Afternoon summary
- The government is facing the threat of industrial action by civil servants after publishing guidance saying they should get average pay rises of 2% - with maximum awards capped at 3%. (See 2.05pm.)
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Number of people in poverty fell during first year of pandemic, DWP figures show
The number of people in the UK living in poverty fell during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new figures, PA Media reports. PA says:
A total of 13.4 million individuals were estimated to be in relative low income – below 60% of average household income - in the year to March 2021.
This was down from a record high of 14.5 million the previous year, but higher than the equivalent figure of 13 million a decade earlier in 2010-11.
The number of children living in poverty also fell in 2020-21, down year-on-year from 4.3 million to 3.9 million, meaning some 400,000 children were pulled out of poverty.
The figures, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, show that average household income fell during the first year of the pandemic, from £478 a week in 2019-20 to £472 in 2020-21, after housing costs.
But poorer households actually saw their incomes rise, from £192 a week to £200.
Commenting on the figures, Jonathan Cribb and Thomas Wernham from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said:
This is almost certainly driven by the substantial increases in the generosity of universal credit and other benefits that poorer households are particularly reliant upon for their incomes.
This growth comes in stark contrast to the very low income growth for poor households in prior years - which averaged only 0.5% between 2011 and 2019.
However, with the end of the temporary uplift to Universal Credit in autumn of 2021, and rising inflation meaning benefits are not keeping up with inflation currently, the prospects for lower income households in 2021-22 and 2022-23 are much bleaker.
And Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said:
Today’s figures show that government has the power to protect children from poverty.
But in a week when the chancellor made clear he was comfortable with his choices and the prime minister claimed child poverty had been left out of his plan for the country ‘by accident’ it looks like ministers have turned their backs on low-income families.
Many of the children who were lifted out of poverty by the £20 increase to universal credit have already been forced back over the brink by the government’s actions.
And as millions struggle with spiralling costs, we know the picture will worsen.
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Labour would strengthen Britain's defences, says Lammy
Labour would strengthen Britain’s standing as a military power, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has indicated.
In a speech to the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University in the US, Lammy called for a “radical rethink” of foreign policy in the light of the war in Ukraine, and set out four principles for Labour’s approach in an “age of authoritarians”.
First, we must strengthen our defences and lead the debate about the future of European security ...
We need to end more than a decade of cuts to the army and rethink the assumptions in the integrated review.
The government has pursued an Indo-Pacific tilt, but it must not do so at the cost of our commitments to European security.
As war ravages parts of our continent, we need to put past Brexit divisions behind us.
Stop seeking rows with European partners, and use this moment to explore new ways to rebuild relations with European allies through a new UK-EU security pact.
Lammy said the other three priorities for a Labour foreign policy, in the context of Vladimir Putin, were: ending Britain’s dependence on fossil fuels from authoritarian states, through a massive green investment; getting “dirty finance” out of the UK; and restoring the UK’s soft power.
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New DfE guidance says only pupils with high temperatures need to isolate, for three days, as Covid testing ends
Only pupils with high temperatures will need to self-isolate for three days, according to updated government advice to schools on the eve of Covid safety measures in England being scrapped.
The memo from the Department for Education led teaching unions to accuse the DfE of failing to protect students ahead of A-level and GCSE exams.
“It is frustrating and disappointing that the DfE has only now communicated its ‘living with Covid’ plans to schools and colleges 24 hours before this significant change takes place,” said Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
The DfE’s memo advises that regular testing of pupils will end on Friday, and that only those with high temperatures are to remain off school for a reduced isolation period of just three days. Adults are expected to self-isolate for five days.
Schools will no longer be given test kits by the government, other than residential special needs schools. The DfE said remaining stocks of tests should not be handed out to staff or students from Friday onwards.
Barton said ending the use of tests removed one of the last barriers against the spread of Covid in schools, which are still seeing high numbers of cases. He said:
The most likely outcome of all of this is that there will be more cases and more transmission in schools and colleges with more disruption including among students taking exams. It is a shambles.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
This confusing guidance is a recipe for even more chaos and will make managing cases and preventing disruption even harder than it already is.
The DfE said further guidance will be issued by the UK Health Security Agency.
Ulster Unionist party leader Doug Beattie claimed there will not be a united Ireland for generations as he urged voters to set aside the constitutional question to focus on the cost-of-living crisis, PA Media reports. PA says:
Launching his party manifesto ahead of May’s Northern Ireland assembly elections, Beattie said he believes there will be no constitutional change during his lifetime or the lifetime of his children.
Making his pitch to voters, the Upper Bann MLA characterised the UUP as a pro-union party that will “do more than just say no”.
The decorated military veteran said problems with Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol need to be resolved but that uncertainty over the fate of the contentious trading arrangements will not prevent his party re-entering a power-sharing executive post-election.
