Closing summary
Here is a round-up of the day’s main headlines:
British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has met China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, during the first visit to Beijing by a UK foreign secretary in five years. During the meeting, Cleverly said it was important the two governments continued with regular face-to-face meetings to avoid misunderstandings. He also said it was important to address the challenges and differences of opinion that all countries had in bilateral relations, according to Reuters.
But the visit has been criticised by China hawks on the Tory benches, who want a tougher line against a state which has imposed sanctions on several British MPs and peers for speaking out about human rights violations. The former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith compared the government’s approach to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, while the foreign affairs committee chair, Alicia Kearns, said she had spoken to Cleverly before his visit and urged him to pressure the Chinese on human rights concerns.
Cleverly said he had raised human rights issues during meetings with Chinese officials. In an interview with Sky News, Cleverly was pressed on whether simply raising human rights obligations was enough amid concerns about abuses in Xinjiang province.
Rishi Sunak has said a crackdown on zombie-style knives, with new powers for police, would make a “big difference” for officers. The government has announced more “zombie-style” knives and machetes with no practical use are to be banned and police will be given more powers to seize and destroy them.
Many lawyers are sceptical about plans to give judges powers to order offenders in England and Wales to attend a sentencing hearing, including by force if necessary. The government has taken the step after high-profile offenders, including Lucy Letby, the nurse who killed babies, and Thomas Cashman, the murderer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, refused to attend their sentencing hearings.
Women will still have the right to receive equal pay for doing a similar job as their male counterparts, the government has insisted, despite the fact that an EU law guaranteeing the protection has been scrapped. The legislation was intended to protect workers, including those whose jobs have been outsourced or who work in different locations. However, part of the guarantee was among about 600 EU laws which the government announced in May that it would scrap by the end of the year, in the retained EU law bill.
Rail unions have raised fresh safety concerns over the closure of ticket offices before a protest on the eve of the final day of consultation on the controversial plans. All three main rail unions are stepping up campaigning against closures amid a huge response from more than 460,000 people to the proposals, PA Media reports.
Ministers have been accused of hypocrisy in claiming Sadiq Khan expanded London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to raise revenue after it emerged the Department for Transport urged the mayor to extend the city’s congestion charge for the same reason. On the first day of Ulez covering every London borough there was renewed bickering between the Labour mayor and the government, with Khan castigating Mark Harper, the transport secretary, for what he called factual mistakes after the pair crossed paths at a TV studio.
Officials are making hurried calls urging school leaders to draw up contingency plans for buildings at risk of collapse because of crumbling concrete, the Guardian has learned. Department for Education documents show that staff have been instructed to contact leaders of England’s schools and academies to check they are prepared to evacuate buildings constructed from reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) at short notice, and relocate pupils to alternatives such as portable accommodation or even other schools in their area.
The outgoing head of the UK’s leading race equality thinktank has said the continued denial of institutional racism has created a credibility issue for the government. Dr Halima Begum, who is stepping down as the director of Runnymede Trust after three years, said that soon after the government released its controversial report on race, which claimed to not find evidence for institutional racism, there were several national scandals that showed otherwise.
The head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is facing mounting pressure to quit after a court ruled that the force unlawfully disciplined two junior officers to placate Sinn Féin. Unionist politicians said on Wednesday they had lost confidence in Simon Byrne, the PSNI chief constable, and urged him to resign.
A Sinn Féin MLA has said that at no point did he suggest his party would withdraw support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland during discussions with senior officers about the policing of a Troubles memorial event in 2021. The policing board representative Gerry Kelly said he wanted to “set the record straight” following the latest controversy to hit Northern Ireland’s police force after a high court judge ruled that a decision to discipline two junior officers was unlawful.
Just 9% of Scottish firms agree that the SNP government understands the business environment in Scotland, according to a new report from the Fraser of Allander Institute. The survey of more than 400 businesses in July and August found that larger firms and those in the hospitality industry in particular agreed that the current administration was out of touch with business needs, presenting a challenge to Humza Yousaf, who set out a “new deal” for business soon after he became first minister in April in an attempt to improve relations which were widely seen to have suffered under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following and see you again tomorrow.
Updated
Women will still have the right to receive equal pay for doing a similar job as their male counterparts, the government has insisted, despite the fact that an EU law guaranteeing the protection has been scrapped.
The legislation was intended to protect workers, including those whose jobs have been outsourced or who work in different locations.
However, part of the guarantee was among about 600 EU laws which the government announced in May that it would scrap by the end of the year, in the retained EU law bill.
One of these was an EU regulation known as the “single source” test, which allows workers to compare their role with that of someone working in a different establishment, if a “single source” has the power to correct the difference in pay, or in their terms and conditions.
The rule protected women who work for outsourcing companies or those employed in different locations but doing similar jobs.
Despite this, thousands of mostly female shop floor workers including at Tesco and Asda – who were paid less than male warehouse staff – previously launched legal action against their employers over equal pay.
Updated
