UK's 'self-lacerating classes' should realise much of world admires their country more than they do, Australian diplomat says Britain’s “self-lacerating classes” should realise that much of the world admires their country much more than they do, the outgoing Australian high commissioner has said. Speaking at an event hosted by the British Foreign Policy Group thinktank, George Brandis, who has represented his country in London since 2018, said: Britain has a lot of moral authority in far away places. One thing that rather bothers me is that there are some in the commentariat, possibly some even in the Foreign Office, who are almost guilty about Britain’s imperial past and therefore think notions like the Commonwealth should be uttered sotto voce. Could I tell you that among the small island states of the south-west Pacific, Britain is loved, the Queen is loved, all of the majesty of the British state is admired in those small nations which are now a very critical part of the world because they’re an object of Chinese ambition. Britain should not underestimate its soft power in a lot of the small Commonwealth nations as the nation whose head of state is the head of the Commonwealth, and nowhere is that more so than in the south-west Pacific. I just wish that the self-lacerating classes in Britain would realise that the world respects their own country a lot more than a lot of them do.

Students are being done a “disservice” over trigger warnings placed on books such as Harry Potter at universities, Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, has said. PA says: Donelan told the PA news agency there is a need for “common sense” over the issue of institutions such as the University of Chester placing warnings about content on JK Rowling’s stories. “Harry Potter is actually a children’s book. Fundamentally it is probably a multimillion-pound industry that has been franchised into films. To say that we need to protect some of our brightest and our best from the likes of Harry Potter is to not only do our universities a disservice but to do our students a disservice,” she said. “And it’s not the way to ensure that they can enter the world having those skills at their fingertips - the ability to challenge, to be critically astute - and that’s certainly not the interpretation that I’d had talking to students, that they want or they need this from their universities,” she added. Donelan said “students have to be able to live in the real world once they graduate university”. “There are no trigger warnings every day as you operate. I’ve not met students who have called for these trigger warnings either. They are not the issues that students are bringing up to me - they’re bringing up sexual harassment, they’re bringing up antisemitism,” she said. Donelan was elaborating on a speech she gave today to the Policy Exchange thinktank about freedom of speech at universities. She was referring to an incident in which the University of Chester warned students that a module that involved studying Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and other fantasy books for young adults could “lead to some difficult conversations about gender, race, sexuality, class, and identity”.

Government childcare plan would 'drive down quality' without increasing availability, says Labour Labour says that trying to cut the cost of childcare by reducing staff/child ratios for nurseries (see 12.33pm), as the government seems to be considering, will “drive down quality whilst making no difference to availability”. This is from Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary. The Conservatives are making high-quality childcare increasingly unavailable and unaffordable. Parents are having to work fewer hours or leave jobs because they cannot find or afford it, once again failing children and families. Now the government’s solution is to drive down quality whilst making no difference to availability. Labour’s children’s recovery plan would invest in early years places for children on free school meals and boost access to before- and after-school clubs.

Brexit has led to 'deep and sustained fall' in relative imports from EU, report says The Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE has published a report today on the impact of Brexit on trade with the EU. Described as the most comprehensive study of this topic yet, it says that the introduction of new, post-Brexit rules (under the trade and cooperation agreement [TCA]) from January 2021 led to “a deep and sustained fall in relative UK imports from the EU”. It says: “This is consistent with the TCA causing a substantial increase in UK-EU trade costs and leading to a shift in UK import activity away from the EU.” The report also says that, surprisingly, Brexit has had less impact on exports. It led to “a small and only temporary decline in relative UK exports to the EU in 2021”, the report says. But it says that, although the overall value of exports to the EU has not fallen markedly, the composition of those exports has changed. There has been a reduction in the variety of goods being exported, it says, and a reduction in the number of buyer-seller relationships with the EU. This is because firms that were only doing relatively modest amounts of exporting to the EU have stopped. It says: It would be a mistake to interpret the missing export value effect as evidence that UK exporters were unaffected by the introduction of the TCA. Instead, we conjecture that the TCA has increased the fixed costs of exporting to the EU, causing small exporters to exit small EU markets, but not (or at least not yet) severely hampering exports by large firms that drive aggregate export dynamics. Commenting on the report, Drew Hendry, the SNP’s international trade spokeperson, said: With each passing week, we see new figures that highlight the devastating impact Brexit is having on businesses across all four nations of the UK. Ever since Boris Johnson signed his botched Brexit agreement, businesses have faced unnecessary red tape, dodgy trade deals, skyrocketing tariffs, and untold misery.

