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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Tessa Jowell gets standing ovation in Lords after moving cancer speech – as it happened

Afternoon summary

  • Tessa Jowell, the Labour former culture secretary, has received a very rare standing ovation in the House of Lords after giving a speech about her experience fighting brain cancer and what needs to be done to improve care for patients. (See 5.12pm.)
  • Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader Tory Brexiter, has said the government’s Brexit strategy needs to fundamentally change. (See 3.50pm.)

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Earlier I flagged up Gary Gibbons’ Channel 4 News blog about the draft of new EU guidelines for the Brexit transition he has seen. He has posted them in full on his blog.

Here is some Twitter comment on them.

From the Sun’s Nick Gutteridge

Here are the EU guidelines from 20 December (pdf) Gutteridge is referring to.

From Peter Ricketts, a former head of the Foreign Office

From Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Research

From Nicolai von Ondarza, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Tessa Jowell receives standing ovation in Lords after moving speech about her brain cancer

Here are extracts from Tessa Jowell’s speech. Her brain cancer is very serious, the Lords was packed for her speech and peers listened to her in silence and with great respect. Afterwards (very unusually for parliament, where applause is not meant to be allowed) she was given a long standing ovation.

  • Jowell spoke about the importance of “a community of love” for cancer patients but also argued for more international collaboration in cancer research. She said that, just as patients need support as individuals, health systems have to cooperate with each other too. This is how she ended her speech.

For what would every cancer patient want? To know that the best, the latest science was being used - wherever in the world it was developed, whoever began it.

What else do they want? They need to know they have a community around them – supporting and caring. Being practical and kind.

For while doctors look at the big picture, we can all be a part of the human-sized picture.

Seamus Heaney’s last words were: Noli timere, do not be afraid. I am not afraid, but I am fearful that this new and important approach may be put into the ‘too difficult’ box.

But I also have such great hope.

So many cancer patients collaborate and support each other every day. They create that community of love and determination wherever they find each other.

All we now ask is that doctors and health systems learn to do the same. Learn from each other.

In the end, what gives a life meaning is not only how it is lived, but how it draws to a close.

I hope this debate will give hope to other cancer patients like me. So that we can live well with cancer, not just be dying of it.

All of us. For longer.

  • She urged peers to support the Eliminate Cancer Initiative.

Cancer is a tough challenge to all health systems, and particularly to our cherished NHS.

We have the worst cancer survival rate in Western Europe. Partly because diagnosis is too slow. Brain tumours grow very quickly. And they are hard to spot.

However, there is reason for hope. It is called the Eliminate Cancer Initiative (“ECI” for short). Its director is Professor Ronald de Pinho, from the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas.

ECI is a global mix of programme and campaign, already underway in Australia. It is designed to be rolled out next in the UK, the USA and China. This recognises that no one nation can solve the problem of GBM [glioblastoma multiformeon - the brain tumour Jowell has] on its own.

ECI aims to do three main things:

First, link patients and doctors across the world through a clinical trials network.

Secondly, speed up the use of adaptive trials

And thirdly, build a global data base to improve research and patient care.

  • She called for patients to have more access to alternative treatments.

Usually, drug trials test only one drug at a time, take years, and cost a fortune.

New adaptive trials can test many treatments at the same time. They speed up the process and save a lot of money.

ECI also has a secure cloud platform where doctors can share data and insights.

So much data is held in siloes with limited access. That reduces its value. This is all a quite new approach. Already, collaborative discussions are underway in England.

  • She described how she discovered she had cancer.

Let me tell you what happened to me.

On 24 May last year, I was on my way to talk about new Sure Start projects in East London. I got into a taxi but couldn’t speak. I had two powerful seizures. I was taken to hospital.

Two days later, I was told that I had a brain tumour, glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM.

A week later the tumour was removed by an outstanding surgeon at the National Hospital in Queen Square.

I then had the standard treatment of radio- and chemotherapy.

To put it in context, across the country, GBM strikes less than 3,000 people in England every year. It generally has a very poor prognosis.

  • She said called for more brain surgery centres to have access to the best treatments.

A major factor in survival is successful surgery.

The gold standard is to use a dye to enable the surgeon identify the tumour. But it is only available in about half of the brain surgery centres in England. It must be extended to all of them.

