Afternoon summary
- The television licence could be abolished from 2027, with ministers saying they are “open minded” about how to fund the BBC from that point onwards, suggesting further cuts could be on the cards for the national broadcaster. The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, made the announcement at an event where she also denied claims that the government was submitting the BBC to a “punishment beating” because of its coverage of Brexit and the general election. (See 11.36am.)
- Boris Johnson has failed to give Tory MPs at PMQs they assurance they want that Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network will only be temporary. (See 1.33pm.)
- The home secretary, Priti Patel, has bowed to pressure from rank-and-file police officers and is seeking to rip up changes to bail rules spearheaded by Theresa May. My colleague Jamie Grierson reports, Patel has proposed doubling or trebling the length of pre-charge bail, which since 2017 has been limited to 28 days under changes drawn up by May when she was home secretary and implemented when she was prime minister. The proposals put out to consultation by Patel would delay the point at which magistrates’ approval for the extension of bail is required from three months to six, nine or 12 months.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the
People's PMQs - Snap verdict
Boris Johnson has many faults, but he is not stupid. He is also an accomplished performer who, like most good performers, can tell when he is losing his audience. By the end of this session he looked like someone finding it increasingly hard to pretend that what he was doing was anything other than utterly pointless.
And he was right; it was.
It is never wise to make predictions, but I would be very surprised if this charade is still running after Easter. Johnson would not be the first prime minister to try, and abandon, a new means of communication with the public. Tony Blair tried a weekly podcast, I seem to remember, but gave up very quickly when he realised that no one was listening.
The only half interesting bit was when Johnson started talking about the portraits on the wall and Queen Elizabeth. It was a reminder that, as a TV documentary presenter, Johnson was very watchable. Perhaps he’s missing his old career.
Even Johnson seems to be getting bored now. He thinks it is time to wrap up, but finds one final question.
Q: Will you turn this into a podcast?
Johnson says he does not know about that, but that he will look into it.
He says there will be another PMQs. Isn’t it amazing to have contemporaneous pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, he says. He says Shakespeare performed in front of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth asked for another Falstaff play, and he wrote the Merry Wives of Windsor.
(Johnson started writing a Shakespeare biography, but had to give it up when he became PM.)
And that’s it.
Q: What will you do to cut taxes and help hard-working families?
Johnson says this questioner is the sort of person he really wants to help. He will reduce national insurance contributions. He says that will give everyone a £500 tax cut once the threshold has been lifted to £12,000.
(Johnson does not mention that lifting the threshold to that level is only a long-term Tory aspiration, and not something he committed in the manifesto to doing in this parliament.)
Q: What do you and your government intend to do about the justice system? The judiciary are out of touch. We expect prisoners to serve their full sentences.
Absolutely right, says Johnson. He says he will soon legislate to end the automatic release of terrorist offences.
And the automatic early release of prisoners in jail for serious crimes will also end, he says.
He says the attack in Streatham was terrible.
He says people’s patience with this has come to an end.
He says people will also ask what will happen to these people in jail. It is an important consideration, he says. He says the government must find ways of rehabilitating people.
Terrorist offenders are a special case, he says. He says there are 224 about to come out in the immediate future. But it is hard to tell if they have been de-radicalised.
Q: Can you do more to protect urban trees?
Johnson says he loves trees, and that he is a fanatic about trees. But often people object to trees being planted because they worry about subsidence. He says he thinks the government can plan 50,000 more urban trees.
He says nothing could be lovelier than cycling beneath the dappled light of apple trees.
Q: When will you address the pressure on the NHS? It cannot take any more.
Johnson agrees with the ‘not taking any more’ point.
He says he had a “massive meeting” on this yesterday with Matt Hancock, the health secretary. He says he thinks he can get 50,000 more nurses. More money is going into the NHS, he says. The graph is rising. But he wants to see huge improvements.
Johnson says his points-based immigration system will come into effect next year. He does not want to slam up the drawbridge, he says.
Q: I’m concerned about education. There does not seem to be the investment needed. What are your future intentions?
Johnson says he is putting record sums into education.
(This may be true in cash terms, but is probably questionable in relative terms. Because of inflation, most governments put record amounts into public services in cash terms.)
Boris Johnson's 'People's PMQs'
Boris Johnson is holding another of his ‘People’s PMQs’ on Facebook.
He says he is in the Pillared Room in No 10, which has a picture of Queen Elizabeth I on the wall. Johnson presents her as a forerunner of “global Britain”.
During PMQs the SDLP MP Colum Eastwood asked about a particularly brutal IRA killing 13 years ago. At the time Conor Murphy, the Sinn Fein politician who is now finance minister in Northern Ireland executive, infuriated the family of the victim, Paul Quinn, by claiming that he was “involved in smuggling and criminality”. Eastwood told MPs:
Last week we lost a political giant in Seamus Mallon. He was an outstanding parliamentarian, and a seeker of justice for everyone. One injustice that burned in him until his dying day was the murder of Paul Quinn, who was beaten to death by an IRA gang in 2007. They broke every single bone in his body, to the extent that his mother could not place rosary beads in his hands when he was in his coffin.
