Summary
Here’s a roundup of today’s politics news on Maundy Thursday, as a report has been published into claims of Islamophobia by Tory minister Nus Ghani.
Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus said he could not determine what then chief whip Mark Spencer had said to Ghani.
Ghani claimed she had been told she was being sacked as a minister in 2020 because of her “Muslimness”.
Magnus criticised Spencer for “shortcomings” in his evidence.
Ghani welcomed the report, saying it is clear her evidence was “clear and consistent”.
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, has said he does not have the powers to sack officers who he has concerns about being dangers to the public.
He described “police regulations” over employment as “byzantine”.
In a review of cases by Met officers, “concerns remained” over four fifths who were accused of sexual or domestic violence.
Labour has established a 40-point lead over the Conservatives in London. The party is on 58% compared to Sunak’s who are on 18%.
One model, based on the YouGov polling, shows it leaving the Tories with less than 10 seats in the capital.
The National Education Union has threatened to organise a mass protest in Manchester during the Conservative party conference in the ongoing dispute over pay.
Long queues have started to form at the Port of Dover as people try to get away for holidays over the long Easter weekend, with a fear of a repeat of last weekend where thousands had to wait up to 14 hours.
Suella Braverman has been selected for the Fareham and Waterlooville seat, after winning a contest on Wednesday night.
Tory MP Scott Benton has had the whip removed after an investigation by the Times showed him offering to help lobby for gambling investors.
Thanks for following along today. I’ll be back tomorrow.
A body set up by the government to work with politicians in northern England to improve transport links has not met since May 2022.
PoliticsHome reports that the Northern Transport Acceleration Council (NTAC) has not convened since May 2022, less than two years since it was founded by then-transport secretary Grant Shapps.
In the eleven months since, there have been numerous problems affecting transport including timetabling of services, poor performance on cross-country services run by Avanti and the delay of HS2 to Birmingham and Manchester.
The rail minister Huw Merriman has now suggested to PoliticsHome that officials are “reviewing” the role of NTAC and how they work with northern leaders.
Labour MP for Barnsley Central and former South Yorkshire mayor Dan Jarvis said he finds it “very strange” that the most recent meeting was last May, and felt ministers “should work out with northern leaders what is the most appropriate forum and then get on and make it work; joined up government is key”.
The National Education Union’s leadership has threatened to organise a huge protest during the Conservative party conference, accusing Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, of being deluded about teachers’ pay and staff shortages.
The NEU’s joint general secretary Kevin Courtney told delegates at the union’s annual conference: “If you need to, you will organise the biggest demo Manchester has seen for decades on 2 October, you’ll carry on a campaign right into the general election year. And you will win.
“The government is so rattled by our campaign, so rattled that it is reacting foolishly.”
The NEU’s delegates voted for five days of strikes at schools in England during the summer term, as well as holding a new members’ ballot that would authorise further industrial action until the start of 2024.
Read more:
Nicola Sturgeon’s former justice secretary has been asked to reveal what was discussed at a meeting with the most senior police officer in Scotland, a week before the first minister resigned.
Keith Brown, who has been deputy leader of the Scottish Natinal party since 2018 met Iain Livingstone, who is chief constable of Police Scotland on 9 February, the Telegraph reports after a Wings Over Scotland freedom of information request.
Police Scotland has said it was just a “regular meeting” and refused to reveal “any other business in terms of investigations that may or may not have been discussed.”
The meeting was also a fortnight before Livingstone resigned, complaining about how policing in Scotland was “unsustainable” on present terms.
It comes as Sturgeon’s husband, the former chief executive of the SNP was arrested and released yesterday as part of an investigation into SNP funding and use of finances.
Jackie Baillie, the deputy leader of Scottish Labour, said: “It’s clear this probe into the SNP goes much further than just Peter Murrell.
“It appears that Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and Keith Brown have many questions to answer.
“This investigation must continue. The people of Scotland deserve honesty and transparency from their leaders.”
Nusrat Ghani welcomes report criticising Tory ex-chief whip
Nusrat Ghani has posted a statement on Twitter saying Sir Laurie’s report is clear her evidence was “credible and consistent”.
I’m relieved that the report acknowledges that the previously denied 4th March 2020 meeting did take place and was central to the matter, as well as that Twitter statements were published ‘without evidence’.
Ghani thanked the prime minister and Sir Laurie for publishing the report after three years.
