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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

No 10 criticises Nadine Dorries for delaying her resignation – as it happened

Suella Braverman Boris Johnson Diana Johnson ​​Rishi Sunak Home Office United Kingdom Daniel Finkelstein Wes Streeting Nigel Adams the Home Office

My colleague Aubrey Allegretti has some more Tory reaction to the Guido Fawkes/Bernard Jenkin story. (See 4.21pm.)

In the Lords last night the Green party peer Jenny Jones tried to pass an amendment blocking the protest disruption regulations now being challenged by Liberty. (See 3.34pm.) It was defeated by 154 votes to 68.

With Labour support, the Jones motion would have passed. Vernon Coaker, the Labour home affairs spokesperson, told peers that what the government was doing was “a shocking betrayal of our unwritten constitution”. But he defended Labour’s decision not to vote for the Jones amendment, saying that it would respect the convention that the Lords does not block secondary legislation. (The Lords is a revising chamber; secondary legislation cannot be revised.)

Coaker told peers:

I understand why some people would wish that to be otherwise but, as His Majesty’s Opposition, we will respect convention. We will respect tradition and the right way of doing politics in our country.

But, as Jones said in her speech, there is precedent for the Lords blocking secondary legislation. It happened in 2015, when peers voted to delay a planned cut in tax credits. A month later George Osborne, the then chancellor, said he was abandoning the proposed move (in effect, a £4.4bn welfare cut) for good.

From 1968 to 2015, five other pieces of secondary legislation were voted down by the Lords, a report subsequently said.

Sir Jonathan Jones, a former head of the government’s legal department, said today this episode showed the need for a new approach to scrutiny of secondary legislation by parliament.

Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government thinktank, said peers should have voted down the regulations.

While Vernon Coaker told peers last night that Labour was respecting convention on the Lords and secondary legislation, at PMQs in the Commons today Keir Starmer told Rishi Sunak he should ignore convention on resignation honours. (See 1.46pm.)

Boris Johnson suggests Bernard Jenkin may have to quit privileges committee over alleged lockdown drinks

Boris Johnson has launched a fierce attack on the Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, who sits on the Commons privileges committee, following a claim that Jenkin attended an event where birthday drinks were served.

The story first appeared on Guido Fawkes, a Westminster gossip blog that in the past has published a lot of material favourable to Johnson. It claims that on 8 December 2020 Jenkin attended an event in the office of Dame Eleanor Laing, the deputy speaker, where drinks were served to mark the birthday of Jenkin’s wife, Ann (a Tory peer, and a friend of Laing’s). At the time meetings were only allowed for work purposes.

Bernard Jenkin told the website he did not attend any drinks party during lockdown. Asked specifically if he had a drink at the 8 December event, he said he could not remember.

But Johnson has issued a statement challenging Jenkin to clarify what happened, and implying that he may be a hypocrite. He said:

If this is true it is outrageous and a total contempt of parliament.

Bernard Jenkin has just voted to expel me from parliament for allegedly trying to conceal from parliament my knowledge of illicit events.

In reality of course I did no such thing.

Now it turns out he may have for the whole time known that he himself attended an event – and concealed this from the privileges committee and the whole house for the last year.

To borrow the language of the committee, if this is the case, he “must have known” he was in breach of the rules

Why didn’t he say so?

He has no choice but to explain his actions to his own committee, for his colleagues to investigate and then to resign.

Jenkin has been contacted for a comment.

The privileges committee report into Johnson is out tomorrow. But it is not primarily about Johnson breaking lockdown rules; it is about the claims that he misled MPs when he answered questions about Partygate in the Commons.

Updated

Liberty launches legal action against Braverman over law limiting right to protest passed as secondary legislation

Liberty, the human rights group, has announced that it will mount a legal challenge against controversial new protest laws that come into force tomorrow.

It is taking Suella Braverman, the home secretary, to judicial review, arguing that in implementing the “serious disruption” regulations she has exceeded her powers.

The Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations have been widely criticised by civil liberty campaigners and others because they will make it easier for the police to stop and arrest people holding peaceful protests. That is because they lower the threshold for what counts as “serious disruption” under the Public Order Act.

