Exploring options to end the import of Russian gas.“Of course that means investing massively in our offshore wind and other renewables but it must also mean developing new nuclear projects and re-incentivising new oil and gas exploration in this country as we transition.“Because I really think the British people want to see a bit of conservative pragmatism, not net zero dogma.“We are conservatives. We exist to conserve. We will get to net zero.“Of course we will save the planet. We just don’t want Vladimir Putin taking it over while we are doing it.”Mr Miliband told The Independent: “It tells you all you need to know about why the Tories can’t be trusted to tackle the climate crisis that their party chair now says to their faithful that net zero is ‘dogma’.“As they prepare to relaunch their failed energy policy, it’s clear they will pander to fringe elements of their party and betray present and future generations.”And Ms Lucas said: “It’s frankly unbelievable that a member of Boris Johnson’s own cabinet is now claiming ‘net zero dogma’ is holding the country back – when what’s really threatening our energy and climate security is Tory backbenchers hell-bent on a return to fracking, a Net Zero Scrutiny Group in parliament touting the lines of climate deniers, and an obsession with importing oil and gas from tyrannical regimes.“Once again, Conservative party members – and now cabinet ministers – are holding the country to ransom over their own anti-climate ideology.”Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Danny Gross said: “The worry for many people is how they’ll pay their energy bills when prices rise in April. Solutions that bring down these costs quickly and for the long term need to be the focus for government.“The truth is that new oil and gas fields take 28 years on average before they can start supplying our energy systems, so clearly this isn’t going to help people who are struggling to pay their bills now.“Renewable energy isn’t just the best option for our planet, it’s also best for our pockets because it is much cheaper and can be rolled out far quicker than new North Sea oil and gas. It also remains the most popular energy source with the public.” More

Britain has joined other European countries in offering free onward travel for Ukrainian refugees on its rail network.A statement issued by the rail industry on Friday said the concession would allow Ukrainians to get “to a safe place”.Under the scheme people will have to show a Ukrainian passport and boarding pass or ticket, and be given 48 hour to travel to their destination from their arrival in Britain.It comes two weeks after Eurostar, the high-speed cross-channel operator, made a similar concession for people coming to the UK, provided they could produce a visa.The German, French, Dutch, Polish, and Czech state rail operators, as well as high-speed service Thalys, are among national railways to have for weeks provided free travel for Ukrainian nationals crossing Europe.”To help Ukrainian nationals travelling to the UK, we are offering free onward travel on National Rail services to get you to a safe place,” a statement posted on the National Rail Enquiries website said. ”To make use of this scheme, you will need to show your Ukrainian passport and a boarding pass or ticket showing your arrival into the UK. “The offer is valid across all train operators in England, Scotland and Wales, and you will have 48 hours from arrival in the UK to complete your journey. “You will be able to use London Underground/DLR services if your journey requires you to travel between London national rail stations.”The Department for Transport said the scheme would begin on Sunday 20 March.Around three million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, but as of 15 March just 5,500 visas have been issued by British authorities.EU countries are meanwhile allowing Ukrainians entry without a visa for up to three years. Poland, which borders Ukraine, has taken 1.1 million people, and the UK’s neighbour Ireland is already hosting nearly 7,000.The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here.  If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page. More

