UK Politics

Defence minister James Heappey has said he “sincerely hopes” that Boris Johnson did not mislead parliament about the drinks party in the No 10 garden during the first Covid lockdown in May 2020.The prime minister is battling to save his premiership, amid reports the 54 letters which would launch a no confidence vote could be received on Wednesday.In a message to MPs considering sending a letter to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, Mr Heappey told Sky News: “This doesn’t feel like the time to be changing prime minister, if you ask me.”However, the minister refused to say whether Mr Johnson should resign if he is found to have broken the law. “We are all keen to understand exactly what happened and whether it not it was breaking law … it is perfectly reasonable to wait for Sue Gray’s report.”Asked on Times Radio if a report by investigating civil servant Sue Gray could find the PM misled parliament, Mr Heappey said: “It may … Ministers know that when they stand up at the dispatch box they need to be accurate with their language. I sincerely hope the prime minister was.”Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Mr Johnson was the right person to lead party into next general election, Mr Heappey said: “As things stand, right now, yes.”The Armed Forces minister said he currently “accepted” the PM’s explanation of events, but also signalled he thinks that if Ms Gray’s report shows Mr Johnson misled parliament he should resign.“If Sue Gray comes out and says something different then we’re in a different place and I’m happy to come back and reflect on my feelings then,” he said.A seventh Tory MP confirmed he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Mr Johnson, with up to 20 reportedly set to follow suit in a growing mutiny emboldened by the party’s 2019 “red wall” intake.A group of angry red wall Tory MPs is understood to discuss Mr Johnson’s downfall on Wednesday in a move dubbed the “Pork Pie Plot” because it allegedly involves Alicia Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Melton – home of the Melton Mowbray delicacy.Asked about the rebellion on Sky News, Mr Heappey said: “Some colleagues appear to have met to discuss things. I don’t think that’s surprising – I suspect there are lots of colleagues who are reflecting what they have heard in their constituencies and are feeling under a lot of pressure.”The Armed Forces minister said he accepted Tory MPs were “competing loyalties” to the prime minister and their constituents – but urged colleagues to keep “cool heads” and wait for the outcome of Ms Gray’s report.He told BBC Breakfast: “I have chosen to believe the prime minister, I hope colleagues do likewise. But I understand there are very many people out there who don’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt, and that’s why it’s right there is an investigation.”The minister also suggested Mr Johnson had been let down by his staff, arguing that “the prime minister really doesn’t own his own diary,” adding: “The reality is that those who work around the prime minister need to have his back.”Mr Johnson insisted on Tuesday that he wasn’t told it was against the rules for him to attend a gathering in the garden of Downing Street on 20 May 2020. Mr Heappey claimed the PM’s diary is so “congested” he cannot be expected to know what he was attending. “I can see how the prime minister wouldn’t have known what it was he was going down the stairs to join … He would have been grabbed from his office, taken downstairs and briefed on what he was going to, as he went,” he told Today.Asked about the so-called drinking culture in Whitehall, the defence minister said he saw government staff “very occasionally have a glass of wine together at the end of work”.But Mr Heappey added: “I think that there does need to be some reflection about the amount of alcohol that appears to be consumed and how regularly, not just the No 10 but in a number of departments of state.”Red wall Tory Christian Wakeford, MP for Bury South, became the seventh Conservative MP to publicly call for Mr Johnson to go on Tuesday.Some MPs have suggested the expected flurry of no-confidence letters to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, could take the total to the 54 needed trigger a vote of no confidence as soon as Wednesday. One told the Daily Telegraph: “His time has gone.”One Tory backbencher who is “close” to sending in a no-confidence letter told The Independent that opposition to Mr Johnson was strongest among “one nation” Tories who had been opposed to Brexit, as well as some in the Covid Research Group (CRG) who had been vehemently against restrictions.“Many of the 2019 intake feel they owe their seats to him [Mr Johnson]. So if some of them are turning against him it’s a bad sign for him.”Andrew Bridgen – one of the MPs to have already submitted a letter – also predicted “we will get to threshold of 54 this week” with Sir Graham announcing whether a vote will take place “next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday”. He added: “I heard first-hand last night that another 20 from the 2019 intake will be going in today. I would have thought that will encourage a considerable number of others who are wavering to put their letters in. “The Sue Gray report, I think, will be out Tuesday or Wednesday next week. and of course Dominic Cummings and those who have got information damaging to the prime minister will probably dump everything into the press this weekend to influence the vote next week.” More

