Summary
Here is round-up of the day’s top stories from Westminster:
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has confirmed that the Scottish government will go to court to challenge the UK government’s decision to block its gender recognition reform bill. In an interview with the BBC, she said: “In doing so we will be vigorously defending something else, and that is the institution of the Scottish parliament and the ability of MSPs, democratically elected, to legislate in areas of our competence. In short, we’ll be defending Scottish democracy.”
The Scottish government has estimated that between 250 and 300 people will apply for a gender recognition certificate every year if its bill becomes law, the UK document on the section 35 order decision says. That is currently a tenfold increase because only around 30 people currently apply, the document says.
Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish secretary, said the reasons given by the government to justify the section 35 order were “pretty weak and pretty flimsy” at first glance. But he refused to condemn the use of the section 35 order outright, and instead he criticised both the UK and Scottish governments, depicting them both as unreasonable.
Social media bosses who ignore or deliberately flout rules aimed at protecting children could face jail under plans drawn up as Rishi Sunak bowed to pressure from rebel Tories. The prime minister was facing a major backbench rebellion as 50 MPs put their names to an amendment to the online safety bill that would make tech chiefs criminally liable if they do not block minors from seeing damaging content on their platforms. The compromise plan put forward by the culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, would hold bosses accountable “in a way which is effective and targeted towards child safety”.
The University and College Union has announced that its latest strike action will begin on 1 February, alongside teachers, railway workers and civil servants, in action likely to affect 150 universities across the UK. Up to 70,000 UCU members could go on strike as part of their long-running dispute with higher education employers over pay, pensions and working conditions. The 1 February strike is the first of 18 days of action that the union has threatened to take over the next two months.
The independent inquiry looking at the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer will also consider the crimes of David Carrick, the home secretary announced. Suella Braverman told the Commons Dame Elish Angiolini will include the 48-year-old’s offending in her inquiry, which was set up in November 2021.
Brexit has led to a shortfall of 330,000 people in the UK labour force, mostly in the low-skilled economy, a report by leading researchers has found. The UK’s departure from the EU in 2020 led to an increase in immigration from non-EU countries but not enough to compensate for the loss of workers from neighbouring countries, according to the joint findings of the thinktanks Centre for European Reform (CER) and UK in a Changing Europe.
Michelle Donelan, the culture secretary, has announced that the government will go ahead with a ban on conversion practices. Curiously, she has made the announcement in a Commons written statement, which is mostly about the online safety bill, and which provides details of the concession to potential Tory rebels revealed last night.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. The blog will be back tomorrow morning but, for now, it’s goodnight from us.
Updated
People should have to opt in, not out, to see harmful content online, the SNP said.
Urging MPs to back an SNP amendment to the bill aimed at making the change, the party’s Cabinet Office spokesperson, Kirsty Blackman, said the safest option “should be the default option”.
She added:
That is the point of view we should start from.
We should start from the point of view that if anyone wants to see eating disorder content, if they want to see racist content that doesn’t meet the bar of illegality, if they want to see incredibly harmful content that does not meet that bar, they should have to opt in to receive that content.
They shouldn’t see that by default, they should have to make that actual choice that they want to see that content.
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