Afternoon summary
Keir Starmer ridiculed Rishi Sunak’s handling of the Greek PM at PMQs, saying Sunak was engaged in a “one-man war on reality”. He also described Sunak as someone with “the reverse Midas touch”. (See 1.36pm.)
The Home Office does not know the whereabouts of 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been marked as withdrawn, officials have admitted. As Rajeev Syal reports, amid a stalled Rwanda deportation scheme and rising costs for housing people seeking refuge in hotels, the two most senior officials in the department told the Commons home affairs committee that marking those claims as “withdrawn” would help hit Rishi Sunak’s target of reducing the “legacy backlog” by the end of this year. Tim Loughton, a Conservative member of the committee, has just told Radio 4’s PM programme that this was one of the worst performances by senior civil servants at a committee he had ever seen. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, said the hearing showed that the asylum system was broken under the Conservatives. He said in a statement:
Home Office officials let the cat out of the bag that under the Tories, 17,000 asylum seekers have gone missing.
Labour first warned back in August that the Conservatives were cooking the asylum books by withdrawing claims for asylum seekers for spurious reasons, and then allowing those individuals to drift away undetected into the underground economy.
This is more evidence of an asylum system broken by the Conservatives.
Dominic Raab, the former foreign secretary and former deputy PM, has told the Covid inquiry that he does not accept the Boris Johnson goverment was a “puppet regime” run by Dominic Cummings. (See 4.50pm.) He made his case after Sajid Javid, the former chancellor and former health secretary, told the inquiry that he did think Cummings was the person really in charge in early 2020. (See 3.25pm.)
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Turning back to the backlog of asylum applications (see 10.38am), PA Media says data published last week showed the backlog of asylum applications – rather than individuals – stood at 122,585 as of 29 October this year, down 12% from a record 138,782 at the end of February.
The “legacy” backlog of asylum applications (defined as applications submitted before June 2022, when the Nationality and Borders Act came into force) stood at 33,253 as of 29 October, down nearly a half (47%) from 62,157 on 30 July.
To meet Rishi Sunak’s target of clearing the legacy backlog by the end of the year, around 16,630 applications would need to be cleared per month before 31 December.
Some 12,620 were cleared between 24 September and 29 October, and 9,604 cleared between 27 August and 24 September, figures showed.
Raab says he does not believe Johnson's government was 'puppet regime' run by Cummings
Dominic Raab, who was foreign secretary at the start of Covid and who stood in for Boris Johnson after he was hospitalised, has been giving evidence to the Covid inquiry this afternoon.
He said he did not accept the claim made by Sajid Javid (see 3.25pm) and others that Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, was really running the government in early 2020. Asked if he agreed with this view, he replied:
No, I don’t … I just don’t accept the characterisation that there was some sort of puppet regime.
Raab also claimed the best decisions were made with the information available at the time. He said:
When I look back, I am very conscious that we made the best decisions, with the science as fluid as it was, at that point in time, and I think that’s the best you can, in good faith, do.
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Nottingham city council issues notice in effect declaring itself bankrupt
Nottingham city council has issued a section 114 notice, in effect declaring itself bankrupt, as experts warn an increasing number of councils are “reaching breaking point”, Jessica Murray reports.
Starmer to attend Cop28 summit, and expected to stay for longer than Sunak
Keir Starmer will attend the Cop28 UN summit in Dubai and stay for talks longer than the prime minister has made time for, as he hopes to “bang the drum for Britain”.
Starmer is keen to demonstrate just how important his party deems the climate crisis is, and use the opportunity to “fight for British investment and jobs”.
The opposition leader is expected to stay in Dubai for crunch talks with world leaders, days longer than the prime minister, to showcase the types of projects he’d hope to get investment for if Labour wins the next election.
Starmer’s attendance at the environmental summit may impress many, given it is the first time an opposition leader has attended a Cop UN summit, especially a year before an expected election, for at least a decade. Ed Miliband did not attend Cop20 in Peru, a year before he stepped down as party leader. Jeremy Corbyn didn’t attend Cop25.
A spokesperson for the Labour leader said:
He aims to fight for Britain to bring jobs and investment which will cut bills, make us energy independent and tackle the climate crisis.”
The transition to net zero is a vital opportunity for the country in terms of jobs, growth and the opportunity that it provides. We believe there are great opportunities for this country in terms of being able to reduce bills, and provide energy security for the country with the drive for renewables.