Sue Gray, the senior civil servant handed responsibility for untangling a string of Downing Street parties that allegedly broke lockdown rules, has been placed in an “impossible position, with an impossible task,” Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said. Ms Gray, the second permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, was given the job of leading the inquiry into the scandal last month after cabinet secretary Simon Case recused himself when it emerged that a party had also been held within his own department.Boris Johnson and his Cabinet have since declined to answer questions about any allegations of rule-breaking and have instead been calling for Ms Gray to be allowed to collect the facts and complete her inquiry in peace before her findings are published in a report. “Sue Gray is acting independently, she is leading this piece of work,” Mr Johnson’s official spokesperson has insisted, sailing past the inconvenient truth that she must ultimately report to Michael Gove.“Under the terms of reference she is able to speak to who she wishes and investigate as she sees fit to ascertain the facts.”She has, reportedly, already used that freedom to speak to Mr Johnson.But her assignment seems to get more complicated by the day as more and more revelations continue to come to light on the front pages of Britain’s newspapers, carrying sordid tales of staffers being sent out to Co-op to fill suitcases with bottles of wine and drunken revellers staggering out into the garden of the prime minister’s official residence and breaking his infant son’s swing set.At the outset, Mr Johnson was not thought to have been in attendance at any of the “gatherings” in question but now we know, by his own admission, that he was at the 20 May 2020 garden party, even if he did “implicitly believe it was a work event”.So not only is establishing the precise narrative of what went on when and who knew about it tricky enough, the veteran inquisitor also faces the prospect of incurring further anger from voters if she is ultimately deemed to have been too lenient and carried out a “whitewash” on Mr Johnson’s behalf.Equally, delivering a damning verdict would mean overtly criticising the moral conduct of senior ministers and civil service colleagues with whom she has long worked and may retain friendly personal ties.As such, she is widely expected to err on the side of caution and conclude that poor judgement was evident in abundance but that nothing criminal took place, keenly aware that it is beyond her remit to recommend the resignation of a British prime minister.Sir David Normington, a former Whitehall permanent secretary, summed up the complexity of her situation when he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last week: “She will be very aware that she has the reputation and possibly the careers of senior civil servants and possibly of the prime minister in her hands, and that is a very difficult position to be in, however fair and fearless and rigorous you are.”But, by all accounts, if anyone can walk that tightrope, it is Ms Gray, nicknamed “the woman who runs the country” and “deputy God” by MPs Oliver Letwin and Paul Flynn respectively.“Sue has been there for so long, she knows everything that anybody has ever done wrong,” ex-Cabinet Office special adviser Polly Mackenzie told the BBC’s Profile programme in 2017.Enjoying a reputation for diligence, Ms Gray is also so discreet that even her own precise age is disputed.She is either 63 or 64, did not attend university and has served in the civil service since the late 1970s, barring a career break during the 1980s when she abandoned Westminster to run a pub called The Cove Bar in Newry, Northern Ireland, with her husband, a country singer named Bill Conlon.“If a pub landlady doesn’t know what a party is, who will?” a rather wry family friend told The Daily Mail’s Michael Crick recently.According to her biography on the government website, she has worked in the departments of transport, health and work and pensions “covering a range of roles which included both policy and front line delivery”.Subsequently joining the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s, Ms Gray eventually became director general of propriety and ethics from 2012 to 2018.It was in that guise that she carried out a number of high-profile inquiries into the likes of defence secretary Liam Fox, ex-chief whip Andrew Mitchell over “plebgate”, and Damian Green, Theresa May’s de facto deputy prime minister, who was dismissed after he was found to have been “misleading” in a statement made to police regarding pornography on his office computer in 2008.As The Independent’s Sean O’Grady writes, Mr Mitchell has since been highly complimentary about his one-time interrogator, commenting: “I have always found her to be extremely straightforward, very easy to deal with; she’s got a great sense of humour and she is clear-cut and doesn’t shilly-shally around.”It was also in relation to this period as ethics chief that the former BBC Newsnight journalist Chris Cook complained that Ms Gray was “notorious for her determination not to leave a document trail” and had assisted departments to “fight disclosures” in the shape of freedom of information requests.