Afternoon summary
- Tory and Labour MPs have turned out in force to vote down an SNP motion accusing Tony Blair of misleading parliament about Iraq and demanding a fresh investigation by a Commons committee into his conduct. The motion was defeated by 439 votes to 70, a majority of 369.
- Liberal Democrats in Richmond Park are predicting they will narrowly snatch the west London seat from Zac Goldsmith, after a campaigning blitz in which the party claimed activists spoke to more than 30,000 voters. The singer Bob Geldof has been campaigning for the Lib Dems in the constituency today. He said:
I know Zac Goldsmith and I like the guy, but the plain fact is that Zac is a political failure. Worst of all of is that he’s not only failed but betrayed the people of Richmond, who like the rest of London, voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe. How can Goldsmith represent the opinion of the people of Richmond in parliament when he is the poster-boy for the Brexiteers and is urging the Government daily on its catastrophic course? The fightback can begin in Richmond tomorrow; Zac has to go.
Or, “Zac is crap,” as Geldof also put it.
"Zac is crap"... pic.twitter.com/iGiM4bDlv9
— Sam Lister (@sam_lister_) November 30, 2016
- Robert Chote, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, has said he expects Brexit to cost the government £12bn a year. (See 3.51pm.)
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
One conclusion that could be drawn from the result of the vote is that, even though quite a lot of MPs (Tories and Labour) dislike Tony Blair, they hate the SNP even more.
MPs vote down motion accusing Blair of misleading them over Iraq by majority of 369
The motion has been defeated by 439 votes to 70, a majority of 369.
Updated
And this is from the SNP MP Peter Grant.
Voting on #Chilcot Lab whips out in full force. "Not a whipped vote" soinds as true as "Saddam has chemical weapons".
— Peter Grant MP (@PeterGrantMP) November 30, 2016
This is from the Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland, who is backing the motion.
Disappointing to see Labour & Conservative whips blocking the lobbies to discourage their MPs from voting for the #Chilcot motion!
— Greg Mulholland (@GregMulholland1) November 30, 2016
MPs are voting now on the SNP’s Iraq/Blair motion. (See 9.12am.)
The Iraq/Blair debate has just finished.
Mike Penning, the defence minister, concluded by saying the government did not see the need for a new inquiry and would not be backing the motion.
Here is the key exchange between Rachel Reeves and Robert Chote earlier where Chote said Brexit could cost the country £12bn a year.
RR: You estimate the cumulative increase in borrowing as a result of the referendum between 2016-17 and 2020-21 as £58.7bn. Is it fair to interpret that figure as the cost of Brexit?
RC: Well, we’ve made a series of judgments as you can see. I’m wary of adding up nominal numbers because the more years you add up, the larger the number you get and that’s not necessarily terribly helpful. If you look at the overall level of the change in the budget deficit, before any policy measures, it’s about 1.1% of GDP. The Brexit element of that is about 0.5% of GDP. So that would be one way of thinking of it.
If you look at the adjustment we’ve made, and compare it to the adjustments we’ve made on productivity in past forecasts, it’s the third largest of the ones that we have made over the last 14 forecasts. So it’s not insignificant. But it’s not the biggest.
RR: Do you think a better way of looking at it is to say it’s costing half a percent of GDP?
RC: In the public finances over this period, that would be a reasonable way of looking at it?
RR: What would that be in pounds?
RC: Well, if you’ve got roughly £60bn over roughly five years, it’s roughly £12bn a year, would be another way to do it.
Q: You have created a big headline saying the economy will be badly hit because fewer people will come here because of Brexit.
Chote says the OBR has to make an assumption about what migration will be. It sets out its reasoning.
Q: But you have built in a policy that does not exist - stricter controls.
Chote says the OBR does not know what the government will do. It has made a transparent set of assumptions.
Q: What is the trend in net migration since the end of June?
Chote says he does not have those figures.
Q: Why are you assuming that the government will have more controls over immigration?
Chote says that is what the government says it wants to do.
Q: For the last few years you have been under-estimated net migration. But now you are assuming it will fall. Isn’t that guesswork?
Chote says it is a transparent assumption on which the OBR has based its forecast.
Q: Will your forecast be 100% wrong?
Yes, says Chote. That is in the nature of forecasts.
But he says the OBR’s forecasts are more optimistic than some others. That means there is a net downside risk, he says. (That means, on balance, it is more likely that the chances are that things could turn out worse.)
