In today’s newsletter: After months of wrangling, Parliament passed the government’s controversial plan to tackle small boats
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Continue reading...Category Archives: House of Lords
UK passes bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda
Lawyers prepare for legal battles on behalf of individual asylum seekers challenging removal to east Africa
Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill will become law after peers eventually backed down on amending it, opening the way for legal battles over the potential removal of dozens of people seeking asylum.
After a marathon battle of “ping pong” over the key legislation between the Commons and the Lords, the bill finally passed when opposition and crossbench peers gave way on Monday night.
Continue reading...Rwanda bill clears parliament after peers abandon final battle over safety amendment – as it happened
Bill could become law this week as end of parliamentary ping-pong in sight
Q: Do you think you will be able to implement this without leaving the European convention of human rights?
Sunak says he thinks he can implement this without leaving the ECHR.
If it ever comes to a choice between our national security, securing our borders, and membership of a foreign court, I’m, of course, always going to prioritise our national security.
Continue reading...Rwanda bill: what does the latest delay mean?
Flights have been pushed back to summer after the House of Lords spoke out for Afghans and refugees – here’s what to expect over the coming weeks
Rishi Sunak’s plan to fly people seeking asylum to Rwanda this spring appears to have been put back to the summer after House of Lords insisted on changes to the scheme.
On Thursday the prime minister’s spokesperson said the Lords were responsible for any delay after attaching unwanted amendments to the deportation bill.
Continue reading...Rwanda bill further delayed after Lords again votes for changes
Legislation to go back to Commons after peers stand up for rights of Afghans and scrutiny of refugees’ treatment
The parliamentary battle over Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill will spill into next week after the Lords refused to budge over the rights of Afghans and scrutiny of the treatment of refugees in east Africa.
The move prompted an immediate backlash from the home secretary, James Cleverly, who blamed Labour for blocking the bill and being “terrified” that the Rwanda plan would stop asylum seekers from travelling to the UK in small boats.
Continue reading...Further delay to Rwanda bill’s passage as Lords vote through amendments – as it happened
Move follows vote in Commons where MPs voted down four amendments inserted by Lords yesterday
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
PMQs is starting soon.
Continue reading...Sunak considering exemptions to Rwanda bill for some Afghans
Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons
Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say.
Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee.
Continue reading...Rwanda bill delayed for at least a day after Lords pass amendments
Legislation to return to the Commons with changes that would ensure conformity with UK and other law and protect claimants
The Rwanda deportation bill has been delayed for at least one more day after the House of Lords voted for amendments that would ensure that it adheres to international and key domestic laws.
The plan to spend £541m to send 300 people seeking asylum to east Africa was sent back to the House of Commons after peers voted several times to add protections for claimants to the bill.
Continue reading...MPs vote to give smoking ban bill second reading – as it happened
Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67
At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.
The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.
And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.
Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.
Continue reading...Sunak says ‘all sides should show restraint’ after Iranian attack on Israel – as it happened
British PM says he will speak to Netanyahu to express solidarity and discuss how further escalation can be avoided
UK general election opinion poll tracker: Labour leading as election looms
David Cameron ruled out trying to become PM again in an interview this morning. (See 9.30am.) But Liz Truss has not done so. In an interview with LBC’s Iain Dale, being broadcast tonight, she did not entirely dismiss the possibility. This is from LBC’s Henry Riley.
Truss is giving interviews to publicise her memoir which is out this week. According to extracts sent out in advance, she also confirmed in her LBC interview that she wanted to see Donald Trump win the US presidential election. She said:
I don’t think [Joe] Biden has been particularly supportive to the United Kingdom. I think he’s often on the side of the EU. And I certainly think I would like to see a new president in the White House …
The thing I would say about Donald Trump is, because I served as secretary of state under both Trump and Biden, and Trump’s policies were actually very effective. If you look at his economic policies, and I met his regulatory czar, I travelled around the United States looking at what he’d done. He cut regulation, he cut taxes, he liberated the US energy supply. And this is why the US has had significantly higher economic growth than Britain.
Continue reading...Labour has 99% chance of forming next government, says elections expert – UK politics live
Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, said the chances of a Tory revival were small
In the House of Lords peers have just started debating the second reading of the leasehold and freehold reform bill. The bill has already passed through the Commons.
Normally, at this stage of the process, the content of a government bill is all but finalised. But, as No 10 admitted on Monday, the government has still not decided how far it will go in terms of cutting ground rents for existing leaseholders.
Continue reading...Government suffers seven defeats on Rwanda bill as peers vote to tighten safeguards – UK politics live
Lords back amendments saying bill must comply with international law, on classifying Rwanda as a safe country and independent monitoring
Yesterday I covered quite a lot of comment on the Rachel Reeves’ Mais lecture based on a three-page press release sent out by Labour with advance extracts. The full speech runs to 8,000 words and it is certainly worth a read. Here is some commentary published after the full text was made public.
Paul Mason, the former economics journalist who is now an active Labour supporter, says in a blog for the Spectator that Reeves is proposing an approach that should make it easier for the government to justify capital investment. He explains:
Reeves effectively offered markets a trade-off. She set out the same broad fiscal rule as the government: debt falling at the end of five years and a deficit moving towards primary balance. She will make it law that any fiscal decision by government will be subject to an independent forecast of its effects by the OBR. But, she said: “I will also ask the OBR to report on the long-term impact of capital spending decisions. And as Chancellor I will report on wider measures of public sector assets and liabilities at fiscal events, showing how the health of the public balance sheet is bolstered by good investment decisions.”
