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Move agreed by Speakers of Commons and Lords follows imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing
The new Chinese ambassador to the UK has been barred from parliament by the Speakers in the Commons and Lords after the imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing.
The new ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, was due to attend a meeting of the broadly pro-Chinese all-party group on China, but after a letter from MPs who were subjected to sanctions by China, including the former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has said the meeting is not appropriate.
Brexit minister Lord Frost tells House of Lords that the European Commission must take renegotiation proposals seriously
The row over Brexit and Northern Ireland has escalated after the UK government issued a new warning to the EU that it will not shy away from unilaterally suspending the Northern Ireland protocol agreed by Boris Johnson last year.
Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, told the House of Lords on Monday night that the EU should take the UK’s proposals to renegotiate part of the protocol “seriously” if it wanted to avoid the protocol collapsing.
China has imposed sanctions on 10 UK organisations and individuals, including the former leader of the Conservative party Iain Duncan Smith, over what it called the spreading of 'lies and disinformation' about human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said the government stands 'in total solidarity' and it will not stop it addressing 'industrial-scale human rights abuses'
Exclusive: Lords committee chair highlights concern EU parliament may delay trade deal ratification
The Brexit deal signed in December has been thrown into jeopardy because of the recent breakdown of relations with the EU, an influential House of Lords committee is warning.
The European Union committee says “the threat of no deal remains”, with the European parliament now declining to set a date for its vote on the trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve.
Move seen as political theatre as talks in Brussels continue, but may not preclude recall of MPs and peers
MPs and peers will begin their Christmas break on Thursday evening, the government has announced, amid waning hopes that a Brexit deal will be struck in time to be approved in parliament next week.
With talks on trade and security continuing in Brussels amid signs of progress and compromise, ministers had considered stipulating that parliament should sit on Monday and Tuesday to allow legislation implementing a deal to be passed rapidly.
Peers prepare to back cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed to be committing genocide
Ministers face a double defeat in the Lords over Britain’s trading links with China as peers prepare to back a cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed by the UK high court to be committing genocide.
The manoeuvre is in addition to Labour-led plans in the upper house to require a government human rights risk assessment before backing a Brexit trade deal.
Lord Kilclooney is urged ‘retract and apologise’ after tweet about US vice-president-elect
A former deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist party and member of the House of Lords has been called on to apologise after referring to the US vice-president-elect as “the Indian” in a tweet.
The Speaker of the Lords, Norman Fowler, was among those to demand John Kilclooney retract his remarks about Kamala Harris, who is the first black and Asian-American person to be elected to the role.
Almost nine in 10 pupils have attended schools in England since their full reopening this month, government figures show. Around 92% of state schools were fully open on Thursday September 10, and approximately 88% of students were back in class on the same day, the Department for Education analysis suggests.
There have been a further 110 cases of Covid-19 in Wales, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 19,681. Public Health Wales said no further deaths had been reported, with the total number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic remaining at 1,597.
Repairs body says it will not review idea of temporary move as decision is for MPs and peers
Boris Johnson’s suggestion of moving parliament to York while a multibillion-pound restoration of the Palace of Westminster takes place will not be considered by a body reviewing the plans.
PM says city should be in frame if Commons or Lords have to move during restoration work
Boris Johnson has confirmed that Downing Street is thinking of setting up a “government hub” in York, telling officials drawing up restoration plans for the Palace of Westminster that they should consider the city if the Commons or Lords have to be moved.
Restoration of the parliamentary estate, which is crumbling in many places and viewed as a significant fire risk, could cost an estimated £6bn, and the plans are still being debated.
Real-time access to EU police databases has not yet been agreed in the negotiations
The UK risks losing its real-time access to a watchlist of suspected terrorists if it does not strike a comprehensive Brexit deal on justice and security, peers have been told.
The concerns of the policing consequences of a collapse in Brexit talks were raised by members of the Lords EU security and justice sub-committee during questioning of the Home Office minister James Brokenshire.
Lords committee warns uncertainty over trading rules may add to economic damage of crisis
Northern Ireland faces a “potent threat” to its prosperity and stability if reduced business confidence due to uncertainty over post-Brexit trading rules compounds the economic damage from coronavirus, a Lords committee has warned.