Link to Report- https://t.co/3Dilrir07h pic.twitter.com/vvA5UIIqMv
— Nus Ghani MP (@Nus_Ghani) April 6, 2023
“To be told your faith and identity is the reason for [losing a job] cannot be acceptable,” she said. “The impact of being told this was devastating and my motivation in pursuing the complaint was to ensure that no other colleague would have to endure anything similar.”
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In his investigation into alleged Islamophobia, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, said it was not possible to determine what the then chief whip, Mark Spencer, said to the Tory MP Nusrat Ghani in two 2020 meetings, and criticised “shortcomings” in Spencer’s response.
Ghani claimed she had been told during the meetings that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly because of concerns about her “Muslimness”, PA Media reports.
Magnus said:
Despite a review of considerable evidence, it has not been possible to draw a clear picture of what was discussed between Mr Spencer and Ms Ghani during two meetings which both agree took place on 4th and 23rd March 2020. These discussions are central to the allegations made.
Magnus added:
Ms Ghani and Mr Spencer have differing accounts of these meetings, with different recollections of what was said. Each has provided evidence (including some contemporaneous notes) to support their respective accounts, but given the differing evidence presented to me, I am not able to conclude with sufficient confidence what was or was not said at these two meetings.
Magnus also criticised “shortcomings” in Spencer’s response to the Islamophobia allegations made by Ghani.
Thechief whip “should have taken more care” when briefing the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, before his meeting with Ghani in July 2020, as Spencer gave an “inaccurate” account by omitting to mention one of his meetings with her which was central to her claims.
Magnus’s report said:
Because incomplete information had been provided, Ms Ghani’s account was initially questioned and she had to make efforts to demonstrate to the then-prime minister that the meeting had in fact occurred. This added further difficulty to what Ms Ghani already found to be a stressful meeting … Given his influential position as the then chief whip, and the centrality of the information he had to supply, Mr Spencer should have taken more care when briefing the then prime minister.”
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The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm has said Scott Benton’s offer to lobby ministers on behalf of a gambling company is “beyond belief”.
Labour MP Carolyn Harris told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:
How anybody could think that they should say that kind of thing and offer that kind of access to government ministers is beyond belief. I am absolutely aghast that any member of parliament felt that that was an OK thing to do.
Harris added:
Anyone who does not see that there’s a problem here and would offer that kind of access, well, I just cannot believe anybody would be that arrogant or stupid.
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Scotland’s health secretary, Michael Matheson, has said the government would not provide a “running commentary” of the investigation into the SNP’s finances but conceded it was a “difficult time” for the party.
Speaking during a visit to an NHS 24 call centre in Glasgow, Matheson told PA Media news agency:
There’s a live police investigation here and I think the important thing is that we give the police the space that they need – without a running commentary – as part of their investigation. I don’t intend to be providing a running commentary around that.
He added:
I think it’s important that I acknowledge – and the first minister acknowledged this yesterday – it’s a difficult time for the party at the present moment, given this investigation, but it’s important we allow the police to get on with their job and to carry out a very thorough and detailed investigation, and see what the outcome of that is.
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A brief foray into the area between politics and football as the Athletic, a subscription-only football website, has obtained government emails that showed the possible failure of a Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle United was flagged as an “immediate risk” to UK-Saudi relations [paywall].
The website’s reporter Adam Crafton has 59-pages of emails between government officials that shows the Foreign Office trying to boost the image of Saudi Arabia despite concerns about human rights abuses as the Premier League considered whether to approve the deal.
The article claims the Department for International Trade (DIT) was prepared to send a PR offer, to aide the takeover process.
The UK and Saudi Arabia have a longstanding trading agreement, including the sale of British-made arms. Concerns have been raised about their use in the war in Yemen.
Emails between government ministers and civil servants in departments including Downing Street, and the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia show a level of interest in the deal, including the proposal of a “senior” government interlocutor to “impress [her majesty’s government] interests with the Premier League as they finalise their consideration of the Newcastle United takeover”.
The Premier League chief executive, Richard Masters, has said that there was “no pressure” applied by the government during the process.
It has previously been claimed that the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, received text messages from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund that eventually bought Newcastle, in which he warned there may be economic consequences for Britain if the Premier League resisted the takeover.
Johnson denied any government involvement when asked about the deal in parliament.
The full article is worth a read for more details about the level of government interest and involvement.
A spokesperson for Johnson declined to comment to the Athletic.
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The Labour frontbencher Jess Phillips has opened up about taking anti-anxiety medication amid the experiences and attacks she has faced as an MP, but said: “I’m a tough old bird.”