Tessa Jowell receiving a standing ovation from peers
Tessa Jowell receiving a standing ovation from peers. Photograph: Parliament TV

Updated

Tessa Jowell, the Labour former culture secretary who has brain cancer, is speaking in the House of Lords now about her condition, and her call for patients to have better access to experimental treatments. She spoke about this in an interview for the BBC broadcast yesterday and now she is elaborating on what she said when speaking to Nick Robinson. The Lords is packed for the speech.

There is a live feed here.

Tessa Jowell.
Tessa Jowell. Photograph: Parliament TV

Updated

No 10 confirms Trump will visit UK later this year

Downing Street has just put out a read-out of Theresa May’s meeting with Donald Trump. It confirms that Trump will be visiting the UK later this year.

A Downing Street spokesperson said:

Prime Minister Theresa May today met with President Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The two leaders began by discussing Bombardier, with the PM reiterating the importance of the company’s jobs in Northern Ireland.

The PM and the President discussed Iran, and the need to work together to combat the destabilising activity which it is conducting in the region, including ballistic missile development, and continuing efforts to ensure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.

They also agreed on the importance of continuing to stand side-by-side in the fight against Daesh in Syria and elsewhere.

The prime minister updated the president on the good progress which had been made in the Brexit negotiations so far. The two leaders reiterated their desire for a strong trading relationship post-Brexit, which would be in the interests of both countries.

The PM and president concluded by asking officials to work together on finalising the details of a visit by the president to the UK later this year.

More evidence that the Brexiter push-back is now on: in a blog, Sky’s Faisal Islam says Brexiter Tories are gearing up to rebel on the taxation (cross border trade) bill because they fear it could become an instrument for effectively keeping the UK in the customs union. As he says, this would be “the first time leave-backing Tories will have rebelled on Brexit legislation.”

May's Brexit strategy 'needs to fundamentally change', says leading Tory Brexiter Rees-Mogg

One of the surprising features about Brexit last year was how much the Tory Brexiters were willing to tolerate as Theresa May unveiled details of what she was accepting in the negotiations. A two-year transition that some of them thought was unnecessary? No one minded at all. Payments of up to £40bn to the EU for the “divorce bill”? The Brexiters swallowed that too with very little protest. The European court of justice having some ongoing role in relation to the rights of EU nationals? They did not mind much about that. Even the inclusion of full regulatory alignment as a fall-back position for Ireland did not trigger much of a protest.

It seemed as if the Brexiters felt almost any transition concession was worth putting up with for the sake of ensuring that the UK actually leaves. They still worry about Brexit being reversed, but they think that once the UK has quit the EU on 29 March 2019, people will never vote to go back in.

But Theresa May could be about to discover that she has reached the point where the Brexiter push-back begins. As the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope reports, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the prominent leave campaign who now chairs the European Research Group (ERG), the Tory MPs pushing for a hard Brexit, says government Brexit policy needs to “fundamentally change”.

Rees-Mogg may have been promoted to speak out by the experience of listening to David Davis, the Brexit secretary, at the Commons Brexit committee yesterday. Rees-Mogg said Davis’s proposals would turn the UK into a “vassal state”.

Here is the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Rees-Mogg’s intervention.

Christopher Hope says it amounts to “a declaration of war” by 60-odd Tories.

The “60 Eurosceptic MPs’ is a reference to the ERG, although it is not clear whether the ERG is quite as powerful or united now as it used to be. When it was headed by Steve Baker during the EU referendum campaign it was very well organised, and it tended to get what it wanted. When Suella Fernandes was in charge it did not seem quite as influential. Rees-Mogg, who has recently replaced her as ERG chair, has a very high media profile, but may not have Baker’s skills as a backroom fixer.

Updated

David Meller takes leave of absence from his own educational trust after Presidents Club scandal

David Meller, the Presidents Club co-chairman who resigned as a Department for Education director yesterday after the revelations about sexual harassment at the club’s charity dinner, has now taken leave of absence from his own trust, the Meller Educational Trust, which runs several schools. In a statement it said:

The trust is absolutely committed to equality of opportunity and respect for all members of society. We are appalled to hear reports of what happened at the Presidents Club dinner. We, as trustees, wish to express our sympathy to those women who have been so badly treated. David Meller is taking leave of absence as a trustee with immediate effect. The trustees will continue to support the academies within the trust.