This was something Scotland did not vote for, and something Scotland will not continue to settle for.

Covid inquiry should cover impact of Partygate and Barnard Castle on support for lockdown rules, MPs told Downing Street is facing fresh calls to widen the terms of the Covid-19 public inquiry to cover the impact of its own lockdown breaches, including Partygate and Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle. A grieving daughter told MPs and peers investigating the pandemic that rule breaking by the rule makers should be included in the scope of the inquiry, which is still yet to be formally established. The draft terms of reference, which are due to be finalised by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, do not include the impact of the breaches, which have led to fixed penalty notices for the PM, chancellor and numerous Downing Street officials. Rabinder Sherwood, who lost both her parents to Covid in January 2021, said: “Any rule breaking by the rule makers should be included in the scope of the inquiry.” She told the all party parliamentary group on coronavirus that while ministers were breaking the rules, her family took the “painful decision” to tell her parents why they were having to keep socially distanced. That was particularly hard for her father, who suffered from dementia. Stephen Reicher, professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews and a participant in the SPI-B group of the government’s Sage committee, said: There is no doubt that, starting with Barnard Castle, the sense of one law for them and one law for us undermined trust. Sir Geoff Mulgan, professor of collective intelligence, public policy and social innovation at University College London, where international Covid inquiries are being monitored, predicted the process could take three to four years to complete. He said it would require the chair, Dame Heather Hallett, to set up several parallel inquiries. That suggests final results are unlikely to be available until after the next general election, expected in 2024. Elkan Abrahamson, a lawyer representing the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Group, said they had not seen the amended terms of reference, which will go from the chair to the PM for his approval, making bereaved families “supplicants” rather than participants in setting the agenda. He went on: Already the openness that we’d hoped for from the inquiry seems to be ebbing away and that is a real concern.

Keir Starmer has also said he hopes that the controversy about the Mail on Sunday’s sexist reporting of Angela Rayner leads to a change of culture at Westminster. He said: The Speaker obviously needs to be happy that the way we all treat each other in parliament is appropriate and with respect and obviously he will make his own decisions in that respect. But I think all of us have got a responsibility not just to call this out but to renew our determination to change the culture in parliament because this is awful for Angela. I’ve got a young girl and I worry about her seeing this environment. We all have to change it.

Starmer rejects claim he has let Partygate distract from Labour's campaign focus on cost of living Keir Starmer has rejected claims that Labour has let Partygate distract from its campaigning on the cost of living. According to a HuffPost story by Kevin Schofield, Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling-up secretary, complained at shadow cabinet last week that the party was focusing too much on Partygate. In the Commons last week Starmer spoke about Partygate three times: in response to Boris Johnson’s statement on the the matter on Tuesday, at PMQs on Wednesday, and in the debate on the privileges committee on Thursday. Nandy said there was a danger that voters would think “we’re all as bad as each other” if Labour continued to focus on Boris Johnson’s woes over lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street. She said Labour risked looking “out of touch” at a time when families across the country are struggling to make ends meet. But Schofield also says that other members of the shadow cabinet did not agree with Nandy’s point. Asked about this today, Starmer insisted that Labour’s campaign had remained focused on the cost of living. He said: When we started the campaign, we had a laser-like focus on the cost of living and we’ve maintained that throughout. Starmer also restated Labour’s call for an emergency budget (see 10.10am), saying that this was what the country needed, not a cabinet meeting. He said: The cost-of-living crisis has been staring us in the face for six months now and it’s a real problem for people struggling with their bills – and the cabinet meeting this morning isn’t going to change any of that. Keir Starmer speaking to business owners about the increased cost of living in Stevenage today. Photograph: Doug Peters/PA

The BBC has a report with more on Boris Johnson’s threat to privatise the Passport Office if services do not improve. The news was originally leaked to the Evening Standard. (See 1.14pm.) As the BBC’s Nick Eardley reports, bosses from the agency are expected to be called in for talks next week. Eardley says the PM sees this as a cost of living issue, because people are having to pay for the premium service to get their passport on time because of the delays, and he thinks privatisation could provide better value for money. PM also threatened to privatise passport office if it doesn't deliver better value for money.