The Westminster Bridge terrorist attack and the murder of two parliamentarians – Jo Cox and David Amess – had caused “extreme trauma”, Phillips said, but MPs were “just expected to deal with it as part of your job”.
Although all politicians are subject to scrutiny, the shadow domestic violence minister said she sometimes felt under “a huge amount of pressure” and was subject to unacceptable attacks. “I have suffered trauma being a member of parliament, without doubt,” Phillips told Sky News.
Read more:
The Sunday Times’s political editor Caroline Wheeler is reporting that the investigation has finished into Nus Ghani allegedly being sacked as a transport minister in 2020 for being a Muslim.
Ghani claimed in the Sunday Times that Mark Spencer, the then chief whip, raised her “Muslimness” as an issue.
She was allegedly told her “Muslim woman minister status was making colleagues feel uncomfortable”.
Wheeler, who was part of the team who broke the original story [paywall] said the report is expected to say that investigators have been unable to prove the facts of what was discussed between the two Tory MPs. She added that Spencer was expected to be criticised.
THREAD: The investigation into Nus Ghani’s claims she was sacked for being Muslim has concluded. The probe was launched after claims made in the @thetimes that Mark Spencer told her during a meeting in March 2020 that colleagues were uncomfortable with her faith.
— caroline wheeler (@cazjwheeler) April 6, 2023
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Labour has 40-point lead over Tories in London
Labour has its highest lead over the Conservative party since YouGov started tracking voting intention in the capital in 2010.
According to its latest poll of 1,051 it has a 40-point lead, putting it at 58% compared with Rishi Sunak’s party on 18%.
The mayoral election in 2021 saw a win for Sadiq Khan against a lacklustre campaign by Shaun Bailey, whose campaign was memorable for his attending a party with Tory activists during a lockdown in 2020. No police action was taken.
One election model shows that the latest polls would leave the Conservative party with just nine seats in the capital. As recently as 2015 they won 27.
The only seat left standing in central London would be Chelsea and Fulham, the seat held by the party chair, Greg Hands. But in the words of Peter Snow, just a bit of fun.
Labour now have a 40pt lead over the Conservatives in London Westminster VI, the highest since YouGov started tracking in 2010 (fieldwork 27-31 Mar)
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 6, 2023
Con: 18% (-5 from Jan 2022)
Lab: 58% (+3)
Lib Dem: 9% (=)
Green: 7% (=)
Reform UK: 6% (+3)https://t.co/gZLaCK0CtV pic.twitter.com/hhn9ZtFF9m
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A fairly bleak report from the investigative news website OpenDemocracy who have done a feature on the progress of the Conservative party’s 2019 election pledge that it would “end” rough sleeping by 2024.
The pandemic saw an “everyone in” order to house homeless people in hotels during lockdowns. However that ended in 2021 and since then the number of people on the streets is rising, just over a year before the original deadline date.
They’ve got a quote from Bob Blackman, a Conservative MP who is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which is a tacit admission that the 2019 policy won’t be reached.
“At the moment, the figures are going in the wrong direction.
“We need to take urgent action now to get us back on track to achieve what we said we’d achieve,” he said.
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Suella Braverman wins selection vote for new Fareham and Waterlooville seat
As we mentioned yesterday, Suella Braverman was facing a selection panel last night to be chosen for the new Fareham and Waterlooville seat, as her current Fareham seat is being abolished under the new boundary review.
She and Flick Drummond, the Meon Valley MP whose seat is also being scrapped, gave speeches and took pre-submitted questions, with Braverman winning.
With seats being abolished, there will be more contests like this – and that’s without some Conservative MPs not being automatically reselected by their own associations.
One of them is Julie Marson, who represents the home counties constituency of Hertford and Stortford – who according to Conservative Home sources lost by one vote on the constituency’s executive committee.
Marson will go to the wider membership later this month to see if they will back her.
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Successive governments' mistakes have contributed to neglect of social housing tenants, says Michael Gove
The housing secretary, Michael Gove, has said that successive governments’ mistakes have contributed to the neglect of social housing tenants.
It follows the cases of Sheila Seleoane, who was revealed to have lain dead in her flat for two years before she was discovered, despite her neighbours repeatedly raising concerns; Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old who died of a respiratory condition because his family home in Rochdale was full of mould, and the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Gove said the government had taken more action to help those in social housing in the last 18 months than it had for “decades”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:
The thing that affected me most was the Grenfell fire. What the Grenfell inquiry in particular has subsequently brought to light were a chain of errors.