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Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has said he will not deviate from doing the right thing just to make himself popular. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg for the BBC’s Newscast podcast, asked about criticism of the spring statement, he said:
I’m confident in what we’ve done. I know it’s tough for people. We’re facing a very difficult situation with the price of things going up and I want to do what we can to ameliorate some of that, but I’m also honest with people that we can’t ameliorate all of it, sadly ...
Some of these things are difficult. They’re certainly unpopular. But they’re responsible and will help us in the long-term and I’m not going to deviate from that just for some short-term popularity gain.
He also said what he found most upsetting in recent days was criticism of his wife, Akshata Murthy, who has been in the headlines because of her stake in Infosys, the firm set up by her billionaire father, NR Narayana Murthy, which is still operating in Russia. Sunak said:
You know, I think it’s totally fine for people to take shots at me. It’s fair game. I’m the one sitting here and that’s what I signed up for.
Actually, it’s very upsetting and, I think, wrong for people to try and come at my wife, and you know, beyond that actually, with regard to my father in law, for whom I have nothing but enormous pride and admiration for everything that he’s achieved, and no amount of attempted smearing is going to make me change that because he’s wonderful and has achieved a huge amount, as I said, I’m enormously proud of him.
Comparing himself to Will Smith, he said: “At least I didn’t get up and slap anybody, which is good.”
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Government axes outsourcing firm for England tutoring scheme
The company running the national tutoring programme (NTP) has been axed and funding will go directly to schools instead after the government was forced into a climbdown over its flagship scheme, my colleague Sally Weale reports.
Civil servants to receive average pay rises of 2% – with maximum awards capped at 3%
The government is facing the threat of industrial action by civil servants after publishing guidance saying organisations can make pay awards of up to 3%, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Civil Service can pay average awards up to 2%, with a further 1% to be targeted at “specific priorities”, it was announced.
Unions reacted with anger to the below-inflation deal, with one saying it will be discussing industrial action.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said the offer is effectively a pay cut because of rising inflation and prices.
He said: “The failure of the government to recognise the cost-of-living crisis is a disgrace and shows utter contempt to our members, who have worked themselves to the bone during the pandemic. A government that can afford to write off £8.7bn on unusable PPE – much of it given to party members and supporters – can afford to pay its workers a decent wage. PCS will now be discussing an industrial response to this outrage.”
The Prospect union deputy general secretary, Garry Graham, said: “With inflation rocketing, a national insurance increase coming in and energy prices going through the roof, this 2%-3% pay remit guidance means yet another crippling real-terms pay cut for civil servants. Once again the government is using Civil Service pay as a political football and attempting to balance the books by penalising the people who have delivered so much through the twin challenges of Brexit and Covid, and let’s not forget that civil servants have already had a 20% real-terms pay cut since 2010.
“It’s time we took Civil Service pay out of the hands of politicians and gave it to an independent pay review body. MPs benefit from this process and have seen their pay increase far faster than the civil servants they rely on. It’s also time for individual government employers to step up to the plate and make the case for their workers to be paid what they deserve. You can’t get good government on the cheap.”
Ben Zaranko from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank says senior civil servants saw their pay fall by 11% in real terms over the decade.
Ouch: new guidance says 2% average pay awards for civil servants in 2022/23, when CPI inflation is forecast to average 8%. https://t.co/sRXEsDlxTl
— Ben Zaranko (@BenZaranko) March 31, 2022
One figure, to give some context: the average real salary for a senior civil servant fell by 11% between 2010 and 2020. pic.twitter.com/jLOmiCUtCy
And Paul Johnson, the IFS director (Zaranko’s boss), says this pay settlement does not bode well for other public sector workers.
Ouch indeed. 2% for civil servants in face of 8% inflation and a decade of pay cuts. Probably not a good sign for other public sector workers.
— Paul Johnson (@PJTheEconomist) March 31, 2022
Testing limits of employee patience and of the labour market. https://t.co/e6i5Ujdvla
Last week, in its analysis of the spring statement, the IFS said public sector workers are facing “hefty” real-terms pay cuts.
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'In many ways Putin has already lost,' says armed forces chief
At the start of the IfG event Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, gave a short speech. In it he said that in many ways Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “has already lost” from the war in Ukraine, and that he has become a “weaker and more diminished figure”.
Radakin said:
The scenes coming out of Mariupol and elsewhere are horrific, and the coming weeks will continue to be very difficult, but in many ways Putin has already lost.
Far from being the fast sighted manipulator of events that he would have us believe, Putin has damaged himself through a series of catastrophic misjudgments.
He has failed to recognise how deeply the notions of sovereignty, democracy and national identity have taken root in Ukraine.
Like all authoritarians, he allowed himself to be misled as to his own strength, including the effectiveness of the Russian armed forces.
And lastly, he has failed to anticipate the unity and cohesion that exists among the free nations of the world, here in Europe, and obviously far beyond. His actions to date have done more to galvanise than divide, and have shown Ukraine to have the one thing that Russia conspicuously lacks, which is real friends.