In the aftermath, the now finance minister Conor Murphy said that Paul was linked to criminality. That was a lie. Does the prime minister agree that Conor Murphy should retract that lie, publicly apologise, and give any information that he has about Paul’s murder to the Police Service of Northern Ireland?
Boris Johnson did not mention Murphy in his reply. But Murphy has subsequently issued this statement. He said:
I have consistently and unreservedly condemned the murder of Paul Quinn.
Those who murdered him are criminals and need to be brought to justice.
I repeat my call on anyone with any information on his murder to bring it to the Gardaí or the PSNI.
I very much regret comments I made in the aftermath of Paul’s murder which have added to the grief felt by the Quinn family.
I apologise for those remarks and I unreservedly withdraw them.
Once again I offer to meet the Quinn family at a time and place of their convenience.
This will be worth watching.
After interviews with Labour leadership candidates Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy, @afneil will interview Rebecca Long-Bailey and Keir Starmer in an extended #AndrewNeilShow on 4 March, 7pm, BBC Two
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 5, 2020
📺 CATCH UP on earlier interviews here: https://t.co/WGzajf8jss
Here are two more answers from Emily Thornberry’s webchat with Mumsnet. (See 1.24pm.) Thornberry, who is one of four candidates still in the contest (although the only one of the four who has not yet got the enough nominations from members or unions needed to get a place on the final ballot) did not say anything particularly newsy, but she did give some interesting insights into her thinking.
In response to a question about inherited wealth, she said an experience with her mother recently had given her new understanding of why it was important for people to be able to leave money to their children. She said:
I only recently began to understand why people felt so strongly about being able to pass things on to the next generation. My mother who was a great socialist and frankly had very little indeed, wrote on a scrap of pink paper, otherwise known as her will, complete with drawings, how proud she was to be able to pass on some savings to her kids. I was so angry with her because she’d been saving up money from her pension to give me money and I didn’t really need it.
It made me think about this quite a lot, as opposed to my somewhat knee jerk anti-inheritance reaction in the past. But the truth is that if we have a society which is about equality we shouldn’t have people who have a greater chance because their parents have more money.
But it is a question of getting the balance right. Because another truth is that if we do believe in equality fairness and justice, we cannot have families hoarding an amount of wealth and increasingly so. So our tax system shouldn’t just be a tax system were people are taxed fairly, with those with the broadest shoulders paying the most, we also do need to look at wealth when it is passed on from one generation to another to the extent that it currently is.
And, in response to a question from someone worried about “gender identity extremism” and trans rights supposedly undermining women’s rights, Thornberry admitted that her own thinking on this issue had changed. She said:
In the 1970s and 80s I was involved in the feminist movement and at that time we were trying to establish that women could make their own choices that they weren’t in someway ‘lesser men’, that we could do jobs that until then only men had done, that we didn’t have to wear make up, that we didn’t have to get married. We could establish our own identity. I was really proud of being a woman and being part of that movement.
Over the decades things have changed and I have thought about this issue a great deal and have been challenged particularly by the younger generation who have a very different attitude to identity than I did when I was their age. When I was at college there was someone who worked in the catering department. She was known as David the Dinner Lady and we all laughed at her and she was incredibly vulnerable but amazingly brave and I look back at that and I’m ashamed.
I hope our world has moved on and I think the younger generation have a different attitude. I don’t think you need to be worried about your daughter, I think your daughter will grow up in a world that is more tolerant and understanding and perhaps has learnt from feminism that we can all be different and it’s OK.
From the Times’ Steven Swinford
There’s a race to get emergency legislation ending automatic early release of convicted terrorists in place by February 27
— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) February 5, 2020
Another convicted terrorist considered to pose a threat to the public is due for release the following day
Five others are due for release in March
In a story in today’s Evening Standard Jim Armitage says that Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser, lost an internal Downing Street battle with Sajid Javid, the chancellor, over who should be the next head of the Bank of England. Armitage says:
Boris Johnson’s powerful adviser Dominic Cummings pushed hard for Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane to take over from Mark Carney as governor but was overruled by the prime minister after intervention from Chancellor Sajid Javid, the Evening Standard has learned.
Johnson appointed Financial Conduct Authority chief Andrew Bailey instead in a victory for the chancellor amid boiling point tensions with the aide.
Cummings had demanded Haldane for the job due to his more radical tendencies. Haldane has been sounding increasingly on board with the aide’s key messages on “levelling up” the regions. He has been far more outspoken than Bailey, chiming with Cummings’ preference for independent thinkers. However, despite the lobbying, Johnson refused.
The Standard is edited, of course, by George Osborne, the former chancellor, who is a close ally of Javid’s.
The Bank of England story follows another in today’s Times (paywall) by Oliver Wright also suggesting that Cummings might not be quite as powerful in Whitehall as some suggest. Wright says:
[Cummings] vehemently opposed giving the go-ahead to the HS2 rail network that he described as a “disaster zone” and was a hawk on allowing the Chinese tech giant Huawei access to the UK’s 5G networks.
