Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
And on the subject of the trade talks with the EU, Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister who is overseeing the “future partnership” stage of Brexit, has issued a parliamentary written statement about the first round of the talks that ended on Thursday last week. Here is an excerpt.
Discussions in some areas identified a degree of common understanding of the ground that future talks could cover. In other areas, notably fisheries, governance and dispute settlement, and the so-called “level playing field”, there were, as expected, significant differences.
The next negotiating round will take place on 18-20 March in London. The UK expects to table a number of legal texts, including a draft FTA, beforehand.
During a press conference this morning Urusla von der Leyen, the European commission president, said the UK had to make up its mind about what it wanted from the talks on the post-Brexit trade relationship with the EU. She said:
We are aware that there are differences in the approach towards what scope should the future agreement have and what are - if I may say so - the rules of the game everybody has to abide to.
So it will be important that the United Kingdom makes up its mind; the closer they want to have access to the single market, the more they have to play by the rules that are the rules of the single market.
I think the UK has made up its mind very decisively, and has been very clear about what it wants from its future relationship with the EU. The UK’s position is the one which secured a significant majority for the prime minister in the December general election.
We’re getting an urgent question on coronavirus at 3.30pm.
One UQ at 3:30pm:
1. @JonAshworth to ask @MattHancock to make a statement on Coronavirus.
There is a summary of all the main coronavirus lines from the No 10 lobby briefing here.
But the Mirror’s Dan Bloom sums it all up in a single tweet here.
No10 briefing lasted 45 min - lots of detail but summary is it’s clear there is NO new UK govt advice and/or action enacted at this point. That could obv change. But as of 1pm public sphere remains open and older people not advised to do anything special (other than hand washing)
Q: Is the government committed to retaining free school meals for the under 7s?
The spokesman says he is not aware of any suggestion that it isn’t. When it is put to him that this has been seen as a budget option, he says he has not seen that, and won’t comment on budget matters.
Q: Do you think the EU is listening to what the UK wants from the Brexit talks? Ursula von der Leyen said this morning the UK needed to make up its mind what it wants?
The spokesman says the UK has been very clear about what it wants.
Q: Does the government support the bid by Tory MPs to impose a deadline by which Huawei’s involvement in 5G should end?
The spokesman says, although the government has set a 35% cap on Huawei’s involvement, it wants to reduce this, so that the UK isn’t reliant on Huawei.
Q: Why did the PM say last year he had a plan for social care when it was clear from the letter sent out on Friday that there is no plan?
That is a reference to this letter.
Today I’ve written to colleagues in all parties to initiate talks on social care. We will seek a cross-party consensus - and deliver much needed reform pic.twitter.com/COmON799xs
Q: This morning Oliver Dowden suggested cabin crew staff were getting training to spot symptoms. But the union that represents them denied this?
The spokesman says he thinks staff have been given advice on this.
Q: Will people brought back from the Grand Princess have to go into isolation?
The spokesman says the passengers themselves will be told first.
Q: Didn’t the CMO tell elderly people on Thursday to stay away from public places?
The spokesman says he does not have the CMO’s words to hand, but whatever he said would have been sensible, the spokesman says.
Q: Are elderly people being told they do not need to stay at home?
The spokesman says the government will be led by the evidence. If there is any further advice, it will be issued.
Q: How will the government identify people must vulnerable to the disease? And what about elderly people who may not be online?
The spokesman says the government is aware of this. He says advice will be issued in due course. This issue is being “actively worked on”, he says.
The spokesman says the government has been very transparent so far in terms of publishing information. That will continue, he says.
Q: What did you mean when you said earlier that the virus will spread in a significant way?
The spokesman says the number of cases is increasing. We have had the first fatalities in the UK, and it is clear that it is spreading in country.
Q: Is there a meeting planned between the government and Premier League broadcasters?
The spokesman says DCMS held a meeting with a range of sporting bodies this morning.
The spokesman says the environment department will be speaking to supermarket companies about what measures can be taken to ensure supplies to shops.
Q: Is the PM worried about the stock market crash?
The spokesman says the Bank of England has said it will take all steps necessary to protect the economy. He says the underlying fundamentals of the economy are strong.
Q: Would the PM urge people to stop panic buying?
The spokesman refers to what the PM said yesterday. He says the UK has a “resilient supply change”. The government will work to ensure that remains the case.
Q: What do you say to people who will be looking at what is happening in the UK and concluding the government is slow to act?
The spokesman says the government has been working on the basis of the best medical and scientific advice. It will continue to do that, he says.
