Boris Johnson news – live: Government used public money on polling, emails reveal as Raab wades into RNLI row
RNLI #RNLI
Newly-published emails show Boris Johnson’s government used taxpayers’ money to conduct political polling on opposition figures, such as the Labour leader, under the guidance of Dominic Cummings.
The former senior No 10 adviser led the charge in awarding Hanbury Strategy a £580,000 contract to do polling on the government’s response to the Covid pandemic. In messages released by the Good Law Project, Mr Cummings told the most senior civil servant responsible for Covid contracts to sign off on it, saying if “anybody in CABOFF [the Cabinet Office] whines tell them I ordered it from PM”.
Labour said the newly-released emails showed “all the hallmarks of a racket” and claimed taxpayers’ money had been “abused”.
Meanwhile, Dominic Raab earlier suggested that the government’s “robust approach” to small boats crossing the English Channel is not “inconsistent” with the RNLI’s attempts to rescue migrants.
Key points
Watch: RNLI does an ‘incredible job,’ Raab says but small boats issue needs ‘hard response’ 13:49 , Matt Mathers
Holocaust memorial can be built next to Westminster, minister rules 12:58 , Sam Hancock
A national Holocaust memorial centre will be built next to Parliament after a minister signed-off on a recommendation that the location would present a “powerful associative message”.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the decision by housing and planning minister Chris Pincher, which came after local public inquiries were held in October and November due to the application being called in for central consideration.
It faced objections from some campaign groups but, in the end, Mr Pincher agreed with planning inspector David Morgan that the “application should be approved”.
Scheduled to open in 2024, the centre is intended to be the focal point for national remembrance of the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazi persecution, along with providing a place for reflection on subsequent genocides, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said in a letter.
Communities secretary Robert Jenrick discussed the move earlier on BBC News:
School expulsions and suspensions drop amid Covid closures 12:48 , Sam Hancock
More education news now. The number of children being expelled and suspended from state schools in England has decreased significantly amid the pandemic, official figures have shown.
However, the data also reveals that the number of permanent exclusions and suspensions did rise in the autumn term of 2019 – before schools were closed for the lockdown.
Government statistics revealed that pupils were permanently expelled on 5,057 occasions in 2019-20 – down from 7,894 occasions in 2018-19. While the number of suspensions, also known as fixed-period exclusions, dropped from 438,265 in 2018-19 to 310,733 in 2019-20 – the academic year when schools were closed in the spring due to Covid-19.
But looking at the autumn term only – when schools were yet to be affected by Covid-19 – the number of suspensions increased by 14 per cent on the previous autumn, from 157,100 to 178,400, the DfE said. They increased by 21 per cent in primary schools and by 12 per cent in secondary schools during the period.
Kiran Gill, founder of The Difference charity, said: “No one should rest assured that exclusions are declining, quite the opposite. Instead, children are being permanently excluded in greater numbers at younger ages. This should sound alarm bells.”
A DfE spokeswoman added: “While we will always back headteachers to suspend or permanently exclude pupils where this helps maintain calm classrooms that bring out the best in every child … our guidance for schools is clear that staff should consider any underlying causes of poor behaviour before taking the decision to permanently exclude, and these decisions must be lawful, reasonable and fair.”
Unions have urged Gavin Williamson not to scrap most BTEC qualifications, saying such a move would be “reckless”.
The education minister has been advised to keep these qualifications which “play a vital role in helping young people progress” in the next stage of their lives.
Announcing a shake-up earlier this month, the government announced it would stop funding poor-quality qualifications that overlapped with new T-levels, reports Zoe Tidman.
Government told it would be ‘reckless’ to scrap BTECs
‘Taxpayers abused’: Rayner responds to polling email revelation 12:12 , Sam Hancock Conservative PCC tells Patel police pay freeze is ‘unfair’ 11:50 , Sam Hancock
The home secretary should reconsider freezing police officers’ pay, a Tory police and crime commissioner (PCC) has said, describing the plans as a “huge blow”.
Donna Jones, the PCC for Hampshire and Isle of Wight, says in a letter to Priti Patel that the decision is “deeply disappointing” in comparison to a four-year settlement that she understands has been reached for Ministry of Defence (MoD) staff.
She writes: “This news is a huge blow to the thousands of men and women who have worked tirelessly over the last 10 years with reducing numbers and budgets, but particularly throughout the pandemic to keep our communities safe.
“If there had been a pay freeze across all government departments owing to the huge increase in national debts, whilst it would have been deeply disappointing for police officers, the fairness of the decision would have been acknowledged.”