Q; Newspapers give prominence to your forecasts. But they never explain the risks?
Chote says he is not sure there is a great weight of people out their who have great faith in forecasts. And some newspapers are very critical of the forecasts.
Labour’s John Mann is asking the questions now.
Q: Do average Germans leave more to their children?
No idea, says Prof Sir Stephen Nickell.
Mann says Germans pay less in mortgages. So they should have more money to leave to their children.
Nickell says he does not know what Germans leave. But most Britons do not leave big estates to their children.
Mann says he is making a point about productivity.
Here are some more lines from Robert Chote’s evidence.
From the FT’s Chris Giles
Robert Chote of @OBR_UK on #Brexit: The fact that we’d got onto an aircraft without knowing where we wanted to go would be a cause of alarm
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) November 30, 2016
From the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves
OBR chief Robert Chote tells MPs that higher immigration boosts size of economy but does not necessarily lift living standards significantly
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) November 30, 2016
Rachel Reeves, the Labour MP, is asking the questions.
Q: Could there be any positive results from Brexit?
Prof Sir Stephen Nickell, a member of the OBR who is giving evidence alongside Robert Chote, says it is possible that food prices could go down. But that is only one element of it, he says.
Chote says you could have a world with a more liberal trade regime, promoting higher growth.
Brexit could cost £12bn a year, OBR chief tells MPs
I will go back to the Iraq debate for the vote. In the meantime I will be listening to Robert Chote, the Office for Budget Responsibility chair, who is giving evidence to the Treasury committee.
He has just suggested that Brexit could cost £12bn a year.
This is from the BBC’s Mark Broad.
Robert Chote of the @OBR_UK predicts #Brexit will cost £12bn a year
— Mark Broad (@markabroad) November 30, 2016
And this is from the Times’s Philip Aldrick.
Chote: annual cost of Brexit is half a percentage point of GDP. @RachelReevesMP trying to pin him down on a number, he kind of accepts £12bn
— Philip Aldrick (@PhilAldrick) November 30, 2016
Updated
Here is my colleague Jessica Elgot’s story about the opening of the Blair/Iraq debate.
Austin says Alex Salmond’s judgment has also been at fault. In particular, Austin criticises him for not backing the military intervention in Kosovo.
Labour’s Ian Austin is speaking in the debate now. He says the SNP have just tabled this debate to divide the Labour party. He says there are much better issues they should be talking about.
The Chilcot report should lay to rest claims that Tony Blair was motivated by deceit.
You can be for or against the war. But it is not true to say that Tony Blair lied about it.
Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, is speaking now.
He says the most serious charge against Tony Blair is that he went to war despite being warned that it would trigger internecine warfare in Iraq.
Opening of the Iraq/Blair debate - Summary
- Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, has accused Tony Blair of deliberately misleading MPs in the run-up to the war in Iraq. He made the claim as he opened a debate on an SNP motion (see 9.12am) saying that the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee should hold a new inquiry looking at the claim that Blair mislead MPs and recommending measures to prevent a prime ministers doing this again in the future. He told MPs:
This is an opportunity in this motion to introduce another check and balance into a system which is clearly deficient, a process to create a precedent where any future prime minister will know that he or she will have to account for his actions not just to history, but to this House of Commons.
A long time ago I made a speech in this House where I suggested to Mr Blair that he might answer to a higher power than this House. I understand that he found this offensive.
But in the meantime, in her here and now, here on earth would it not be important for us to find a parliamentary process by which a prime minister who grievously misled this House and people into an illegal war can finally be held to parliamentary account?
- Salmond has published a report purporting to prove that that Blair did deliberately mislead MPs. (See 1.11pm.)
- Forty five MPs from seven parties have backed the SNP motion. Most of the MPs who have signed it are SNP members but it is also backed by Conservatives Sir David Amess and Sir Roger Gale, Labour’s Kate Hoey and Kelvin Hopkins, the Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland, Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Williams, the Green MP Caroline Lucas and the SDLP’s Mark Durkan.
- Chris Skidmore, the Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that the government takes the view that Blair did not lie to MPs. Skidmore quoted what David Cameron told MPs in July when the Chilcot report was published. Cameron said:
On the issue of misleading parliament, there is nothing in the Chilcot report that I can see points to deliberate deceit but there were clearly occasions when more information or better information could have been presented.
Skidmore also quoted approvingly what Chilcot himself said in evidence to the liaison committee earlier this month. Chilcot said:
I absolve him from a personal and demonstrable decision to deceive Parliament or the public—to state falsehoods, knowing them to be false. That I think he should be absolved from.