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Q: Will you put up fuel duty next year? Your plans assume it will go up, but if it gets frozen again, as usually happens, then you have lost half of your fiscal headroom.
Hunt says this will be announced next year.
Q: Isn’t it a mistake to make plans on the basis of tax rises that will never happen?
Hunt insists that the freeze in the fuel duty rise is a temporary measure, not a permanent one.
Q: What is going to happen about the HS2 station at Euston? Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, says your plans to get the private sector to fund some of it won’t work.
Hunt says he thinks the project will attract private sector finance.
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Q: This is the worst parliament on record for growth in real household income, isn’t it?
Hunt says this parliament has had a once-in-a-century pandemic and an energy shock. The government will be judged by how it responded, he says.
Q: The Bank of England says there is a 50% chance of recession next year.
Last year they were saying we were facing a long recession, Hunt says.
At the Treasury committee Angela Eagle (Lab) says she is concerned about the gap between rhetoric and reality in the autumn statement.
Q: Taxes are up, not down, aren’t they?
Jeremy Hunt says the Resolution Foundation described the tax cuts as the biggest since the 1980s.
Q: The tax cuts are based on implausible spending plans, aren’t they?
Hunt does not accept that.
He says the tax cuts are designed to promote growth.
Q: The OBR has downgraded future growth for the next three years, quite substantially. Why are you cutting public investment?
Hunt says the OBR is not in line with other forecasters on those projections.
Boris Johnson referred to people reluctant to return to office in 2021 as 'malingering' and work-shy', Covid inquiry hears
Sajid Javid, the former chancellor and former health secretary, has finished his evidence to the Covid inquiry. Here are the key points from what he said.
Javid said that, when he was chancellor, he felt Dominic Cumming was prime minister “in all but name”. He told the inquiry:
I resigned in February 2020 before the pandemic in large measure because of the actions of Mr Dominic Cummings, who was in post at the time.
I would say during my time as chancellor I considered he sought to act as the prime minister in all but name and he tried to make all key decisions within No 10 – not the prime minister.
I felt that the elected prime minister was not in charge of what was happening in his name and was largely content with Mr Cummings running the government.
Javid also said that at this point it was not unusual for him to get a request from No 10 that turned out to be inspired by what Cummings wanted, not be something Johnson wanted.
He said many ministers felt No 10 was “dysfunctional” under Johnson in early 2020. He said:
Broadly, I think it was a widespread feeling amongst a lot of the political advisers working in number 10, many ministers, that the number 10 operation collectively was quite dysfunctional.
Asked how Johnson’s government compared with previous ones he had served under, he said:
Certainly, I think the the extent of dysfunctionality was something I had not experienced before in any government.
Javid, as health secretary, was excluded from key meetings at No 10 when the Omicron variant was on the rise, the inquiry heard. The inquiry was shown an excerpt from Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary from December 2021. Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser at the time, said:
Health Secretary not invited to the meeting yesterday – quite extraordinary – Frost and Cx (chancellor) but no SoS (secretary of state) DHSC (Department of Health and social Care) – WTF.
Johnson referred to people reluctant to return to the office in 2021 as “malingering” and “work-shy”, the inquiry heard. In a diary extract from July 2021, Vallance said:
PM meeting – cases up, hospital admissions up. PM looks downbeat and talks of grim predictions. Saj [Sajid Javid] says ‘we are going to have to learn to live with it’, ‘and die with it’, PM says.
Cx [then chancellor Rishi Sunak] pushes very hard for faster opening up and fuller opening up. Getting rid of all restrictions. Repeats his mantra ‘we either believe in the Vx (vaccine) or we don’t’. I pointed out we would be facing a lockdown now if it was not for the Vx.
PM says what will we do if we make masks voluntary. What will ministers say they will do ‘sometimes I will, sometimes I won’t wear one’. ‘Are we going to encourage people to wear masks? Are we going to continue with this bollocks?’
He says he wants everyone back at work ‘we can’t have the bollocks of consulting with employees and trade unions. They need to come back to work. All the malingering work shy people’. Says how much of CS [civil service] is back ‘how would you be able to tell’ he says. Saj argues for caution.
Basically it is PM and Cx against a more cautious [Michael] Gove and Saj. PM in a bad mood. End by joking ‘please record that you have overcome my natural caution and bullied me into opening up’. The whole meeting was political posturing. CS people worried. CMO and I made risks very clear.