Meanwhile, his radical plan to slim down the cabinet and create a trade and business ministry has also been ditched.
The civil service, well used to political zealots, has also seen off his attempts to bring “weirdos and misfits” into Whitehall, pointing out – respectfully – that even the prime minister’s chief of staff could not recruit civil servants.
He even failed in his more modest proposal to rearrange the Downing Street office space when Mr Johnson decided that he didn’t want to leave his study to become part of a Nasa-style mission control centre.
It has led those, who at first feared Mr Cummings as an almost Rasputin-like power behind Mr Johnson’s throne, to question just how far his writ runs.
Earlier this week Alex Wickham at BuzzFeed also published a detailed account of feuding between Cummings and Javid. Wickham said: “Rumours of [Cummings’] eventual demise in Downing Street have already started up again, with some expecting him to eventually grow frustrated and walk out.”
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn favours Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader and former energy secretary, as a candidate to chair the COP 26 climate change summit, HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports.
Corbyn spokesman on who should chair COP26 talks: "Ed Miliband is certainly who has a strong record and would be an entirely suitable person"@Ed_Miliband
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) February 5, 2020
From the Financial Times’s media reporter Mark Di Stefano
The BBC reaction to Nicky Morgan saying the BBC faces being Blockbuster in a Netflix-world is the punchiest I've seen in a while. pic.twitter.com/i7pSUnm4Lc
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) February 5, 2020
Updated
On the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show this morning Emily Thornberry, a candidate for the Labour leadership, said she would approve of empty homes being seized to tackle the housing crisis. She said:
If you leave a flat empty and you’re not using it then you will lose it ... They would need to justify why it’s been empty for the amount of time that it has.
But if you’re leaving a flat empty for years – which if you go down the Thames, there are all of these developments, all of these big blocks of flats and you go down there at night – none of them have got the lights on. They are all empty.
When she was asked whether she approved of taking private property away from people, Thornberry replied:
Yes. Because they are not being used and because we have a housing crisis. We’ve got people sleeping on the streets, we’ve got homeless families in bed and breakfasts – it’s not right.
Updated
Johnson fails to give Tory MPs assurance they want about Huawei's involvement in UK 5G only being temporary
Twice during PMQs Boris Johnson refused to promise Tory MPs that he would find an alternative 5G provider for the UK so that at some point in the future it could give up using Huawei.
Damian Green, the former first secretary of state, first raised the issue. He asked the PM:
The prime minister is conscious of the very widespread concern in this house about the plans to involve Huawei in 5G networks, concerns that will have only been increased by the news this week that France is building a new 5G network without the involvement of Huawei, following the lead of Australia. If they can do it, we could do it.
Can the prime minister confirm that he wants to reduce Huawei’s involvement over time and can he give a timescale as to when that involvement will hit zero?
Johnson replied:
[Green is] certainly right that we are going to be reducing involvement of Huawei below the 35% market cap, but he’s also right in his general vision, which is one I entirely share.
What has happened is, I’m afraid, a failure of like-minded countries to produce an alternative to the 5G network, except that provided by high-risk vendors, and that is why we are now doubling the science budget and we will be working with some of the countries that he mentions in order to produce exactly that diversification in the market.
Then David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, made a similar point. He asked:
The Australian agencies analysed the involvement of – any, any involvement of – Huawei in their 5G system and determined that any involvement would lead to a major risk of a sabotage and espionage. Can [Johnson) give an undertaking that this country will lead the Five Eyes and Nato to create an alternative to Huawei in the next two years?
Johnson replied:
We, of course, will do nothing to endanger either our critical national security infrastructure or to prejudice co-operation with Five Eyes partners as he has rightly suggested. We will work to ensure that high-risk vendors cannot dominate our market.
Updated
'We cannot be cuddly, hopeless lefties,' says Thornberry
Emily Thornberry, a candidate for the Labour leadership, has been taking part in a webchat with Mumsnet. In one answer she said Labour people must avoid being “cuddly, hopeless lefties”. Being cuddly and leftie were fine, she said - but not hopeless.
. @EmilyThornberry on what Labour needs to do next, and not being 'hopeless lefties' https://t.co/9cOLzYvzej pic.twitter.com/2YOPGNbqPq
— Mumsnet (@MumsnetTowers) February 5, 2020
I will post more from the webchat when it is over.
PMQs - Snap verdict
One of the big events of the year for this government will be the COP 26 climate change summit in Glasgow in November and yesterday, as Boris Johnson formally “launched” it at an event in London, it was clear that it is mired in a mess. It does not have a chair, the costs seem to be overrunning, and even the venue has yet to be fully finalised. Public concern about the climate crisis is rising. And yet, from PMQs, it does not feel as if Johnson considers himself at all vulnerable on this front at this moment. Jeremy Corbyn devoted all his questions to the issue and he made some good points (the most effective, probably, about Johnson’s record as a climate change denier – see 12.12pm and 12.22pm). But he was so scattergun that none of them really stuck, and he did not make much headway against a PM who seemed better briefed than usual (a very low bar). As usual, Johnson’s facts may not stand up to sustained forensic analysis (Full Fact has some useful snap analysis – see below), but at least he was able to show that the government does have a story to tell on climate change.