“If the government feels it has to get rid of a minister, she will give them cover to do that. If a government really wants to keep someone, she’ll find a way to do that,” he said.She served as permanent secretary to the Northern Irish executive’s department of finance on secondment from the Cabinet Office between 2018 and 2021 before returning to occupy her present role last May, reportedly frustrated to miss out on the top job in the Northern Irish civil service and speculating to the BBC: “Perhaps I was too much of a challenger, or a disrupter.”Many will be willing her to show some of that same spirit as she rattles out her Partygate dossier this week. More

Boris Johnson has ways to “wriggle” out of the ‘partygate’ crisis even if the inquiry suggests the Commons was misled over the No 10 party, constitutional experts say.The prime minister’s chances of clinging on to power have slipped with Dominic Cummings’ explosive claim of evidence that he “lied to parliament” – an offence meant to trigger a minister’s resignation.But academics in constitutional law have told The Independent of possible escape routes for Mr Johnson, as he waits the verdict of Sue Gray, the civil servant probing the controversy.One said the wording of the ministerial code that only ministers who “knowingly mislead parliament” should quit offered him hope – after he insisted he was not told about the “bring your own booze” party.A second doubted whether the defence could be convincing – after voters dismissed the prime minister’s apology as bogus – but said there was still little prospect that parliament could force him out.Both agreed the controversy is probably heading for a second inquiry, by Mr Johnson’s ethics adviser, prolonging the agony for Conservative MPs – unless they act to topple him.“He certainly has a way of trying to wriggle out of the situation, using the terminology of the ministerial code,” said Michael Gordon, professor constitutional law at the University of Liverpool.“It is definitely right to say that the ministerial code, in talking about knowingly misleading, offers him a way out without resigning – even if it is a politically controversial one.”Dr Craig Prescott, who lectures in constitutional law at Bangor University and formerly at King’s College London, said the defence of not knowing the party broke the law might not be “as helpful to the prime minister as he might think”.“If he didn’t furnish himself with the full facts in advance, then it could be argued that he has failed to fulfil his duty,” he argued.“But there is no mechanism for him to resign beyond sheer political pressure. Ultimately, whatever is in Sue Gray’s report, the primary audience is Conservative MPs and the cabinet.”Mr Cummings lit a fuse under his former boss when he claimed an email sent by “a very senior official” warned the event on 20 May 2020 broke Covid rules and that Mr Johnson himself was alerted.If confirmed, it would blow apart the prime minister’s defence that he thought it was “a work event”, which was repeated in a TV interview on Tuesday.The offence of misleading parliament is recognised in Commons resolutions from the 1990s – to be resolved through a no-confidence vote – but Tory MPs would view it as “neater” to decide Mr Johnson’s fate themselves, Prof Gordon said.He also suggested that, given it is not within Ms Gray’s remit to judge whether the code was broken, a further probe by Christopher Geidt, the prime minister’s ethic adviser, is likely.That threatened a “repeat” of Lord Geidt’s inquiry into the ‘flatgate’ scandal which – despite the adviser’s anger at information being kept from him – saw him stop short of concluding he had been deliberately misled. More

Boris Johnson is set to face an increasingly angry chorus of his own MPs amid reports the 54 letters which would launch a no confidence vote in the PM could be received on Wednesday.Reports on Tuesday night suggested MPs furious at the prime minister’s handling of the partygate scandal engulfing Westminster had been angered further by Mr Johnson’s insistence that nobody had told him a party at Downing Street would break rules he himself had set.And that especially those in the 2019 intake, many of whom have slim majorities after votes were “lent” to them during the last election, were preparing to submit their letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs, Sir Graham Brady.Bury South MP Christian Wakeford – who has a majority of just 402 – became the seventh Conservative MP to publicly call for Mr Johnson to go on Tuesday, according to Yahoo News.But a number of newspapers reported that the plot to oust Mr Johnson was far