Afternoon summary
- Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, has said that David Cameron’s proposed law to assert the sovereignty of parliament in relation to the EU would be “pointless”. (See 1.58pm.)
- Jamie Reed, the Labour MP, has accused Jeremy Corbyn of showing “chaotic” and “dishonest” leadership over Trident. (See 2.53pm.)
- Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has accused the UK Treasury of trying to “systematically reduce the Scottish budget” as talks over future funding arrangements appear deadlocked. She said the UK and Scottish governments did not have a “shared understanding” of one of the key principles behind proposals for further devolution. Referring to the “no detriment” principle in the Smith commission report (which says that, as Scotland and England adopt different policies after the new devolution settlement, one country should not lose out from what the other does), she said:
I am writing to the prime minister today, seeking to address what I consider to be the central issue of principle that is standing in the way of a deal - the fact that we are currently not working to a shared understanding of what no detriment means.
It has become increasingly clear that what the Treasury seems to want to achieve is an outcome that would systematically reduce the Scottish budget as a result of our differential growth in population, even though the Scotland bill gives us no additional powers to grow our population.
- Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westminster, has said having the EU referendum in June would mean that it would clash with the European Championships. The DUP and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales do not want the referendum in June because the campaign would overlap with the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland elections. But in a Commons debate Dodds said football was another reason for delaying. He told MPs:
Let’s face it, if we’re going to have these issues just because the government has chosen to foist the EU referendum on us at a time when the European Championships are taking place then people will want to concentrate on the football. That’s another good argument for having this debate later.
And given the fact that so many fans from England, Wales and Northern Ireland - sadly not Scotland - will be travelling to France, it’s another good reason to avoid all the extra costs of postal votes and proxy votes and all the rest of it to have it on a different date.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has welcomed the plans to extend Sunday trading. He said:
Extending Sunday trading hours could revolutionise the shopping experience for millions of Londoners and visitors to the city, and build on the capital’s position as an international shopping destination. We will now be working with London’s business community and local authorities to see how this could best work in the capital.
In an article for Huffington Post Paul Ingram, director of the British American Security Information Council (a thinktank working for nuclear disarmament) has written a blog saying technological developments render Trident submarines useless. He said:
If we are to take security seriously, and not simply see our nuclear weapon systems as symbols of our power and status, then they have to work. If they do not they are worse than useless - we end up relying upon an illusion. As I have outlined elsewhere, the emerging threats are serious - our systems, particularly our nuclear submarines, are under significant threat rendering deep doubt on the assurance our concepts of nuclear deterrence rely upon. Just because we believe that they have worked in the past is no clear indication of the future. History is littered with examples of armies failing to wake up to the changes to military technologies and suffering humiliating defeats as a result.
Ingram was on the World at One debating Lord West, the former first sea lord and former Labour security minister. West said he did not agree.
I feel that we need to have the best affordable system at the minimum level to enable us to respond should sometime in the next 50 years someone want to attack us. And we have seen nothing which shows a technological breakthrough. There’s nothing there at all and it’s against the laws of physics.
Would America, would Russia, would China be investing way more than us - I mean billions of pounds - in new ballistic missile submarines if they really thought the seas were transparent?
West also said he would resign the Labour whip if it became a unilateralist party.
Salmond slams Cameron's handling of EU referendum debate
MPs have been debating the timing of the EU referendum, and Alex Salmond, the SNP international affairs spokesman and former Scottish first minister, used his speech to accuse David Cameron of running a dismal campaign to keep Britain in the EU. Salmond, who is also in favour of staying in the EU, offered a vision of what an alternative campaign could look like. He told MPs:
Yesterday’s ludicrous exchange on which side of the Channel a giant refugee camp would be located just about sums up this miserable, irrelevant debate.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter. It would take at least five years to withdraw from European Treaties and by then we could have ten times the number of refugees or none at all. No-one knows how that will affect bi-lateral arrangements between Britain and France. It is a pointless, pathetic, puerile debate typical of a deeply depressing campaign - the political equivalent of a no-score draw.
The lead responsibility for this state of affairs lies with the prime minister. This whole mess is of his creation. The time to propose a referendum when you want to achieve something important like Scottish independence not when you want to achieve nothing at all, like his sham Euro negotiations on points of little substance ...