- Fabian Hamilton, the shadow foreign minister, has said that he will urge Labour MPs to vote against the motion. Hamilton said that, although he voted against the Iraq war, he did not doubt that Blair acted in good faith. He also said the public administration and constitutional affairs committee should focus on what lessons can be learnt from Chilcot.
- Bernard Jenkin, chair of public administration and constitutional affairs committee, has told MPs that if the SNP motion is passed, his committee will carry out the inquiry it proposes.
- Sir Roger Gale, one of the two Tories who signed the SNP motion, told MPs in a speech that he thought the Commons was misled by Blair.
- The Labour MP Paul Flynn was branded “a disgrace” by fellow Labour MP Ian Austin after Flynn used his speech to claim MPs were “bribed” to vote for the Iraq war by Blair. Flynn was referring to the offer of promotion, not to financial bribes.
Hamilton says the SNP are fighting “an old war” with this motion and raising allegations that have already been dismissed, he says.
Hamilton says it would be a mistake to assume all the lessons of Chilcot have been learnt.
And he says this may become relevant if Theresa May ever has to come to the Commons to make the case for war.
He says the public administration committee needs to look at the Chilcot report and establish what lessons it holds for the future.
We may face even bigger challenges in the future, he says.
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, asks about the Observer story saying the Chilcot inquiry was set up to avoid blame.
Hamilton says he is not aware of the story. And he does not believe the Chilcot report was set up to mislead the public.
He says he will be urging MPs to vote against the SNP motion. And he will do so so that the public administration and constitutional affairs committee can focus on the substance of its inquiry, looking at the lessons to be learnt from the Chilcot inquiry.
Hamilton says the foreign affairs committee decided that the fears about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction were well founded on the basis of the intelligence then available.
He says the committee rejected claims that the intelligence had been manipulated for political purposes.
He says 13 years and four inquiries later, the conclusions are much the same.
He says he opposed the war. But he never thought Blair was acting in good faith.
The Labour MP Clive Efford intervenes. He says he also voted against the war. But, like Hamilton, he thought Blair was acting in good faith, he says.
Fabian Hamilton's speech
Fabian Hamilton, the shadow foreign minister, is responding now for Labour.
He says he voted against the Iraq war. But he says people who voted for it voted for it it good faith.
He says the claims made by Salmond are exactly the ones examined by Sir John Chilcot.
Chilcot deserves our thanks and praise, he says.
He says it was the fifth and, hopefully, final inquiry into the Iraq war. The first was published by the foreign affairs committee. He was a member, he says.
Skidmore says David Cameron, the then prime minister, was right to say after the Chilcot inquiry was published that it would be wrong to draw the wrong conclusions. It would be a mistake to rule out all future interventions, he says.
He says the government does not see the need for any further inquiries into Iraq.
Ken Clarke, the Conservative former chancellor, says the Cameron government did improve the decision-making process. But he says they did not go far enough. The decision to intervene in Libya was not agreed by cabinet, he says. And he says cabinet ministers should have access to national security advice before decisions of this kind are taken in cabinet.
Skidmore says the decision to intervene to protect Benghazi in Libya was taken in an emergency.
Skidmore says since the Iraq war the government has improved the way it takes decisions of this kind.
Skidmore, like Salmond earlier, has been quoting from Sir John Chilcot’s evidence to the liaison committee earlier this month.
You can read the transcript of Chilcot’s evidence here (pdf).
Chris Skidmore's speech
Chris Skidmore, the Cabinet Office minister, is responding to Salmond on behalf of the government.
He says the Chilcot inquiry had total access to government material.
He says the report is a salutary lesson into what happens when not enough accountability is exercised.
But he says nothing in the Chilcot report suggests Blair deliberately deceived people.
He says the report says the process for assessing the legality of the war was unsatisfactory. But that is not the same as saying it was illegal, he says.
Salmond says soon there will be no MPs left who remember the Iraq debate.
This motion gives the Commons the chance to set up a mechanism to make sure the same thing does not happen again.
A prime minister who grievously misled the Commons into an illegal war should be held to account, he says.
Salmond says the Chilcot report shows that we have a system of non-accountability.
He says the recent story in the Observer shows that it was set up to avoid casting blame.
Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, says his committee is already planning to make recommendations in relation to what the Chilcot report recommended.