What is very clear is that Putin is a weaker and more diminished figure today than it was a month ago.
And conversely, Nato is stronger and more united today than at any time I can remember.
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Q: Does the tank have a future?
Williams and Radakin both give the same one-word answer: “Yes.”
And that’s it.
Q: Did the integrated security review put too much emphasis on Asia?
Williams says the review did not say Asia was as important as Europe.
The UK has been talking about a “tilt”, not a fundamental change.
Radakin says the fundamental security partnership remains rooted in the Atlantic.
He says he want to the Indo-Pacific before the UK carrier went to the South China Sea.
The UK is a permanent member of the UN security council, he says. It has obligations beyond the Atlantic. Other nations want it to get involved. It has relationships in the region, including Aukus. And the UK can do these things from within its resources.
He says by 2030 40% of the economy will be based around the Indo-Pacific. So it will be in the national interest to have defence activity there he says.
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Q: Does the invasion of Ukraine show that deterrence has failed?
Radakin says deterrence failed to stop the invasion of Ukraine. But the deterrence model goes much further than that. Russia was threatened with the prospect of becoming a pariah state.
Russia miscalculated. It thought the world response would be closer to what it was in 2014, after the invasion of Crimea.
But deterrence is wider than that. It is also about maintaining the sovereignty of Nato states. That has been successful, even against a Russian threat which has been getting gradually worse over the last 20 years.
He says he is cautious of focusing just on the Russia-Ukraine border, and concluding deterrence failed.
Nuclear has created a security stability, he says. It has prevented worse conflicts.
David Williams, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, says partly it is a matter of what you want to deter. We are not seeing direct attacks on Nato.
The nuclear rhetoric from Russia is worrying. But it is just rhetoric, he says. It is not stopping Nato from doing things it wants to do - strengthening the eastern flank, supporting Ukraine.
Putin’s nuclear posturing is not delivering any practical effect, he says.
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Lawrence Freedman, the historian, asks if there is any role for the Royal Navy in the Black Sea.
Radakin says he cannot see any scope for that. If it were to happen, it would be with Nato. But that might look like escalation.
But he says you should not just look at naval operations around Ukraine. There is a lot going on in the Atlantic, he says, as part of the Nato effort to bolster its defences.
Armed forces chief says it was 'insane' for Putin to sent his soldiers to war without telling them
Q: How worried are you about Putin’s next moves? And will he face some sort of mutiny?
Radakin says they are “incredibly cautious” about believing Russia’s statements.
Russia’s plans to take the whole of Ukraine have fallen apart, he says.
I think we are seeing that Russia’s ambitions to take Kyiv and Russia’s ambitions to take the whole of Ukraine and do that in a very swift and impressive fashion, those ambitions have fallen apart.
And it looks now that less emphasis is being placed on Kyiv and more emphasis is being placed on the east and the south.
We are starting to see the early indications of those forces being moved back from Kyiv and retreating to both Russia and Belarus.
That in itself is a difficult evolution for Russia because they are doing that under contact, so Ukraine armed forces will attack those Russian forces as they retreat.
And then I think we have to wait and see how that materialises and how that shapes in the future.
As for the prospect of mutiny in the Russian ranks, he says there is disquiet in the ranks.
Mutiny is a strong word, so I think that we are unsurprisingly seeing disquiet at all levels within Russia’s armed forces.
But how substantial that is, we still have to wait and see.
You’ve seen it at the most junior level, which is shocking in a professional sense, that Russian officers might take people into combat and those people don’t even know they are going into combat – it seems an insane thing to do professionally and it’s a morally bankrupt thing to do for any individual.
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At the Institute for Government Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, and David Williams, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, are taking part in a Q&A.
Q: What kind of support might we offer Ukraine long term?
Radakin says it is hard to answer. But he says the commitment to Ukraine will endure. He says the UK was the first country to recognise Ukrainian independence in 1991.
The UK will feature strongly in terms on ongoing support for Ukraine, and military support for Ukraine.
Q: If China were to invade Taiwan, would the global response to Russia provide a blueprint for how the west might react?
Williams says the response to Ukraine has shown a very high degree of unity and resolve. “That is something for China to think about.”
He says the western response involved a full range of measures. Russia did not anticipate that, he says.
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Peers dig in and reject for third time plans to give police powers to impose conditions on noisy marches
Ministers have been defeated for the third time in the House of Lords on plans to give the police the power to impose conditions on protest marches judged to be too noisy.
Peers rejected these measures when they first debated the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill. The Commons reinstated them, but peers threw them out again when the bill returned to the Lords in the first round of “ping pong” (the process whereby a bill bounces between the Commons and the Lords until one side backs down and accepts the views of the other). Those defeats were again reversed by MPs, and this afternoon the bill has been back in the Lords again, for a second round of “ping pong”, where the government again lost two votes on this issue.