We need to fight an entirely different campaign in Scotland. What people want to hear is how to build a European future which acts on the environment, which faces down the multi-nationals, which shows solidarity when faced with a refugee crisis, which acts together against austerity, which respects its component nations, which co-operates on great projects like a super grid across the North Sea and which revitalises the concept of a social Europe for all of our citizens.
That is a Europe worth voting for, not Cameron’s teeny, weeny vision of nothing much at all.
Back to Trident, and the Labour MP Jamie Reed has written a particularly harsh blog for Coffee House attacking Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of this issue. Reed accuses Corbyn of “an orgiastic embrace of the chaos theory” (whatever that means) and goes on:
There’s nothing pro-Labour about deliberately choosing to split the party on an issue that the Leadership knows cannot be influenced from a position of Opposition and about which every decision will have been made before 2020.
Worst of all, the leadership has made an informed choice and that choice is to pursue electoral defeat. The leadership knows that an anti-Trident policy will lead to rejection at the ballot box. It knows that this is a litmus test of credibility. The leadership knows that an anti-Trident position means taking a pass on power; it’s an open-armed, wide-eyed, deliberate embrace of the wilderness.
This is a chaotic, dishonest, shambolic process. For the sake of the Labour leadership, for the sake of the party, for the sake of the 9.3 million people who voted Labour at the last election, and for the sake of the country, it should be abandoned without delay.
Cameron's proposed sovereignty law would be 'pointless', says former attorney general
Last week David Cameron signalled that he will introduce some kind of law or measure to assert the sovereignty of parliament in relation to the EU. This is intended, in part at least, to appease Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP and mayor of London, who was been calling for this.
But Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP and former attorney general (senior legal adviser to the government), told the World at One that this would be “pointless”. Asked what Cameron’s plan might achieve, he replied:
All I would say is this: by virtue of the treaties and the acts which followed our treaty of accession, primacy in matters of European law, in its interpretation, is given to the court of justice in Luxembourg. And in those circumstances it is difficult to see how any piece of legislation can alter that without our being in breach of the treaties.
So, any attempt at doing this, I would be interested to see how something beneficial could be achieved without in fact interfering with the treaty obligations which it is quite clear the government doesn’t intend to do.
Grieve said that if Britain did breach European law, it would be taken to the European Court of Justice, and the ECJ could over-ride the relevant national law.
So would any sovereignty measure be pointless, he was asked. He replied:
It would in those circumstances be pointless, but it is not to say, for example, that it isn’t possible to have a dialogue between our own supreme court and the court in Luxembourg in which jurists who are considering the same piece of legislation may exchange views about what the legislation actually means. That’s very desirable in any working justice system.
But at the end of the day the buck stops somewhere. And the treaty of accession, and our own legislation, makes quite clear that it is the court in Luxembourg which has the last word, as indeed it has for every other state which is adherent to the European Union.
(It is comments like this that help to explain why Grieve is a former attorney general.)
Lunchtime summary
- Labour tensions over Trident have erupted again after Emily Thornberry said nuclear submarines may not be able to hide under the sea within a decade, making them as obsolete as Spitfires. As Rowena Mason reports, the shadow defence secretary, who is leading Labour’s review of policy on Trident, made the claim at a stormy meeting of the parliamentary party on Monday night and explained it further on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday. It drew the immediate ire of pro-Trident parliamentarians, with Alan West, the Labour peer and former military chief, taking the unusual step of calling the Today programme to dismiss his colleague’s claims as “nonsense”. The shadow cabinet was due to discuss Trident at its meeting today, but it is understood that that debate has now been put off until a further meeting.
- Theresa May’s draft “snooper’s charter” bill fails to cover all the intrusive spying powers of the security agencies and lacks clarity in its privacy protections, the parliamentary intelligence and security committee has said. Commenting on the committee’s report, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said:
This is a very detailed report. The government will want to take time to look at it and consider it. The whole point of having this pre-legislative scrutiny period is so we can hear the views of others and engage with them to make sure we get this absolutely right.
- Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, has described government plans to extend Sunday trading as “a nightmare scenario”. Sajid Javid, the business secretary, unveiled his proposals today. (See 10.33am.) In response, John Hannett, the Usdaw general secretary, said:
Whilst we accept that there are mixed views about longer Sunday opening in retail sector, we know there is huge opposition to the proposal to devolve the matter to local authorities. The overwhelming majority of retailers do not want to have to deal with nearly 300 different regulatory regimes across the country, it is a nightmare scenario.
- Nick Herbert, the former policing minister, has said that campaigners in favour of leaving the EU have “no idea of what the alternative to EU membership looks like”. In a speech given in his capacity as chair of Conservatives for Reform in Europe, he said:
Some of them want fortress Britain, sulking behind the Channel, while others want to turn the place into a gigantic Hong Kong, open to the world’s capitalists.
While Nigel Farage will mention migrants in every sentence if he can, Douglas Carswell will change the subject from immigration as fast as he can – though both want Britain to model our system on Australia’s, which, Liam Fox admits has allowed a higher rate of immigration per head than ours.
Matthew Elliot, chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, suggests opening our borders not just to Australia, New Zealand and Canada but to the 300 million people of the United States.
Whereas Aaron Banks, who leads another campaign, Leave.EU, argues that “Politicians of all parties have encouraged a total open door policy that has created tensions across Europe” 2 and suggests an immigration cap of 50,000 a year.”
- Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said she has no interest in coming the next UK Tory leader.
Laughing, @RuthDavidsonMP rules herself out of becoming next Tory leader. "Absolutely no interest in the job"#bbcdp https://t.co/vazXlNlb0Q
— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) February 9, 2016
- Lord Bew, the chair of the committee on standards in public life, has told peers that there is no appetite amongst the public for state funding of political parties. He was giving evidence to a committee looking at the impact of the trade union bill on party funding.
Updated
My colleague Owen Jones has written about Labour’s Trident split, and criticised the MPs who heckled Emily Thornberry at last night’s meeting of the PLP. Here’s an extract.
In what other line of work is it acceptable to shout down a colleague because you don’t like their presentation? Here’s the sort of macho, yah-boo circus that deters anyone vaguely normal from wanting to have anything to do with anything political. These same MPs will, undoubtedly, be the first to complain about the Labour leadership briefing against their colleagues. If at a local Labour party meeting – never mind the PLP – a bunch of activists linked to Momentum started trying to shout down their local MP, we might expect it to make national headlines: the thuggish hard-left trying to drown out anyone who disagrees with them.
And here’s his article.
Last night Channel 4 News broadcast the results of a Michael Crick investigation that suggests the Conservatives overspent in three byelections in the last parliament.
Crick has been on the Daily Politics talking about his scoop. He said there were unlikely to be prosecutions, because any prosecutions under the Representation of the People Act would have to take place within 12 months of each byelections, and those deadlines have expired. Some lawyers thought a conspiracy charge might be appropriate, Crick said. But he said the real problem was that no one seemed interested in investigating.
The trouble with this area is that no one really wants to handle it. The Electoral Commission are saying we only handle national spending limits, not the local constituency limits that apply in constituency campaigns. They say that’s the job of returning officers. The returning officers take the return in and look after it and make it available to the public, but they say, ‘Well, it’s not our job to check the returns.’ They say that’s a matter for the police. And the police say, ‘Well, we don’t really want to get involved.’ So nobody really polices any of this. The Electoral Commission has asked for greater powers from the government. But they say the government has not responded.
The Conservatives told Channel 4 News that they declared all byelection spending in accordance with the law. But Crick said the Tories had not explained why the hotel bills he unearthed did not appear in the byelection expense returns.
Crick had some bad news for the Tories. There will be more revelations on Channel 4 News tonight, he said, relating to spending in Thanet South during the general election.
On the subject of Trident, Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has announced the government is committing £201m to spend on designing the new submarines that will replace the Vanguard boats that carry the Trident missiles.
Here is an MoD picture of what the new submarines might look like.
Labour MP Clive Lewis floats idea of sharing nuclear deterrent with the French
The Labour MP Clive Lewis, a shadow energy minister and a prominent Jeremy Corbyn supporter, told BBC News a few minutes ago that there were compromise options available to Labour on Trident. It was not just a choice between renewal and unilateral disarmament, he said.
It was important to remember that the issue facing the Commons was not whether to get rid of Trident, but what to do about replacing it, he said.