He says that, if the Commons votes for the SNP motion, his committee will conduct the new inquiry that the motion proposes. (See 9.12am.)
Salmond says MPs have heard a lot recently about checks and balances in political systems, particularly in the light of what has happened in the US.
Here is the summary from Glen Rangwala’s report (pdf).
From late 2001 to March 2003, Tony Blair made three inter-related statements repeatedly to the House of Commons: (1) that no decision had been taken to use military force against Iraq; (2) that military action could be avoided by Iraq’s disarmament of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; and (3) that regime change was not the goal of government policy.
The Report of the Iraq Inquiry, published on 6th July 2016 – the Chilcot report – has demonstrated conclusively and authoritatively that each of these three statements was untrue, and that its falsity was known to Mr Blair. The evidence presented in the Chilcot report shows that Mr Blair was deliberately misleading the House of Commons. According to Erskine May (24th edition, p.254), making a deliberately misleading statement in the House constitutes a grave contempt of Parliament.
Mr Blair backed up his claims about the need for Iraq’s disarmament by asserting (4) that there was conclusive evidence of Iraq’s possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and (5) that these weapons were a threat to the UK’s national security. On both points, these statements contradicted the intelligence assessments that had been put to Mr Blair. He did not address the threats that would arise to the UK in the event of an invasion despite repeated intelligence assessments put to him concerning this matter, and direct questions about these threats. Mr Blair knowingly endangered UK domestic security through his actions, and his statements about threats were in direct contravention of the July 2001 Ministerial Code, which required ministers to “be as open as possible with Parliament”.
Finally, Mr Blair stated in March 2003 that (6) diplomacy had been exhausted in seeking to avoid an invasion of Iraq. This is shown to be untrue by the Chilcot report, and again involved Mr Blair deliberately misleading the House of Commons.
Michael Gove, the Conservative former justice secretary, says Salmond is wrong to say that the “I will be with you, whatever” memo was a firm commitment to support Bush. Gove says the memo makes it clear that Blair’s support was conditional.
Salmond says the point he is making is that MPs and even ministers were not told about this commitment.
The Glen Rangwala report is on Alex Salmond’s website here (pdf).
Salmond says, if Jeremy Corbyn were free to do so, he would be voting with the SNP today.
Labour’s Ann Clywd says the Kurds believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Salmond says that was not the case presented to parliament. Blair told MPs that there was a real and present threat to the UK, he says.
Salmond quotes from what Sir John Chilcot said about Blair when he gave evidence to the liaison committee recently.
Labour’s David Hanson says Chilcot told the same committee that he did not think Blair had deceived the public.
Salmond says Hanson did not read the next sentence from what Chilcot said. Chilcot said Blair went beyond the facts of the case, Salmond says.
Updated
Salmond says the Chilcot report did not say what should be done about the evidence that Blair misled people in advance of the war.
He says the SNP has released a report from a Cambridge academic Dr Glen Rangwala, which details the contrast between Tony Blair’s public statements to parliament and people with the private correspondence to American president George W Bush.
This is what the SNP said in a news release earlier about the report.
The report concluded that following Blair’s repeated statements to parliament that no decision had been taken to use military force against Iraq, that military action could be avoided by Iraq’s disarmament and that regime change was not the goal of government policy; that these statements were then negated by Blair’s private note to President Bush that bluntly stated “I will be with you whatever”.
Updated
Salmond says there are 179 MPs in the Commons now who were in the Commons at the time of the Iraq war.
He finds it easy to remember that number, because is the same as the number of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq.
Alex Salmond's speech
Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, is opening the debate.
He says the SNP motion is supported by MPs from seven parties.
The text of the motion is here, at 9.12am.
MPs debate motion accusing Blair of 'misleading' them over Iraq
MPs will start the debate on the SNP Blair/Iraq motion very soon.
Here is the Guardian’s preview story.
As usual, I missed the two questions from Angus Robertson, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, because I was writing the snap verdict. So here is a summary.
Robertson asked about the crisis in Aleppo.
What can the UK and international community do to end the suffering of the people of Syria?
May said the government was working with France to ensure that there is an emergency discussion on this at the UN security council. It will take place later today, she said.
Robertson then urged May to push “everything that can be done, now” to try to resolve the crisis.
May said the government was doing all it could.
I can assure him the government is pressing hard, is doing everything we can, we have consistently looked at what might be the possible solutions ... There’s an important message to send to Russia that they use their influence with the Assad regime to stop these appalling atrocities in Aleppo and let aid through.