wider, as the PM will attempt to reassure his party when he appears in the Commons for prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.An expected announcement that plan B measures to stem the spread of coronavirus will be lifted next week is likely to please some backbenchers.But MPs from the former so-called Red Wall were said to have met on Tuesday to discuss Mr Johnson’s future in a gathering nicknamed the “pork pie plot” or the “pork pie putsch”, and one told The Daily Telegraph the 15 per cent of letters needed to trigger a challenge could be reached on Wednesday.One frontbencher told The Guardian: A frontbencher said: “The mood has turned dramatically. He’s in real trouble. And it’s not just the 2019ers panicking about their seats. It’s quieter older colleagues. “Unless the report says something staggeringly good, we will have a challenge.”Mr Johnson, who was reported to have spent Tuesday evening in his Commons office meeting with potential rebels, apologised multiple times in a major broadcast interview for “misjudgments that were made”.But he stuck to his defence that he had thought a “bring your own booze” party held in the No 10 garden on May 20, 2020 had been a work event and he had not been warned about it in advance.Mr Johnson’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings threw that into doubt on Monday as he said he would “swear under oath” Mr Johnson was told about the bash.But asked if he had lied to parliament over the parties as he visited a north London hospital, the PM told broadcasters: “No. I want to begin by repeating my apologies to everybody for the misjudgments that I’ve made, that we may have made in No 10 and beyond, whether in Downing Street or throughout the pandemic.“Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules, that the event in question was something that… was not a work event, and as I said in the House of Commons when I went out into that garden I thought that I was attending a work event.”Mr Johnson said he “can’t imagine why on Earth it would have gone ahead, or why it would’ve been allowed to go ahead” if he had been told it was anything but a “work event”.“I do humbly apologise to people for misjudgments that were made but that is the very, very best of my recollection about this event,” he said.Mr Johnson confirmed he had given evidence to an inquiry being carried out into Whitehall parties during lockdown restrictions by senior official Sue Gray.And the PA news agency understands Mr Cummings has also agreed to speak to the civil servant who has been described as “formidable”.Chancellor Rishi Sunak refused to give the prime minister his unequivocal backing on Tuesday, as Mr Johnson made his first public appearance after reducing his contacts last week, when No 10 said a family member had tested positive for Covid-19. More

Britain’s “porous” safety net has left the poorest households inadequately protected against major economic disruption, a leading think-tank has warned.In a major report, the Resolution Foundation claimed “weak” welfare system is “almost unrecognisable” to that created in the aftermath of the Second World War and William Beveridge’s seminal report.Examining how the welfare state has evolved, the authors questioned how equipped it is to meet the challenges of “unprecedented economic change” as a result of Covid lockdowns, Brexit, and the decarbonisation of the economy.It warns that cuts to cost-based benefits since 2010 “mean Britain goes into the 2020s with a porous safety net that leaves too many in poverty and offers little, and highly variable, insurance for workers who jobs are affected by economic change”.It comes as opposition parties at Westminster also warn of a looming cost-of-living crisis for many families ahead of anticipated hike in energy bills and the government’s decision to increase national insurance to fund a staggering NHS backlog.The authors of the report highlight that government spending on non-pensioner benefits has more than doubled since the creation of modern welfare state — from 1.7 per cent of GDP in 1948-49 to a projected 4.5 per cent by the middle of the decade.But, at the same time, the “extra spending has not been driven by more generous income support, which has consistently fallen further behind average earrings,” they said.The report — a joint project with the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, funded by the Nuffield Foundation — also states that unemployment support is also set to “fall to its lowest real-terms values in just over three decades this April, at just £77.29 a week”.It adds: “The UK’s low, flat-rate basic level of benefits is that the amount of income insurance provided by the social security system in the event of unemployment can be very low for earners who are not deemed to have additional needs.”“A consequence of this meagre income insurance is that the system provides relatively low levels of macroeconomic support in the face of aggregate shocks – the so-called automatic stabilisers.