Ms Jones states the pay freeze does not recognise the efforts made by police officers during lockdowns, and adds: “The real-time pay cut for existing officers fails to acknowledge the part they played during the pandemic going into people’s homes and keeping communities safe.”
Boris Johnson has backed Ms Patel’s decision to freeze the salaries of all officers earning more than £24,000, leading to the Police Federation declaring it has no confidence in the home secretary.
Cummings told No 10 to use taxpayers’ money for polling – emails 11:35 , Sam Hancock
Boris Johnson’s government gave taxpayers’ money to a private firm to conduct political polling on key opposition figures – including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, newly-published emails show.
Dominic Cummings, former senior No 10 adviser, asked Hanbury Strategy to do polling on the government’s response to the Covid pandemic, before the company was given a £580,000 contract, writes Adam Forrest.
Emails released by the Good Law Project show that concerns were raised by senior civil servants that polling done by Hanbury on Sir Keir, London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan and others would show political bias in favour of the Conservative Party.
Cummings directed government to use taxpayers’ money to do political polling on Starmer, emails reveal
BoE shares findings on impact of stamp duty holiday on homebuyers 11:26 , Sam Hancock
Interested in the property market? Mortgage borrowing hit a record high of £17.9bn in June as homebuyers rushed to beat the stamp duty holiday deadline, the Bank of England has said.
It found the mammoth net mortgage lending figure beat that of the previous £11.5bn record set in March – before the stamp duty tax relief was extended by three months to 30 June.
But the Bank’s latest money and credit report showed that approvals for house purchases – an indicator of future borrowing – fell to 81,300 in June.
This was the lowest since July last year and down from 86,900 in May in a further sign that the UK property market may be cooling following the end of full stamp duty relief.
Some excellent opinion writing on the RNLI fallout now. Our senior commissioning editor on Voices, Rupert Hawksley, writes:
Nigel Farage wants you to know that he has raised money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Yes, he once “stood outside Liverpool Street Station […] with a box, collecting money for the lifeboats”. He even organised a “British beer festival […] in a square in Brussels” to raise money for the RNLI, which has a whiff of the charity skydive about it. But there you go. In short, Nigel seems to be saying, you can’t accuse me of being anti-lifeboat: some of my best friends are RNLI.
Except, of course, you can accuse him of being anti-lifeboat, because that is exactly what he is. Not content with being anti-everything else, Nigel has now picked a fight with the RNLI over its decision to, well, save lives at sea. He has criticised the charity for becoming “a taxi service for illegal immigration” and “an arm of border force”. What he means by this, I think, is that the RNLI has aided a number of sea rescues involving migrants off the coast of Kent and East Sussex. Terrible, isn’t it? A lifeboat helping those in trouble at sea. Whatever next?
Now, I know that Nigel has raised money for the RNLI – did he mention that? – but he may not be the foremost expert in these matters.
Read the piece here:
Opinion: The RNLI is saving lives at sea. Terrible, isn’t it, Nigel Farage?
Video: RNLI volunteers respond to criticism of migrant rescues 11:04 , Sam Hancock Unions tell local government workers to reject ‘miserable’ pay offer 10:13 , Sam Hancock
Council workers are being urged to reject a 1.75 per cent pay offer, described by union leaders as “woeful”, because it falls short of the 10 per cent claim they put forward for this year.
Unison, as well as Unite and the GMB, said council and school staff deserved a bigger pay rise after working though the pandemic.
Members of each will now meet to discuss a recommendation not to accept the offer amid claims the pay of local government workers has fallen in real terms by more than 20 per cent in recent years.
Mike Short, of Unison, said: “Council staff have kept communities clean and safe, protected the most vulnerable, and worked in schools throughout successive lockdowns to allow others to work. These workers, mostly women, are amongst the lowest paid in the country and have seen their pay drop substantially in recent years. This 1.75 per cent offer is nowhere near what’s needed.”
GMB’s national secretary, Rehana Azam, described it as “woeful” while Jim Kennedy, from Unite, said: “Local government workers will see right through the employers’ false claims that this is a pay rise. It’s yet another miserable real-terms pay cut.”
The pay deal was intended for staff working in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Final bid to prevent London tube drivers from striking 09:46 , Sam Hancock
Last-ditch efforts are being made by industry officials in a bid to avert strikes by London Underground drivers, which threaten travel disruption as more people return to work following the easing of Covid restrictions.
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) are set to stage a series of 24-hour walkouts, starting on 3 August, in protest at plans to scrap the pay grade of Night Tube drivers.