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At the Treasury committee, Drew Hendry (SNP) says Hunt’s plans imply a cut in capital investment.
Hunt says there was a big increase in capital spending in previous years. He says he has protected spending in cash terms, but not in real terms.
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Hunt says he does not anticipate aid spending rising to 0.7% of national income for another five years
Baldwin says she and Hunt both rebelled over the decision of the Boris Johnson government to cut aid spending from 0.7% of national income.
Hunt says he is committed to returning aid spending to the 0.7% figure when it is possible.
Baldwin says the autumn statement figures imply that will not happen in the next five years. Hunt confirms that is the case. He says:
I don’t believe it is possible to budget for that [going back up to 0.7%] in the figures, no.
Jeremy Hunt questioned by Treasury committee about autumn statement
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is giving evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.
Harriett Baldwin, the Conservative chair of the committee, starts the questioning.
She says the Office for Budget Responsibility said yesterday that Hunt’s fiscal rules are the loosest of any set of fiscal rules the Treasury has had since the OBR was set up.
Hunt accepts that, but he says the OBR also said that he faced the tightest set of public finances.
Baldwin puts to Hunt that his fiscal rules are “mañana” ones – because they assume debt falling, but always in the future.
Hunt does not accept that. He says the plan is for debt to fall.
It is unusual for a Conservative MP to admit publicly that Rishi Sunak did badly at PMQs, but that is what Sir Simon Clarke, levelling up secretary in Liz Truss’s government, is saying in two posts on X.
We either set out a credible plan on legal immigration, and a really robust emergency bill on Rwanda, or we face more PMQs like that one… https://t.co/y5fHeHIjyg
— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) November 29, 2023
We either set out a credible plan on legal immigration, and a really robust emergency bill on Rwanda, or we face more PMQs like that one…
It doesn’t matter that Labour have no plan, and no intention of acting on this issue. We are the party in government and this is a fundamental issue of trust for our voters.
Labour says Parthenon marbles not 'priority', but it would not oppose loan agreement acceptable to British Museum
Labour says the issue of the Parthenon marbles would not be a “priority issue” under a Keir Starmer premiership.
At a post-PMQs briefing, asked if the marbles would remain in the UK under a Labour government, a party spokesperson said:
[A] Labour government will not be spending any time legislating on this matter or giving any government time to this matter. It is not a priority issue for us. There will be no change in the legal status.
As you will be well aware, there are cultural exchanges that happen the whole time between institutions and government.
If the British Museum and the Greek government were to come up with a loan agreement that was acceptable to both sides, then we obviously wouldn’t stand in the way of that. But it is not a process that we would be looking to insert ourselves into.
Asked about fears that the Greeks would not return the ancient sculptures after such an exchange deal, the spokesperson said:
Well, I think that would not meet the definition of a loan if that was the case.
That is for the British Museum and the Greek government to discuss on those terms and clearly any agreement they came to would have to be compatible with the existing law because we are not looking to change the law on these matters.
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Predictably, Downing Street has rejected Ursula von der Leyen’s suggestion that the UK should rejoin the EU. (See 1.45pm.) Asked about her comment, the PM’s spokesperson said:
It’s through our Brexit freedoms that we are, right now, considering how to further strengthen our migration system.
It is through our Brexit freedoms we are ensuring patients in the UK can get access to medicines faster, that there is improved animal welfare. That is very much what we are focused on.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says she would like to see UK rejoin EU
The UK should rejoin the EU, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said, admitting that European leaders had “goofed up” on the departure of Britain from the bloc.
She made the remarks at an event in Brussels last night.
Asked if the UK could ever rejoin the EU she replied:
I must say, I keep telling my children: ‘You have to fix it. We goofed it up, you have to fix it.’ So I think here too, the direction of travel – my personal opinion – is clear.
Her remarks at an awards ceremony staged by Politico come as relations between the EU and the UK continue to improve after a near collapse of relations under Boris Johnson and Lord Frost, who negotiated the Brexit trade deal.
The new foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, made his first official return to Brussels this week after losing the keys to Number 10 in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Officially he was in the EU capital to attend a meeting of Nato foreign ministers but he squeezed in an hour-long meeting with Maroš Šefčovič, a vice-president of the European Commission and the chief Brexit negotiator following the UK’s exit from the bloc in 2020.