Q: Will the local elections be delayed?
The spokesman says this is a matter for the Electoral Commission to advise on, but he says he is not aware of any plans for this.
The spokesman says the Foreign Office is working intensively with the US authorities on what can be done to bring home the 142 Britons on the Grand Princess cruise ship.
Q: Why did it take the Foreign Office so long to update its travel advice after the Italian quarantine decision?
The spokesman says the Foreign Office went through its normal decision making progress.
Q: Is the government considering stopping flights to the UK from the quarantined areas in Italy?
The spokesman says anyone returning to the UK from the quarantined areas of Italy should self-isolate, regardless of whether they are showing symptoms. And anyone returning to the UK from other parts of Italy should self-isolate if they develop symptoms.
Q: When is the government likely to announce further measures?
The spokesman says he does not want to pre-empt what happens. But he expects a SAGE meeting tomorrow, and a further Cobra meeting on Wednesday.
Q: Will you be giving out advice aimed at specific age groups?
The spokesman says, when the government does issue advice, it will come from the experts.
The prime minister’s spokesman is here.
He says the PM has been chairing Cobra. The chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser were there. A range of measures to contain and delay the spread of coronavirus were discussed.
I’m at 9 Downing Street for the regular morning lobby briefing, which is due to start at 12.30pm. The prime minister’s spokesman will be briefing on normal government business, but also on this morning’s meeting of the Cobra emergency committee, chaired by Boris Johnson, to discuss coronavirus.
The embargo on the briefing is normally lifted soon after it starts.
One of the main aims of Boris Johnson’s government is to “level up” Britain and the budget on Wednesday may by the first big chance for the government to show what it actually means (or it would have been, if circumstances had not evolved to mean that it will largely become a coronavirus rescue plan instead).
But what does “levelling up” actually mean, and how will anyone be able to tell in 2024 whether it has been accomplished successfully. In his interview with Andrew Marr (pdf) yesterday Rishi Sunak, the new chancellor, was unable to give a very good answer. He said that levelling up was about “spreading opportunity” (something to which almost every government in the democratic age has been committed). When Marr pressed him on this again, and asked how he would measure “levelling up”, Sunak replied:
You’ll be able to, of course, measure it in the stats of income growth and everything else. You’ll be able to measure it in whether we’re making our investments in infrastructure as we’ve said ... But, as I say, it’s about a feeling that people have that where they happen to be born, where they happen to grow up is not going to be the determinant of how well they do in life. It’s because, wherever they are, we’ve provided them with the opportunities. Whether it’s through education, whether it’s through skills, whether it’s through a better bus connection that gets them to a better job, we’re doing all of that, and that’s meant that their life is better off.
Currently, investment spending per head is higher in London than anywhere else in the country: £1,456 per head in London, versus an average of £891 in the rest of the UK, and just £621 per head in the East Midlands.. Transport, which will be of particular importance for productivity growth, is a key driver of differences in spending across the country: at £653 per head, transport investment is 2.5 times higher in London than the average £260 per head in the rest of the UK.
Rewriting the rules that govern which projects receive funding to place greater weight on regional equity could be one way of rebalancing government investment away from London and the South East, and towards other parts of the country. ‘Levelling up’ in this respect could come with a hefty price tag: raising transport investment per head across the UK to the current London level would mean spending an extra £19bn per year.
For an alternative view, this is what the Labour MP Khalid Mahmood says about Trevor Phillips’s suspension from the party in a foreword to the Policy Exchange report published this morning. (See 10.01am and 11.10am.) Mahmood says:
It was with no small measure of astonishment that I learnt that my own party, the Labour party, had initiated proceedings against Trevor Phillips on grounds of ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’. The charges are so outlandish as to bring disrepute on all involved in making them; and I fear they further add to the sense that we, as a party, have badly lost our way.
Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.
And these are from Sayeeda Warsi, the former Conservative party chair, who is a longstanding campaigner against Islamophobia in her own party and elsewhere. She does not mention Trevor Phillips by name, but it is fairly obvious that her comments are aimed at him.
Monday morning class for racists - it’s 2020 people ♀️
- If you take a negative characteristic of an individual and impose on a whole community that’s racism
- personal anecdotes are not justifications for racism - it’s still racism
Explaining #racismfordummies
- the “racialisation” of a group is how we stereotype and demonise groups/communities not whether they all share the same skin colour
- exceptionalising a group in either policy or law is racism
Explaining #racismfordummies
- if you find yourself in step with far right narratives the probability is you are racist
- if you are a darling of the sections of the press and think tank world that has form for bigotry - update your #antiracism training
Explaining #racismfordummies
These are from Miqdaad Versi, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, on the Trevor Phillips’ suspension.