“Social security spending can play a key role in supporting the economy in a downturn, but the responsiveness of UK social security spending to the economic cycle is one of the lowest among rich countries.Karl Handscomb, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Our social security system has seen huge change over the last 75 years, leaving us with a benefits system that makes little attempt to provide basic levels of income support, but doing more to support households with specific costs like housing and children.“With even those cost-related benefits cut back over the past decade, we go into the 2020s with a porous safety net.He added: “The result is the poorest members of society are being left further behind, while many are left with little by way of insurance if their jobs are threatened by economic change. These flaws were exposed on the eve of the pandemic, and forced the Chancellor to radically reinvent our welfare system at very short notice.”“With Britain set for a decade of economic upheaval in the 2020s, our social security system needs to be better equipped to support people through the change the future brings and the high inequality the past has left us.”Alex Beer, programme head at the Nuffield Foundation, added: “As this research shows, over time the protection given to people who lose their jobs has fallen to a level that only just enables them to avoid destitution and that is damaging not only to the people affected but also to the ability of our society to respond to economic change.”A government spokesperson said: “Our welfare system offers a safety net while providing vital employment support to help claimants into work and towards financial independence.“We know work is the best route out of poverty, that’s why our plan for jobs is supporting people across the country to boost their skills and take the next step in their careers. Working families on universal credit are seeing on average £1,000 more a year in their pockets and we’re increasing the living wage again in April by 6.6% to £9.50 an hour – £1,000 a year for a full time worker.“For the most vulnerable, including those who can’t work, additional support is available through schemes such as the warm home discount and our £500m household support fund.” More

Boris Johnson has insisted he wasn’t told it was against the rules for him to attend a gathering in the garden of No 10 during lockdown – but did not rule out resigning as he faced a mounting revolt from Tory backbenchers.Pressure mounted on the prime minister as a seventh Tory MP confirmed he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Mr Johnson, with 20 more reportedly set to follow suit on Wednesday in a growing mutiny emboldened by the party’s 2019 parliamentary intake.“No matter what Sue Gray decides, I think the voters have already decided,” said one MP who indicated they would not wait for findings of the Downing Street party probe before acting to end Mr Johnson’s premiership.A group of angry red wall Tory MPs reportedly met to plan Mr Johnson’s downfall on Wednesday in a move dubbed the “Pork Pie Plot” because it allegedly involves Alicia Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Melton – home of the Melton Mowbray delicacy.The meeting came after the PM appeared in public on Tuesday for the first time since former aide Dominic Cummings claimed he warned in advance of a “bring-your-own-booze” party in Downing Street.Cutting a downcast figure, Mr Johnson hung his head and sighed heavily as he publically apologised to the Queen for a separate leaving party held in No 10 on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.Confirming that he will give evidence to the Gray inquiry, Mr Cummings denounced Mr Johnson’s defence as “catastrophic”, telling him via social media: “The more media you do defending yourself the more you destroy your own support and hasten the inevitable.”Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab confirmed that a minister who “knowingly” misled the House of Commons would normally be expected to resign – a position which Downing Street said was supported by Mr Johnson.Despite the PM’s categorical denial, an exclusive poll for The Independent found that almost two-thirds of voters (65 per cent) and more than half (54 per cent) of Conservative supporters do not believe the PM’s claim he thought the 20 May 2020 drinks in the Downing Street garden was a “work event”.An overwhelming 80 per cent of those questioned by Savanta ComRes – including 73 per cent of those who voted Tory in 2019 – agreed that under Johnson there was “one rule for the government and another for everybody else”.And almost three-quarters (73 per cent) – including 60 per cent of Conservative voters – said they were angry about the reports of repeated drinks parties in No 10.Following the meeting of members of the 2019 intake of younger MPs, some suggested the expected flurry of letters to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, could take the total to the 54 needed trigger a vote of no confidence as soon as Wednesday.One told the Daily Telegraph it could be“D-Day” for the PM, adding: “His time has gone.”Bury South’s Tory MP Christian Wakeford revealed he has submitted a letter of no-confidence to the PM, telling Yahoo News there were other MPs who “have written the letters but haven’t sent them in yet”.Another member of the 2019 intake, Mark Logan of Bolton North East – who was not at the meeting and has not submitted a letter – told The Independent: “My constituents and myself are unconvinced, and the prime minister really does have to dig deep and show he is prepared to change the culture at the top.