Although Cameron had campaigned for remain, nervousness about being back in the embrace of the EU given was evident.
He declined to speak to the media on his first day in the Belgian capital and refused any questions on the second.
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PMQs - snap verdict
It is widely assumed that it was Tony Blair who annihilated the Tories in the 1990s, but it was his predecessor, the late John Smith, who first cemented in the public mind the idea that John Major was a hapless incompetent leading an administration of utter uselessness, and he did it in a speech in the Commons in June 1993. You can watch an excerpt here.
Smith described Major as the “man with the non-Midas touch” and went on to say: “It is no wonder that we live in a country where the Grand National does not start and hotels fall into the sea.” Today Keir Starmer referenced that speech when he told Rishi Sunak:
It is ironic that he has suddenly taken such a keen interest in Greek culture when he has clearly become the man with the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to … maybe the home secretary can help me out here.
It is always quite risky resurrecting a joke that someone else has used brilliantly in the past. But by the time Starmer used this line, in his sixth question, he had already performed a fairly effective demolition job on Sunak, and so it worked fine.
The exchanges covered immigration policy and Sunak’s row with the Greek PM, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, about the Parthenon marbles. In the long term, migration is probably the most serious problem for Sunak, but today he was at his most inept trying to justify the Mitsotakis snub. Starmer asked:
Never mind the British Museum, it’s the prime minister who has obviously lost his marbles.
The Greek prime minister came to London to meet him, a fellow Nato member, an economic ally, one of our most important partners in tackling illegal immigration.
But instead of using that meeting to discuss those serious issues, he tried to humiliate him and cancelled at the last minute. Why such small politics, prime minister?
Sunak could have tried to play down the whole affair. But instead he escalated, by denouncing the Greek PM as someone who cannot be trusted to keep his word. This is what No 10 was in effect briefing yesterday, but for the prime minister to say this in parliament, about leader of a friendly country, is highly provocative. Sunak said.
Of course, we’re always happy to discuss important topics of substance with our allies, like tackling illegal migration or indeed strengthening our security.
But when it was clear that the purpose of a meeting was not to discuss substantive issues for the future, but rather to grandstand and relitigate issues of the past, it was inappropriate.
Furthermore … when specific commitments and specific assurances on that topic were made to this country and then were broken, it may seem alien to him, but my view is when people make commitments they should keep them.
Starmer replied:
I discussed with the Greek prime minister the economy, security, immigration, I also told him we wouldn’t change the law regarding the marbles. It’s not that difficult, prime minister.
And then, when Sunak in his reply said that Starmer was “backing an EU country over Britain”, Starmer hit back:
The prime minister is now saying that meeting the prime minister of Greece is somehow supporting the EU instead of discussing serious issues. He’s just dug further into that hole that he’s made for himself. Rather than deal with the facts, he’s prosecuting his one-man war on reality.
That clinched it. Wit and eloquence can count for a lot in debate, but being right is normally even better, and Starmer’s attack was powerful today because it crystallised what many Tories, as well as Labour MPs, will be thinking.
After his “hotels fall into the sea” speech (which followed Black Wednesday), Smith had the authority of a prime minister in waiting, while Major could never quite shake off the perception that he was a bit of a joke. The relationship is broadly similar today. That is not a result of today’s PMQs, but the exchanges this afternoon do confirm the picture.
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Deidre Brock (SNP) asks for an assurance that health data about Scottish patients won’t be released under the Palantir deal.
Sunak says health policy is devolved. But he defends the policy.
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Jonathan Gullis (Con) says the Labour-run council in his constituency won’t let people with free bus passes use them until after 9.30am.
Sunak say he backs Gullis’s campaign to get the council to change its mind.
Beth Winter (Lab) says the government is not funding efforts to make coal tips safe in south Wales. Is it right that the UK took the economic benefit from Welsh coal, but will not spend money to make it safe?
Sunak says the UK government is investing in south Wales. It has invested to safeguard thousands of jobs at Tata Steel.
Updated
Mohammad Yasin (Lab) asks if the government will take up with the Indian government claims that India has supported attempts to assassinate Sikh activists outside India.
Sunak says the government is concerned about the safety of all communities in the UK.
Rachel Maclean (Con) asks Sunak to back a campaign for maternity services to be returned to the hospital serving her constituency.
Sunak says decisons about services are taken locally.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Con) says a constituent aged 110 is visiting Downing Street today. He says he hopes he can give Sunak advice on surviving against the odds.