On @BBCr4today at 8:30am, I discussed Trevor Phillips' ongoing unfounded claims about Muslims that not only align with far-right Islamophobes but are used by far-right Islamophobes to justify their divisive hatefulness and targeting of Muslims. pic.twitter.com/B63p8ZHQuf
In particular, note how Phillips' claim of an estimated 100,000 British Muslims admit having sympathy with suicide bombers fighting injustice, is just flawed.
Using that methodology, would mean, 600,000 non-Muslim Brits would have the same sympathyhttps://t.co/JzJIxQo21i
That Phillips treated Muslims differently from others (the very basis of claims of discrimination), is highlighted by Conservative commentator Peter Obornehttps://t.co/Lw5pIn7BSw
It is this very divisive notion that he propagates that "Muslims are not like us" which is hugely problematic.
See Kenan Malik's response here:https://t.co/DAHw6rrz23 pic.twitter.com/NIwyai4ptE
What Phillips consistently does is create a special category for Muslims - that we are uniquely bad (as set out above), but also as shown in this report below.
e.g. we are "resistant to the traditional process of integration"https://t.co/dIc5luX6cf pic.twitter.com/eedL5CEOJw
When railing against Muslim communities, he talks about "ghettoes" and how Muslims don't integrate.
The facts suggest:
(A) Muslims aren't unique in integration challenges
(B) Muslims are becoming less concentrated in certain areashttps://t.co/6BQtZRKEx8https://t.co/bTWhedq9cE pic.twitter.com/Ybr0JihcE5
His core message echoes that of far-right Islamophobes (e.g. Tommy Robinson) on Muslims being:
1. Apart from rest of society
2. Dangerous e.g. can't foster Christian girl
3. Uniquely unwilling to integrate
4. Unwilling to report terrorism / sympathy with terrorists
It's dangerous pic.twitter.com/VxVj8hGJXr
I am not going to comment on the timing of the suspension, nor on the priority given to him over others.
But those who try and make out Trevor Phillips has *nothing* to answer for, are being either disingenuous, or don't care about what he says concerning Muslims.
The Policy Exchange report (pdf) includes the text of the letter sent to Trevor Phillips by Labour’s governance and legal unit explaining why he has been suspended for alleged Islamophobia. The letter is quite long and detailed, but it accuses Phillips of breaking four specific party rules, all relating to Islamophobia or prejudice against race and religion generally. To justify these allegations, the letter cites numerous alleged offensive passages, which come from five sources: a transcript of a Tory conference fringe event on Islamophobia, an article for Unherd, a Mail report of what Phillips said at Policy Exchange event, a report quoting what Phillips said in an article in the Sunday Times, and a report (pdf) Phillips wrote for the Civitas thinktank four years ago, called Race and Faith: The Deafening Silence.
Some of the alleged offensive remarks are very particular: a reference to Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech, which Phillips says is taken out of context, and a joke by Phillips about being nominated for “Islamophobe of the year” by an Iranian human rights body. But most of the complaints relate to two sorts of comment that Phillips has been making in recent years.
Muslim communities are not like others in Britain and the country should accept they will never integrate, the former head of the equalities watchdog has claimed. Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said it was disrespectful to assume that Muslim communities would change. He told a meeting at the Policy Exchange think tank in Westminster on Monday that Muslims ‘see the world differently from the rest of us’.
At a recent conference of Muslim scholars, I had the privilege of addressing a hundred or so people at a leading British university. Most of the audience were Muslims themselves. The event took place just a few days before Remembrance Sunday. I noted that just three people in the room displayed a poppy, myself, a (white) journalist and one Muslim attendee. Raising the point, I could see the incomprehension on the faces of those without poppies; they weren’t meaning to offend, but as a group, they couldn’t see why they should wear what – I imagine – they think of as a symbol of war. The same day, I visited an industrial site – where many immigrants, mostly African and Eastern Europeans, were working. Poppies were everywhere. The norms in these two places were wholly different. One group had clearly adapted to the mainstream; the other had not.
But the most sensitive cause of conflict in recent years has been the collision between majority norms and the behaviours of some Muslim groups. In particular, the exposure of systematic and longstanding abuse by men, mostly of Pakistani Muslim origin in the North of England.
Did the disputes committee know of, or consider the specific context of the allegations? For example, did the committee discuss the likelihood that a party member of over a quarter of a century’s standing, who is himself a person of colour, and whose family heritage includes almost a thousand years of adherence to Islam, would either deliberately or accidentally make any statements that are racist or Islamophobic?
