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George Osborne, the former chancellor, has said he completely rejects claims that austerity weakened the UK’s health and social care capacity before Covid. (See 2.47pm.)
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said that Labour will not try to rejoin the single market or the customs union because it needs to be “pragmatic”. In a speech at Best for Britain’s Trade Unlocked conference, he said:
The next Labour government will not rejoin the EU, the single market or customs union.
I know that disappoints some people here today.
But I’ve spent the last 18 months travelling around Europe, meeting counterparts, building relationships, talking to our sister parties.
It’s mistaken to think that after such a messy divorce it is possible to propose marriage again even before two ex-partners have gone on a date.
The next Labour government will be focused on what is pragmatic, turning the page on the era of acrimony that this government has overseen, which has seen trust undermined, cooperation stall and our economy damaged.
But Lammy also said that it was a “fantasy” to think the relationship with the EU was not important. He explained:
Last week the Conservative party press office attacked me for saying that improving our relationship with the EU will be a priority of the next Labour government.
I have no qualms about repeating this.
Reconnecting Britain must start by reconnecting with our European neighbours.
Because the EU are our biggest trading partners.
And our allies as we face war on our continent.
If you do not think Britain’s relationship with Europe is of fundamental importance to our future, you are living in a fantasy.
Nadine Dorries, the Boris Johnson cheerleader and former culture secretary, has suggested that Harriet Harman’s revelation last night that No 10 wanted her to carry on as chair of the privileges committee, despite people claiming that she had posted tweets implying she was biased against Johnson, showed that Downing Street was engaged in some sort of anti-Johnson conspiracy. She posted this on Twitter.
Harmans speech was very revealing and effectively threw No10 under a bus. It implied, that despite the fact that she had already tweeted in advance of the hearings that Johnson was guilty, that she had the full backing of the PM and therefore the Gov to chair the committee. https://t.co/IYV88V6tVN— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries () June 20, 2023But Dorries seems to have forgotten when she posted her tweet that it was not Rishi Sunak who was in No 10 when it approved the Harman appointment, but Johnson himself.Updated at 17.46 BSTGeneration of children have been damaged by experience of lockdown, former chief medical officer tells Covid inquiryDame Sally Davies, who was chief medical officer for England between 2010 and 2019, told the Covid inquiry this afternoon that a generation of children had been damaged by Covid, and the experience of lockdown.Davies, who is now master of a Cambridge college, said that, in planning for a possible pandemic, no thought had been given to the prospect of lockdown, said:
It’s clear that no one thought about lockdown. I still think we should have locked down, although a week earlier. But during that we should have thought do we need to further. The damage I now see to children and students from Covid and the educational impact tells me that education has a terrific amount of work to do.
We have damaged a generation and it is awful as head of a college in Cambridge watching these young people struggle.
I know in preschools they haven’t learned how to socialise and play properly, they haven’t learned how to read at school. We must have plans for them.