The strikes are planned from noon on 3, 5, 24 and 26 August.
Talks will be held on Friday at the conciliation service Acas, said the RMT.
“RMT has made serious proposals and a resolution to the dispute is available through discussion and we will be attending Friday’s talks with the intention of making progress along those lines,” its general secretary Mick Lynch said this morning.
“LU management need to come back to the table in the same constructive frame of mind and I trust that they will.”
The foreign secretary has said he doesn’t think a “robust approach” to small boats crossing the English Channel is at odds with the “heart and soul” of the RNLI.
It comes after recent reports that some of the institution’s volunteers received abuse for rescuing migrants in the Channel.
“The RNLI do an incredible job, they have got this great heart and soul to them and they do an amazing job,” Mr Raab told LBC this morning.
“I think they operate within the legal rules and that is part of this country. We are a big-hearted country. At the same time, if we are talking about the wider small boats issue, that is something where, absolutely at the same time, we need to come down as hard as is humanly possible, working with our French partners,” he said.
Mr Raab spoke later in the programme about the “threat” of “criminal gangs” transferring their business to the UK.
“To see the threat of the criminal gangs trying to launch from France to the UK as early as possible, that is partly intelligence, it is partly technology, and secondly have the strongest criminal action including prosecution sentences against those criminal elements that feed like parasites off the human misery of those people making that journey,” he said, adding: “I don’t think that is inconsistent, that robust approach, with what the RNLI do.”
John Rentoul’s answers to your latest Brexit questions 08:55 , Sam Hancock
Following his live Q&A with Independent readers, political commentator John Rentoul has rounded up the debate to give you a sense of people’s opinions.
He writes:
“I started by saying I thought that the UK government’s position is a reasonable one, and that the EU is being inflexible – suggesting, for example, that sending sausages to Belfast supermarkets undermines the integrity of the EU single market – but I hoped that these were the opening negotiating positions and that good sense will prevail.
This proved to be a controversial view that provoked debate.”
An edited version of the debate can be read here:
Political commentator John Rentoul’s answers to your latest Brexit questions
Raab moves to minimise fears over fake Covid vaccine passports 08:52 , Sam Hancock
Doing the media rounds this morning, Dominic Raab was quizzed on the furore around fake Covid vaccination certificates that US and EU travellers allegedly might try and use to enter the UK.
The government “cannot guarantee” this will not happen, he said, but he told BBC R4’s Today programme he thought it was “highly unlikely”.
It comes following the government’s decision to allow fully jabbed people from the EU and US not to have to isolate when they arrive in England, Scotland and Wales from 2 August.
“The point here is that, with both the European countries and the US, we are talking about high-trust countries with whom we have not just an intuitive level of high trust, we have active co-operation, so we know that we can straighten out any discrepancies we might come across pretty quickly,” he said.
Mr Raab added there is a “double lock” of written certification and proof of US residency for American travellers, which he said could allow “further checks if there is any suspicion of fraud”.
“Both domestically with our rollout but also internationally we want to open up, we want to move the country forward, but we want to do it irreversibly and we need to take solid, surefooted steps forward,” he said. “We feel this is a modest opening up of international travel but one that has the reassurances that we can take further steps forward as we build confidence in the system.”
Councillors pass vote of no confidence in local MP Matt Hancock 08:36 , Sam Hancock
At a meeting of Newmarket Town Council this week, councillors passed a vote of no confidence in West Suffolk MP and former health secretary Matt Hancock, with five voting for, five against and four abstentions.
Mr Hancock resigned last month after he was captured on camera kissing his close aide Gina Coladangelo in his ministerial office.
Unsurprisingly, no Conservative councillor supported the motion. But the town’s mayor Michael Jefferys, who is a member of the Labour Party, used his casting vote to pass the vote, reports Joe Middleton.
Councillors pass vote of no confidence in local MP Matt Hancock
Govt ‘must encourage exercise in kids’ amid pandemic slog, warn MPs 08:28 , Sam Hancock
The government has been advised to introduce a daily exercise campaign, similar to “5 a Day”, amid concerns over the decline in physical activity during the pandemic.
A nationwide “Work Out to Help Out” campaign, which will incentivise people to get involved in organised sport, should also be launched, MPs on the the cross-party Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said.
It comes after the committee heard evidence that more than 100,000 fewer children in England met the minimum 60 minutes’ daily activity recommended by the chief medical officer last year compared with the year before. There was also a warning that the proportion of children and young people not achieving the minimum recommended level of activity is “of significant concern”.