And he suggested that Britain could share a nuclear deterrent with the French. This is what he said when he was asked what the compromise options available to Labour might be.
I think the Liberal Democrat review saw some of those options. I think if Emily Thornberry’s review also looks at those, it could be perhaps, for example, going in with the French. It could perhaps be having our own system which is land-based. It could be cruise missile based. There are a number of options that are already out there.
The Lib Dem option refers to keeping a submarine-based Trident system, but not ordering another four boats. This would mean not having a submarine on patrol at all times, or “stepping down the nuclear ladder”, as the Lib Dems described it.
The Labour MP Madeleine Moon, a member of the Commons defence committee (and author of the most expressive political tweet of 2016 - see 8.57am) told BBC News earlier that she did not think that Labour’s Trident review was “honest” because Emily Thornberry, the shadow defence secetary, was not open-minded about nuclear weapons.
Labour’s policy is very clear; we actually support the renewal of the deterrent. That’s our position. What worries me is you can’t have an open and honest debate if what you are saying is ‘I would never use the deterrent, I don’t support the deterrent, but I’m doing the review.’ Now, that is not an open and honest discussion. It’s perfectly valid to have a position where you don’t support Trident, that’s valid, but to say that your position is that you’re willing to discuss it when clearly you’re not, is not honest. That upsets me a great deal.
In her interview earlier (see 9.46am) Thornberry rejected this. She said that the choice about Trident was not a binary, yes/no one, and that “other options” were available.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has put out a statement saying it has a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, this afternoon “to speak about areas of interest and concern to the British Jewish community including Labour’s attitudes to antisemitism and extremism, Israel and Middle East, religious freedoms and faith schools”. It says it will issue a statement after the meeting.
Intelligence committee criticises May for treating privacy as 'an add-on' in 'snooper's charter'
Here are the key points from the intelligence and security committee’s report on the investigatory powers bill (the new version of legislation originally dubbed the snooper’s charter).
Dominic Grieve, the committees’ new chairman, is a former attorney general and one of the more robust libertarians in the Conservative party. That shows in this result, which has much more emphasis on privacy than previous reports from the committee (which used to be chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind.)
- The ISC criticises Theresa May, the home secretary, for treating privacy as an “add-on” issue in the bill, not a central concern.
We had expected to find universal privacy protections applied consistently throughout, or at least an overarching statement at the forefront of the legislation. Instead, the draft Bill adopts a rather piecemeal approach, which lacks clarity and undermines the importance of the safeguards associated with these powers. We have therefore recommended that the new legislation contains an entirely new part dedicated to overarching privacy protections, which should form the backbone of the draft legislation around which the exceptional powers are then built. This will ensure that privacy is an integral part of the legislation rather than an add-on.
- It says the bill does not clarify the law on surveillance satisfactorily.
Taken as a whole, the draft Bill fails to deliver the clarity that is so badly needed in this area. The issues under consideration are undoubtedly complex, however it has been evident that even those working on the legislation have not always been clear as to what the provisions are intended to achieve. The draft bill appears to have suffered from a lack of sufficient time and preparation.
- It says the intelligence agencies should not be able to get “bulk equipment interference warrants” (wide-ranging warrants allowing computer hacking). The targeted equipment interference warrants that are available should be satisfactory, it says.
- It says intelligence agencies wanting access to personal datasets (databases containing information about potentially millions of people) should have to get a warrant for each dataset they want to access. Class bulk personal dataset warrants (allowing access to them all) should not be available.
- It says that the bill should ensure that all computer hacking operations (“equipment interference”) are covered by the same laws, not different laws as under the bill.
Updated
Parliament’s intelligence and security committee has published its report on the draft investigatory powers bill.
Here is its news release.
And here is the full 13-page report.
Javid says relaxing Sunday trading laws will lead to a 'significant boost in jobs'
Sajid Javid, the business secretary, has confirmed that the government will press ahead with legislation to allow councils to extend Sunday trading in their areas. In a written ministerial statement, he said that a consultation showed that a “majority of respondents from local authorities, business representative organisations and large and medium businesses” were in favour.
This could lead to a “significant boost in jobs”, he said.