To make things worse, Meller’s eponymous multi-academy trust had miserable results in today’s DfE league tables, with pupil progress “well below the national average”.

David Meller
David Meller Photograph: Department for Education/PA

In an article for the New European, David Miliband, the Labour former foreign secretary who now runs the International Rescue Committee, says opposition will have to choose later this year between backing a Tory Brexit and calling for a second referendum. Here’s an extract.

The transitional period, while necessary, offers false comfort. It delays the choices but does not remove them. Slow Brexit does not mean soft Brexit ...

Labour needs to prepare for a life-changing question next autumn: will it vote to give a license for a Conservative Brexit, or will it insist that the voters be given a final say on the Brexit deal? Leave, and we take our chances on the choppy, laissez-faire open seas. Far from freeing ourselves to intervene, subsidise and reform, we will neuter our ability to do so.

To govern is to choose, but opposition takes choices too, when it aspires to govern. The debate, or lack of it, about Article 50 last year provides a telling warning.

In the Sun today Harry Coles claims Sir Graham Brady, chair of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, has asked colleagues not to submit any more formal letters demanding a leadership contest - prompting speculation that he has already received close to 48, the number that would trigger a no confidence vote in Theresa May. Cole says:

One senior backbencher told The Sun the top Tory was “ashen faced” at the prospect of getting one more letter recently – which he has intimated could spark a bitter leadership election and plunge Brexit talks into chaos.

The party grandee’s terrified reaction suggests the number of letters he has already received may now have reached the mid 40s, as anger with “dull, dull, dull” Theresa May spirals on the Tory benches.

Brady does not speak about letters sent to him in confidence, and so it is hard to know where this will end up. But these tweets from the Evening Standard’s Joe Murphy will help to fuel speculation about May facing a leadership challenge at some point sooner rather than later.

Lunchtime summary

  • Downing Street has said it will review how non-disclosure agreements are used in the light of the Presidents Club sexual harassment scandal. Theresa May is responding to the way hostesses at Presidents Club event were asked to sign agreements preventing them from revealing what went on. (See 12.13pm.) In an interview, May has also said that the revelations show that there is “a lot more work to do” to combat the “objectification” of women. (See 11.01am.)
  • Theresa May has delivered a speech at Davos saying social media companies must do more to protect users. There is full coverage on our Davos live blog.
  • Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, has told MPs that the armed forces need more money. Speaking in the Commons, where he was giving details of the new defence review, he said that the initiative was not “aiming to be fiscally neutral”. He also said:

We do need to look at getting additional resources for our armed forces so they have the capability to protect and truly defend Britain’s global interests - both near and far.

Williamson spoke out as his predecessor, Sir Michael Fallon, used an article in the Daily Telegraph to say defence spending should rise from 2% of GDP to 2.5%.

  • Hospitals remain under intense pressure this winter from flu and illness caused by the cold weather, NHS England figures show. As Denis Campbell and Pamela Duncan report, A&E units had to divert patients to other hospitals 20 times last week, and more than 11,000 patients had to be looked after by ambulance crews for at least half an hour before they could be handed over to A&E nurses. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS trust, which runs three acute and two community hospitals, last Thursday became the first trust in England this winter to have to close an A&E unit completely. The temporary closure happened because the unit could not cope with the number of patients seeking care.
  • Open Britain, which is campaigning for a soft Brexit, has welcomed the revelation that Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, told a private breakfast meeting at Davos that Brexit had cost the UK £200m a week in lost growth. The Times (paywall) said:

The subject came up when a guest at the breakfast asked Mr Carney what the “delta” of voting to leave the EU had been so far. In economics, a delta is a ratio used to measure the difference between actual and potential growth.

The guest requested that he measure it in “Brexit buses”, a reference to the £350 million a week that Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign claimed the UK could recover by scrapping budget contributions to Brussels.

According to a number of business figures at the event, the governor did some quick mental arithmetic and concurred that the missed opportunity equated to between two thirds and three quarters of the £350 million ...

The £200 million figure is not directly comparable to the Leave campaign’s £350 million because the former refers to lost growth while the latter was money available for government spending. The £10 billion of lost growth equates to 0.5 per cent of GDP and the impact on the public finances would be considerably smaller.