Were the committee provided with any information as to the commissioning and publication of the Runnymede Trust’s 1997 report on Islamophobia; the Parekh Report of 2000 which called for incitement to racial hatred to be extended to protect Muslims; or the successful efforts by the Commission for Racial Equality to bring about the passage (by the last Labour government) of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, protecting Muslims inter alia from acts of incitement? I was chair of each organisation in the relevant periods and personally commissioned and launched the two reports referred to.
Policy Exchange, a rightwing thinktank, has this morning published a report (pdf) on the Labour party accusations against Trevor Phillips called The Trial: the strange case of Trevor Phillips. You can get the gist of it from the subtitle, which is “How the accusation of Islamophobia is used to stifle free speech”.
Phillips has said he is not allowed under Labour rules to disclose the exact nature of the charges against him, but miraculously Policy Exchange has managed to get hold a copy of the party’s letter to Phillips explaining why he has been suspended. It is published in the report as an appendix, along with Phillips’ response.
Here is Trevor Phillips’ interview with the Today programme where he was asked about comments he has made that triggered the Labour party’s decision to suspend him for alleged Islamophobia.
"It would be a bit odd if I suddenly decided that because I had been kicked out of the club I couldn't express my beliefs."
Trevor Phillips, ex-chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, denies that his comments about Muslims are racist. #r4Todayhttps://t.co/kQwpWG6kBk pic.twitter.com/HOkC4E7A2g
George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor who now edits the Evening Standard in London, told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that if he were delivering the budget on Wednesday, he would focus on providing short-term help for businesses and individuals affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
If I was chancellor, and I’m sure Rishi [Sunak] is thinking like this, I don’t want some complicated scheme that is going to be working in six months’ time.
I need to use the tools that are available to me right now to help people who are unable to work because their business has shut or they are self-isolating or they have got the virus, and to help those small and medium-sized businesses that will have very limited cash reserves and therefore could go into bankruptcy.
If I was chancellor of the exchequer, I would make this a Budget for the coronavirus, I would do everything I could to vaccinate the economy against what is going to happen.
If we can’t vaccinate people against what is going to happen, I would provide the cash for businesses and individuals that don’t have it at the moment because of the impact of the virus, and try and provide that immunity to the economy going forward.
Good morning. On Thursday last week Boris Johnson told ITV that “the most important message at this stage, as we start to see [coronavirus] spread, is ... as far as possible, it should be business as usual for the overwhelming majority of people in this country”. Journalists who make bold assertions are often taught to include some “cover” in the remarks, some qualification that protects them against the possibility of being 100% wrong, and for Johnson the three words “at this stage” proved very useful. On Thursday morning it may have been, for most people, business as usual. But no one would say that four days later. As ever, Jack Blanchard has a good summary of where we are in his London Playbook briefing.
The oil price crashed 30% when markets opened this morning … as Asian stock markets and US bond yields tumbled dramatically … after Italy sealed off 16m people from the outside world … and France banned all large gatherings of people … and Germany recommended doing the same … while the number of coronavirus cases in Britain leapt by more than 30% in one day … and a third Briton died after contracting the virus … and we now have Tesco rationing the sale of basic groceries … and it’s still only 7 am on Monday morning. Goodness knows what else this week will bring.
Related: Coronavirus live updates: stock markets plunge as infections pass 110,000
Related: FTSE 100 plunges 8.5% on fears of global recession triggered by coronavirus – business live
Related: Trevor Phillips dismayed at Labour suspension over Muslim comments
So what accounts for this extraordinary turn of events? Some will see it as payback by Corbynistas for public criticisms I made of the leadership’s failure to tackle antisemitism in the party. Another possibility is that it’s an attempt to scare the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which I used to lead and which is investigating Labour’s handling of antisemitism. Weaponising Islamophobia to attack political opponents may seem like clever tactics but trying to intimidate a legally independent organisation is pure political gangsterism. Perhaps someone in Labour HQ has been reading up on the Inquisition’s methods; in 1578, one official defined its purpose thus: “That others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.”
I accept that I may not share all the views of Labour’s current leader or even of the majority of members. But I have never belonged to any other party and I have stuck by it through thick and thin. If this is how Labour treats its own family, how might it treat its real opponents if it ever gains power again? It would be a tragedy if, at the very moment we most need a robust and effective opposition, our nation had to endure the spectacle of a great party collapsing into a brutish, authoritarian cult.
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