In a move that is specifically designed to target Just Stop Oil, and its slow-walking protests used to hold up traffic, the regulations also allow the police to take into account the cumulative impact of protests, not just the disruption caused by a single incident.

The regulations are particularly controversial because Braverman originally tried to include them in the Public Order Act 2023. But her amendments were voted down in the Lords, and could not be reinserted in the Commons because they were introduced late, and so Braverman is implementing them in the form of secondary legislation.

Secondary legislation receives less scrutiny than primary legislation, it cannot be amended and it is very hard to block. A Lords committee said it could not find any precedent for a government using secondary legislation to introduce a measure only recently blocked by parliament in primary legislation.

This is one of the main arguments used by Liberty in its judicial review.

In a statement, Katy Watts, a lawyer for Liberty, said:

The home secretary has sidelined parliament to sneak in new legislation via the back door, despite not having the powers to do so.

This has been done deliberately in a way which enables the government to circumvent parliament – who voted these same proposals down just a few months ago – and is a flagrant breach of the separation of powers that exist in our constitution.

This is yet another power grab from the government, as well as the latest in a long line of attacks on our right to protest, making it harder for the public to stand up for what they believe in.

The wording of the government’s new law is so vague that anything deemed ‘more than a minor’ disturbance could have restrictions imposed upon it.

In essence, this gives the police almost unlimited powers to stop any protest the government doesn’t agree with …

We’ve launched this legal action to ensure this overreach is checked and that the government is not allowed to put itself above the law to do whatever it wants. It’s really important that the government respects the law and that today’s decision is reversed immediately.

The text of Liberty’s pre-action letter to the home secretary is here.

Updated

The Commons privileges committee report into claims Boris Johnson misled MPs about Partygate is due at 9am tomorrow, and will run to 30,000 words, according to the Times’ Steven Swinford.

This is from ITV’s Robert Peston on Rishi Sunak boasting at PMQs about delivering the fastest wage growth in years.

Updated

Aslef train drivers vote to continue strike action over next six months

Train drivers have voted overwhelmingly to continue taking strike action for the next six months in their long-running pay dispute, PA Media reports. PA says:

Aslef said a re-ballot of its members showed they are “in it for the long haul”.

Unions involved in industrial disputes have to hold a fresh ballot every six months to ask their members if they want to continue taking action.

Aslef balloted 12,500 of its members at 15 train operators, with most voting by more than 90% in favour of continuing with strikes and other forms of industrial action.

Commenting on the result, Mick Whelan, the Aslef general secretary, said:

Once again our members have decided that we are in this for the long haul.

Train drivers are sick to the back teeth of their employers and the government failing to negotiate in good faith, and blaming drivers for their inability to manage services and the rail industry effectively.

Updated

The Conservative MP Aaron Bell has criticised Nadine Dorries for delaying her decision to resign. Speaking on the World at One, Bell also implied that she had been neglecting her parliamentary duties since she started a job as a TalkTV host earlier this year.

Asked about Dorries not formally resigning as an MP, even though she said on Friday she would be doing so “with immediate effect”, Bell said:

I don’t know what Nadine’s doing to be honest. I think it would be good for her constituency in Mid Bedfordshire … if they could have proper representation, because Nadine’s barely been seen in parliament these last six months while she’s been earning money on telly.

Bell also said that the party was now “united behind Rishi Sunak” and that the row about Johnson’s honours list was over. He said:

Actually this is over now. Boris Johnson is no longer a member of parliament. The vast, vast majority of the parliamentary party are completely united behind Rishi Sunak.

Updated

Privileges committee signs off Boris Johnson Partygate report

The long-awaited report that will find Boris Johnson misled parliament over Partygate has been signed off by the privileges committee, marking the end of a year-long inquiry that saw him quit the Commons in fury at its findings, Aubrey Allegretti reports. He says:

Seven MPs on the cross-party group, which has a Tory majority and Labour chair, held multiple meetings on Tuesday and endorsed the report at around 7pm, the Guardian has been told.

A damning assessment of Johnson’s promise that no Covid rules were broken and claims he was repeatedly assured the gatherings were within the rules is on course to be published on Thursday morning.