I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.
The SNP’s Hannah Bardell asks about a constituent killed in Israel. What more can be done to put pressure on Israel so the family gets justice?
May says the Foreign Office is working on this case.
Michael Tomlinson, a Conservative, says he was disappointed by Donald Tusk response to his letter. Will she raise it at the next EU summit?
May says she hopes this will be addressed at an early stage. But article 50 has not been addressed, she says.
Labour’s David Lammy says the corporate governance green paper stressed the importance of diversity. So why did the culture secretary block the appointment of a black woman to the Channel 4 board. Is there no black person in the country suitable?
May says she does not know about this issue, but will look into it. She says these decisions are based on who is right for the job.
May says she recognises the role played by creative industries in the economy. An extra £1bn is being invested in broadband.
Labour’s Ronnie Campbell asks what plans May has to make super economic zones.
May welcomes Campbell back to the Commons. (He has been ill.) She says she will look at this. She wants an economy that works for everyone.
Suella Fernandes, a Conservative, says the UK will have a “fantastic opportunity” to benefit from world trade after Brexit. The Legatum Institute has produced a report on this, she says.
May says she believes absolutely in the advantages of free trade. But she wants to boost trade with other countries before we leave the EU too.
The SNP’s Kirsten Oswald asks about church visitors having a problem with visas.
May says we have a clear visa system. The home secretary will look at this case, she says.
May says the government is putting more money into the NHS. Labour’s former health secretary said putting more money into the NHS would be irresponsible, she says.
(She is referring to something Andy Burnham said before the 2010 election.)
Peter Lilley, a Conservative, says he is glad May wants to guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK. So is May disappointed that Jean-Claude Juncker, in a letter to MPs, has put process ahead of the rights of EU nationals.
(It was Donald Tusk, not Jean-Claude Juncker.)
May says she was disappointed by the response. She says it shows why she was right not to offer a concession to EU nationals until the EU agrees to protect the rights of Britons in the EU.
Labour’s Stephen Timms says the govenrment promised to half the employment gap for the disabled. The ESA benefit cut was proposed because support for people to get into work was supposed to be increased. But that extra support isn’t there. So shouldn’t the cuts be halted.
May says its the support package that enables people to get into work. Labour should be celebrating the fact there are 600,000 more disabled people in work.
The Conservative Claire Perry says there is a concern about employment rights being eroded after Brexit. Will the government ensure employment rights keep pace with changes in the workplace?
May says employment is changing. Technology is the driver in many places. That is why Matthew Taylor, head of the RSA thinktank, is doing a review of employment rights. That shows the Conservatives are the party of working people.
Snap PMQs verdict
Snap PMQs verdict: A good PMQs for the factcheck brigade - there were statistics aplenty flying about - but it was a rather less illuminating one for everyone else. Corbyn and May both put in solid, quality performances - I scored it a draw - but they were talking across each other, and mostly did not engage with each other’s points. PMQs used to be the highpoint of the week in the Commons, but May v Corbyn is starting to feel a bit missable. Corbyn was at his best talking about the “disgrace” of 4m people living in poverty, and his response to May’s jibe about Labour borrowing was a good one. May seemed most comfortable attacking Labour over welfare, but it was also interesting hearing her respond to Corbyn’s question about social care. He raised the same issue last week, but today May seemed more willing to acknowledge that there is a problem with the system. Corbyn has clearly identified a weakness.
Updated
Corbyn says the government has no credibility on the deficit because it is going up. There are 4m people in poverty, he says. It’s a disgrace. Philip Hammond spoke for more than 50 minutes but he did not once mention the NHS or social care. Why was there no extra money for social care?
May says there is no doubt that social care is under pressure. There are 1m more people over 65 than in 2020. That’s why the government is putting more money into social care. It is also important that councils and hospitals work together. There is some good practice and some not so good practice.
Corbyn says there is a parallel between and under-funded NHS and and under-funded social care system. There is real crisis in care. Next year the governmnt will give back £650m in corporation tax cuts, with the sum going up in further years. So can May explain to pensioners worried about care, or the future of the triple lock, what the government’s priorities are.
May says £3.8bn extra is going into the NHS this year. Under Labour £1.3bn less is going into the NHS. At the last election Ed Balls said local authorities would get not a penny more. But the government is putting more money in.
Corbyn says wages have stagnated, home ownership is down and queues at food banks are growing. Why is the government cutting in-work support by £2bn.