Boris Johnson has issued a passionate defence of his plans to drill for more North Sea oil and gas, insisting it will not undermine the fight against the climate emergency.Ahead of a new energy plan that will grant fresh licences, the prime minister argued it would be “crazy” to shut down production – and open up the UK to “blackmail from Vladimir Putin.Speaking to Scottish Tories in Aberdeen – the heart of the North Sea industries – Mr Johnson vowed to make “sensible use of this country’s own natural hydrocarbon resources”.Turning off the taps would be “a disaster”, he said, telling a conference: “It would mean prices up even further.“It would mean jobs lost just as householders are feeling the pinch of the high gas and oil prices – and, of course, it would mean exposing the UK to continued blackmail from Vladimir Putin.”Four months after what he called the “wonderful” Cop26 summit in Glasgow, Mr Johnson claimed: “We can continue the transition to a low carbon future, we can get to net zero.”There was no mention of the cost of living crisis that threatens households with soaring fuel and food bills, as inflation rises sharply and with tax rises about to bite.On Ukraine, the prime minister said he is “more convinced than ever” that Putin’s invasion will fail, as its troops fail to advance or control the skies as expected.“He will fail because, in his catastrophic venture in Ukraine, he fatally underestimated the heroism and the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight,” he said.“He underestimated Western unity. And among other things, by the way, he underestimated the passionate commitment of the people in this country to help.”The UK will send more defensive weapons to help Ukraine against the “pitiless bombardments” its people are suffering, the conference was told.On his telephone call earlier with Volodymyr Zelensky he said he had told Ukraine’s president that the UK “stand with you at a time when your people are facing such horror with such courage”.“When you’re fighting, not just for your lives and your homes, for the cause of democracy and freedom itself, we know that we must do more to help. I pledge to you that we will,” he had said.The prime minister also used the speech to try to heal wounds with Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who called for him to quit over the Partygate scandal – before withdrawing his letter.Heaping praise on him, Mr Johnson said: “Douglas Ross has been able to defy the sceptics, stop Nicola Sturgeon from getting an overall majority as people said that she would.“Get more votes than any previous Scottish Conservative leader, including Ruth Davidson, brilliant though she is.” More

Boris Johnson’s government has rejected a change in the rules governing MPs’ behaviour aimed at making sure they do not show “discriminatory attitudes” – citing the need to protect freedom of speech.The cross-party Commons Standards Committee – chaired by Labour MP Chris Bryant – had called for changes to the code of conduct so MPs sign up to a new “respect” principle.The committee said the principle would mean that MPs “should demonstrate anti-discriminatory attitudes and behaviours through the promotion of anti-racism, inclusion and diversity”.But the government has dismissed the idea, arguing it would “stifle debate” in a written response to the committee from No 10 chief of staff Steve Barclay and chief Tory whip Mark Spencer.“We would not want to stifle legitimate debate on politically contentious issues which are important to our democracy – as an indirect consequence of the proposed new requirement for ‘anti-discriminatory attitudes’ or demonstrating ‘inclusion and diversity’,” they said.The senior Conservative ministers added: “This could have a chilling effect on free speech on contentious and polarised political issues.”A separate select committee – Committee on Standards in Public Life – has already updated the Seven Principles of Public Life to include the demand that all public officials “treat others with respect”.The cross-party group of MPs said in November that “increasing intimidation and abuse” meant the change was needed the Seven Principles of Public Life, also known as the Nolan principles.However, Mr Barclay and Mr Spencer rejected the idea of incorporating the language into the MPs’ code of conduct.The senior Tory MPs warned against any “unnecessary attempts to over define the principles – which are already widely understood” arguing that they would “endanger robust political debate in our institutions”.It comes the government also ditches plans to limit MPs’ earnings from second jobs in a rethink over the issue which sparked a major sleaze row at Westminster at the end of last year.Ministers previously said they backed “reasonable” limits on earnings outside parliament following the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal and outrage over fellow Tory Geoffrey Cox making almost £1m from legal work in the past year.But the government has now rejected the idea of imposing time limits on outside work as “impractical”, and said a cap on the amount earned would unfairly stop MPs doing jobs which do not bring “undue influence”.Mr Barclay and Mr Spencer told the standards committee: “It is the government’s initial view that the imposition of fixed constraints such as time limits on the amount of time that members can spend on outside work would be impractical.”On the amount MPs’ can earn, the ministers said: “In respect of a cap on earnings from outside work to impose such a limit could serve to prohibit activities which do not bring undue influence to bear on the political system.”Thangam Debbonaire, Labour’s shadow Commons Leader, said Mr Johnson “can’t just row back on his promises to tighten up the rules on second jobs just because he is in a spot of bother with his backbenchers”. More