Johnson cannot be suspended from parliament – a punishment he was likely to face – because he announced he was stepping down last Friday and formally left the Commons on Monday.

However, the privileges committee is keen to ensure he does not get away scot-free. It is likely to recommend that he be blocked from being given the pass offered to most former MPs granting him privileged access to the Westminster estate.

Here is the full story.

No 10 criticises Dorries for delaying her resignation, saying her constituents deserve 'proper representation'

No 10 has criticised Nadine Dorries for delaying her resignation. (See 11.19am.) At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, asked about Dorries not yet formally resigning her seat, Rishi Sunak’s press secretary said:

It’s obviously unusual to have an MP say they will resign with immediate effect and for that not to take place. The prime minister believes the people of Mid Bedfordshire deserve proper representation in this house and he looks forward to campaigning for the Conservative candidate in the byelection.

Asked if that meant Dorries’ constituents were not currently being served properly, the spokesperson said:

The prime minister believes that it’s important that they have certainty.

Updated

PMQs - snap verdict

Rishi Sunak had quite a torrid PMQs. And the opposition leader was terrific. But that opposition leader was the SNP’s Stephen Flynn. Keir Starmer was less impressive today, and his performance can be chalked up as an example of when the commentariat assumes there is an open goal, the ball often doesn’t make it to the back of the net.

It did when Flynn gave it a punt. Here is his opening question.

During his ill-fated leadership bid late last summer, the prime minister warned of the perils of mortgage rate rises, indeed he stated, and I quote: ‘It’s going to tip millions of people into misery and it’s going to mean we have absolutely no chance of winning the next election.’ Given that mortgage rates continue to rise, does he still agree with his own electoral analysis?

“Which is absolutely why our economic policy sets as our number one priority to reduce inflation,” Sunak said, as he started his reply, but he was about as discomforted as he ever gets by the question, and he ended his first response with a feeble non-sequitur about SNP MSPs sending Nicola Sturgeon flowers.

There were at least two other questions that left Sunak metaphorically winded. They were from the Labour MPs Lyn Brown (see 12.03pm) and Taiwo Owatemi (see 12.25pm). But the Starmer script did not seem to unfold quite so well. Colleagues who were sitting in the chamber say Sunak was getting less support from his MPs today than he normally does. (On TV it is harder to judge, because television does not give an accurate presentation of noise levels at PMQs, which can be deafening.) On screen, though, Sunak may have come over better. It felt as if he managed to fend off Starmer.

Starmer opened with a question echoing the case made by Wes Streeting on his broadcast round this morning; that the country is in a mess because the Tories are just squabbling over peerages. (See 9.25am.) Although logically flawed (perhaps the country is just in a mess because the government is hopeless, even the most competent administration in history might have had a row about honours), this fits with what many or most people think, and for a quick hit, it might have worked.

But Starmer persisted, asking Sunak to explain why he did not just veto Boris Johnson’s honours list, and challenging him to commit to blocking Liz Truss’s. This was probably the highlight of his six questions.

It’s not just Johnson – the prime minister’s immediate predecessor is hoping to reward those who made her reign such a rip-roaring success. On her honours list are the masterminds of that kamikaze budget – the economic extremists of the Institute of Economic Affairs, those whose disastrous ideas crashed the economy and left the country to pick up the pieces. Will the prime minister block that honours list or will he buckle to her as well?

To Guardian readers, and many others, the Johnson honours list was an absolute shocker, and Starmer was absolutely right to say that it should have been scrapped. But as Labour leader Starmer has approved new peerages himself (he is committed to abolishing the Lords, but many in the party assume that will never happen), and Sunak had a reasonable comeback, saying (correctly) that he just acted in line with convention, and highlighting the fact that Starmer approved the controversial peerage for Tom Watson.

The honours row is a Westminster process story. Sunak, understandably, was keen to move on, and he attacked Labour over policy in answers that did not sound like the usual attempt to change the subject because Starmer was talking about the government’s economic record. In response to the jibe about the Liz Truss budget, Sunak said:

If you want disastrous economic ideas all you have to do is [look at] Labour’s economic policy on energy. It’s an energy policy that seeks to ban all new British oil and gas drilling, jeopardising 200,000 jobs and our energy security at a time of international conflict. Despots like Putin are the only people who will welcome such a policy. His predecessor once said he wanted British jobs for British workers – his policy is British jobs for Russian workers.