May says housebuilding fell under Labour. She says she and Corbyn do not agree on welfare. It is important to remember those benefiting from it, and those paying for it. Corbyn believes in a welfare system where people can live on benefits, she says.
Corbyn says child poverty is rising. People are suffering because of the government’s policies. The government has even abandoned the pledge of getting the national living wage to £9 an hour. What is the new pledge?
May says it is what it always has been. And there are fewer families in poverty, and in relative poverty. You can only do that by having a strong economy. Labour would increase borrowing by £500bn, she says. She quotes a former Labour spokesman saying Labour’s policy would double income tax and double national insurance.
Jeremy Corbyn starts by wishing people a happy St Andrew’s Day too. The autumn statement revealed the failure of the government’s economic strategy, he says. Does May accept the long-term economic plan was a failure.
May says the IMF says this will be the fastest growing advanced economy in the world. Unemployment is down, and there are a record number of people in employment.
Corbyn says the deficit was meant to be eradicated by 2015, and then by 2020. Now the date has been put off again. And she mentions the IFS, but it says the prospect for workers is “dreadful” and that this will be the worst decade for living standards since the 1020s.
May says Corbyn cannot differentiate between the IMF and the IFS, so it is probably good he is not prime minister. The government introduced the national living wage, she says.
Mark Menzies, a Conservative, asks about a road in his Fylde constituency.
May says there is going to be a significant sum of money from the developer for this.
The Green MP Caroline Lucas says having your cake and eating it is not a serious strategy for Brexit. How can MPs vote for Brexit when she gives no clarity of her plans? Is it arrogance or incompetence?
May says she has been very clear about wanting to get the best possible deal for trading with and in the single market.
Theresa May starts by wishing everyone a Happy St Andrew’s Day.
Loud cheer for Theresa May as she takes her seat in the Commons for #PMQs. She's flanked by Philip Hammond and Welsh Sec Alun Cairns.
— Jack Maidment (@jrmaidment) November 30, 2016
And here is the full line-up of MPs on the order paper.
Here are the MPs lined up to quiz the Prime Minister in #PMQs with Green Party leader Caroline Lucas up first. https://t.co/U7e3VGqUr9 pic.twitter.com/dMpmDOiwt9
— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) November 30, 2016
This is from Sky’s Adam Boulton.
Not a bad #PMQs line up: Q1 @CarolineLucas Lucas Q3 @RhonddaBryant Q8 @claire4devizes Q9 Mr Peter Lilley Q10 @stephenctimms
— Adam Boulton (@adamboultonSKY) November 30, 2016
PMQs
PMQs is starting soon.
PMQs 5 mins away. George Osborne just arrived, taken up a seat on the backbench next to Stephen Crabb. Gives him a slap on the shoulder.
— Jack Maidment (@jrmaidment) November 30, 2016
Sadiq Khan floats idea of London getting its own special Brexit deal
In a speech to the Institute of Directors today Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, will float the idea of London getting a special Brexit deal. Stressing the importance of London businesses being able to continue to recruit skilled workers from abroad, he will say that he is urging the government to ensure that firms can continue to hire these workers after Brexit. But, if the government does not adopt a UK-wide solution to this problem, he will call for London to get a bespoke Brexit deal.
He will tell the summit:
London’s businesses must retain access to the skilled workforce they need in order to grow – it’s absolutely essential to protecting jobs, growth and tax revenues across Britain over the next decade.
I will keep pushing the government to recognise this vital need in their negotiating position – but it doesn’t look like they are listening.
If the government ignores the needs of business and pushes ahead with a new system that cuts off access to skilled workers then we will have no choice but to look at a London-specific solution ...
The City of London Corporation and London Chambers of Commerce have already done some crucial early thinking about options – but we need to go further and faster to make the case to the government and develop a new system.
By “crucial early thinking” Khan is referring to the plan drawn up by PriceWaterHouseCoopers for a regional visa system that would allow London to keep hiring skilled EU workers after Brexit.
He will also say that he will hold a meeting of business leaders and experts at City Hall in the New Year to take the idea forward.
Updated
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the rest of the papers, here is the Politics Home list of top 10 must-reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s political stories.
And here are three stories I found interesting.
Boris Johnson has sparked a fresh Cabinet row by calling for a Brexit amnesty for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.
During a No10 meeting chaired by Theresa May, the Foreign Secretary renewed his controversial former policy when he was London Mayor to give residency rights to any illegals who have escaped detection for 10 years ...