The opposition won both votes with majorities of 39 and 12 respectively.
Govt defeated on #PolicingBill ping-pong (round 2), as Peers vote 177-138 FOR @UKLabour @VernonCoaker Motion (C1) to remove 'noise trigger' for putting conditions on protests - covering both marches & one person protests. https://t.co/IWEdGP2uRl
— LabourLordsUK (@LabourLordsUK) March 31, 2022
2nd Govt defeat on #PolicingBill ping-pong (round 2) follows, as Peers vote 163-151 FOR Lord Paddick's Motion (D1) which would also remove 'noise trigger' for public assemblies
— LabourLordsUK (@LabourLordsUK) March 31, 2022
Public must be told if Carrie Johnson fined for breaking lockdown rules, says Starmer
People should be told if Carrie Johnson, the prime minister’s wife, is fined over illegal lockdown parties in Downing Street, Keir Starmer said.
Speaking at the launch of Labour’s local government elections campaign, Starmer said:
If Carrie Johnson gets a fixed penalty notice, then of course it should be made public.
My focus is on the prime minister because he is the one who sets the culture, he is the one who oversaw this criminality at his home and his office, he is the one that came to parliament and said all rules were complied with, which is clearly not the case.
So I do think Carrie Johnson should be named if she gets a penalty notice, but my focus is laser-like on the prime minister.
Currently No 10 is saying that it will not disclose the names of anyone who receives a fine over Partygate, apart from Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary (if any of those three do get fined).
One of the events being investigated by the police is an alleged party held in the PM’s Downing Street flat on 13 November 2020 and hosted by his wife to celebrate the departure of Dominic Cummings. Cummings and Carrie Johnson were, and remain, bitter enemies.
Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
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When he moved from the Cabinet Office to the levelling up department, Michael Gove retained responsibility for the union (or “intergovernmental relations”, to use the official term. In January he published a review of intergovernmental relations and, among other things, it proposed the publication of annual reports on “intergovernmental activity”. The first one is out today.
Apart from the statistics it contains on the number of meetings that took place last year between the Westminster government and the devolved governments, the document does not contain anything new. But it avoids saying anything critical about Scottish and Welsh governments, and the Northern Ireland executive, which marks a change from much of the normal ministerial rhetoric about them. “No single government has all the good ideas,” Gove says in the foreword. “We need to work together.”
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has been speaking to the media this morning, and he has also been asked about Partygate. He told reporters:
The police investigation ... into events in Downing Street, it’s a live investigation. It’s still going on. I do know of course like everyone else that at least 20 fines have been issued so far but it is a live investigation. I think it’s never good practice for ministers to comment on it.
But Javid also refused to accept claims that there was “confusion” in government over whether or not people are now accepting that the law was broken. He said:
I don’t think there’s any confusion. I mean, if you’re asking me in general about fixed penalty notices, when those are issued of course it means the police issuing that has come to a conclusion, and that’s purely a police matter - not a ministerial matter.
Windrush: Home Office has failed to transform its culture, report says
The Home Office has failed to transform its culture or to become a more compassionate department as it promised to do after the Windrush scandal, a critical inspection report has found. My colleague Amelia Gentleman has the story here.
Commons culture committee says it can't support government's choice for Charity Commisison chair
MPs have criticised the “slapdash and unimaginative approach” to appointing a new chairman for the Charity Commission as they rejected the government’s pick for the job, PA Media reports. PA says:
Orlando Fraser was put forward for the role after the government’s previously preferred candidate Martin Thomas withdrew from the process following four allegations of inappropriate behaviour in a previous position.
However, MPs on the digital, culture, media and sport committee (DCMS) have now rejected Mr Fraser’s appointment and accused the department of failing to learn its lessons.
Explaining the committee’s decision, Julian Knight (Con), the committee chair, said:
The fiasco of four months ago should have jolted the department into widening out its search for the very best person to oversee an organisation that is so vital in ensuring people can support charities with confidence. By failing to rerun the process and falling back on a shortlist which would seem to be so lacking in diversity, ministers have sadly squandered their second chance.
While we recognise Mr Fraser’s potential to do the job, such a slapdash and unimaginative approach to his recruitment means we cannot formally endorse his appointment.
Responding to the committee’s report, the culture department said:
As recently noted by the commissioner for public appointments, the appointment process for Charity Commission chair was run in line with the governance code on public appointments.
The DCMS Select Committee rightly recognises Orlando Fraser’s suitability for the role and we will now consider its report in full and respond in due course.
The committee does not have the power to veto the appointment and the final decision will be up to Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary.
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At the Downing Street lobby briefing, for the third day in a row, the PM’s spokesperson refused to say that Boris Johnson accepts that the police decision to start issuing fines over Partygate means the law definitely was broken at No 10. The spokesperson said:
The facts are not in dispute. We have been clear that mistakes were made, the prime minister believes it is right to respond once the full facts are known, once the investigation has concluded.