This won’t necessarily pass a fact check test (Russia is subject to sanctions, and the Labour policy is all about replacing North Sea oil with UK renewables, not Siberian gas), but for the purposes of PMQs knock-about it was perfectly adequate.

The highlight of PMQs, and probably the only point people will remember by next week, was Philip Davies dancing on the political grave of Boris Johnson. (See 12.35pm.) This is significant because it shows just how diminished Johnson now is. Even to his own side, he has become laughing stock.

Updated

Sunak says the Conservatives are delivering for voters in Uxbridge, whether it is opposing Ulez, or keeping police stations open.

And that is it. PMQs over

Philip Davies also said Sunak had left behind an “idiotic” proposal to ban buy one, get one free offers for junk food. That is wrong, particularly when there is a cost of living crisis. Will the government scrap this?

Sunak says the introduction of this policy has been postponed. No final decisions have been made, he says.

Tory MP Philip Davies mocks Boris Johnson over his complaints about the government not implementing Conservative policies

Philip Davies (Con) uses his question to have a go at Boris Johnson. He says Johnson has complained about the government not being Conservative enough. If only Johnson had had a majority of 80 and been in a position to do something about it, he says.

One of the socialist landmines the prime minister has inherited from the former member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip [Boris Johnson] – I’m sure the prime minister remembers him, he’s the one who said that we should be more conservative – if only he had had a majority of 80 and been prime minister he might have been able to do something about it.

This is from the i’s Paul Waugh.

Updated

Claire Hanna (SDLP) says Northern Ireland is one of the most dangerous places for women. The absence of an executive does not help. Will the government help encourage moves to protect women there?

Sunak says services would operate better if the executive were running.

Henry Smith (Con) says the eurozone is in recession, and the UK is experiencing growth.

Sunak says the Tories are delivering. He says various bodies have upgraded their UK growth forecasts.

Updated

Mohammad Yasin (Lab) says capital spending limits are preventing the building of new mental health services in his constituency.

Sunak says the government is investing record sums in the NHS.

Virendra Sharma (Lab) says Ukraine’s largest mobile phone operator has kept services going during the war. Will the PM support services like this at next week’s Ukraine investment conference?

Sunak welcomes the question, and says support for Ukraine will continue.

Updated

Elliot Colburn (Con) asks about plans for a hospital in his constituency.

Sunak says the government remains committed to the Epsom hospital plan.

Taiwo Owatemi (Lab) asks about a constituent who has had to go private after told he would have to wait five months for heart treatment. The British public deserve better, she says.

Sunak says he is sorry to hear about this case. The government is investing record sums in the NHS, he says.

Fabian Hamilton (Lab) asks Sunak to accept that the scrapping of housing targets was the wrong decision.

Sunak says he makes no apology for respecting the views of communities. Labour may want to build over the green belt, but that is not something the government will do, he says.

Updated

Gary Sambrook (Con) asks about homes in Birmingham not meeting the required standards. He says a leaked Labour memo from the council has blamed the Labour group on the council. Will the government intervene?

Sunak says the failings in Birmingham are unacceptable. He says the regulator for social housing has intervened.

Updated

Kim Johnson (Lab) asks Sunak to scrap the two-child limits for benefits claimants.

Sunak says this ensures fairness, because it requires families on benefits to make the same decisions as families in work.

Updated

Theresa Villiers (Con) asks Sunak to condemn the plan to expand the Ulez zone in London.

Sunak says this will raise costs for families in London. And Keir Starmer totally backs the London mayor’s plan, he says.

Neale Hanvey (Alba) says Keir Starmer recently deliverd a one nation vision for Scotland. But he sounded like a Tory. Which party leader is the biggest threat to Scotland, the Tory on the right or on the left?

Sunak says he and Hanvey probably agree Starmer should not be running the country.

Updated

Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, says Sunak said last year the Tories would have no chance of winning the election if mortgages were going up. Does he still agree?