In a statement issued by Open Britain, the Labour MP Wes Streeting said:

These comments by the governor of the Bank of England reveal the truth: there is no Brexit dividend, only a Brexit deficit.

Brexit is already costing this country hundreds of millions of pounds a week, which means less money for public services and less money for the NHS during a winter crisis when it needs it most.

  • The Institute for Government has said that Theresa May’s constant reshuffles have disrupted planning for Brexit. (See 9.12am.)

Those with an interest in Brexit’s impact on the devolution settlement will be glued to the Lords this lunchtime, where peers are debating just that.

This discussion is given extra urgency following last week’s vote in the Commons to pass the EU withdrawal bill even though the Westminster government failed to bring forward amendments to a highly contentious clause that centralises more than 100 European powers in Whitehall after Brexit, although they involve policy controlled by the devolved parliaments.

The amendments to clause11 must now be dealt with in the Lords, where the SNP have no direct representation because they do not send members to the unelected chamber in principle. Negotiations are ongoing behind to scenes to identify a number of peers willing to act as go-betweens with the Scottish government.

One of those most likely to be involved, Jim Wallace, former leader of the Scottish Lib Dems and now Lord Wallace of Tankerness, berated Westminster’s “cack-handed approach” to Clause 11, describing it as “not fit for purpose”.

Baron McInnes of Kilwinning, aka Mark McInnes, the director of the Scottish Conservative party, who introduced the debate, struck a more ameliorative note. He insisted that legislate consent - ie both Scottish and Welsh parliaments voting in favour of the withdrawal bill - was important to the Lords, even if it was not a political necessity (these consent motions are purely symbolic).

According to former first minister Lord McConnell, Brexit “for all its flaws provides an opportunity to refresh the way that the UK is governed”. He added that it was “blatantly obvious” that powers should return to Scotland unless it was absolutely essential that they are reserved.

Updated

According to my colleagues Graeme Wearden and Nick Fletcher, cowbells are ringing at the Davos conference centre to alert delegates to the fact that Theresa May’s speech will be starting soon.

They will be covering it on the Davos blog here.

Gary Gibbon, the Channel 4 News political editor, has got hold of a draft of the EU’s guidelines on how they want the Brexit transition to operate. As he explains on his blog, the proposals will be “every bit as annoying to Jacob Rees-Mogg and fellow Brexiteers” as Rees-Mogg suggested at the Brexit committee yesterday.

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is planning to deliver a speech tomorrow that will give details of how the Brexit transition might operate, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports. Here is an excerpt from the blog she’s written about it.

I’m told that he will make clear the UK intends to negotiate and complete trade deals with other countries during the transition, to be ready to sign on the dotted line the moment the transition is over.

He’s also expected to make plain the UK wants to remain within existing agreements that the EU has stitched together with other countries too.

One minister told me it’s “reasonable enough” to hope to persuade the EU that can happen. Right now, Brussels’ position is that when we’re out, we lose out on those deals as well. But Brexiteers also want to know whether ministers are going to resist any new rules that come into force in the EU between 2019 and 2021.

If the situation is broadly the status quo, the EU expects that the UK will be bound by any changes that are made during that period, and also be bound by the European Courts.

Updated

Non-disclosure agreement rules to be reviewed after Presidents Club scandal, No 10 says

Theresa May is to look into the issue of how women working at Presidents Club events were asked to sign forms requiring them to not reveal details of what took place, her spokesman has said. Asked at the Downing Street lobby briefing whether women should be told to not report harassment, he said:

Questions have been raised about the operation of non-disclosure agreements. The prime minister will look into the way these non-disclosure agreements are applied to see if changes are required.

However, he had not details of what might change, or which department might lead on this.

We also finally have an answer to how a lunch with Boris Johnson came to be auctioned at the Presidents Club event without him knowing.

The spokesman said Johnson did donate a lunch with him, but as an auction prize for another charity, one set up by the former England cricketer Ian Botham, but that it was passed on without Johnson knowing.

Liam Botham, Ian Botham’s son, was among those listed as being invited to last week’s event.

On Nadhim Zahawi, the junior education minister who attended the event, the spokesman said he had told the Conservative chief whip that he regretted it and would “never attend something similar in the future”, adding: “The prime minister agrees with him that it is the right thing to do.”