One senior minister there told The Sun: “It’s an insane idea and would make ordinary Brits furious.
“A lot of us round the table couldn’t believe Boris is still going on about this.
“Privately, Boris is still the most pro-immigration member of the Cabinet.”
But The Sun has also been told Home Secretary Amber Rudd was not one of Boris’s critics, and instead asked him for details of his thinking after the session broke up.
The party’s education spokesman Tulip Siddiq has been secretly recorded admitting Labour still ‘hasn’t made a decision’ on whether to block Article 50, which begins the process of leaving the EU.
She said she was ‘minded to vote against it’ – and revealed the issue was being widely discussed by her fellow MPs ...
Ms Siddiq said: ‘There’s two options. One is we vote against Article 50 and the Labour Party I should say hasn’t actually made a decision on what’s going to happen.
‘This is what’s floating around the tearooms every night. Some of us will vote against Article 50, but not everyone, then it will still get through. The second option is that a lot of us vote against it, it doesn’t go through, the next step will be a General Election. I’ll be honest and say I have been minded to vote against it.’
The worst-kept secret in fashion is out: Samantha Cameron, wife of the former prime minister, is launching her own fashion label.
It will be called Cefinn, and the first 40 pieces will be on sale soon at Selfridges and Net-a-Porter. Mrs Cameron is seeking to cast off her image as political spouse and heiress in much the same way as Victoria Beckham reinvented herself as a fashion designer after life as a Spice Girl.
Rudd proposes special licences for police investigating child sex abuse cases
Police investigating child sex abuse should have a licence to practise similar to the system for firearms officers, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, told the College of Policing this morning. She said:
It is important that only those who are absolutely qualified to perform critical roles dealing with the vulnerable are deployed to those situations.
And that is why the Home Office and the College of Policing have been working closely together to develop a licence to practise.
It will ensure that the public receive an assurance of competence and a delivery of consistent standards. It will also mean that police officers are not forced to take on roles that they are not prepared for or professionally trained to do.
If your child was sick you wouldn’t expect them to see a doctor with no experience in children’s medicine, and it’s right to apply the same logic here.
The College of Policing will be given £1.9m to fund a pilot scheme testing the proposed licensing system.
Gordon Brown says oppression of children globally now the great civil rights issue of our time
Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, is speaking today at a summit in Brussels on education in emergencies. Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and, in a powerful speech, he will say that the International Criminal Court should prioritise investigating crimes against children.
Here are the key points.
- Brown will urge the International Criminal Court to take crimes against children much more seriously.
This is no world for a child. Now that the International Criminal Court has, to its credit, been persuaded to announce just this month that it will take seriously and give priority to crimes against children as war crimes and crimes against humanity, 2017 must be the year when we end impunity for the systematic violation of children’s rights.
I can think of nearly 10 countries – from Syria, Iraq and Libya to South Sudan, Nigeria and Afghanistan – where atrocity crimes have been committed against children that have so far gone unpunished.
- He will urge the UN security council to start prioritising this issue by referring the bombing of the school in Idlib in Syria to the ICC.
I believe evidence is now mounting of a war crime perpetrated by Russian-Syrian operations when a school in Idlib was bombed and 30 pupils and teachers were killed on October 26th.
New video imagery offers us additional verification that damage to the school complex in the village of Haas was caused by airstrikes.
We must call them to account – and ask them to explain a Human Rights Watch report based on interviews and photographs that places Russian and Syrian bombers above the site on the day.
As Tony Lake of UNICEF said, if this is deliberate, a war crime has been committed. It cannot go unpunished and its perpetrators cannot escape with impunity. The very inquiry the Russians offered should now be put not only to the UN general assembly but also to the security council – to enable independent investigators to be appointed and a case brought before the ICC.
- He will suggest that protecting the rights of children is now the great civil rights challenge of our time.
In the 1960s the world fought for black civil rights; in the 1970s and 1980s over apartheid; and in the 1990s and beyond over the rights of the disabled, women and LGBT persons.
Now it is time to put centre stage the civil rights struggle for children – for an end to the casual and routine violation of children’s rights; for the right of boys and girls not to be in the front line of war; for schools not be used as instruments of war; for children’s rights to education to be upheld at all times, irrespective of borders, and for us to end exploitation in child labour, child marriage and child trafficking, in favour of education.
- He will say that 2016 has been the most dangerous year for children globally since the second world war.