Peers inflict two further defeats on government on retained EU law bill as 'ping pong' continuesIn the House of Lords peers have just inflicted two further defeats on the government over the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill. It is the third time the bill has been sent from the House of Commons to the Lords, and by this stage of “ping pong” peers are often minded to back down and let the elected house have its way. But at the moment they are digging in.The government lost on two amendments where peers are insisting on safeguards to the bill, which was originally intended to ensure that all remaining EU regulations would lapse by the end of the year, unless ministers chose to keep or reform then, until Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, significantly watered down what was planned.One amendment would ensure that any new regulations replacing EU environmental regulations must not “reduce the level of environmental protection arising from the EU retained law to which the provision relates”. It would also ensure that ministers have to take expert advice when drafting replacement regulations.Lord Krebs, the crossbencher, academic and former president of the British Science Association who proposed the amendment, said he had tried “very hard” to make his amendment acceptable to the government. He said he was “simply trying to ensure that our environmental protections are not weakened”. His amendment was passed by 232 votes to 187 – a majority of 45.Lord Krebs. Photograph: HoLThe second amendment would ensure that, if ministers wanted to use secondary legislation under the powers in the bill to change EU law, they would have to consult a joint committee of MPs and peers, and that if that committee ruled the changes were “substantial”, the Commons and the Lords would get to vote on them. This was passed by 241 votes to 181 – a majority of 60.The Green party peer Jenny Jones posted this on Twitter after the votes.On the #REUL Bill we've had two votes and won both with big margins, sending the Bill back amended yet again to the Commons. But ... Will the Govt listen on the issues of environmental protection and democratic scrutiny?— Jenny Jones () June 20, 2023Updated at 17.03 BSTSturgeon says resigning from SNP would compromise her right to assert she has 'done nothing wrong'Severin CarrellNicola Sturgeon has implied that she will not resign from the Scottish National party following her arrest by police because doing might suggest she was guilty.The former first minister hosted a short press conference with reporters at Holyrood this afternoon to again insist she was wholly innocent of any wrongdoing, nine days after being arrested as a suspect by Police Scotland detectives.Pressed on why she had not resigned the SNP whip at Holyrood or voluntarily suspended her party membership, Sturgeon said she understood that argument – one forcibly put by Michelle Thomson, who was forced to resign the SNP whip in 2015 after being implicated in a mortgage misselling investigation.But Sturgeon has rejected it. She said:
What that would do, I think, would be to compromise my ability and my right to assert the position that I hold absolutely, which is that I have done nothing wrong.
Thomson and other Sturgeon critics believe the former SNP leader is guilty of hypocrisy: two ministers lost the whip after being accused of personal misconduct; several MPs have lost the whip pending investigations into financial or personal misconduct.By being arrested as a suspect as part of Police Scotland’s investigation into the SNP’s handling of over £600,000 in donations, she too has been implicated, her critics argue.Sturgeon said she always put the party’s interests first.
I will always consider, and I consider on an ongoing basis at all times, what’s in the best interest of the SNP – a party I have given my all too, almost my entire life; an organisation that for me is not abstract. It’s made up of my friends, my family, my colleagues.
During a 10-minute question and answer session, Sturgeon also deflected questions on whether her husband, Peter Murrell, the SNP’s former chief executive who was the first to be arrested by police, was innocent of wrongdoing. Sturgeon said:
In a situation like this, I can only speak for myself and I am speaking for myself. There is also a difference between me and my husband. I’m an elected politician. I’m a public servant, and therefore there is an expectation, I think a legitimate expectation on your part, that I make statements and to the best of my ability answer questions; obviously Peter is not in that position.
Nicola Sturgeon speaking to journalists at Holyrood today. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA MediaUpdated at 16.07 BSTSummary of George Osborne's evidence to Covid inquiryHere are the main points from George Osborne’s evidence to the Covid inquiry this morning.
Osborne said austerity, and getting the public finances under control, made the UK better placed to respond to Covid. (See 10.22am.) He said:
The one thing I’m sure of is there’s no point having a contingency plan you can’t pay for.
And absolutely central to all of this is the ability of your economy and your public finances to flex in a crisis.
He said he completely rejected claims that austerity had weakened the UK’s health and social care capacity before Covid. (See 12.40pm.)
And he rejected claims that austerity meant the poor were affected more by Covid. Asked if he was saying there was no link between austerity and Covid disproportionately affecting the most disadvantaged people, he said:
That’s absolutely my contention.
It is true that pandemics will affect poorer people more severely and that is one of the great tragedies, which is why we tried to alleviate poverty and direct services towards them.
I think everything we did to try and ringfence the NHS budget, to provide stable finances so that they were not further affected by a fiscal crisis, things like universal credit which were introduced, all of these things were done to try and protect the poorest part of the population.
He rejected claims that he did not fund the NHS properly. Asked if funding for health was insufficient when he was chancellor, he replied:
No, I don’t accept that. I mean, what I accept is you could spend more money on the NHS, just like you could spend more money on the court system, more money on the school system, more money on the army.