The spokesman refused to specify whether this meant ministers should never attend male-only events of any kind. But it seems clear May might take a dim view of this – the spokesman pointed out her decision in 2001 to leave London’s Carlton Club until it allowed women as full members.

10 Downing Street.
10 Downing Street. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images

One of the lots on offer at the charity auction at the Presidents’ Club dinner was lunch with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary. Johnson did not know about this but, as my colleague Peter Walker reports, at the Number 10 lobby briefing it was explained how his name came to end up in the prize brochure.

The Institute for Government Whitehall Monitor report mentioned earlier (see 9.12am) also includes an assessment of how Theresa May is doing in terms of getting more women into government. Here is the relevant passage.

Part of the prime minister’s stated intention behind the January 2018 reshuffle was to make the government look ‘more like the country it serves’ and to introduce a ‘new generation’ of ministers. With regards to gender balance this appears to have been a moderate success.

Following the January 2018 reshuffle, nearly a third of all ministers are women, only one department (the Ministry of Defence) has no female minister, and in three departments half or more ministers are women (they are in the majority at the Home Office). This is an improvement from the reshuffle after the 2017 election, where only a quarter of ministers were female and five departments had no female ministers. In particular, there has been an increase in female ministers of state – from 15% to 27% – the pool from which the next generation of cabinet ministers are most likely to come. The percentage of women in the cabinet also rose, from 28.6% before Damian Green’s departure to 34.5% (although largely because more women are now allowed to attend cabinet rather than them being full members).

In other areas, progress has been slower and some areas of government still appear to be dominated by men. The percentage of female special advisers declined from 33% to 25% between December 2016 and December 2017, with eight departments having no female spads. Similarly there are five select committees on which fewer than 20% of members are female: Transport, Foreign Affairs, Defence, International Development, and Science and Technology. Nonetheless, eight of 24 Select Committees are chaired by women, and overall, women make up a third of Select Committee members.

This chart shows the ministerial gender mix in all government departments.

Ministerial gender mix in government departments.
Ministerial gender mix in government departments. Photograph: Institute for Government

Theresa May says charity dinner scandal show 'a lot more work to do' to combat 'objectification' of women

In her Bloomberg interview Theresa May that the revelations about sexual harassment at the Presidents Club charity dinner showed there was “a lot more work to do” to combat the “objectification” of women. Asked about her reaction to the story, she said:

I was frankly appalled when I read the report of this Presidents Club event. I thought that that sort of attitude of the objectification of women was something that was in the past. Sadly, what that event showed is that there is still a lot more work for us to do.

I will continue to work, as I have done in my time in politics, to a point where we really can say women are respected and accepted and treated as equals.

Asked if she thought rules needed to be changed, May said it was more a question of changing atttitudes. She said:

Sadly, what we saw from this Presidents Club is this is about attitudes. It’s about saying that actually women are not objects just to be used by men. Actually we are equals, we have our own position, our own abilities and that should be respected.

So I will continue to work - I’ve done it in politics, I’ve done it in business - to ensure that people recognise the value that women can bring to business, can bring to politics ... just in general, that attitude that says that women are objects, that we erase and eradicate that attitude. It’s so important that women are able to take their place as equals.

She also gave her qualified support to Nadhim Zahawi, the education minister who has been under pressure to resign after it emerged he attended the dinner. Asked if Zahawi was the right man for his government job in the light of what happened, she replied:

I understand that Nadhim was uncomfortable about what happened at the dinner and left the dinner on that basis.

Theresa May.
Theresa May. Photograph: Bloomberg

These are from Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton.

This is from the Telegraph’s Jack Maidment.

Bloomberg has now released the footage of a TV interview it has conducted with Theresa May this morning in Davos.

I will post some highlights soon.

Irish PM Leo Varadkar says he would like UK to end up with 'Norway plus' Brexit deal

These are from RTE’s Tony Connelly.

Leo Varadkar.
Leo Varadkar. Photograph: Jean-Francois Badias/AP

Updated

And here is Alan Travis’s story on the crime figures.

Here is my colleague Patrick Butler’s story on the rough sleeping figures.

Here is my colleague Alan Travis, the Guardian’s home affairs editor, on the crime figures.

More violence being reported to police but overall crime down, says ONS

And the Office for National Statistics has just published its lengthy report on crime figures in England and Wales for 2017.