Asked why cabinet ministers Anne-Marie Trevelyan (see 8.22am) and Dominic Raab were prepared to say the law was broken but Johnson was not, the spokesperson said:
[The PM] said he would not be giving a running commentary on the investigation. He will respond once the full facts are known and once the investigation has concluded.
As Anne-Marie Trevelyan has said, the facts are not in dispute and the prime minister has said that mistakes have been made.
But beyond that I’m not going to be commenting and the prime minister will not be until the investigation is concluded.
Back in the Commons Eddie Hughes, the housing minister, is now responding to an urgent question about the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Mike Amesbury, the shadow local government minister, who tabled the UQ, asks how many Ukrainians have already arrived. How will councils know when refugees have arrived? Do checks need to be fully completed before Ukrainians can come to the UK? And does the £10,000 per refugee offer only cover this scheme, or does it cover the family scheme too?
(The answer to the final question is no, as Boris Johnson told the liaison committee yesterday.)
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Foreign office sanctions 14 more Russian organisations and individuals, including 'Butcher of Mariupol'
The Foreign Office has announced another 14 Russian individuals and organisations are being sanctioned. Mostly the sanctions are being imposed on “Russian propagandists and state media who spread lies and deceit about Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine”, it says. But the Russian general dubbed “the butcher of Mariupol” is also included.
Describing the key figures on today’s list, the Foreign Office says:
This includes Sergey Brilev, famous TV anchor on Russia state-owned media Rossiya and propagandist for Putin. Having previously lived in the UK, Brilev will no longer be able to access any of his UK assets or continue business dealings.
The government is also directly sanctioning state media organisations, targeting the Kremlin funded TV-Novosti who own RT, formerly Russia Today, and Rossiya Segodnya who control news agency Sputnik.
Following Ofcom’s decision to revoke RT’s broadcasting licence, these sanctions will ensure RT will not be able to find its way back on UK televisions, and will prevent companies and individuals operating in the UK from doing business with Russian state propaganda vehicles RT and Sputnik, and key figures in those organisations ...
Other propagandists sanctioned today include:
Aleksandr Zharov, Chief Executive Officer of Gazprom-Media and former Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor)
Alexey Nikolov, Managing Director of RT
Anton Anisimov, Head of Sputnik International Broadcasting
As well as targeting Putin’s propaganda machine, the government is also sanctioning prominent Russian colonel-general Mikhail Mizintsev.
Dubbed ‘the butcher of Mariupol’, Mizintsev is the chief of the national defence command and control centre, where all Russian military operations are planned and controlled worldwide. Mizintsev is known for using reprehensible tactics, including shelling civilian centres in both Aleppo in 2015-16 and now in Mariupol – where atrocities are being perpetuated against Ukrainian people.
Labour’s Anna McMorrin says she does not think Kevin Foster appreciates quite what a “shambles” the visa system is. She cites the case of a family who cannot flee Ukraine until their visa is approved because their son is disabled, and living in a refugee camp would be too difficult.
Foster says the issuing of visas is being speeded up.
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Back in the Commons Harriet Baldwin (Con) suggests it would be helpful to issue the visa application form in Ukrainian.
Kevin Foster, the immigration minister, says the government is looking at providing guidance on filling in the form in Ukrainian and Russian.
But he says that translating the form itself into Ukrainian would require “a reasonably significant amount of technical work”. He also says it would be hard to find enough Ukrainain speakers to process the forms.
My colleague Jim Waterson was watching the Michael Grade committee hearing until the end, and records this gem.
Michael Grade has been in the media industry so long that, when MPs ask his views on what's appropriate on television, he can say: "I actually cancelled the Black and White minstrel show".
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) March 31, 2022
Sir Desmond Swayne (Con) mentions a case involving a long wait, which he describes as “disappointing”.
Diana Johnson (Lab), the chair of the home affairs committee, says she does not undersand why the Home Office cannot say how many Ukrainians have already arrived in the UK. She asks about the case of a woman who has just given birth, in Poland, who cannot get a visa because she does not have a birth certificate for the baby.
Foster says he will look into this.
Visa delays 'testing patience' of people offering to house Ukrainian refugees, former Tory cabinet minister tells MPs
Robert Jenrick, the Tory former communities secretary, says “something is wrong with the scheme right now”. He goes on:
The vast majority of sponsors tomorrow will have waited two weeks and won’t have heard anything at all. We are testing the patience of people in this country who have put themselves forward as sponsors, and much more importantly, we’re letting down those vulnerable individuals and families in Ukraine.
He says the Home Office should ensure that resources are in place to speed the system up.
Foster says he understands why MPs want the system to work faster, but safeguarding checks need to be carried out.
Foster is replying to Cooper.