At this stage in the electoral cycle, Tory MPs pose more of a threat to Johnson than opposition ones, and the most important interventions were probably those from Damian Green and David Davis. They are two former cabinet minsters, from opposite wings of the party, who were both asking for assurances that, notwithstanding the announcement made last week about allowing Huawei a role in building the UK’s 5G network, the government remains committed over the long term to drive it out (or to reduce its market share to zero, as Green put it). Johnson did stress his desire to nurture alternative providers, but twice he refused to commit to forcing Huawei out of the network for good. At some point, probably quite soon, this issue will come to a vote in the Commons, and today Johnson was put on notice that heavyweight Tories are threatening to mobilise against him.
During #PMQs Jeremy Corbyn repeated his claim the govt won’t meet its target of net zero carbon emissions until 2099.
— Full Fact (@FullFact) February 5, 2020
We’re already looking into this claim and will publish something on it soon. [1/2]
The govt aims to meet the target by 2050. So far the UK has exceeded its own targets in cutting emissions compared to 1990 levels, and has made bigger cuts than other G7 countries. But this isn’t expected to be enough to meet future targets.https://t.co/9WVh8ohyXY [2/2]
— Full Fact (@FullFact) February 5, 2020
Boris Johnson said at #PMQs that since 2010 CO2 emissions had been cut on 1990 levels by 42%. He seems to have got his numbers a little muddled but CO2 emissions fell by 39% between 1990 and 2018. [1/2]https://t.co/GuMcStbfgV
— Full Fact (@FullFact) February 5, 2020
He also said that at the same time the economy has grown by 73%. Again the time frame he meant is a little unclear but this figure is correct between 1990 and 2017. Since 2010 the economy has grown by 20%. #PMQs [2/2]https://t.co/ApoNhnUMak
— Full Fact (@FullFact) February 5, 2020
Updated
The SDLP’s Colum Eastwood asks about the involvement of the IRA in the murder of Paul Quinn in 2007. It was claimed Quinn was a criminal, he says. That was a lie, he says.
Johnson says the government will implement the Stormont House agreement so as to provide justice for victims.
The SNP’s Owen Thompson asks when the report into Russian interference in UK elections will be published.
Johnson says it will be published when the intelligence and security committee is reconstituted. He says conspiracy theorists will be disappointed by its conclusions.
Johnson says he is passionate about buses and will “massively increase” the bus network in the Rother Valley.
Labour’s Ruth Jones asks when medicinal cannabis will be available for the families that need it. Will Johnson come and meet some of them who will be in parliament after PMQs.
Johnson says it was this government that legalised medicinal cannabis. He says Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will meet the families.
Johnson says he thinks most people in the country would agree that early release of terrorist offenders has gone too far.
Labour’s Lilian Greenwood asks about a constituent who starved to death when the DWP stopped his benefits. How many more vulnerable claimants will have to die before the government values their cases?
Johnson says this is a tragic case. He says the DWP has allocated millions of pounds to improve the way it handles these vulnerable cases.
David Davis, a Conservative, says the Australian government concluded that any involvement of Huawei was a threat. Will the UK develop an alternative?
Johnson says the government will work to ensure high-risk vendors do not dominate the market.
Suella Braverman, a Conservative, says there has been an explosion of judicial review and judicial activism. Will Johnson address this?
Johnson says the government will protect judicial review, but ensure it is not used to generate needless delay.
Edward Timpson, a Conservative, asks if the government will extend the scheme to give a national insurance holiday to people who take on ex-veterans to cover other groups who find it hard to find employment, like disabled people.
Johnson says he does support this idea. The Tories favour cutting taxes, he says.
Updated
From Business Insider’s Adam Bienkov
Boris Johnson says he takes climate change very seriously.
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) February 5, 2020
Here’s what he wrote back in 2015. #PMQs https://t.co/0gYBui9Neb pic.twitter.com/NmZxneKan7
Labour’s Catherine West asks about the state of school buildings.
Johnson says that is why the government is investing £14bn in education.
Johnson says he supports the idea of a metrolink between Manchester and Bolton.
Johnson says the government is investing immediately on improving bus services. The chancellor has “many more” such investments in the pipeline.
Damian Green, a Conservative, asks about Huawei. He says France is building a 5G network without Huawei. “If they can do it, we can do it.” When will the UK reduce the involvement of Huawei to zero?
Johnson says he does want to reduce Huawei’s share. He says he agrees with Green that there has been a market failure, and he says the UK will be working with countries (like France, he implies) on a competitor.
Corbyn and Johnson clashed over climate change targets - reality check on actual progress here https://t.co/ODA2uB5mpL
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) February 5, 2020
Michael Tomlinson, a Conservative, asks if the government is still committed to the troubled families programme.
Johnson says he is, and that the programme is getting more funding.
Updated
Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, asks if Johnson is trying to impersonate Donald Trump.
Johnson says his speech on Monday was internationalist. There is only one party here with nationalist in its name, he says; the SNP.