But you have to make a calculation of balancing the resources each of those services get, and the central calculation, which every household has to make, is what can we actually afford, because what’s the revenue that’s coming in?
He said the Treasury had not planned for an emergency that might require a long lockdown – but he said that, even if it had, he was not sure policies like furlough would have been any better. He said:
You’re absolutely right that there was no planning done by the UK Treasury, or indeed as far as I’m aware, any western treasury for asking the entire population to stay at home for months and months on end, essentially depriving large sectors of the economy like hospitality of all their customers for months and months to come …
So yes, planning could have been done for a furlough scheme in advance. I’m not clear, observing it at that point as just a citizen, I’m not clear that would have made a better furlough scheme than the one we actually as a country saw.
He said other countries had also not planned for lockdown. He said:
You’re right that there was no planning in Britain – or indeed as far as I’m aware in France, Germany, the United States, or anywhere like that. It wasn’t a groupthink unique to this country.
There was no assumption that you would mandate that the population to stay at home for months and months on end so there was no planning for a lockdown.
He said that there were “definitely things that we could have done if this threat of a coronavirus pandemic had been identified in advance”, including stockpiling PPE and respirators in hospitals.
George Osborne leaving the Covid inquiry today. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesUpdated at 16.16 BSTIn the Times today Steven Swinford quotes a source close to Boris Johnson saying the former PM wants a truce with Rishi Sunak. Swinford says:
A source close to Johnson said that he wanted to improve his relationship with Sunak and had all but given up on making a political comeback before the next election.
“He’s moving into a different phase,” the source said. “He wants to de-escalate tensions with the government. He believes that his long-term interests are best served by refraining from agitating. He’s in watching and waiting mode. But all of this is conditional on the Sunak government leaving him alone.”
Iain Martin, the Times columnist and publisher of the Reaction website, says there are claims that the Johnson ceasefire is linked to Sunak not voting for the privileges committee’s report.PM abstaining on the Privileges Committee report is odd. He's got stuck into Johnson before. Goodness, he brought him down. Why abstain yesterday? Rumour is the govt did a desperate deal for Johnson to shut it, with the Tories being shredded in the polls and election coming...— Iain Martin () June 20, 2023Updated at 14.07 BSTSome 97,000 households across much of the UK that had their benefits capped included children, PA Media reports. PA says:
The total number of capped households has increased by 3% in the latest quarter, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) statistics.
This means there were 2,900 more households subject to the benefit cap across England, Scotland and Wales as of February 2023 compared with November 2022 last year.
Around 114,000 households had their benefits capped as of February 2023 and 86% of these included children.
Some 70% of households that had their benefits capped are single-parent families, the DWP said.
Action for Children said the cap – which was introduced in April 2013 and means the amount of benefit a household receives is reduced to ensure claimants do not receive more than the cap limit – “causes immense harm by unjustifiably pushing struggling families deeper into poverty”.