Sunak says that is why the government wants to get inflation under control. He says the only thing the SNP can agree on is to send flowers to Nicola Sturgeon. (He is referring to a decision by SNP MSPs.) Did Flynn sign the card?

Flynn says Sunak should grow up. He asks Sunak to apologise for the damage he has caused.

Sunak criticises the SNP’s record.

Updated

Starmer challenges Sunak to call an election now.

Sunak criticises Labour for voting against the illegal migration bill.

Starmer says Liz Truss wants an honours list for allies who made her premiership such a success. Will Sunak block that?

Sunak says under Labour’s energy policy to stop new oil and gas developments, 200,000 jobs would be at risk. Russia would welcome that. He says Gordon Brown promised British jobs for British workers. Starmer is offering British jobs for Russian workers.

Updated

Starmer says mortgage payers are paying the price for “this endless cycle of chaos and destruction”.

Sunak says Rachel Reeves has watered down her plan for £28bn borrowing, while Ed Miliband says it still stands.

Updated

Starmer says honours should be for public service. He asks if Sunak’s message to the public is: if you don’t like these honours, tough.

Sunak say Starmer proposed an honour for Tom Watson, who spread vicious conspiracy theories.

Updated

Starmer says the PM did sign off the honours list. That means those who threw a Downing Street party the night before the late Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral will get an award. Why did the PM not block that?

Sunak says he followed precedent. His predecessors may not have approved of honours for Tom Watson and Shami Chakrabarti. As a knight, Starmer should know that.

Sunak defends approving Boris Johnson's honours list

Keir Starmer echoes what Sunak said about Nottingham and Grenfell Tower.

He says all across the country people are worried about prices and mortgages. So why has the Tory party spent the week arguing about which of them gets a peerage?

Sunak says he followed the resignation process to the letter:

In line with a long-established convention of previous prime ministers having the ability to submit honours, I followed the process to the letter, in convention of longstanding process.

It is, by the way, a longstanding convention that prime ministers on both sides to this house have followed in the same way that I did.

Updated

Mark Pawsey (Con) invites Sunak to attack Labour’s dependency culture.

Sunak agrees. He says unemployment is at record low levels.

Lyn Brown (Lab) says the ONS says food prices were rising at 16.8% in January. The most recent figure are 19.1%. This makes a mockery of the PM’s pledge to halve inflation, he says.

Sunak says of course he recognises this. That is why he made a pledge to halve inflation. It is now falling, he says. And he says the government is still helping families, notably by paying half their energy bills.

Rishi Sunak starts by thanking the emergency service for their response to the “shocking” incident in Nottingham yesterday.

He says MPs will also remember the 72 people who lost their lives on the sixth anniversary today of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Rishi Sunak leaving No 10 earlier on his way to the Commons for PMQs.
Rishi Sunak leaving No 10 earlier on his way to the Commons for PMQs. Photograph: Lucy North/PA

Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs

PMQs starts in about 10 minutes. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

PMQs
PMQs Photograph: HoC

The Tories have not said yet when the two byelections will take place, but they have to take place between 21 and 27 working days from the issuing of the writ. That means they will either be on Thursday 13 July or Thursday 20 July.

Updated

Tory chief whip Simon Hart moves writ for byelections in Selby and Ainsty, and in Uxbridge and South Ruislip

In the Commons Simon Hart, the chief whip, has just moved the writ for byelections in Selby and Ainsty, and in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Braverman dismisses claim Home Office has no realistic chance of clearing legacy asylum application backlog by end of year

Back at the home affairs committee, Tim Loughton (Con) asks about the asylum application backlog. He says that, at the rate applications are being processed now, the legacy backlog won’t be cleared by the end of the year.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, says she is not as pessimistic as Loughton is. She expects the processing rate to speed up.

Q: You need to process at the rate of 10,630 applications per month for the rest of the year. But you are not going to achieve that in the next few months. So there would have to be a much bigger monthly processing rate by the end of the year. That is not going to happen, is it?

Braverman says more people are being hired, and processing rates will speed up. She says she is not as pessimistic as Loughton.

Loughton says he is not being pessimistic. He is just looking at the numbers.