He says it is too early to say how many Ukrainians have arrived in the UK.
He says the government has cut back on the information applicants are required to supply.
And he says this is the latest in a number of humanitarian interventions created by the government. The evacuation from Afghanistan was the biggest UK evacuation since Dunkirk.
And he says the government has done better than Cooper with her own pledge to home an Afghan refugee.
Labour accuses Home Office of 'utter incompetence' in Commons urgent question on Ukrainian refugees
Turning away from the culture committee, Kevin Foster, the minister for immigration, is now responding to an urgent question from Labour.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, says the visa system for Ukrainians is not working. She quotes cases of people waiting for more than a week for a reply.
The situation is “Kafktaesque”, she says. And the home secretary is incapable of getting a grip.
How many people have arrived in the country, she asks.
She says it is taking at least two weeks to clear cases. That means it will take over a week to clear the backlog.
She says the Home Office has stopped publishing full figures on this.
Tens of thousands of people are still stuck in the system. Families are desperate ... Is this deliberate, or is this just total and utter incompetence?
Q: Do you think the BBC will still be here in 10 years, funded by the licence fee?
Grade says ultimately this will be a matter for parliament. He says what matters is that there continues to be investment in talent and content and skills. And he says the tradition of impartial news should continue.
Q: Do you still think that the end of the licence fee would mean the end of the BBC?
Grade says you could fund the BBC in different way. If you funded it through subscription, that would change the nature of the BBC.
But he says his recent comments critical of the licence fee were prompted by the sense that, with people facing cost of living pressures, it was “tactless” for the BBC to be asking for me.
He says he has never been against the licence fee.
Q: Do you detect any evidence that the tech companies are recognising that the world is changing, and they need to accept regulation?
Grade says the tech companies are used to having their own way. It has been “a wild west in many respects”. There have been huge benefits from this, he says. But he thinks the time has come for effective regulation. Britain is at the forefront of this, and the world will be watching.
UPDATE: Grade said:
I think the laws of nature suggest they will resist regulation. The are not used to it, they are used to having their own way. It is a wild west is many respects. There are huge benefits - let’s not underestimate the benefits they provide - but it is time that these companies that are enormous and so powerful and so pervasive, much of it benign and productive, but there is huge risk in some of it.
And the time has come for effective regulation, and I think Britain is at the forefront of it and I am sure the world will be watching to see how well we manage this, and to what extent we can get the tech companies to listen and take us seriously.
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Julie Elliott (Lab) is asking the questions now.
Q: These tech companies pay huge salaries. Will you really be able to attract the best people to work for Ofcom?
Grade accepts that Ofcom may not be able to poach people earning millions of dollars in Seattle. But he says it can identify up and coming people with potential, and ensure they get the right experience.
Grade says Ofcom already hiring experts it will need to understand how tech companies use their algorithms
Julian Knight (Con), the committee chair, is asking the questions now.
Q: Are you up for the fight with tech companies like Meta?
Yes, says Grade. He says he has spoken to the Ofcom chief executive. The government is already giving it more money to be ready for the responsibilities it will have when the online safety bill becomes law. “We are recruting now,” he says, speaking as if he has already joined Ofcom. He says recruitment is going “extremely well” and Ofcom has hired “one or two high-fliers from the tech companies”.
He says the priority is to ensure that Ofcom can match them for expertise.
He says the bill will give Ofcom new powers to demand information from the tech companies, covering things like the operation of their algorithms.
Q: And will you be able to understand them when you get them?
Grade says it will have to be able to do that. It will recruit the people who can undersand them.
Jane Stevenson (Con) is asking the questions now.
Q: What would you count as success in this job?
Grade says he would be pleased if, after three years, there was a recognition that Ofcom was cleaning up the “excesses” of the internet. He says generally the internet is an “incredibly valuable resource”.
I will sleep at night at the end of three years if there is a general recognition that while the job... I am going to be slightly emotive here - cleaning up the excesses of what is an otherwise incredibly valuable resource - the internet.
There is a bit of it that is a serious worry, serious harm, but the overwhelming value of the internet, the balance sheet is very favourable. It is a massive boon to communication, to business, as we saw throughout the pandemic.
What would we have done without Zoom and Teams and the rest of it?
So I would hope that, at the end of three years, people can see that we are giving good effect to what parliament has laid down for us to do and the tech companies are taking us very seriously and beginning to understand - it won’t happen overnight - that lip service to responsibility is no longer acceptable.
Q: And what would your message by to Ofcom staff?
Grade says the board is there to support them, and to maintain their independence. Just because he takes the Tory whip in the Lords, that does not mean he is a political appointment. Ofcom decisons should always be based on evidence.
Q: Do you think Ofcom staff would welcome your appointment?
I hope so, says Grade.
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Prospective Ofcom chair Lord Grade admits he does not use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
Grade says he does not use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. But he does use WhatsApp.
