Dominic Raab bullying allegations: Sunak receives report and is ‘carefully considering’ findings – live

Key events

Power-sharing in Nothern Ireland likely to resume in autumn, Ulster Unionist leader says

Power-sharing in Northern Ireland is likely to resume in the autumn, Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist party said today.

The UUP is the second largest unionist party in Northern Ireland. Beattie said he often talks to Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the DUP, the largest unionist party, which brought down power-sharing when it began a boycott of Stormont last year over the Northern Ireland protocol. But Beattie said his assessment was not based on inside knowledge of DUP thinking, but on an analysis of what was likely.

Beattie told the Nolan Show on Radio Ulster:

I’m in no doubt the executive will get up and running. It’s not a case of ‘if’, it’s a case of ‘when’ …

It’s my analysis of where we are, because there’s nothing else we can do. We have to get Stormont up and running again.

We have to grasp those opportunities. We have to start doing legislation to help the people of Northern Ireland, all the people of Northern Ireland, and I think we will do.

It’s a case of: when is that going to happen? Now we’re in the middle of an election, so nothing’s going to happen now or afterwards in the marching season.

But I would imagine in the autumn that we will definitely have an executive running again.

I am sorry we have had to turn the comment off. That is because of concerns that people might post comments about the SNP crisis, and the arrest of leading party figures, that could be libellous, or prejudicial to a future court case. I hope we can open them again later.

Humza Yousaf says he is ‘focusing relentlessly on day job’ when asked about SNP crisis at FMQs

This week’s FMQs at Holyrood focused largely on domestic matters – guidance on avoiding custodial sentences for young offenders and the ferries crisis – but the centrifugal force of the SNP’s internal chaos seems inescapable for the new first minister.

Humza Yousaf was “bogged down in scandal”, said the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, while the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, told him he was compromised if “the party of government is about to go bankrupt, he himself may become involved in the police investigation”.

Ross challenged Yousaf to make a statement to the chamber about the financial crisis engulfing the SNP, which on Tuesday saw the arrest of the party treasurer Colin Beattie, following the detention of the former chief executive Peter Murrell and the two-day police search of the home he shares with the former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. Yousaf has since taken on the role of treasurer himself following Beattie’s resignation yesterday.

Yousaf told Ross he was “not going to shy away” from the issue, and reminded MSPs that one of his first acts as SNP leader was to agree a transparency and governance review with the party’s ruling council, but added he would be “focusing relentlessly on the day job”.

While I take my responsibility as leader of the SNP extremely seriously, I and the government that I lead will be focused relentlessly on the priorities of this country.

The new rules on public attendance at the Holyrood session seemed successful with only one protest disruption this week. (It’s a mark of how frequently previous sessions have stopped and started with climate protesters shouting from the galley in recent months that one incident feels like progress.)

Updated at 07.45 EDT

Steven Swinford from the Times thinks we may have to wait some time to learn the outcome of the Dominic Raab inquiry.

No 10 says PM wants Raab situation resolved ‘as swiftly as possible’, but report will be read ‘carefully’

Back to Dominic Raab, and at the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said Rishi Sunak continued to have “full confidence” in Raab while he considers the report’s findings.

Asked about this, the spokesperson said:

[The PM] does have full confidence in the [deputy] prime minister – that still stands. Obviously he is carefully considering the findings of the report.

Asked when the findings of the Raab inquiry would be published, the spokesperson replied:

Obviously, we’ve always wanted this to be done as swiftly as possible. I think the public would understand that it’s right to carefully consider this.

At Holyrood Humza Yousaf has just started taking first minister’s questions. Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, began by asking a series of questions about the SNP funding crisis.

Alison Johnstone, the presiding officer, suggested his questions might be out of order, because they were about a party matter, not a government matter, but Humza Yousaf said he would be happy to answer.

He said the SNP had “serious issues” to address. He said he had already ordered a review into transparency and governance in the party. But he said he was “focusing relentlessly on the day job”.

There was a brief protest in the gallery, which led to proceedings being very briefly suspended (despite the Scottish parliament recently tightening the rules for admission to FMQs, to stop this happening).

In his second question, Ross dropped the SNP issue, and asked about sentencing.

Updated at 07.42 EDT

This is from my colleague Pippa Crerar.

Sunak has received Raab bullying report and is ‘carefully considering’ its findings, No 10 says

Rishi Sunak has received the report into the allegations that Dominic Raab bullied officials and is “carefully considering” its findings, Downing Street has said.

The Tony Blair Institute has said the new amendments to the illegal migration bill being proposed by the government (see 9.35am) won’t make the legislation any more practical. In a statement, Harvey Redgrave, the thinktank’s immigration specialist, said:

The asylum system is broken and we have yet to see a workable government plan to fix it. Internal Tory debate on the illegal migration bill won’t address its fundamental flaws. Without return agreements the pledge that nobody coming over the Channel will be able to claim asylum is undeliverable. And while the government will try to portray these new amendments as tough, we already know the prime minister is unwilling to take the UK out of the ECHR. Doing so would shatter our reputation and amongst other things undermine the Windsor framework.

As TBI has previously said, if the government is serious about preventing illegal migration then they should focus on clearing the backlog, increasing the number of returns, introducing a system of digital identity verification and opening up safe and viable routes for asylum claims.

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, told MPs this morning that the final day of debate on the illegal migration bill will take place on Wednesday next week. That is when the new amendments (see 9.35am) will be debated.