“I don’t really care about Sue Gray’s report, It’s not about waiting for a report, it’s about someone being willing to change personally, not just change personnel.”Mid-Derbyshire MP Pauline Latham said that it was not acceptable for the prime minister to break rules he had set himself.“At the end of the day, he made the rules,” Ms Latham told Times Radio. “He was in that briefing room looking at the cameras, saying ‘This is what you have to do’. So you can’t say he didn’t know what the rules were.“If the truth is that he did mislead parliament, you just can’t do that. Parliament is sacrosanct, we have to tell the truth in parliament, it is such an important principle that we should all adhere to”Speaking during a hospital visit in London, Mr Johnson repeated his claim that when he spent 25 minutes with staff eating picnic food and drinking alcohol around trestle tables in the No 10 garden, he had been attending a work event.“I carry full responsibility for what took place,” said the prime minister. “But nobody told me – I’m absolutely categorical – nobody said to me this is an event that is against the rules.”He added: “I do humbly apologise to people for misjudgments that were made but that is the very, very best of my recollection about this event, that’s what I’ve said to the inquiry.”Asked if he would resign if it was found he had misled parliament Mr Johnson said he would “wait and see what the report says”. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said he believed Mr Johnson’s account, but asked whether the PM would have to resign if he was shown to have lied to parliament, he replied: “The ministerial code is clear on these matters.”He removed his microphone and walked out of a TV interview when he was pressed on whether he supported the prime minister unequivocally.Tuesday’s poll suggested that Mr Sunak would be Tory voters’ choice as leader if Mr Johnson is forced out.Some 51 per cent of those who backed the party in 2019 said they would be more likely to vote Conservative with Sunak at the helm, compared to 23 per cent for his main rival, foreign secretary Liz Truss.If health secretary Sajid Javid was leader, 29 per cent of Tory voters said they would be more likely to back the party again, while the figure for former health secretary Jeremy Hunt and home secretary Priti Patel was 21 per cent.Savanta ComRes interviewed 2,166 British adults on 15-16 January More

Boris Johnson is expected to lift England’s Covid plan B measures after his Cabinet meet on Wednesday morning to review restrictions.The prime minister is due to make an announcement to parliament afternoon, with mask-wearing and home-working guidance set to be scrapped.Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Sajid Javid told MPs he was “cautiously optimistic” that regulations could be “substantially reduced” and that the peak of the Omicron wave had passed.The rules include mandatory mask wearing in schools and on public transport, as well as working from home where possible. Covid vaccination passes required for entry into England’s nightclubs will also reportedly be axed.But the government expected to keep in place rules on self-isolation and controls to international travel.“Eight weeks ago when this house last met for health and social care questions, the world had not even heard of the Omicron variant, yet since then we have seen a third of the UK’s total number of Covid-19 cases recorded,” Mr Javid said in the Commons on Tuesday.“The action that this government has taken in response to Omicron and the collective efforts of the British people have seen us become the most boosted country in Europe, the most tested country in Europe, and the most antivirals per head in Europe.“That is why we are the most open country in Europe. I have always said that these restrictions should not stay in place a day longer than absolutely necessary.”He added: “Due to these pharmaceutical defences and the likelihood that we have already reached the peak of the case numbers of hospitalisations, I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week.”Around 17,000 patients are still in hospital in England with Covid, and cases are still high, with 94,432 new infections in the 24 hours before 9am on Tuesday. Some 438 deaths were recorded in the same period, with 1,904 in the last seven days.Ahead of the Cabinet meeting, a government spokesperson said a decision on the next steps “remain finely balanced”. “Plan B was implemented in December to slow the rapid spread of the extremely transmissible Omicron variant, and get more jabs in arms,” they said.“The Omicron variant continues to pose a significant threat and the pandemic is not over. “Infections remain high but the latest data is encouraging, with cases beginning to fall. Vaccines remain our best line of defence and we urge people to come forward, to give themselves the best possible protection.” More