Benefit cap levels have recently gone up, but during the period covered by these figures the cap was £20,000 a year (or £13,400 for single adults with no children) nationally, and £23,000 a year (or £15,410 for single adults with no children) in London.Hunt rules out mortgage interest tax relief helpAt Treasury questions today Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, ruled out providing large-scale assistance to mortgage payers, through tax relief on their mortgage payments. Graeme Wearden has more on this story on his business live blog.Updated at 13.41 BSTNadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, has said she is “disappointed” by the report from the independent expert panel rejecting her complaint that she was bullied on Twitter by the SNP MP John Nicolson. (See 1.10pm.)In any workplace other than Parliament where the rule of law, not privilege applies, Nicholson would have been instantly dismissed.— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries () June 20, 2023
I’m disappointed that the Standards Commissioners verdict has been overturned in this way. It seems strange to me that it can be done on the basis of 'new evidence' which I have not seen or been given the opportunity to respond to.— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries () June 20, 2023
Once again, a shadow of doubt cast over Parliamentary process and the conduct of individual MPs.— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries () June 20, 2023
At the Covid inquiry George Osborne was also asked about an Institute for Government report saying austerity had left the public services in a poor state to respond to the pandemic. As my colleague Ben Quinn reports, he did not accept that.Osborne was asked about this finding. 'is it a picture you recognise?""The short answer is no. By the time i left office there were more doctors, nurses... and public satisfaction had remained constant.. " pic.twitter.com/ehJvhZWHj3— Ben Quinn () June 20, 2023Osborne has finished giving evidence now. I will post a summary of what he said soon.Here is John Crace’s take.George Osborne seems to have identified a new unsung hero of the Covid pandemic. A certain George Osborne— John Crace () June 20, 2023Updated at 13.24 BSTWatchdog rejects Nadine Dorries' complaint about Twitter bullying by SNP MP, partly due to her own tweeting recordThe SNP MP John Nicolson has been cleared of bullying and harassing Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, on Twitter.The parliamentary commissioner for standards, Daniel Greenberg, originally considered Dorries’ complaint about Nicolson, and he concluded that the SNP MP had bullied Dorries when she was culture secretary. Dorries submitted her complaint in October 2022, and it related to tweets sent by Nicolson in November 2021, after Dorries gave evidence to the Commons culture committee, on which Nicolson sits.In a summary of the key complaints, today’s independent expert panel report says:
They were that over a 24-hour period in November 2021, Mr Nicolson had tweeted, liked or retweeted disparaging material about Nadine Dorries 168 times and that in the course of that time, he had “liked” tweets which described Ms Dorries as “grotesque”, a “vacuous goon”, and as having been “ragdolled” by him during parliamentary exchanges.
The complaint was originally investigated by an investigator appointed under parliament’s independent complaints and grievance scheme. The investigator said Nicolson had not broken bullying rules, but Greenberg disagreed and said Nicolson’s conduct amounted to bullying and harassment.Greenberg said Nicolson’s tweets amounted to “offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour” and that as a result Dorries was “left feeling vulnerable, upset, undermined, humiliated, denigrated or threatened”.But Nicolson appealed to the independent expert panel, and in its report today the IEP says what the MP did should not count as bullying and harassment. The IEP said there were three reasons why it thought Greenberg’s ruling was flawed.1) Greenberg did not enough account of the importance of MPs being able to engage in “legitimate political activity”.2) Greenberg did not make enough allowance for Dorries’ own record of aggressive tweeting.3) Greenberg did not take into account when Dorries submitted her complaint.The IEP pointed out that Dorries only submitted her complaint in 2022, almost a year after Nicolson posted his messages on Twitter, but shortly after the Commons culture committee criticised her for making false claims about Channel 4 faking a reality TV documentary.And the IEP also said that Dorries’ own Twitter use suggested that she was not quite as shocked by Nicolson’s tweets as she suggested. The IEP said:
The question whether she was genuinely shocked or disturbed is obviously capable of being affected by her own behaviour. If her own use of Twitter might at times be thought aggressive, or even threatening, it would suggest it was less likely that she was affected as she claimed …
Some of the evidence provided to us demonstrates that the complainant herself has used strong language in tweeting, and that she has lodged complaints about others in the past. On one occasion she referred in a tweet to a journalist with whom she has had a sustained difficult relationship as “an apologist for Islamic atrocities”. She then complained about the journalist to his employers. The complaint was dismissed. On another occasion a tabloid journalist was investigating the funding of the complainant’s office and payments to one of her daughters. A press photographer took photographs of the complainant’s (adult) daughter in the street near her home. Subsequently the complainant tweeted that she would “nail [the journalist’s] balls to the floor using [the journalist’s] own front teeth”. She explained this to the investigator by saying the photographer had taken photographs of her “teenage” daughter “inside her house”. The complainant lodged a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which was rejected.