Blackford says Johnson does not even know the name of his party. (It is the Scottish National party, not Scottish Nationalist party.) He says the PM is a threat to the NHS. He asks if Johnson will support the SNP’s NHS protection bill.
Johnson says the SNP policy is to rejoin the EU, have a new currency, put up a border at Berwick, and hand over fish.
Darren Henry, a Conservative, asks Johnson is the government will fulfil its manifesto pledges and deliver for the NHS.
Johnson says he is proud the money is now flowing through.
Corbyn says Johnson cut the number of climate attachés in embassies when he was foreign secretary. He says until 2015 Johnson denied climate science.
Johnson says Corbyn wants to confiscate people’s care and prevent them having foreign holidays.
Corbyn says the PM has a vivid imagination. But it has taken over from his memory. He says Johnson once described climate change as a “primitive fear without foundation”. When will he face up to the climate emergency and turn Glasgow into the climate change?
Johnson says this government is showing world leadership in tackling climate change. He says Corbyn mentioned the media. Labour did an inquest into the election, and concluded it was the media that was to blame. He says he won’t do that; he says he is a journalist, and loves journalism.
Corbyn says the government is missing its targets. He says O’Neill said the government was not keeping its promises over the COP 26 summit. What was she talking about?
Johnson says he does not know what Corbyn is talking about. He says CO2 levels have been cut in this country by 42%, while the economy has grown by 73%. That was down to dynamic free market Conservatism. That is his approach; what is Corbyn’s?
Corbyn quotes O’Neill on how voters cannot trust Johnson.
Johnson says Corbyn’s failure to understand what is happening in this country is mind-boggling. He says the north-east leads the world in wind turbine technology. He says reliance on coal has been cut from 70% to 3%, and will fall to zero.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn also starts with a tribute to the police.
On Brexit, he says Britain’s place at a world is at a crossroads. He says he hopes we come together to shape our future and to build a diverse, outward-looking future.
On COP 26, he says Claire O’Neill, the former president of COP 26, said there had been a huge lack of leadership from the government. What did she mean?
Johnson says last year renewable sources produced more energy than carbon sources. Corbyn is just producing hot air, he says.
Corbyn says two former Tory leaders have turned down O’Neill’s job. Why is the PM failing to measure up spectacularly to the challenge of climate change.
Johnson says this is beyond satire. The government is leading the world on this, he says. He says there will be a wonderful summit in Glasgow.
Updated
Jamie Wallis, a Conservative, congratulates the PM on delivering Brexit. Will he ensure jobs are brought to areas like Bridgend that are left behind.
Johnson says he will unite and level up the country.
Boris Johnson starts by paying tribute to the police for their handling of the Streatham attack. The government will shortly introduce emergency legislation, he says.
PMQs
PMQs is about to start.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Diane Abbott criticised for tweet dismissing anti-Bercow bullying allegation
Diane Abbott has been branded “ridiculous” by a union boss after she suggested it was unlikely a former general could have been bullied by John Bercow. (See 9.55am.) Abbott, the shadow home secretary, made her point in a tweet, which she subsequently deleted. But Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said Abbott had shown a “complete failure to understand” the abuse of power in the workplace. He said:
Indeed Diane - faced with an abusive boss, we often advise members to deploy military self-defence tactics.
What a ridiculous comment from an experienced MP, demonstrating blind political partisanship and a complete failure to understand how power is abused in the workplace.
The Labour MP Dan Jarvis, a former soldier, also criticised Abbott. He posted this on Twitter.
Having a distinguished service record does not preclude you from being a victim of workplace bullying.
— Dan Jarvis (@DanJarvisMP) February 5, 2020
All of us in the labour/trade union movement have a responsibility to create a climate where people can voice their concerns & not have their experiences dismissed out of hand. https://t.co/5msivQpnMk
Bercow, of course, has repeatedly denied allegations that he bullied Commons staff.
Updated
My colleague Polly Toynbee is urging people to contribute to the DCMS consultation on decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee.
Here today govt public consultation on BBC licence fee. All you wise people set aside carping and come to defence of this national treasure under attack by Boris. Gripes? Of course, but imagine UK without it. Fox news next... Write in NOW https://t.co/bfdlmD9Asq
— Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) February 5, 2020
Nicky Morgan's Q&A - Summary
Here are the main points from Nicky Morgan’s Q&A. The full text of the culture secretary is not available yet (it should be on the DCMS website soon), but the spiky stuff came in the Q&A.
- Morgan, the culture secretary, rejected claims that the government was giving a “punishment beating” to the BBC. In her speech Morgan announced two policies with profound consequences for the BBC: decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee from April 2022, which could cost it £200m; and possibly replacing the licence free altogether after 2027. (See 10.21am.) When the BBC’s Norman Smith put it to her that this would be seen as a “punishment beating” for the BBC because the government disliked its Brexit and election coverage, she rejected the claim. Smith said:
You say the BBC needs to adapt to the new streaming era. Everyone in the BBC knows that. What I’m not clear about is why you think decriminalising, or moving to a civil enforcement scheme, in any way assists the BBC in meeting that challenge, because the view within the corporation is it weakens the BBC to the tune of £200m a year, quite possibly more. In other words, it puts us in a worse place to meet the challenge. And doesn’t that just underscore the suspicion that really what is going on here is a bit of a punishment beating for the BBC from a government who resent the attitude of the BBC as they see it during the Brexit referendum and the general election? It’s a bit of political payback.