These measures will help our local high street retailers not just to survive but to thrive. Online sales did not even exist when the current legislation was first brought in, but they now account for a significant share of the retail market and continue to grow strongly; 15% in 2015.
This change could lead to a significant boost in jobs. It has been estimated that a two hour extension to Sunday trading in the West End and Knightsbridge alone would lead to the creation of between 1,070 and 2,160 jobs.
He also announced measures that marginally strengthen the rights that workers have to opt-out of Sunday working.
Sir Peter Ricketts, who was Britain’s ambassador to France until last month, has backed David Cameron’s claim that leaving the EU could lead to the Calais migrants camp coming to the UK, Rowena Mason reports.
Emily Thornberry's Today interview - Summary
Here are the main points from the Today programme interview with Emily Thornberry, the shadow defence secretary.
- Thornberry hinted that Labour would advise its MPs to abstain when the government holds a vote on Trident renewal. The debate is expected within the next few weeks. But Thornberry said a “main gate” vote (giving final approval to Trident renewal) was not necessary, and that they government would only be holding the vote to embarrass Labour. In those circumstances, and given that the Commons voted on Trident in 2007, abstaining would be justified, she implied.
I think it is important to note that the Tories are talking about this as being a main gate decision, a decision at which there is a no point of return in relation to Trident. And that is untrue. Their own review says that they will not be having a main gate vote. So, if they do ask for a vote, it will be a vote on principle. We had a vote on principle in 2007. There will be many people who are in favour of Trident who will be asking the question, “What on earth have the Tories been doing since 2007 that we now need to have another vote in principle?” If they are not playing games with us, why don’t they get on with that?
- She suggested that she would not be willing to authorise the use of nuclear weapons herself. This is what she said when Nick Robinson asked if she would be willing to press the nuclear button.
If nuclear weapons need to be threatened, then they have failed. Everybody says that. The whole point about nuclear weapons is that you don’t use them. And in order for them to work at all, you have to be able to say with confidence, “I have a big stick, my stick is larger than your stick”, and both sides need to be confident that that threat is a real one.
- She suggested that she thought it would be possible for Labour’s defence review to produce a Trident policy the party could get behind. This is contrary to what Andy Burnham was saying on the programme earlier. (See 8.42am.) The evidence would point to “certain conclusions”, she said.
It’s a hard job that I’ve been given ... But if people proceed with goodwill, and if we are prepared to go into this and look at the evidence, the evidence will draw us to certain conclusions. We need to have all the options on the table. And we need to have a proper debate within the party.
- She claimed that the debate about Trident renewal was not “binary”. In other words, it was not just a case of deciding whether to order new Trident submarines with nuclear weapons, or to give up the nuclear deterrent, she said.
I had been challenged and told that it was either Trident or nothing, that it was a binary option. And our view is that it is not necessarily a binary option. We do need to look at all the possibilities.
- She said technological developments could in future make Trident ineffective as a deterrent. This is what she said when Robinson asked her to explain the comment she made to the PLP last night about how Trident could one day become as obsolete as the Spitfire.
There are questions to be asked about Trident. There are forthcoming generations of drones that can work underseas. At the moment they have two problems; one is communications, and the other is battery life. But I was explaining to the PLP that I had actually met one of the young turks who at the moment is developing these drones, and they are very hopeful that in the next 10 years or so that actually the seas will no longer be opaque.
The idea of the Trident replacement is that it can hide in the sea. If technology is moving faster than that, then it may well be that Trident will not be able to hide. And if that’s right, then if we are to bet everything on mutually assured destruction, we have to be assured that it is going to work. And if it can’t hide any more, that is a problem. And it is right for the opposition, before voting for a commitment which would cost, according to Crispin Blunt [the Tory chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee] £168bn, we have to make sure that it works.
When Robinson told her that Lord West, the former head of the navy and former Labour security minister, had rung the programme to say this argument was “nonsense”, Thornberry replied:
Alan and I have had this discussion. And he knows as well that the Chinese and the Russians and the Americans are pouring billions into this technology in order to be able to find submarines. They would not be pouring that money in if they did not think there was a realistic chance of being able to get somewhere.
- She insisted that there were “other options” besides Trident renewal. But she would not spell out what they were.
- She said Labour wanted people to contribute to its defence review.