Updated at 13.17 BSTNo 10 still refuses to say whether or not Sunak agrees with privileges committee report saying Boris Johnson lied to MPsOn the Today programme this morning Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said that Rishi Sunak would answer questions about the privileges committee report into Boris Johnson in due course. (See 9.22am.)As if, as the young people might say. At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson was asked if he would finally say whether or not Sunak agreed with the committee’s report. The spokesperson implied that Sunak is still in Trappist monk mode on this issue. He told reporters:
The prime minister thanks the committee for their thorough work and fully respects the decision of the house on this matter. He has made clear it was rightly a matter for parliament and not for government.
The spokesperson would not say how Sunak would have voted if he had been in the Commons for last night’s vote.Asked if Sunak thought Boris Johnson did mislead MPs about Partygate, the spokesperson replied:
He respects the decision the house has come to, this follows extensive work by the committee, but beyond that I don’t have anything more to add.
Asked if Sunak thought the matter was now closed, the spokesperson replied: “Yes.”Osborne says he completely rejects claims austerity weakened UK's health and social care capacityAt the Covid inquiry, Kate Blackwell KC asked George Osborne if he agreed that his austerity policies had left the UK with “a depleted health and social care capacity, and rising inequality”.Osborne replied:
Most certainly not. I completely reject that.
I would make two points. The first of all, it is not surprising that the biggest economic crash that Britain experienced since the 1930s has an impact on Britain and on poverty and on unemployment, and on people’s life chances. That’s unfortunately what happens when your country experiences such a massive economic shock as we experienced in 2008-9.
What flows from that is a whole set of things. And one of them is seriously impaired public finances which you then have to repair and that is what we set about doing.
I would say if we had not done that, Britain would have been more exposed, not just to future things like the coronavirus pandemic, but indeed to the fiscal crisis which very rapidly followed in countries across Europe, such as Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, all across the continent …
If we had not had a clear plan to put the public finances on a sustainable path, then Britain might have experienced a fiscal crisis, we would not have had the fiscal space to deal with the coronavirus pandemic when it hit seven years later.
And indeed, as Mr Cameron pointed out yesterday, the example in many of those countries that did have those crises was there were real cuts in health services and other public services that went far beyond what the UK experienced. In the case of the NHS, actually budgets went up in real terms.
Updated at 13.08 BSTEconomists paid 'far too little' attention to risk of global pandemic, OBR chief tells Covid inquiryThe committee has just displayed this extract from the witness statement from Richard Hughes, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility. In it, Hughes says economists paid “far too little” attention to the risk of a global pandemic in the decade before Covid.Extract from witness statement from Richard Hughes, head of OBR Photograph: Covid inquiry(I’m sorry I do not have a clearer version. The inquiry has not published this yet.)Osborne quotes from a witness statement given to the Covid inquiry by Richard Hughes, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Hughes’s statement has not been published, but Osborne quotes him as saying:
In the absence of perfect foresight, fiscal space may be the most valuable risk tool above all.
Osborne says this backs up his argument (see 10.22am) about how improving the state of the public finances put the country in a better position to deal with the pandemic.Osborne says other countries could not afford a lockdown because they were not as economically strong as the UK.Osborne says Treasury had not planned for long lockdown - but says furlough scheme would not have been better if it hadGeorge Osborne says it is hard to imagine a crisis like Covid not also turning into a financial or fiscal crisis.Q: Do you agree that the Treasury had not been planning for external shocks that could affect the economy?Osborne says the UK had an influenza plan. The Treasury had looked at the impact of that – the hit to GDP, and the impact of people being off work for a week or two.The Treasury had the capacity to deal with that, he says.For example, he says it had considered supply chain issues.But Osborne says no planning had been done for the impact of the entire population being asked to stay at home for months. He says no other country had planned for that either.If the Treasury had been asked to prepare for a lockdown lasting months, it would have prepared policies like furlough, he says.In the event, he says it turned out to be relatively easy to put schemes like furlough in place.Planning could have been done in advance, he says. But he goes on:
I’m not clear that would have made for a better furlough scheme than the one we actually saw.
Kate Blackwell KC is questioning George Osborne on behalf of the inquiry.She starts by saying this hearing is not about the merits of Osborne’s economic policy. It will only cover austerity in so far as it is relevant to the pandemic, she says.