Why is this so big? Because the OBR does not currently model the ‘long-term impact of capital spending decisions’. It believes that £1 billion of new capital investment produces £1 billion of growth in the first year, tapering to nothing by year five. Furthermore, since 2019 it has repeatedly expressed scepticism that a sustained programme of public investment can produce a permanent uplift in the UK’s output potential.
George Eaton at the New Statesman says the Reeves speech contained Reeves’ “most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments”. He says:
In her 8,000-word Mais Lecture, delivered last night at City University, the shadow chancellor offered her most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments. Though she praised New Labour’s record on public service investment and poverty reduction, Reeves warned that the project failed to recognise that “globalisation and new technologies could widen as well as diminish inequality, disempower people as much as liberate them, displace as well as create good work”.
She added that the labour market “remained characterised by too much insecurity” and that “key weaknesses on productivity and regional inequality” persisted. This is not merely an abstract critique – it leads Reeves and Keir Starmer to embrace radically different economic prescriptions.
Mais lecture is the most intellectually wide-ranging speech Rachel Reeves has given. Worth reading for takes on Lawson, austerity, New Labour, link between dynamism & worker-security, and how geo-politics changes our national growth story (& more besides)
Continue reading...Rwanda deportation bill set back again after House of Lords votes
Rishi Sunak’s bill was opposed in 10 votes by peers, two days after five amendments were forced through
Rishi Sunak has suffered further setbacks in the House of Lords over his controversial Rwandan deportation bill after peers defeated the government on all 10 votes.
Wednesday’s vote comes two days after the prime minister endured his heaviest defeat in the House of Lords when the archbishop of Canterbury and former Conservative ministers joined forces with the opposition to force through five amendments.
Continue reading...Lords pass five amendments to Rwanda bill in heavy defeat for Rishi Sunak
Peers, including senior Tories, vote by margins of about 100 votes for changes to legislation, which will have to go back to Commons
Rishi Sunak has suffered his heaviest defeat in the House of Lords after the archbishop of Canterbury and former Conservative ministers joined forces with the opposition to force through five amendments to the Rwandan deportation bill.
The string of government setbacks, most passed by unusually large margins of about 100 votes, means the legislation, which aims to clear the way to send asylum seekers on a one-way flight to Kigali, will have to go back to the Commons.
Continue reading...Sunak suffers defeats in House of Lords over Rwanda bill – as it happened
Prime minister suffers defeats in House of Lords over Rwanda bill. This live blog is closed
There will be one urgent question in the Commons today at 3.30pm, on the Home Office’s decision to publish 13 reports from the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration last week on Thursday afternoon.
The former minister Paul Scully has announced he will stand down at the next election in a statement suggesting the Conservative party has “lost its way” and is heading down “an ideological cul-de-sac”.
Continue reading...Major Tory donor among 13 new peers named in honours list
Entrepreneur Stuart Marks reportedly featured on – but was removed from – Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list
A major donor to the Conservative party who reportedly featured on Boris Johnson’s original resignation honours list is among 13 new peers announced by the government on Friday evening, eight of them Conservatives.
Stuart Marks, a technology entrepreneur who has served as a senior treasurer for the Conservatives, has been given a life peerage, an official announcement said. He has personally donated £119,500 to the party and another £56,500 through his company.
Continue reading...Make used electric cars cheaper and tackle battery fears, peers tell ministers
Grants needed towards buying EVs as well as a battery health testing standard to reassure consumers
Ministers need to intervene to boost the secondhand electric vehicle market and allay “uncertainty and concerns” over the health of their batteries, a House of Lords committee has said.
Peers on the environment and climate change committee urged the government to step up efforts to encourage electric vehicle adoption amid consumer jitters over the cost of vehicles, the longevity of their batteries and the availability of charging points.
Continue reading...Labour ditches radical reforms as it prepares ‘bombproof’ election manifesto
Plans to reform social care and House of Lords are trimmed as Keir Starmer’s party opts for caution ahead of vote
Labour is planning only limited first-term reforms of social care and the House of Lords and a smaller green investment plan as part of a stripped-down general election manifesto, as it seeks to make its policies “bombproof” to Tory attacks.
Shadow cabinet ministers have been given until 8 February to make policy submissions for the manifesto, as Keir Starmer’s party gears up for an election that, according to opinion polls, looks likely to return it to government for the first time since 2010.
Continue reading...‘Incomprehensible’ that Abramovich’s Chelsea funds not yet spent on Ukraine
Lords report says UK government must break impasse over details of how frozen assets should be spent
Peers have criticised the UK government for failing to agree a deal with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to spend £2.5bn from his sale of the London football club.
Members of the House of Lords’ European affairs committee have described ministers’ failure to spend the money on Ukraine “incomprehensible”, nearly two years after the sale was agreed.
Continue reading...Michelle Mone and the PPE Medpro investigation – podcast
After the peer admitted to lying about her involvement in lucrative government PPE deals during the Covid crisis, the fate of her high-profile lingerie company raises further questions. David Conn reports
When Michelle Mone sat down for an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last month it was against the backdrop of serious allegations that she had been facing since 2020. Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, are the subjects of a long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of bribery and fraud in their securing of £200m in government contracts for a company, PPE Medpro.
She admitted to Kuenssberg that she had lied for years when denying her involvement in the lucrative PPE deals, emphasising in the interview that she was a ‘very successful individual businesswoman’.
Continue reading...