Braverman says, taking into account the extra number of decision makers, whose numbers will double at least, and a streamlined process, there will be a “substantial uptick” in the processing rate.

Updated

Nadine Dorries reportedly planning to delay her resignation, to stop Sunak being able to hold three byelections on same day

Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson ally, is going to delay her resignation, to prevent Rishi Sunak being able to schedule three potentially damaging byelections on the same day, Jason Groves from the Mail reports.

Simon Hart, the chief whip, is expected to move the writ today for two byelections – in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, and in Nigel Adams’s Selby and Ainsty. On Friday Dorries said she was resigning “with immediate effect”, and the Tories had expected to hold the byelection in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency on the same day. But now it turns out that her definition of “immediate” seems to include “any time in the next month or so”.

In the comment below Shropshirefella asks:

Given that Nadine Dorries has given her intention to quit as an MP ‘with immediate effect’, but is yet to follow the formal process and given that her prolonged presence seems to be a distraction and continuation of the Johnson soap opera, could Sunak sack her or otherwise expel her from the party? Could the Tories cut her loose and do her resignation for her?

Sunak could in theory suspend or expel her from the party, but a) it would be hard to justify doing this to her and not to Johnson or Adams; b) it would hugely antagonise her allies in the media, including the Daily Mail, where she writes a column, and TalkTV, where she has a show; and c) this would not get her out of the Commons anyway.

Once an MP has been elected, it is very, very hard to get rid of them. The recall election process provides one route, but Dorries has not done anything to provoke a recall election. In extremis, the Commons can also vote to expel a member. But this has only happened in the past in cases of gross misconduct or contempt, and it has not happened recently. It is not an option for Sunak in this case.

Updated

After PMQs, at around 12.30pm, Suella Braverman will be making a statement to MPs about the fatal attacks in Nottingham. We will be covering that on our Nottingham live blog.

Alison Thewliss (SNP) goes next.

Q: You have two children. What would you do if one of them went missing?

Braverman says she would call the police.

Q: There are 154 unaccompanied asylum seeker children who have gone missing from hotels. What are you doing about them?

Braverman says it has been very hard to find accommodation for asylum seeker children. Now there are no unaccompanied asylum seeker children in hotels. They are with foster parents.

Q: But what are you doing about the missing ones?

Braverman says the Home Office works with local authorities. There is a protocol to follow.

Q: Do you know their names?

Braverman says she is not involved in these cases personally. That is a matter for the police.

She says she has no power to detain unaccompanied asylum seeker children in hotels. She asks Thewliss if is suggesting they are detained.

Thewliss says she is suggesting the Home Office cares about these cases.

Braverman says it is incredibly difficult to find people who do not want to be found.

Q: Is it that they do not want to be found? Or is it that they are in the hands of traffickers?

Braverman says she cannot say what happens to these children. Some people claiming to be children are adults. She says 50% of age assessment cases are resolved in the Home Office’s favour.

Updated

Diana Johnson asks Braverman how many of the 1,800 Albanians who have been returned to their country arrived in the UK on small boats.

Braverman says she does not have that figure. She says they are not all small boat arrivals.

Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chair, is asking the questions now. He says when Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, gave evidence, there was some disagreement as to whether the police could stop protesters blocking the streets. (Rowley and Anderson had a row about it.) He asks if the police can now stop protesters doing this.

Braverman says she thinks they can – particularly after last night’s vote in the Lords.

Q: So will you tell the police to stop protests like this?

Braverman says the police are operationally independent.

She says she gets “incredibly frustrated” when she sees people being disrupted by these protests.

Braverman says people need to show more 'personal responsibility' to protect themselves from online fraud

Fell put it to Braverman that customers were not learning to protect themselves from online fraud because, if they are cheated, they tend to get their money back from banks. He suggested that people were being “coddled”. It was as if they were leaving their front door open, leaving themselves vulnerable to burglary, he said.

Braverman said Fell had a point. She told him:

I think that’s a really important point and I’m passionate about increasing awareness - much like practice changed when it came to wearing a seatbelt …

I think we need a step change when it comes to online activity. We are far more vulnerable than we appreciate and I think people’s lives are lived so politically online that they forget that there are fraudsters operating in that online world.