And Morgan replied:
I utterly refute that last suggestion ... If you have to criminalise the non-payment of a licence fee in order for the BBC to have the funding to remain relevant, then that would suggest to me there’s something wrong with the model.
- She rejected claims that opening a debate about the future of the BBC licence fee when its current charter period has another seven years to run was unprecedented. This point was put to her by Lord Birt, the former BBC director general, who used a lengthy question to suggest the government was threatening the BBC’s independence. (See 10.37am.) Morgan did not accept that.
- She urged Downing Street to make peace with Westminster political journalists (aka “the lobby”). The two sides have been in dispute this year over the arrangements in place for government briefings, and it culminated in political journalists walking out of No 10 on Monday when the prime minister’s director of communications, Lee Cain, tried to exclude certain reporters from a briefing. Asked about this, Morgan said:
At the end of the day I don’t think it serves anybody for this as a debate to be continuing. I hope very much that, actually, the best thing would be for the co-chairs of the press lobby here at Westminster to sit down with the director of communications and to work this out because ... actually what’s needed is communicating clearly to the public about the tricky issues that this government is dealing with.
According to at least one account, so far No 10 has been resistant to holding this sort of meeting. (See 10.29am.)
- She refused to defend No 10’s decision not to allow government ministers to appear on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Today on Radio 4. Asked about this by the Telegraph’s Anna Mikhailova, Morgan replied:
Obviously there are decisions taken elsewhere about which programme [ministers appear on]. But ... there is a massive amount of engagement between government ministers and the BBC and different channels, as well as all other broadcasters. So it is not that we are not being questioned by broadcasters.
In answering this question Morgan was less brave than she was two weeks ago, when she implicitly criticised the No 10 tactic when responding to the same question in an interview with Nick Robinson. Here is the Independent’s Tom Peck on Morgan’s answer today.
Oh lovely stuff. The telegraph's @AVMikhailova clean bowls Nicky Morgan, by asking her how, given she thinks the BBC has to "stay relevant, a consistent theme in your speech", should the government be boycotting the today programme, even after a terror attack.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) February 5, 2020
The verbatim answer, I think: “Umm, err, umm, everyone who has wanted to come here today has been welcome to come. Individual decisions taken on particular programmes and err umm err it’s not like we’re not being questioned um.”
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) February 5, 2020
Nicky Morgan, being essentially a decent human being, resoundingly fails to defend the indefensible.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) February 5, 2020
Why she's choosing to do this to herself we can but wonder.
- Morgan said changing broadcasting impartiality rules to allow Fox News-style partisan news channels in the UK was “not on the government’s agenda”. (See 10.42am.) This will come as a relief to the BBC. As my colleague Rowena Mason revealed recently, Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief adviser, used to argue for impartiality rules to be abandoned in anti-BBC blogs around 15 years ago (in which he also made the case for a boycott of Today).
Updated
The Q&A is over. But it was good while it lasted, and much more interesting than the speech itself. I will post a summary shortly.
Q: [From the BBC’s Norman Smith] Everyone in the BBC knows it has to adapt to the digital era. But how will decriminalisation help at all. It will just take revenue from the BBC. It will be seen as a “punishment beating”, and payback for news coverage the government does not like.
Morgan says she does not accept that. She says it is reasonable to consider whether non-payment of the licence fee should be a crime.
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Q: [From the Telegraph] Is is right for the government to boycott the Today programme and its 7 million weekly listeners, particularly in the wake of a terror attack?
Morgan says she is taking questions today.
She says decisions are taken elsewhere about who appears on programmes. But there is a “massive amount” of engagement, she says.
Q: Would the government change broadcasting impartiality rules to allow US-style partisan news?
Morgan says this idea is not part of any of the consultations under way. This is “not on the government’s agenda”.
- Morgan rules out abandoning broadcasting impartiality rules to allow Fox-style partisan news in the UK.
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Q: [From Lord Birt, the former BBC director general] This will be seen an attack on the BBC. The BBC was founded 100 years ago. In the 1920s Churchill wanted to take over the BBC during the general strike. That was a critical event. But both main parties established the BBC under a charter. It has been a peerless, although never perfect, institution. The charter means the government can only review the future of the BBC once a decade or so. But you are now instituting a review outside the charter period. This is pretty much unprecedented. Do you accept that?
Morgan says she does not accept that. She says it is right to review the BBC. There is always a review mid-charter, she says. She says there is a longer debate to be had about the licence fee model. But what she is talking about is decriminalisation of non-payment of the licence fee.
Q: How will you know what the levels of licence fee evasion will be once non-payment is decriminalised? You need to know this before deciding the licence fee settlement.
Morgan says the conversation for 2022 is about the level of the licence fee. The conversation about its future would come later.