A fourth round of talks between the UK and EU over a permanent deal begins this week, with little apparent progress made, and the looming deadline of 1 July for the UK to seek an extension to the transition period beyond this year.
House of Lords changes rules after warning BAME workers excluded from facilities for mostly white peers
Parliament has been accused of operating a form of apartheid after a report found that minority ethnic staff were asked to show their security passes more often than white counterparts.
Black and minority ethnic staff who responded to a survey carried out last year also complained that historic parliamentary rules meant that they were not allowed to eat or drink in the same rooms or even use the same toilets as the mostly white members of the House of Lords.
Former Speaker tells Guardian Live event that the issue has been ‘weaponised’
The former Commons Speaker John Bercow has described parliamentary staff members who allege that he bullied people as “snobs and bigots”, and claimed he is the victim of a concerted campaign to destroy his reputation.
In conversation with Owen Jones at a Guardian Live event in Sloane Square in central London, he mocked those who have complained about him and denied all the allegations surrounding his behaviour.
Conservation work on Elizabeth Tower is ‘more complex than anticipated’
The repair bill to fix parliament’s Elizabeth Tower that houses Big Ben has increased by £18.6m to nearly £80m following the discovery of asbestos, second world war bomb damage and pollution problems.
Conservation work on the 177-year-old structure, which is supposed to be completed at the end of next year, led to the discovery by the project team after intrusive surveys, parliamentary officials have disclosed.
Former chief of the defence staff who served at D-day and was later embroiled in the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Midland
Field Marshal Lord Bramall, who has died aged 95, was chief of the defence staff from 1982 until 1985, the pinnacle of a long military career that began just in time to land him on the beaches of Normandy as a freshly minted second lieutenant in the D-day invasion of June 1944.
But in March 2015 he was drawn into the saga of claims of historical paedophilia and child abuse in high places that began with the unmasking of Jimmy Savile in 2012. Bramall’s cottage in a village near Farnham, Surrey, was raided by police as part of a co-ordinated initiative that also included the homes of Lord (Leon) Brittan, the former home secretary, who died in January 2015. All this was part of Operation Midland, set up by the Metropolitan police in response to allegations against a number of notable public figures.
Heavier sentences for violent criminals among policies aimed at wooing Labour voters
Violent and sexual criminals as well as foreign national offenders who return to the UK will face drastically heavier penalties under measures that will form the centrepiece of a Queen’s speech aimed at wresting the agenda away from the delicate Brexit negotiations.
With just days to go before the deadline for Boris Johnson to clinch a last-ditch Brexit deal in Brussels, the Queen will on Monday set out his government’s priorities for a new session of parliament, including 22 new bills.
Court backs MPs who said prorogation breached constitution
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Scottish appeal court judges have declared Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful.
The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the power to interfere in the prime minister’s political decision to prorogue parliament.
The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has warned that there is “no such thing as a clean break” – Brexit deal or no Brexit deal – with difficult and complex negotiations on the future relationship with the EU whatever the outcome of talks. In a speech in Dublin to the British and Irish Chambers of Commerce, he has said:
If there is no deal – and I believe we may have to live with no deal for a period – then, at a certain point, we will have to begin negotiations again. The first and only items on the agenda ... will be citizens’ rights, the financial settlement with the EU and a solution to the Irish border.
Whatever happens, Ireland will not be dragged out of the single European market.
Recently, Prime Minister Johnson and I spoke by phone. We spoke of our shared desire to see the Northern Ireland political institutions reinstated. We shared our perspectives on the withdrawal agreement and agreed that our teams would establish one-to-one contact.
We will meet again in Dublin on Monday. Unfortunately, given political developments in the UK, there is a significant and growing risk of no-deal.
Here’s some more detail on the criticism of Johnson from the West Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, Labour’s Mark Burns-Williamson:
To use police officers as the backdrop to what became a political speech was inappropriate and they shouldn’t have been put in that position.
It clearly turned into a rant about Brexit, the opposition and a potential general election. There’s no way that police officers should’ve formed the backdrop to a speech of that nature.
Yes, because he’s used the pretence of an announcement around police recruitment for mainly a political speech.
Labour’s leader in House of Lords at head of cross-party effort to establish joint committee of MPs and peers
Labour’s leader in the House of Lords, Angela Smith, is spearheading a cross-party bid to force the government to set up a powerful new committee to report by September on the risks of a no-deal Brexit.