Sunak says he looks forward to meeting John, the constituent.
Sir John Hayes (Con) asks if the government will introduce measures to cut immigration as proposed by Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister.
Sunak says the government is reviewing its policies on legal immigration. And it will bring forward a bill to allow flights to Rwanda to happen, he says.
Sunak insists he never said during Covid crisis he favoured opposing lockdown and just letting people die
Tulip Siddiq (Lab) asks about the claim in the Covid inquiry that Sunak’s view was that the government should “just let people die”. No 10 did not deny this last week. So how did people at the top of government get this idea?
Sunak says he will give evidence to the inquiry. But if Siddiq had listened to the evidence, she would have seen that Sir Patrick Vallance, whose diary was quoted, said he had not heard Sunak say that. Sunak says that is because he did not say that.
Siddiq is referring to a diary entry in which Vallance quoted Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser at the time, as saying: “Rishi [Sunak] thinks just let people die and that’s okay.” Cummings was not quoting Sunak; he was just summarising Sunak’s position as he saw it (with characteristic hyperbole).
UPDATE: Sunak said:
There is an ongoing inquiry into Covid and it’s right that process is followed, and I look forward to providing my own evidence.
But if [Siddiq] had taken the time to actually read the evidence submitted to the inquiry, she will have seen that … the chief [scientific] adviser confirmed that he did not hear me say that.
And that’s because I didn’t.
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Nickie Aiken (Con) says Labour-run Westminster council is increasing parking charges for electric vehicles by up to 1,800%.
Sunak says the council should rethink these plans.
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This is from Beth Rigby, Sky News’s political editor, on what Rishi Sunak said to Keir Starmer about the Greek PM.
Former cab minister texts following PM Greece remarks at #PMQs: “Rishi on Greece is mad. He’s creacted a full diplomatic breakdown, the Greek gov are furious” Adds that Greece has done lot of work tackling illegal migration & could benefit from Greek model (which they now haven’t discussed)
Former cab minister texts following PM Greece remarks at #PMQs: “Rishi on Greece is mad. He’s creacted a full diplomatic breakdown, the Greek gov are furious” Adds that Greece has done lot of work tackling illegal migration & could benefit from Greek model (which they now haven’t…
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) November 29, 2023
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Sarah Dines (Con) says an entire town, Bakewell, has been debanked by NatWest. As the government is the main shareholder in the bank, will it do something about that?
Sunak says all customers should have access to banking services.
He says new cash deposit services will be provided for Dines’s community.
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Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says many of the supposed 40 new hospital projects promised by the government are not progressing. Why do doctors and nurses have to suffer for years in unsafe conditions?
Sunak claims “good progress is being made”. But it is right that hospitals with Raac concrete problems need to be prioritised.
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Philip Hollobone (Con) asks Sunak to back the redevelopment of a hospital in Kettering.
Sunak says the government is committed to this project. Work should begin in the first quarter of 2024, he says.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, says it is snowing in Aberdeen. Kids will be pleased, but not their parents, who dread the energy bills. Does the PM regret not offering financial support this winter?
Sunak says it is wrong to say that the government is not offering people financial support.
Flynn says it is hard for Sunak to emphathise when he clearly cannot understand what people are going through. He says the SNP thinks Scotland should benefit from Scotland’s energy.
Sunak says the energy grid in the UK is integrated. There are cold weather payments that kick in, and winter fuel payments, he says.
Starmer says there are few things more depressing for Tories than hearing Sunak has a plan. It is fitting he turned to Greek matters this week, because he is the man with the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to – the home secretary will have the correct word, he says.
Sunak says Labour backs inflationary pay rises. It has no plan for welfare. The government has just delivered the biggest tax cuts since the 1980s, and brought in investment worth £30bn, he says.
Starmer says Sunak seems to be the only person in the Tory party who does not have a personal immigration plan. His own side have lost faith in him. So why should the public trust him?
Sunak says the government is taking steps to control immigration. He says Starmer once said immigration laws were racist.
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Starmer says if Sunak thinks that meeting the PM of Greece is siding with the EU, he is digging himself further into a hole. He says he is prosecuting a one-man war on reality.
Sunak says in the past Starmer said having controls on skilled migration was economic vandalism.
Starmer says Sunak has no plan to cut small boat crossings.