Just over half of children and young people achieved the minimum recommended level of an average 60 minutes activity a day in 2020, the report said.
“Despite the government allowing people to exercise outside for one hour a day, either alone or with their household, during lockdowns, team sport and group exercise was halted; gyms, leisure centres and swimming pools were closed down,” it read. “After each successive lockdown, sport has been one of the first things to return but activity levels for 2020 fell below the figures for the previous year among adults, young people and children.”
A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesman responded: “Over the past year-and-a-half we have prioritised the importance of sport and physical activity, and they will remain at the heart of the government’s coronavirus recovery plan as we build back fitter.”
08:08 , Sam Hancock
Here’s the clip of Dominic Raab telling Sky’s Kay Burley he is “unlikely” to attend the Winter Olympics in China:
Raab says he is ‘very unlikely’ to attend Beijing Winter Olympics 08:05 , Sam Hancock
The UK’s foreign secretary has said it was “highly unlikely” he would go to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing great sensitivities around the situation in Xinjiang.
Boris Johnson’s government has resisted opposition calls for a political boycott of the event in China, but Dominic Raab suggested ministers could decide to reduce Britain’s political “representation”.
Asked by Sky News on Thursday if he would attend the Beijing games next year, Mr Raab said: “I doubt it … Of course, there are great sensitivities around Xinjiang and things like that. We’ll decide our level of representation at a political-diplomatic level in due course … It’s highly unlikely I would go.”
Our political reporter Adam Forrest has more:
Dominic Raab says he is ‘very unlikely’ to attend Beijing Winter Olympics
Sunak must apologise to Scottish people over furlough, SNP demands 08:03 , Sam Hancock
The chancellor should use his visit to Scotland on Thursday to apologise for “prematurely withdrawing furlough and risking thousands of unnecessary redundancies”, the SNP has said.
Rishi Sunak will visit Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife on Thursday to meet people supported by the UK government’s “plan for jobs” scheme, which he said has supported one in three jobs in Scotland and tens of thousands of Scottish businesses.
Mr Sunak hailed the strength of the Union and Scotland’s “innovation and ingenuity” ahead of the visit, saying: “We’ve come through this pandemic as one United Kingdom.”
But the SNP’s shadow chancellor Alison Thewliss urged him to explain “why he is short-changing us on youth jobs” and going ahead with Universal Credit cuts that will “plunge half a million people into poverty”.
She went on: “I would urge Rishi Sunak to explain to the people of Scotland why he is shortchanging us on youth jobs, and ploughing ahead with Universal Credit cuts that will undermine the Scottish Child Payment and plunge half a million people into poverty, when at the same time he can find £250m for a UK government yacht.
“It is increasingly clear that the only way to keep Scotland safe from Tory austerity is to become an independent country with the full powers needed to protect jobs and secure a strong, fair and progressive recovery.”
The Treasury has said that through the pandemic, 900,000 people in Scotland were furloughed, more than 90,000 businesses have received loans, and £1.535bn has been paid in self-employment support.
From 1 July, though, employers had to pick up 10 per cent of their furloughed workers’ salaries, with the government paying 70 per cent. This will decrease further in August and September, when the government will move to pay 60 per cent and employers 20 per cent.
The Northern Ireland Protocol risks becoming a constant irritant in future EU/UK relations unless both sides change their “fundamentally flawed” approaches to resolving the dispute, peers have found.
A House of Lords committee set up to examine the controversial post-Brexit trading arrangements for the Irish Sea has warned that Northern Ireland could become a “permanent casualty” of Brexit unless compromise is found urgently.
The EU and UK remain at odds over the implementation of new checks and processes on goods being shipped into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
The committee has published an introductory report on the arrangements that have created the economic barriers on Irish Sea trade.
Lord Jay of Ewelme, who chairs the committee on the Protocol, said there was an urgent need for compromise.
“That won’t be easy, but it is an absolute necessity that the UK and the EU should now work together urgently to identify solutions if Northern Ireland is not to become a permanent casualty of the Brexit process,” he said.
“The tensions over the Protocol currently seem insoluble. Yet that was also true of the political situation during the Troubles. But the peace process ultimately took root and flourished, through a process of time, patience, dialogue, and most of all trust. Those same qualities are now needed to address the problems that Brexit and the protocol present.”
07:49 , Sam Hancock
Good morning, and welcome to The Independent’s rolling coverage of all things UK politics. Stay tuned as the government receives yet another warning over the fallout in Northern Ireland and Dominic Raab takes a stand against China.