She says the BBC has its own figure for how much evasion might cost it. (It is £200m, although she does not mention that.)
Q: This will be perceived as an attack on the BBC. How can trust in the BBC be maintained?
Morgan says her speech should not be seen as an attack on the BBC. It is seen as a beacon around the world, she says.
She says it is the government’s duty to consider if the BBC is being funded in the right way.
Morgan's Q&A
Nicky Morgan is now taking questions.
Q: What do you think of the fact that ministers are banned from some media programmes, and some journalists have been banned from government briefings?
Morgan says the lobby is open to everyone. But she says the government has always held additional technical briefings.
But she says she hopes the row between No 10 and journalists can be ended.
I don’t think it serves anybody for this to be continuing.
UPDATE: From the Sun’s Matt Dathan
Nicky Morgan has just called on No10's director of comms to sit down with the Press Gallery to sort out issues of access to PM speeches & No10 briefings.
— Matt Dathan (@matt_dathan) February 5, 2020
Not sure that's the line No10 wanted her to take given they've refused so far to meet with the Press Gallery over this
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From the BBC’s Norman Smith
The Gloves are off. Govt confirms future of BBC licence fee is on the table in future negotiations
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) February 5, 2020
Morgan says DCMS is making sure that the regulatory environment for broadcasting adapts too.
The legislative underpinning of the PSB system needs to be reviewed, she says.
She says the concept of public service broadcasting should extend beyond just linear TV channels.
Morgan says PSB (public sector broadcasters) remain popular with audiences. But they must adapt to the new era, she says.
Morgan confirms government wants to consider replacing BBC licence fee over long term
Morgan says the licence fee will remain during this charter period, which will end in 2027.
But she says it is important to be “open-minded” about what might come next.
- Morgan confirms that the government wants to consider replacing the BBC licence fee over the long term.
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Morgan says the government will shortly use secondary legislation to make the “simple payment plan” a permanent feature. At the moment the system is just being trialled.
Here is the DCMS explanation of what this involves.
Monthly payment plans are already offered by TV Licensing to pay for a TV licence. However, under current regulations, customers are required to pay for their first year’s TV licence which requires initial payments at double the rate in the first six months (known as ‘front-loading’). The simple payment plan allows eligible vulnerable customers to spread the cost of their first year licence equally over twelve months.
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Morgan says the world in which the BBC operates has “changed beyond recognition” because of the huge increase in the number of people watching TV through a subscription service like Netflix.
She is now turning to the consultation on decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee.
She admits that a review five years ago ruled out decriminalisation.
But at that point a licence was not required to watch programmes downloaded on iPlayer, she says.
Morgan says the media landscape is changing. The only constant is that DCMS secretaries of state keep giving speeches about how the media is changing, she says.
Morgan says broadcasters can also contribute to the government’s aim of spreading opportunity across the whole of the country.
Broadcasters need to ask what they are doing to benefit the whole of the UK, she says.
But she accepts that in some respects this is happening. She says half of ITV staff are outside London. Channel 4 is setting up a hub in Leeds, she says. And half of BBC spending is outside London, she says.
Morgan says the government values the broadcasting sector. It employs 25,000 people directly, and another 50,000 people in the wider broadcasting sector.
The BBC can take risks the commercial sector cannot, she says.
And it provides a pipeline of talent for the commercial sector, she says.
No matter how well funded other broadcasters are, British broadcasters are essential, she says. They can create “shared moments” that bring the country together.
Nicky Morgan's BBC speech
Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary, has just started giving her BBC speech. She is addressing the Policy Exchange thinktank.
There is a live feed at the top of the blog.
She starts with the Blockbuster anecdote she used in her Daily Mail article. See 9.15am.
She says public sector broadcasting is too important to be allowed to go the way of Blockbuster.
Cameron explains why he turned down offer to chair COP 26 climate change conference
David Cameron, the former Conservative prime minister, has explained why he turned down an offer from Boris Johnson to chair the COP 26 global climate change conference in Glasgow in November. Speaking to the BBC, he said there were “a lot of things I have already agreed to do this year, not least the work I do for Alzheimer’s Research UK, so I thought it was important that I carried on with that work”. He went on:
But I wish the government well, I wish this climate change conference well, because it’s absolutely vital. I’m sure that there will be a government minister, or someone, who will be able to do the job and do it very well. The government has my backing as they go forward.
Asked about his relationship with Johnson, Cameron declined to answer.
Giving Bercow peerage would be scandal, says former Black Rod
Giving John Bercow a peerage would be a scandal parliament would struggle to live down, according to the man accusing the former Speaker of bullying and explosive behaviour. As my colleague Kate Proctor reports, Lt Gen David Leakey, who served in the role of Black Rod for seven years, has told the BBC that Bercow’s nomination to sit in the House of Lords by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is inappropriate because of the way he was treated and his behaviour towards other staff members. Kate’s full story is here.