The government will have to draw up a new bill to bring in “draconian” protest laws backed by Priti Patel, following a series of humiliating defeats in the House of Lords.Peers stripped some of the most controversial clauses out of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill after the government attempted to add them at a late stage of scrutiny.Defeated plans to give police the power to stop and search peaceful protesters without suspicion, make “locking on” an offence and create protest banning orders had not been debated by MPs.A proposed offence of disrupting key national infrastructure, including airports and newspaper printers, was also voted down.The unprecedented measures were tabled as government amendments to the bill in November, following a wave of disruptive Insulate Britain protests, sparking allegations that ministers were trying to dodge parliamentary scrutiny.The House of Lords rejected several of the late amendments, meaning they cannot be kept as part of the PCSC Bill and would have to be introduced in a separate law. Liberal Democrat Lord Paddick, who was a deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, said: “If the government is determined to bring in these draconian, anti-democratic laws, reminiscent of Cold War eastern bloc police states, they should withdraw them now and introduce them as a separate Bill to allow the democratically elected House time to properly consider them.”Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, urged the government to “think again” on its plans, which have sparked nationwide protests.She said there had been “deep concern” among all parties, including some Conservatives, over “last-minute amendments that were so broad they would even allow people walking past a peaceful protest to be stopped and searched”.The Tories have a majority in the House of Lords, with 257 peers, but the highest number to back the government’s protest plans on Monday night was 157 and some Tory peers rebelled.A Labour source in the Lords said the figures showed there were around “100 Tory peers who could not be drawn on” to get the controversial laws through parliament.“Clearly, whether it was disagreement with the way the clauses had been brought in, concerns about the policy being heavy-handed or a broader political thing about people not being happy about Partygate – or a combination – it reduced the government’s ability to get more peers in,” they added.A Downing Street spokesperson said the prime minister was “disappointed” by the result but did not commit to bringing forward a new bill to replicate the plans.’Kill the bill’ protests take place across the UK“We will reflect on last night’s votes before the bill returns to the Commons,” he added.“It is disappointing the Lords did not back the public order measures that will ensure the everyday lives of the overwhelming majority are not disrupted by a selfish minority of protesters whose actions endanger lives and cost the public millions of pounds.”The home secretary blamed Labour for blocking the measures, saying they aimed to “stop Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion bringing our country to a standstill”.Ms Patel accused the opposition of “defending vandals and thugs”, although the laws rejected by the House of Lords only related to peaceful protest, rather than violence and criminal damage.Peers also sent some aspects of the bill, including its original provision allowing protests to be banned over noise levels, to MPs.Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab suggested the government would continue to back the controversial move.Asked if measures against noisy protests would be reintroduced in the Commons, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ll look very carefully at all of that, but, yes, absolutely.“In relation to noise, of course we support the right of peaceful and rambunctious protest, but it cannot be allowed to interfere with the lives of the law-abiding majority.”When asked if the government would introduce a new bill to press ahead with the rejected amendments, Mr Raab replied: “On the outcome and consequences of the votes last night, we haven’t decided the approach we’re taking.”The Liberty human rights group hailed the “crushing defeats” as a victory for protests for all causes.Director Martha Spurrier said: “The right to protest is not a gift from the state, and it’s fitting that through months of protest we have protected this right from a dangerous power grab from the government.“Yesterday’s vote means some of the most dangerous and authoritarian parts of the policing bill will never darken British democracy, but the campaign to stop the PCSC Bill must go on. “The bill is an all-out assault on the right to protest, and there are still many dangerous new police powers that will increase discrimination and the danger of police interactions – particularly for black men – while other measures threaten to criminalise the way of life of Gypsy and Traveller communities.” More