Afternoon summary
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has confirmed he would repeal the controversial Northern Ireland legacy bill if he becomes prime minister. Speaking at an event at Queen’s University Belfast on the second day of his visit to NI, Starmer said it was time for Rishi Sunak to face down hardline Brexiters in the Tory European Research Group (ERG) if they try to block a deal.
The UK government is to further delay calling an election in Northern Ireland to give Brexit talks a chance. Senior EU sources said “slow progress” was being made in talks between the UK and Brussels, dampening hopes of a breakthrough by the end of January on the protracted dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said there was “no indication” from the PM that there would be any additional funding to avert strike action within the NHS. The pair held talks on Thursday evening which she described as “perfectly constructive and cordial”. Sunak said there was “record funding” already going into the NHS, adding that “more is coming”.
Sunak has said he is “concerned” about aspects of Holyrood’s gender recognition reform (GRR) bill, which would allow trans people to obtain a gender recognition certificate without the need for a medical diagnosis. The PM declined to say whether Westminster could block the legislation, saying the government is taking advice on the issue “as is completely standard practice”.
Inverness and Cromarty Firth green freeport and Forth green freeport have been jointly selected to become Scotland’s first green freeports. Downing Street said the green freeports, backed by up to £52m in government funding, would bring new, high-skilled jobs to Inverness and Cromarty Firth and the Firth of Forth.
Downing Street has warned health ministers they will have to find savings from their own budget if they want to offer NHS workers more money in an effort to end the growing wave of strikes. No 10 said there would be no increase in the health department’s budget as ministers look for a way to resolve the protracted industrial dispute.
The warning came after the Guardian reported Steve Barclay, the health secretary, had privately conceded he would have to increase the pay offer to NHS staff to get an agreement with health unions. Unions and government officials said this week’s talks were much more positive than those held last year, sparking hope that a resolution can soon be found.
The UK culture secretary has said she is “not ruling out” changing the online safety bill to allow regulators to prosecute social media bosses who are found not to have protected children’s safety. Michelle Donelan told the BBC she was open to making changes that have been demanded by dozens of Conservative MPs, saying she would take a “sensible approach” to their ideas.
Ukraine is confident Britain will announce it plans to send about 10 Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv shortly. A formal announcement is anticipated on Monday but Ukrainian sources indicated they understood that Britain had already decided in favour.
Boris Johnson has received a donation of £1m from a Thai-based British businessman who had previously given millions of pounds to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, the newly released register of MPs’ interests has shown. The size of the donation, one of the biggest recorded to an individual UK politician rather than a party, and from a strong Brexit supporter, will increase speculation that Johnson could be planning some sort of comeback.
Boris Johnson could agree not to challenge Rishi Sunak in exchange for the promise of a safe seat at the next election, the Times has reported, citing friends of Johnson. Johnson could seek to use “leverage” over Sunak if the Tories fare badly in the May local elections, the paper writes, under plans being discussed by a group of Johnson supporters.
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The Conservative MP Alicia Kearns has laid down an amendment to the online safety bill that would ban adverts promoting conversion practices, or so-called “conversion therapy”, to anyone under 18.
The amendment states that “content which advertises or promotes the practice of so-called conversion practices of LGBTQ+ individuals must be considered as harmful for the purposes of this section”, ITV News reports.
Nearly 40 Tory MPs, including former cabinet ministers Priti Patel and Iain Duncan Smith, have put their names to an amendment to the bill demanding tougher action against social media bosses if they fail to protect children from seeing damaging content online.
EXCL: Conservative MP @aliciakearns has laid this amendment to the online harms bill which would ban the advertising and promotion of conversion ‘therapy’ to under 18s.
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) January 13, 2023
The amendment has cross-party support, including four select committee chairs. MPs hope govt will back it. pic.twitter.com/FU0pv4l5rV
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