Sunak says small boat crossings are coming down. And he says Starmer will always put the interests of the EU ahead of the interests of Britain. He says only this week he said the EU anthem was the music that best sums up Labour.
Starmer asks why the PM humiliated the Greek PM by cancelling his meeting with him.
Sunak says it became clear that the Greek PM just wanted to grandstand. And he said he went back on an assurance (about what would be said in public about the Parthenon marbles). Sunak says, when he makes agreements with people, he expects people to keep them.
Keir Starmer says, to conceal his failure, Sunak spent this week arguing about an ancient relic of little interest to the public. But that’s enough about the Tory party. He asks how the Conservative is doing in terms of reducing immigration.
Sunak says the government announced the toughest measures ever to reduce immigration. It will affect 150,000 student dependants. And he claims Labour’s plan would lead to an extra 100,000 migrants coming to the UK.
(This claim is misleading, as this Full Fact factcheck explains.)
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Greg Smith (Con) asks what Sunak is doing to continue his support for Israel.
Sunak says he welcomes the extension of the ceasefire. And the government will continue to hold Iran to account, he says.
Gavin Newlands (SNP) asks about energy standing charges in Scotland.
Sunak says these are a matter for Ofgem. They have launched a consultation. The UK government provides a cross-subsidy worth £60 to people in Scotland, as well as the UK-wide energy support.
Rishi Sunak starts with the usual spiel about his engagements – meetings with colleagues and others etc.
Sajid Javid tells Covid inquiry lack of experience in Johnson's cabinet 'caused difficulties' during pandemic
At the Covid inquiry Sajid Javid, the former chancellor and former health secretary, is giving evidence. The inquiry has just been shown an extract from his witness statement in which he said that Boris Johnson’s cabinet lacked experience, and that ministers were chosen “with a preference for loyalty over experience”. He suggests this “caused difficulties” during the pandemic.
Sunak faces Starmer at PMQs
PMQs is starting soon.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Back at the home affairs committee, Tim Loughton (Con) has just had another go at getting answers about the number of asylum applications that have been withdrawn. (See 10.38am.)
He said, when he said earlier 95% of withdrawn applications were categorised as withdrawn for “other” reasons (and not because the claims were not substantiated), he was quoting figures for the last quarter.
He said that, for an application to be withdrawn on this “other” basis, either the claimant has to sign a form saying they are withdrawing their application, or they have to have left the country. He said that meant the Home Office must have information about why these applications had been withdrawn.
Simon Ridley, the interim second permanent secretary at the Home Office, said the Home Office did have contact details for these people. But he said he did not have that information to hand.
The hearing has now ended. Diana Johnson, the Labour chair, ended by saying the next time the two officials appeared before the committee, they should come better prepared with information.
Health chief said discharging Covid patients into care homes would be 'entirely clinically appropriate', inquiry hears
Prof Dame Jenny Harries has been giving evidence to the Covid inquiry this morning and she has had to defend an email she sent in March 2020 saying it would be “entirely clinically appropriate” to discharge Covid patients into care homes.
Harries, who is now chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, was one of the deputy chief medical officers for England at the time.
In an email to a Department of Health and Social Care civil servant sent on 16 March 2020 (a week before the full lockdown was announced), Harries said:
Whilst the prospect is perhaps what none of us would wish to plan for, I believe the reality will be that we will need to discharge Covid-19 positive patients into residential care settings for the reason you have noted.
This will be entirely clinically appropriate because the NHS will triage those to retain in acute settings who can benefit from that sector’s care.
The numbers of people with disease will rise sharply within a fairly short timeframe and I suspect make this fairly normal practice and more acceptable, but I do recognise that families and care homes will not welcome this in the initial phase.
Sky’s Tamara Cohen has posted the screenshot on X.
Jenny Harries tells the Department of Health on 16 March that “we will need to discharge Covid-19 positive patients into residential care settings” to free up hospital beds - although she is warned it’s an “ethical issue”.
— Tamara Cohen (@tamcohen) November 29, 2023
She concedes it “sounds awful”. pic.twitter.com/QfkRsjOqRF
Asked about the email, Harries said it “sounds awful” but was intended to provide “a very, very high level view” of what would happen if there was an “enormous explosion of cases”. She went on:
It was a very bleak picture because I think the reality was this isn’t an invitation to be discharging Covid patients, it’s actually a reality that says if hospitals overflow … those who are physically well to go will go.
