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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.
Analysis finds 169 peers working as advisers and 15 paid by foreign governments
One in five members of the House of Lords are working as consultants or advisers to private businesses at the same time as serving in parliament, the Guardian can reveal.
An analysis of the Register of Lords’ Interests shows 169 peers reported working as advisers earlier this year,with more than a dozen registering that they were also paid by foreign governments on top of the expenses they are entitled to as peers.
A Labour peer claimed almost £50,000 in attendance and travel expenses covering every single day the House of Lords was sitting last year, despite never speaking or asking any written questions, a Guardian investigation reveals.
The former trade union general secretary David Brookman was among dozens of other lords and baronesses who never took part in a single debate, while almost a third of the 800 peers barely participated in parliamentary business over a 12-month period despite costing almost £3.2m in allowances.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
That’s all from us for this evening. Thanks for reading and commenting. For a summary of the day’s major events, click here.
And, if you’d like to read more on the Brexit negotiations between the government and the opposition, my colleagues Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart have the story:
- The government are defeated on Labour’s amendment 13 in the House of Lords. The amendment makes it an “objective” of the government during negotiations to pursue a free trade deal allowing the UK to stay “in a customs union” with the EU after Brexit.
- The government was defeated on amendment 12 which called for parliamentary approval of future trade agreements.
Prince Charles has saluted the ”unparalleled bonds” between Britain and Ireland at a time of strained Anglo-Irish relations caused by Brexit.
The Prince of Wales was attending a special St Patrick’s Day dinner at the Irish embassy in London where British and Irish politicians mingled amid continuing uncertainty and recriminations over the Irish border issue in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Report finds UK arms ‘highly likely to be cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen’
The UK is on “the wrong side of the law” by sanctioning arms exports to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and should suspend some of the export licences, an all-party Lords committee has said.
The report by the international relations select committee says ministers are not making independent checks to see if arms supplied by the UK are being used in breach of the law, but is instead relying on inadequate investigations by the Saudis, its allies in the war.