I think that we shouldn’t be afraid of having a debate within the Labour party and actually I think this is a debate whose time has come. I think that it’s a debate that the country needs to have. And we have a website in which we are inviting people to contribute and we want there to be a big discussion before such a major decision is made.
- She played down the significance of reports saying she got a terrible reception at the PLP meeting last night when she spoke about Trident.
It has been well rehearsed; four, five, perhaps possibly six people at the PLP last night kicked off. But I don’t think they necessarily represent the whole of the parliamentary Labour party.
Updated
Labour MP Madeleine Moon says other Nato nations worried by Labour's defence policy
Before their interview with Emily Thornberry, Today read out this tweet posted by the Labour MP Madeleine Moon, a member of the Commons defence committee, after last night’s PLP meeting.
Oh dear oh dear omg oh dear oh dear need to go rest in a darkened room
— Madeleine Moon (@MadeleineMoon) February 8, 2016
Moon is also a member of the UK delegation to the Nato parliamentary assembly and she told the programme:
Last week I was in Washington, and I have to tell you the representatives of the other nations who were there - the big question they wanted to ask was, what is your party doing? What are you saying? Because the other 27 nations see it as part of their deterrence too. They see it as part of their security.
The Today programme interview with Emily Thornberry, the shadow defence secretary, is over.
Here are some tweets about the highlights.
Thornberry on her PLP grilling on Trident: "4, 5 possibly six people kicked off.. but I don’t think they are representative." @BBCr4today
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) February 9, 2016
Shadow Defence Sec @EmilyThornberry appeals to Labour MPs to approach Trident review with "goodwill" @BBCr4today
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) February 9, 2016
"In 10 years time, the seas may no longer be opaque," says Emily Thornberry.
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) February 9, 2016
Thornberry on Trident + drones. "If it can’t hide any more that can be a problem..In 10 years time, the seas may no longer be opaque"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) February 9, 2016
Labour peer and form sea lord Lord West just called #Today to shad defence sec Emily Thornberry is talking nonsense #NewPolitics
— James Lyons (@STJamesl) February 9, 2016
Thornberry seemed to duck q of whether she'd authorise use of nukes. "If nuclear weapons need to be threatened they have failed".
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) February 9, 2016
Thornberry sidesteps q when asked if she'd press red nuclear button & said: "The whole point of nuclear weapons is that you don't use them."
— Siraj Datoo (@dats) February 9, 2016
I will post full quotes from the interview shortly.
Labour faces a funding problem because of the blatantly partisan trade union bill but, if all else fails, they could start selling tickets for the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) meetings. Since September they’ve been the liveliest show in town. And last night’s, which was devoted to a discussion on Trident, seems to have been a collector’s item. Paul Waugh at Huffington Post has a riveting account here.
This morning Andy Burnham told the Today programme that he thought it would be almost impossible to find a compromise around which the two factions in the party - those who support Trident, and those committed to unilateral disarmament - could unite. He told the programme:
There are two positions here which are difficult to reconcile - maybe impossible to reconcile - and the party has got to find some way of accommodating those positions and move forward and don’t let this issue take over everything ...
There are some hybrid options that have been put forward but I think most people have found that they just don’t work.
So the discussion has been in the party: ‘can you realistically try to find a halfway house?’ and most people have concluded that you can’t.
Therefore if there are two positions that are deeply held on both sides but can’t easily be reconciled, the party needs to find some way of accommodating that and allowing people to move forward and actually move on to other issues and hold the government to account.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow defence secretary (who, like Jeremy Corbyn, is anti-Trident), is going to brief the shadow cabinet on the defence review she is leading later today. As I write, she is on the Today programme being interviewed, and I will be covering what she is saying in detail.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Lord Bew, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, gives evidence to the Lords committee looking at party funding aspects of the trade union bill.
10.30am: The intelligence and security committee publishes its report on the draft investigatory powers bill.
11am: Nick Herbert, chair of Conservatives for Reform in Europe, gives a speech.
Around 12.40pm: MPs begin a debate on a DUP motion saying the EU referendum should not be held in June.
2.15pm: James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.
I will be covering the Labour Trident story in some detail but but I will be also covering all the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it 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 direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
Updated