I think there needs to be a cultural change and a greater level of awareness amongst individuals about how they can secure themselves properly online, whilst also buying their theatre tickets and booking their holidays. I don’t think we have yet a sufficient level of personal responsibility.

Suella Braverman giving evidence to the home affairs committee
Suella Braverman giving evidence to the home affairs committee Photograph: PRU/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Simon Fell (Con) is asking the questions now.

Q: Why are you only committed to reducing fraud by 10%?

Braverman says a 10% reduction would mean hundreds of thousands fewer victims. Stopping fraud is a complex challenge, she says.

Q: Are you making progress in recruiting more caseworkers?

Braverman says she has 1,281 full-time equivalent asylum decision makers. That is 48% more than in July 2022. She says they want to get that to 2,500 by September.

Q: You said in a letter last night you would get to 1,800 by the summer. When is the summer?

Braverman avoids the question. She says there has been a proactive effort to recruit more staff.

Q: Are those figures gross or net? We have been told the attrition rate is 47%.

Braverman says those of figures for the total cohort.

Q: But in your letter you say you do not have records of people leaving. So how do you know what your total figure is.

Braverman says they know the size of their workforce.

Daniel Hobbs, director of asylum, protection and enforcement at the Home Office, who is giving evidene with Braverman, says the attrition rate has gone down. It is now 28%.

Johnson expresses doubt as to whether the Home Office will be able to get staffing levels up to 2,500 by September.

Q: Has the backlog of asylum applications fallen or risen. At the end of last year the figure was 131,292. But in May it was 137,583.

Braverman says the backlog of cases that were in place in June last year has gone down, but about 17,000. She says this is the backlog the PM has committed to reduce.

Talking about a legacy backlog is legitimate, she says.

Home Office has failed to provide proper evidence modern slavery protections being abused by migrants, committee chair tells Braverman

Johnson now moves on to the illegal migration bill. She says the equalities impact assessment said it would disproportionately impact women.

Q: If a woman who had been trafficked for sex purposes came to the attention of the authories, would she be detained under the illegal migration bill?

Braverman says 80% of people coming on small boats are men. So women are only a small proportion of small boat arrivals.

Q: But could someone be detained if they were a victim of modern slavery?

Braverman says the modern slavery protections have been abused. That is why the rules are being tightened.

Q: But would someone be subject to arrest and detention.

Braverman says it would depend on the circumstances.

Q: You are not sure.

Braverman says it is complicated. There are exemptions, which can allow women not to be detained. If people are part of a police investigation …

Q: Say they are not. Say a woman has just arrived, and is being used for sex trafficking. What happens to this woman?

Braverman says that would be an illegality. If they go to the police, or if they are part of a police investigation, they could claim an exemption to the removal powers in the bill.

But the government must ensure people cannot continue to game the rules, she says.

Johnson says the committee has asked for evidence that the system is being gamed. It has not received any.

Braverman says she gave the committee examples.

Q: Only two.

It was four, says Braverman.

Johnson concedes it was four.

Suella Braverman gives evidence to Commons home affairs committee

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is giving evidence to the Commons home affairs committee. It is a session on “the work of the home secretary”, and so anything come come up. There is a live feed at the top of the blog.

Diana Johnson, the committee chair, starts by naming what she describes as a pimping website, and asks why it has not been banned.

Braverman says she has not heard of the website mentioned by Johnson. But she says pimping is a heinous practice.

Johnson says she looked at the website yesterday. There were 297 adverts for women in Hampsire, Braverman’s constituency. She said many used the same number. And adverts said women were “new in town”, or only there for a short period. These are all red flags for women being trafficked, she says. She says she reported this to the police.

Daniel Finkelstein, the Tory peer, has used his Times column today to argue that Rishi Sunak should double down on his criticism of Boris Johnson, to distance himself from his predecessor but one. Finkelstein argues:

While Boris Johnson is wittering on about a peerage for Nigel Adams to disguise the fact that he is being suspended from parliament for misleading it, he has done Sunak one favour. He has removed from the prime minister the obligation of pretending that he and Johnson are in harmony. There has long been warfare but now the warfare is open.