In a sign of the extent to which views on Bercow became polarised in the Commons along party lines (Labour MPs were broadly supportive, not least because Tory MPs became ever more hostile towards him), the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott posted this on Twitter this morning siding with the former Speaker:
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Former Daily Record editor who published no-helpful 'Vow' becomes SNP spin chief
The Scottish National party has hired the former newspaper editor who published “the Vow”, the famous UK leaders’ pledge on extra powers during the independence referendum, as its new chief spin doctor at Holyrood.
Murray Foote, former editor of the Record newspaper in Glasgow, will take over from Fergus Mutch as the SNP’s head of communications at Holyrood after becoming a committed supporter of independence following his retirement as editor in 2018.
Mutch quit after four years in the post to contest West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine during the general election. After narrowly losing to the Tories, by 843 votes, Mutch did not return to his Holyrood post.
A widely-liked and experienced journalist, Foote quit as Record editor not long after his paper was fined a record £80,000 for two contempt of court offences. He will now play a pivotal role in Sturgeon’s efforts to build support for a second independence referendum, deal with any fallout from Alex Salmond’s trial on 14 alleged sex offences (which Salmond denies), and win more seats in the 2021 Holyrood election.
With the Record living up to its traditions as a pro-Labour paper, Foote published the vow on behalf of the then prime minister, David Cameron, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg two days before the referendum, as the yes campaign edged into the lead in the polls.
The vow is infamous in nationalist circles and wrongly credited by some critics for swinging popular opinion in favour of the union. While it galvanised the no campaign, pollsters found it had very little influence on the result, which the no campaign won by more than 10 points.
Its notoriety has since increased, with Nicola Sturgeon and others in the yes camp insisting that Brexit means its central pledge – that Scotland’s prosperity and security would be guaranteed by remaining in the UK, has been comprehensively broken.
Unionists insist the vow has been honoured: it promised “permanent and extensive new powers” for Holyrood; equitable sharing of resources across the UK; full control of NHS spending remaining at Holyrood. A new Scotland act, brokered after cross-party talks involving the SNP, allowed Holyrood to control income tax. Public spending in Scotland is nearly £2,000 per head higher than the UK average, due to higher taxes and Treasury grants.
Foote told the Herald newspaper yesterday he had always favoured independence. “I have always been sympathetic to the cause,” he said. “Anybody who knows me knows - this does not come as a surprise to them.”
On the vow, he said:
I had a job to do. My job was to represent the views of the readership of the Daily Record. That was what I did to the best of my ability, regardless of my political persuasion.
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BBC could end up like Blockbuster unless it adapts to digital era, says culture secretary
The BBC could end up as defunct as Blockbuster unless it finds a new way of remaining relevant and viable in the digital age, Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary, is warning today. The corporation has always been slightly nervous of its prospects under Conservative governments, and relations with Boris Johnson’s government are particularly fraught, partly because Downing Street is boycotting the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Today on Radio 4, for reasons that have never been fully explained in public. Now a cabinet minister is raising the prospect of the BBC facing extinction.
Morgan, who quit the Commons at the last election and now sits in the House of Lords, is making a speech today that will confirm an overnight announcement about how the government is launching a consultation on whether to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. This sounds like one of those consultations where there is little doubt about what the outcome will be. The BBC claims the move could cost it £200m. My colleague Jim Waterson’s overnight story about the plan is here.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has stressed that this is not a consultation about the future of the licence fee funding model in principle. But it does say that, if non-payment is decriminalised, any change in the law would not come into effect until April 2022 and the government would consider the impact of this when starting negotiations on the overall licence fee settlement later this year.
And, in an article for the Daily Mail, Morgan makes it clear that ministers do want to open up a conversation about how the BBC should be funded in the long term. She writes:
Twenty years ago Blockbuster, the then heavyweight of video rentals, turned down a £38m merger offer from Netflix.
Today Netflix is worth £50bn, 1,300 times its offer to Blockbuster – which has gone from 3,000 stores to a museum in Oregon, for people who want to remember what video cassettes look like ...
We need to think carefully about how the BBC – and indeed public service broadcasting more generally – can stay relevant in the years ahead.
As we move into an increasingly digital age, where there are more and more channels to watch and platforms to choose from, it is clear that many people consider it an anachronism that you can be imprisoned effectively for not paying for your TV licence ...
We make no apology for being bold and ambitious. As the world around us changes, our laws must change too. It will require the BBC to be innovative and to move with the times.
We don’t want a beacon of British values and world-class entertainment ending up like Blockbuster.
Morgan has said she will stand down from the cabinet at the reshuffle, which is expected to happen next week (although one theory is that it could come tomorrow). She won’t be around to take the final decisions, although what she says today almost certainly reflects the wider view in government. During the general election campaign Boris Johnson himself confirmed that he was considering scrapping the licence fee, and he suggested it was hard to justify that method of funding the BBC in the modern era. At the time this looked like a transparent attempt to distract the media from a negative story about a boy being forced to sleep on a hospital floor, but it subsequently emerged that BBC funding reform was something he and aides had been mulling over in Downing Street for a while.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary, gives a speech on the future of the BBC.
12pm: Boris Johnson faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.
12.30pm: Emily Thornberry, a candidate for the Labour leadership, takes part in a webchat for Mumsnet.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up.
You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
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