Bosses will be called to No 10 next week to be questioned on backlog.



Downing St worried families having to fork out for premium services because of delays. https://t.co/4EBCymeKuT — Nick Eardley () April 26, 2022

According to a report by David Bond in the Evening Standard, at cabinet Boris Johnson told colleagues he wanted to “privatise the arse” of bodies like the Passport Office and the DVLA that fail to provide a satisfactory service. Bond says: Boris Johnson has threatened to “privatise the arse” off the Passport Office, DVLA and other “arms-length” public bodies unless they start delivering better services. Urging his cabinet ministers to come up with creative ways to help ease the growing cost of living crisis, the prime minister also pledged to increase scrutiny of the “post-Covid mañana culture” at some public bodies which have come in for criticism for failing to abandon working practices introduced during the crisis. This morning the Times has splashed on a story saying holidays are at risk because of delays in processing passports. The DVLA is also having problems dealing with demand for driving licences.

No 10 plays down suggestions platinum jubilee extra bank holiday could become permanent And here are some more lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing. Downing Street played down suggestions that the extra bank holiday being held this year in honour of the Queen’s platinum jubilee could become a permanent event. The idea has been widely floated in the media. Looks like ⁦⁩ & ⁦⁩ increasingly supportive of a new permanent bank holiday in honour of The Queen and dedicated to bringing communities together. This would be a major signal that post-covid community connection is higher priority #ThankHoliday pic.twitter.com/IomgT4fuDD — Brendan Cox () April 25, 2022 But the PM’s spokesperson said he was not aware of any plans to make the bank holiday permanent. He said each bank holiday “presents a considerable and significant cost to our economy and therefore each proposal would have to be considered carefully on that basis”. Boris Johnson has still not had a call with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, following his re-election on Sunday, the spokesperson revealed. The spokesperson did not deny a Sun report saying ministers are looking at plans to cut tariffs to make imports cheaper for consumers. The spokesperson would not comment on reports that Boris Johnson has not yet received a questionnaire from the Metropolitan police about his attendance at the party in the No 10 garden on 20 May 2020. Some fines have already been issued in connection with this, but Johnson has reportedly not been asked about it. In the Times today Steven Swinford says Johnson is “increasingly confident” that he will not be fined over this event. Sources think the Met has accepted the PM’s argument that he did not break the rules because Downing Street is his home and so he was in his own garden.

No 10 says PM working on plans to make childcare cheaper as it reveals he is chairing committee on cost of living No 10 has given a fresh hint that ministers will relax the rules to allow nurseries to have fewer members of staff to help parents with costs. In a statement about today’s cabinet, where the focus was on the cost of living, the prime minister’s spokesperson told the morning lobby briefing: The prime minister said that, whilst our recovery from the global pandemic was faster than anybody previously expected, continued disruptions in the global economy, including in China where widespread lockdowns are still taking place – coupled with Putin’s continued crazed malevolence in Ukraine – meant the public was facing real pressures and that the government would continue to be on their side. He said there was more to do, including in areas like childcare, to further ease pressures for those that need it most and to get even more people into high skilled, high-wage jobs. This seemed to be a reference to plans, that have been floated before, to reduce the staff/child ratios for nurseries. As Nursery World reported last year, one plan was to allow nursery staff to supervise five children under two, rather than three, as the current rules stipulate. Downing Street said earlier that Johnson was particularly keen to find measures that would cut costs for people without requiring the government to spend more money. (See 9.17am.) Asked to give more details, the spokesperson said: I think all I can say is that this is an area where the government recognises there is more to do. It is live policy work taking place and I’m sure we’ll have more to say in the future. The spokesperson also revealed that Johnson would be personally chairing meetings of the cabinet’s domestic and economic strategy committee to finalise measures that might help people deal with the cost of living. Ministers talked through “a number of ideas” during cabinet meeting, the spokesperson said, and they would “feed into a more formal process”. I will post more from the lobby briefing shortly.

Source: The Guardian

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