Q: Given your lack of engagement with social media, won’t that be problematic for you?
Grade says he would not say he has no experience of this. He has three children, and his 23-year-old student son is “never off his screen”. He says he understands the dynamics of social meda.
He says the members of the Ofcom board cannot be experts in every area it covers.
But he says what matters is that Ofcom gets access to the best advice.
Q: If the committee says you should not get the job, will you turn it down?
Grade says it would depend what the committee said, and how the culture department responded.
Nicolson says, regardless of Grade’s CV, a lot of people will just conclude “Thank God he’s not Paul Dacre”.
Grade says there is no way to answer that.
There will be three urgent questions in the Commons this morning, starting shortly. They will cover rape as a weapon of war; visas for refugees from Ukraine; and the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Nicolson says the committee cannot stop Grade’s appointment. He says although Grade his appointment was not inevitable, it was.
Q: How would your appointment help Ofcom’s diversity?
Grade says he cannot change who he is. But he would be pushing for more diversity at Ofcom. There is a problem at board level, he says.
John Nicolson (SNP) goes next.
Q: You speak about “woke” alot. How would you define it?
Grade says there is a wonderful debate going on in the country. It covers a range of topics. But he does worry about the tone of it.
Q: You described Ofcom officials as “woke warrior apparatchiks”. You wrote about how “some idiot” was complaining about blacking up in a show from the 1970s.
Grade says he has strong opinions sometimes.
Q: How do you think the “woke warriors” at Ofcom will feel about your arrival?
Grade says he was making a point about a channel that caters for nostalgia, and specialises in showing old shows. The shows is broadcasts are obviously a piece of history, he says.
Nicolson says Grade is expressing himself more reasonably now. Grade says, in the article Nicolson is quoting from, he was trying to make a point, and help the channel.
Q: And you have expressed support for Laurence Fox, the actor turned rightwing activist.
Grade says he admires Fox’s courage. He says he has known Fox’s family for a long time. He says Fox’s grandfather and his father were business partners.
I admire his courage. I have known his family. His grandfather and my father were partners in business going back a long way. I admire his courage in speaking out and contributing to the debate. I don’t necessary agree with what he says, but I admire him speaking out.
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Clive Efford (Lab) is asking the questions now.
Q: You have expressed strong views in the past. Is that a problem?
Grade says Ofcom makes decisions based on evidence. He says you have to leave your opinions at the door.
Q: What about our views on the BBC’s licence fee?
Grade says he made a point about how the BBC was asking for an increase in the licence fee at a time when its news bulletins were full of reports about the impact of the cost of living crisis.
He also says, when he said the licence fee was regressive, he was not expressing an opinion.
I described the licence fee as regressive. I didn’t think that was an opinion, I thought that was a statement of fact, actually.
Q: What about your support for Channel 4 privatisation?
Grade says he opposed the privatisation of Channel 4 under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He says Ofcom would have no say over Channel 4 privatisation.
Q: You were a Tory peer until recently?
Grade says he has spent a lifetime as a broadcaster resisting political pressure.
Ofcom’s reputation depends on it being independent, he says. He is capable of “resisting undue political pressure”.
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Grade says he does not think a single candidate could have all the experience needed to cover the whole remit of Ofcom.
But he says he has experience of being regulated, as a broadcaster and as chairman of Camelot. And he has done a wide range of jobs, he says. He was chairman of Ocado for seven years, he says. He says he is “adaptable”. He has worked in the public sector and the private sector.
Q: What skills would you bring to this?
Grade says he has people skills. He has a concern for clear governance. And he is “very consensual”, he says. He says the power of a chair depends “derives entirely from your ability to carry the hearts and minds of your colleagues on the board”.
Lord Grade has just started giving evidence. He says he decided to apply for the Ofcom job in November last year. He was not asked to apply, he says.
He says he was thinking about online safety, and thought there was important work to do there.
(The online safety bill, which was published recently, will hugely expand the powers of Ofcom, giving it unprecedented new powers to regulate social media companies.)
From Bloomberg’s Kitty Donaldson
🍿Drama alert: the Commons @CommonsDCMS Committee has this morning rejected the government's choice for charity commissioner on the basis he was an "archetypal and unimaginative choice" - and they're due to interview Tory peer Michael Grade for Ofcom chair this morning
— Kitty Donaldson (@kitty_donaldson) March 31, 2022
And here is a column by Jane Martinson, a former Guardian media editor and now a journalism professor, on why Michael Grade should not get the Ofcom job.
Michael Grade questioned by MPs about his suitability for becoming Ofcom chair
Michael Grade, the veteran broadcasting executive who has run the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in a long career, is about to be questioned by the Commons digital committee in his role as the government’s preferred candidate to chair Ofcom. The committee does not have the formal power to block his appointment, but a critical assessment could prompt ministers to think again.