I’ve said, and am very happy to reiterate, that there were some mistakes and errors that were made not just by, actually, the coalition government but by governments before which contributed to social tenants not getting the support that they deserved and not having their voices heard.
I wouldn’t draw a linear connection between some of the changes that were made when the coalition government were … understandably keen to make sure that public spending was tightened. We can look back and we can consider what some of the consequences of that were.
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The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said there were “sex offender cases” and “some serious violence cases” in the list of 161 officers with criminal convictions.
Rowley told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I think the current policy is too permissive and leaves too much ground for interpretation. There’s certainly some people when I looked at the list and thought, ‘Crikey, that’s not right.’”
Asked for examples he said “sex offender cases” and “some serious violence cases”.
He added: “The public would expect us to take a very tough line but I don’t think it should be a completely binary line. I think we’d all see that the kid who had cannabis at 15 in his pockets, it shouldn’t rule him out for his whole life.”
He said officers should be scrutinised even if they were not charged with a criminal offence, adding: “The issue for policing is to not get drawn into whether the only test is whether something reaches a criminal standard.
“We are involved in the criminal investigation, which other employers aren’t. So that case the CPS said didn’t merit a charge for domestic violence – that doesn’t mean we should assume therefore that there isn’t material in the file which still gives a level of concern which might need to lead to action.
“I think too often we haven’t done that and we saw that in the David Carrick case.”
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Rowley: not enough 'leeway' to sack hundreds of officers needed
As mentioned, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has been on the airwaves this morning talking about his letter overnight further laying out problems inside the force.
He told BBC Radio 4 that he had not got the power to dismiss officers who were offenders or could be considered a danger to the public.
He said the force was under “police regulations” rather than “normal employment law”.
He said: “Those regulations over time have become byzantine and complex. So not having clear provision to dismiss people who have failed the re-vetting process is crazy.
“People will be shocked. Some of the people on that list of criminal convictions are people that the Met has sacked (and been reinstated).
“I think your listeners will be surprised to hear that the commissioner does not have the final say on his or her organisation.”
He agreed that the regulations had to change for necessary dismissals to take place and said the home secretary was carrying out a consultation.
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Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley pledges to clean up force
Good morning from London, where Mark Rowley’s latest pledge to clean up the Metropolitan police leads the Maundy Thursday headlines.
The force’s commissioner said that it is facing its biggest corruption crisis since the 1970s as more evidence shows a mishandling of cases against serving officers.
An open letter by Rowley says that in four out of five cases involving officers who had faced allegations of sexual or domestic violence that “concerns remained”.
Officials had examined 1,131 claims, in which 78% of cases had concerns that remained. A total of 61% showed that further work was needed as there were “new or missed lines of inquiry”.
Only in a minority, 246, of cases were police chiefs happy that the right decisions had been made.
Rowley’s done a broadcast round on breakfast radio and TV shows, which I’ll bring you some lines from later on.
Meanwhile there was a corker of a story from the Times’ investigations team [paywall] late on Wednesday, as “red wall” Conservative MP Scott Benton was shown offering to help lobby for gambling investors.
In the register of interests for MPs, gambling firms can often be seen supplying hospitality at major sporting or music events to wine and dine MPs, as scrutiny of the industry has grown sharper in recent years.
The MP for Blackpool South offered to table parliamentary questions, leak a confidential policy document 48 hours before publication to undercover journalists posing as investors, and boasting of “easy access to ministers”.
Benton was suspended by the Conservative party late on Wednesday. He has said he has been in contact with the parliamentary standards commissioner.
“[I] contacted the Commons registrar and the parliamentary standards commissioner who clarified these rules for me and had no further contact with the company … I did this before being made aware that the company did not exist.”
Finally the fallout continues from Peter Murrell’s arrest yesterday, in connection with a police investigation in to SNP funding and finances over the usage of donations earmarked for an IndyRef2 campaign.
The former SNP chief executive’s wife is, of course, former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Officers spent most of the day at their home in Glasgow on Wednesday, even seen in the garden of the home appearing to dig part of it up. A blue tent was erected outside.
Sturgeon, a regular speaker at events, was due to speak at the Edinburgh Science Festival on Thurday night. However organisers have announced she will no longer be attending.
I’m sitting in for politics blog stalwart Andrew Sparrow this week, and you can get in touch with any comments or tips, either by emailing harry.taylor@guardian.co.uk or my DMs are open on Twitter where you can find me @HarryTaylr.
We are sorry but comments below-the-line are closed today due to risk of prejudice regarding a live case.
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