End of day summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
The prime minister said new oil and gas drilling licences for the North Sea would help the UK achieve net zero carbon emissions – and that the plan would strengthen the UK’s energy independence and reduce reliance on hostile states, such as Russia. Sunak, who is visiting Aberdeenshire today, said using domestic oil and gas would be better for the environment than importing it.
The government’s former “net zero tsar” has called for an emergency debate into Rishi Sunak’s decision to grant 100 new licences for oil and gas production in the North Sea. Chris Skidmore, the influential Conservative MP who led the review of the UK’s climate goals, tweeted that the government was on the wrong side of history.
Green groups have criticised Sunak’s plans to issue more oil and gas licences as “dangerously incoherent” as the planet boils. Philip Evans, from the Greenpeace UK climate team, said: “This new announcement is nothing but a cynical political ploy to sow division, and the climate is collateral damage.” Experts also pointed out that his plans will not, as he claims, bring down bills.
Ed Miliband has called the government’s plans for North Sea oil and gas “weak and confused policy”. The shadow climate and net zero secretary said the plan “will do nothing for our energy security and drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments, while continuing to leave us at the mercy of fossil fuel dictators like Putin”.
Scientists have tentatively welcomed Sunak’s decision to fund more carbon capture and storage (CCS), but said it could be a “deal with the devil” that greenwashes oilfields and allows for more oil and gas extraction than can be stored.
The ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 remains government policy, the prime minister has said. Rishi Sunak has been under mounting pressure after more than 40 Conservative MPs and peers wrote to him calling for the deadline to be pushed back.
Downing Street has denied that Rishi Sunak’s language on protecting motorists has changed in the wake of the Uxbridge and Ruislip byelection. Asked whether the Tories’ narrow victory, which came amid local concerns about the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone, had affected the prime minister’s thinking, his press secretary told reporters: “No, not at all.”
Members of the National Education Union, the UK’s largest teaching union, have accepted a 6.5% pay rise for teachers in England and voted to end strike action. The joint NEU general secretary Kevin Courtney has said the government “could and should” have gone further after the teaching union accepted its 6.5% pay offer.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips has said the criminal justice system has suffered from “total collapse and calamity”, with her party claiming that more than 90% of crimes go unsolved. The MP for Birmingham Yardley and shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that criminals had “never had it so good”.
A man seen as one of the key architects of Theresa May’s disastrous 2017 election campaign has been selected by the Conservative party to fight Matt Hancock’s seat at the next general election. Nick Timothy, who supported Brexit, was a special adviser to May in the Home Office during the era of the hostile environment policy that led to the Windrush scandal. He was confirmed as West Suffolk’s Tory parliamentary candidate on Sunday night.
People who have been wrongly convicted should not have to pay “living expenses” for the time they spent in prison, No 10 has said after a man spent 17 years inside for a rape he did not commit. Rishi Sunak thought the practice was unfair and had launched discussions with Home Office officials to “establish the facts”, prompted by the case of Andrew Malkinson, who was freed last week.
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NASUWT members have accepted a 6.5% pay rise for teachers and school leaders in England, the union has said.
A total of 77.6% of the union’s members had indicated they were willing to accept the pay offer as part of a consultative survey, PA News reports.
However, just 18.4% of the 18,000 respondents said the measures announced by the government to tackle excessive workload were sufficient.
Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said:
Teachers and headteachers should benefit from more money in their pockets at a time when they are struggling with rising interest rates, rocketing rents and mortgages and persistent high inflation.
Whilst NASUWT members are willing to accept the STRB pay award recommendation, they do not believe that it is sufficient redress for the impact of more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts, where the value of teachers’ pay has declined by 25%. Furthermore, our members do not agree that sufficient action is yet being taken to address their concerns over excessive workload and long working hours.
We have today written to the education secretary calling on the government to do more to address our members’ demands for pay restoration and immediate action to tackle excessive workload and long working hours.
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