When Andrew O’Connor, counsel for the inquiry, put it to Harries that the email implied “some degree of equanimity” about discharging Covid patients into care settings, she said that was just “an interpretation”. Harries went on:
This was a very high-level picture to reinforce, if you like, the position that the country was in at that weekend, and I think we’ve heard that in other places.
If people were not thinking through what likelihood was in the rising numbers of cases, as we’ve heard, I don’t think we have sensible conversations about managing risks.
This is not a policy at all. This is a statement of ‘if you have a pandemic in a country, how on earth are you going to manage that exponential rise in cases?’
Updated
Back at the home affairs committee, Diana Johnson, the Labour chair, is trying to find out how much the Home Office has spent on the Bibby Stockholm barge for asylum seekers.
Not for the first time this morning, she does not have much luck. Simon Ridley, the interim second permanent secretary at the Home Office, tells her they will write to the committee with this information.
David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, refused to answer questions about his meeting with his Greek counterpart yesterday, which took place after Rishi Sunak snubbed the Greek PM in a row over the Parthenon marbles.
But, as he arrived this morning at the Nato-Ukraine council in Brussels, he did read out a prepared statement on Ukraine. He said:
Two weeks ago I was in Ukraine saying we needed to do everything we could to help the Ukrainians repel this appalling aggression by Putin. And I’ll be building consensus for that view here at Nato today.
When you look at the big picture, what’s happened recently is the Ukrainians have a push to the Russian navy right back across the Black Sea.
They’ve opened a shipping lane to get their exports out. Their economy is growing. And, of course, they’re knocking on the door of both Nato and the EU and getting a very warm response.
These are huge achievements and our job today is to build on those achievements and work out what other concrete steps we can take to help the Ukrainians in their struggle and to show that Russian aggression must never pay.
Home Office permanent secretary slammed for failing to answer committee's questions, with Tory saying he 'hasn't got a clue'
Lee Anderson, the Tory deputy chair and a member of the committee, asked Rycroft and Ridley to say how many asylum seekers whose applications have been turned down have been deported in the past three years, excluding criminals and Albanians.
The two Home Office officials said they did not have those figures. They offered to write to the committee.
Anderson asked if they had figures for the last year, or for the past week, or for the last six months.
“Do you have any figures about anything?” Diana Johnson, the Labour chair of the committee asked.
Anderson went on:
I’m sorry, chair, but I find it absolutely staggering that the big boss hasn’t got a clue – not just on this question, but on nearly every other question we’ve asked today.
Rycroft repeated his promise to send the figures to the committee.
Home Office does not know what has happened to 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been withdrawn, MPs told
Loughton is now asking about the government’s plan to clear the number of “legacy” asylum applications – defined as applications submitted before June 2022, when the Nationality and Borders Act came into force.
Rycroft confirms that the government expects to clear these by the end of the year.
He says this has happened because more cases workers have been hired, and because more decisions are being taken a week.
Loughton asks him to confirm that one reason the backlog is being cleared is because of the big increase in the number of cases being withdrawn.
Rycroft says that is correct.
Loughton says 17,316 claims were withdrawn between September 2022 and September 2023. He says that is a 307% increase on the withdrawal rate for the year before. Is that just “fortuitous”, he asks.
Simon Ridley, the interim second permanent secretary at the Home Office, who is giving evidence with Rycroft, says it is not fortuitous.
Loughton says 5% of cases were withdrawn because they were not substantiated, 95% of withdrawals were categorised as for other reasons. The previous year only 45% of withdrawals were in the other category, he says. He suggests this is strange.
Isn’t it strange that conveniently, when faced with a very stiff target, there has been a three-fold increase (in withdrawals) for undetermined reasons, people magically not going forward with their claims, and where are those people?
He asks what has happened to the asylum seekers whose applications have been withdrawn.
Ridley replies: “In most cases I don’t know where those people are.”
Loughton sounds astonished. He asks Ridley to confirm that the Home Office hasn’t got “a clue” where these people are.
Ridley says these are people who made an asylum claim, were invited to interview, and did not turn up.
But they have not gone home, Loughton says.
Ridley says he does not know what has happened to them.
Diana Johnson, the Labour chair of the committee, intervenes. She says it is “amazing” that Ridley did not come to the hearing with precise figures on these cases, and she says that he has been “really disrespectful to this committee”.