Grade was eventually nominated after a chaotic two-year process that saw the government try, and fail, to instal the former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, in the post.
Here is a preview of the hearing by Michael Savage and Richard Brooks.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, rejected claims that it was irresponsible for Labour to call for Boris Johnson’s resignation during the Ukraine war. She said:
The whole of parliament is united in our response to Ukraine and if Boris Johnson was replaced by a different member of the cabinet, a different member of parliament ... the position on Ukraine would not change.
The House of Commons is united in our resolute response to Russia’s aggression and to the needs of the Ukrainian people. The position of the UK government would not change if the prime minister changed.
But at the moment we have a prime minister who has a total disrespect for the rules, has treated the British people as if they are fools, and I don’t think that he is fit to govern.
In her interview on Sky News Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, was also asked if it was appropriate for Boris Johnson to make a joke about transgender people at the Tory dinner on Tuesday night. With the Conservative MP Jamie Wallis coming out as transgender a few hours later, the timing could not have been worse.
To say that Trevelyan defended Johnson over this would be going a bit far. She half-heartedly played it down as a joke, before swiftly moving on. She told Kay Burley:
You know, jokes made at dinners are made, I think ... all of us who know the prime minister know he has a very, very warm and affectionate personality and I think he is genuinely, you know, proud and affectionate and wants to support Jamie in his decision to share with the world his choice to present himself as trans. And I think, I mean, he’s a lovely young man and we are hugely, hugely proud of him.
Can an insensitive joke made at dinner be acceptable?@annietrev says that the PM will support @JamieWallisMP , after he became the first British MP to come out as transgender 👇#KayBurley SR pic.twitter.com/57qGYTym4o
— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) March 31, 2022
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, was on duty miniser on the morning interview round this morning and, on Sky News, she wriggled endlessly when asked by Kay Burley if she accepted that the Met’s decision to issue fines in relation to Partygate meant that the law was broken.
This shouldn’t be a difficult question - the answer is yes, the law was broken - but, because Downing Street is refusing to concede this, loyal ministers are trying to stick to the PM’s line, which is that he’s postponing comment until the investigation is over.
Trevelyan started with the loyal minister position but, in the face of persistent questioning from Burley, eventually defaulted to common sense. “That’s right, they have broken the regulations that were set in the Covid Act,” she said.
An absolute masterclass from @KayBurley on @SkyNews in how to hold Government to account. In the process she completely demolishes this Government Minister over #Partygate & the fixed penalty fines issued & exposes the utter contempt in which the Government holds the public pic.twitter.com/1DQBsdG37q
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) March 31, 2022
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Keir Starmer claims families will be £2,620 worse off this year under Tories
Good morning. Keir Starmer is putting the cost of living right at the centre of Labour’s campaign for the local elections, which he is launching today, with a claim that, as the party puts it in its press release, “the Tories are leaving families £2,620 worse off [this year]– even after the spring statement”.
It is an alarming figure, and it is worth explaining how Labour has calculated it. The party has taken five factors into account.
Tax burden: Tax as a proportion of the economy is rising from 34.4% in 2021-22 to 35.5% in 2022-23, and the party says this would amount to £30bn - which is the equivalent of £1,060 per household.
Energy costs: The rise in the price cap from April will push up energy bills by £690 per household.
Petrol: The increase in petrol prices over the last 12 months amounts to £300 per household, Labour says.
Food: By taking the figure for average household spending on food in 2020, and uprating it in line with the OBR’s forecast for inflation, Labour calculates that food bills will rise by £275 per household.
Mortgages: Labour calculates this as going up by £295 per household, based on the impact of interest rate rises on the cost of servicing a £100,000, 20-year variable rate mortgage.
In a statement issued overnight, Starmer said:
What did we get in that mini-budget?
A Conservative government that takes far more than it gives to working people. The biggest drop in living standards since the 50s. Taxes the highest in 70 years.
Even allowing for everything the chancellor announced, families are £2,620 worse off. Britain deserves better than this.
One obvious problem with the Labour analysis is that three of these five factors amount to inflation (and a fourth, interest rates, is a policy response to inflation), and it is very hard to argue that this is Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak’s fault. If Labour were to take office this week, inflation would still be soaring. But, as Vote Leave discovered in 2016, even a questionable number can have its uses if it sets the terms of debate. And when voters find that money runs out at the end of the month, they may not be overscrupulous about deciding who to blame.
Labour says, with the revenue from its proposed windfall tax on energy companies, it could cut energy bills for families by up to £600.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Lord Grade, the government’s choice for Ofcom chair, is questioned by the Commons culture committee in a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing.
Late morning: Starmer launches Labour’s local election campaign at an event in Bury.
11.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12pm: Nicola Sturgeon takes first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament.
1.30pm: Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, and David Williams, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, take part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.
3.45pm: Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, speaks at the Royal Society’s Science of Covid event.
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