With 500,000 children under siege in Syria and Iraq, an International Criminal Court investigation into the abuse of children in Libya, evidence mounting of a war crime committed in October against schoolchildren in Idlib, Syria and a total of 30million children displaced, 2016 will go down as the year in post-war history when it has never been more unsafe to be a child.
No child in Syria’s conflict zones is safe, not even in hospitals or the recently-opened underground classrooms. The evidence grows of war crimes against girls trafficked out of Libya. In Nigeria, millions of girls live in fear of Boko Haram and will not go to school. With child marriage, child trafficking and child labour on the rise – and with thousands of girls having vanished on the routes from the Middle East to Europe – it can now be more dangerous to be a girl or a boy out on the streets than a soldier in the trenches.
- He will urge the UN and other international organisations to back a “new deal for the world’s children” for 2017.
I propose a New Deal for the world’s children for 2017.
The United Nations, the World Bank and all other international institutions should sign up to a new determination in which:
a) All schools are protected as safe places.
b) Children are not used as weapons of war and in particular not as child militia.
c) Every refugee child’s right to education is upheld.
d) Every war crime and crime against humanity committed against children should be fully investigated.
The new deal for children must answer why for the most vulnerable we do the least and why instead of guaranteed help all we do is pass the begging bowl around at times of crisis.
- He will say that, as part of this “new deal”, international organisations should ensure that displaced and refugee children receive education, not just food and shelter.
Support for independence in Scotland falls below 45% for first time since referendum, poll suggests
According to a YouGov poll for the Times (paywall), support for independence in Scotland has now fallen for the first time below the 45% level achieved in the referendum in September 2014.
The poll puts support for independence at 44%, and support for Scotland staying in the UK at 56%. The paper’s report goes on:
John Curtice, Scotland’s leading polling expert, said the Times data was the first poll to suggest that the “yes” vote has fallen below the level of September 18, 2014.
He said it showed that the SNP’s strategy of linking independence so closely to EU membership had eroded support for the core policy.
The decline in support for independence coincides with an upsurge in the popularity of Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Conservatives, who have made being the party of the Union their core message to voters.
Ms Davidson’s personal net approval is now at 25 points, up from 21 in the last Times poll three months ago. Her overall net positive rating is more than double Ms Sturgeon’s 11 points.
It was Tony Blair’s government that got rid of the principle of “double jeopardy” in English law (the principle that you cannot be put on trial for the same crime twice). So there is something appropriate about the fact that, although the Chilcot inquiry effectively cleared Blair of lying to MPs as he made the case for war, the Commons is going to debate a motion saying that Blair did mislead parliament and that this should be investigated.
The motion has been tabled by the SNP and this is what it says:
That this House recognises that the Chilcot Inquiry provided substantial evidence of misleading information being presented by the then Prime Minister and others on the development of the then Government’s policy towards the invasion of Iraq as shown most clearly in the contrast between private correspondence to the United States government and public statements to Parliament and to the people and also in the presentation of intelligence information; and calls on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, further to its current investigation into the lessons to be learned from the Chilcot Inquiry for the machinery of government, to conduct a further specific examination of this contrast in public and private policy and of the presentation of intelligence, and then to report to the House on what further action it considers necessary and appropriate to help prevent any repetition of this disastrous series of events.
The motion is not expected to attract the support of many non-SNP MPs but the debate will not help Blair’s efforts to reassert himself as an influential figure in British politics. This is what Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister and former SNP leader, said about it in advance.
At a time when Blair is planning his political comeback, it is high time that this parliament and its committees at long last brought this dark stain on UK foreign policy to a close by investigating how such grave misleading occurred and taking the appropriate action to avoid it happening again.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee.
10.10am: Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, speaks to the NHS Providers conference.
10.20am: Amber Rudd, the home secretary, speaks to the College of Policing.
10.30am: The Migration Observatory and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research give evidence to a Lords committee on the movement of people between EU and UK.
12pm: Theresa May faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.
12.30pm: Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, chairs at an event with five of his predecessors at the Institute for Government.
Around 12.40pm: MPs begin a debate on the SNP motion accusing Tony Blair of misleading parliament over Iraq. The vote will come at around 4pm.
2pm: Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, gives evidence to the Commons transport committee on Heathrow.
2.15pm: Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the autumn statement.
I will be focusing in particular on PMQs, on the opening of the Blair debate and on Chote’s evidence to the Treasury committee. But, as usual, I will also be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web.
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.
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