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After Lee Anderson questioned Matthew Rycroft, Tim Loughton, a Conservative, took him back to the cost of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
He asked why Rycroft said he did not recognise the £169,000 per person figure when it was from a Home Office document.
Rycroft claimed he had not said he did not recognise the figure.
Loughton told him that is exactly what he said.
Rycroft said that what he meant was that the figure was based on estimates.
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Home Office does not have figure for how many people might come to UK from Rwanda under clause in deal, MPs told
Lee Anderson, the Tory deputy chair and a member of the home affairs committee, asked Sir Matthew Rycroft about the clause in the Rwanda deal saying that, as part of the agreement, the UK might take some asylum seekers from Rwanda. He asked how many people might come to Britain.
Rycroft refused to say. He said it was not a one-to-one agreement, and he said the government had “not got a number in mind”. He suggested that the clause was in the agreement so that, if for example someone sought asylum from Rwanda, they would not be returned to the country.
Anderson then asked if the Home Office was working on a “plan B” in case the Rwanda scheme did not work. Rycroft would not use that figure, but he said the government was working on various plans.
Here is the line in the agreement that Anderson was asking about.
The participants will make arrangements for the United Kingdom to resettle a portion of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom, recognising both participants’ commitment towards providing better international protection for refugees.
At the time the agreement was published, Home Office sources suggested that this clause was referring to cases where refugees might come from Rwanda to the UK in limited circumstances, such as where they might need specialised medical help.
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Rwanda may be getting even more than £140m already paid under deportation deal, MPs told
Sir Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, has just started giving evidence to the Commons home affairs committee, and within minutes he was struggling badly. Here are the takeaways from the early exchanges.
Rycroft implied that the government may be giving more money to Rwanda this year – even though £140m has been given to the country, and not a single person has been deported there yet. The Labour chair of the committee, Diana Johnson, started by asking Rycroft to say how much money the government was giving to Rwanda under the scheme. He said Rwanda had already had £120m under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) and £20m as an upfront payment for the costs of housing asylum seekers. He said the deal anticipated additional payments each year. But he refused to say if further payments were being made, telling Johnson that ministers had decided not to give a “running commentary”. Instead the Home Office will reveal the figure in the next set of annual accounts published next year, he said.
Rycroft said the cost of sending an asylum seeker to Rwanda would be “about the same as they would be if persons were staying in the UK”.
But Rycroft refused to say what those costs might be. When it was put to him that the Home Office itself published an impact assessment putting the cost per person at £169,000, Rycroft accepted that was the figure in the document, but he said the Home Office did not accept it as the accurate figure.
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Theresa May says she takes 'a different view from the government' on oil and gas licences
Good morning. It’s environment day on the No 10 grid and, ahead of the Cop28 summit starting in Dubai later this week, Rishi Sunak is announcing some green initiatives. As Helena Horton reports, they include plans to designate a new national park. And, in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Sunak says he will stop councils cutting down trees without consulting residents properly.
But, on net zero, Sunak has been strongly criticised by Theresa May, the former prime minister. As PM May legislated to put the 2050 net zero target into law and, speaking to the Times, she said she was opposed to the plan in the king’s speech to legislate to ensure new North Sea oil and gas licences are issued every year. Sunak has said he wants to “max out” these resources. But May said:
I take a different view from the government on the oil and gas licences. This is about [a] phase-out and, ultimately, that is what it has to be about in terms of fossil fuels …
Obviously, energy security for us is important but … new oil and gas licences only provide for energy security if all that energy is sold into the UK and, actually, it will be sold on the world market, so I think there are some questions around that.
No 10 may want it to be environment day, but at PMQs other issues are likely to dominate. The gap between what Tory backbenchers want Sunak to do about cutting immigration, and what he seems likely to announce, seems to be growing bigger by the day, and this row is bound to come up. And Sunak is still facing widespread criticism over his decision to snub the Greek PM.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: David Cameron, the foreign secretary, is at the Nato-Ukraine council in Brussels.
9.30am: Sir Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.
10am: Prof Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, resumes giving evidence to the Covid inquiry. Sajid Javid, the former health secretary, is also due to give evidence in the morning.
10am: The OECD publishes its latest economic forecasts.
Noon: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
2pm: Dominic Raab, the former deputy PM, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.
2.15pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.
Also today Steve Barclay, the environment secretary, is announcing plans to designate a new national park, as part of the government’s response to the Glover review of national parks.
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