The costs of this are clear. It makes the Tories look like a rabble. Actually, delete the words “look like”. But the benefit is that Sunak is now able to say what he really thinks about his predecessor.

And such frankness would allow him to take advantage of one of his main strengths. He warned first Johnson and then Truss against a policy of reckless borrowing. He was prepared first to resign and then lose a leadership contest to assert a principle that has been entirely vindicated. He showed prescience and courage and was ultimately victorious.

Finkelstein also has a good take on how Johnson failed to obtain peerages for his allies.

What happened over the peerages is a little like Johnson’s negotiation over the Northern Ireland protocol. He failed to listen to the details, collapsed his position, imagined he had a deal on his own terms, reassured his allies that he had won a great negotiating triumph and then, discovering he had let his friends down, furiously refused to abide by any agreement at all, claiming it was the other side who had reneged.

Junior doctors who are on strike in England today on a BMA picklet line at University College London this morning.
Junior doctors who are on strike in England today on a BMA picklet line at University College London this morning. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Streeting says Tory 'clown show' means Sunak can't focus on issues of the day

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, also attacked the Tories over Boris Johnson in an interview with Times Radio. He said:

I think it does say something about the culture of the Conservative Party and the clown show that continues to roll on.

It is a total shambles. Rishi Sunak is too weak to lead it. Even if he is trying to focus on the issues of the day, he’s being dragged off with the clown show.

And I think it’s one of the many, many, many reasons why it’s time for a change of government, and only Labour can provide that change and the quality and stability of government that we need.

Labour suggests ‘gongs for cronies’ row is stopping Rishi Sunak doing his job properly as PM

Good morning. Rishi Sunak faces PMQs today. Among the many problems in his in-tray are another strike by junior doctors starting this morning, rising mortgage rates and Nick Macpherson, a former Treasury permanent secretary, warning that the election due next year could coincide with the economy going into recession.

But, Westminster being Westminster, much of the focus at PMQs may end up being on what has been described as the Boris Johnson “clown show” (now on day six of its run). Here is Aubrey Allegretti’s overnight update on where we were on that last night.

There are at least four things we might learn in relation to this story today.

1) Will Sunak escalate his attack on Johnson? After studiously avoiding doing anything that might antagonise Johnson, his small band of loyal supporters in the party, and his much more powerful allies in the Tories media, for most of his premiership, Sunak did publicly criticise him on Monday. Will he double down on this, or retreat?

2) Will the Commons privileges committee publish its report today? Almost certainly not was the steer last night, but nothing in this saga has been certain.

3) Will the government move the writs for the two byelections pending today, in Johnson’s seat and Nigel Adams’, and when will they be?

4) Will Nadine Dorries, who said on Friday that she was standing down as an MP “with immediate effect”, get round to doing so? She hasn’t yet.

Interesting and entertaining as it is, the Johnson pantomime is ultimately quite trival compared to the fact that the UK’s economic performance is lacklustre, many workers are no better off in real terms than they were a decade or more ago, and important public services do not function properly. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was giving interviews this morning on the junior doctors’ strike, and he sought to link it with the Johnson shenanigans. He told the Today programme:

I think the reason junior doctors are out on strike is because they don’t have someone to negotiate with. I think the question at this stage, having failed to get to a negotiated settlement, is where’s the prime minister?

If he’s got an hour of his time to sit with Boris Johnson negotiating gongs for cronies and peerages in the House of Lords, he should have an hour at least to negotiate an end to these terrible strikes which are causing misery for the doctors involved and even more importantly misery for patients who are seeing their operations delayed and cancelled.

Technically, this is not a good argument; prime ministers can deal with more than one issue at a time, and Sunak has a lot more than an hour of his time on NHS pay issues. But that’s irrelevant, because voters will believe Streeting has a point when he says the Johnson row is a distraction.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.45am: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.

11.30am: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, gives a speech on AI and education.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

After 12.45pm: MPs begin a debate on an SNP motion calling for the creation of a Commons cost of living committee to investigate what is driving up prices, how Brexit has contributed, and what the government should do in response.

If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.

Updated

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