The bulletin contains two types of figures: from the crime survey, which measures people saying they have been a victim of crime when asked by researchers; and crimes recorded by police.

The report says overall crime is going down, but that some serious and violent crime figures (the ones the police record) are going up.

Here is an extract from the ONS summary.

Our assessment of the main data sources is that levels of crime have continued to fall consistent with the general trend since the mid-1990s. However, these figures cover a broad range of offence types and not all offence types showed falls.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) shows that many of the high-volume crimes, such as lower harm violent crime, criminal damage and most types of theft, were either estimated to be at levels similar to the previous year or to have fallen. It also shows that crime is not a common experience for most people, with 8 in 10 adults surveyed by the CSEW not being a victim of any of the crimes asked about in the survey.

Other data sources including police data on the number of crimes recorded, show evidence of increases in some of the less frequently occurring, but higher-harm offences. These rises were relatively low in volume and were more than offset by falls seen across other higher-volume offence types shown by the CSEW ...

Police recorded crime showed continuing rises in a number of higher-harm violent offences that are not well-measured by the CSEW as they occur in relatively low volumes. This was most evident in offences of knife crime and gun crime; categories that are thought to be relatively well-recorded by the police. The occurrence of these offences tends to be disproportionately concentrated in London and other metropolitan areas.

And here are two of the key charts from the report.

This one shows overall crime figures (as measured by the crime survey, not reported crime.)

Overall crime figures.
Overall crime figures. Photograph: ONS

And this one shows the figures for violent crime dealt with by the police.

Violent crime dealt with by police
Violent crime dealt with by police Photograph: ONS

How rough sleeping has reached its highest level for this decade

Rough sleeping in England is now at its highest level for this decade, according to the Ministry of Housing figures (pdf). Here are three charts from their report illustrating the figures.

Homelessness figures for England.
Homelessness figures for England. Photograph: MoH/Ministry of Housing
Homelessness figures chart
Homelessness figures chart Photograph: MoH/Ministry of Housing
10 English authorities with highest rough sleeping counts in autumn 2017.
10 English authorities with highest rough sleeping counts in autumn 2017. Photograph: MoH/Ministry of Housing

Rough sleeping has risen by 15% over last year, official figures show

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has just published rough sleeping statistics (pdf). Here are the key figures.

  • Rough sleeping has risen by 15% over the last year, the figures show. The autumn 2017 single night snapshot found 4,751 people sleeping rough in England, up 15% on the figure for autumn 2016.
  • Rough sleeping in London was up 18%. Some 24% of all rough sleepers counted in England were in London.
  • Some 14% of rough sleepers were women, 20% were non-UK nationals and 8% were under 25.
Rough sleeping has risen 15%, official figures show.
Rough sleeping has risen 15%, official figures show. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

A record number of students from the poorest backgrounds are entering top universities, but the richest 18-year-olds are almost six times more likely to be placed, figures show. As the Press Association reports, applications from the most advantaged students were also at a record high last year, according to equalities data from Ucas.

But the gap between the most advantaged and disadvantaged students entering higher education remains, as richer students are 2.3 times more likely to enter university, than the poorest students. Researchers found that, since 2012, there has been a rise in the proportion of poorer students entering top institutions - an increase of 67% - but that overall, one in 25 students from the poorest backgrounds gains admission. This compares with roughly one in five among the most advantaged students, who are 5.5 times more likely to aim for higher tariff universities - institutions with higher entry requirements, the PA reports.

Theresa May's constant reshuffles have disrupted Brexit planning, says thinktank

Theresa May is in Davos today, where she will be delivering a speech and trying her best to get a word in edgeways (if this very good Bloomberg article is to be believed, which it should be) when she meets Donald Trump. My colleague Graeme Wearden is in Davos writing a live blog and he will be taking the lead in covering May, although I will probably give it some coverage here too.

Otherwise - well, there’s always Brexit. The Institute for Government has published its annual Whitehall Monitor this morning - an audit of the performance of government - and it says May’s hyperactive ministerial reshuffling has disrupted Brexit.

Here’s an excerpt.

Preparations for Brexit have been disrupted by the election, by turnover in personnel and by difficulties in parliamentary management ...

[The relative stability at cabinet level after the post-election reshuffle in 2017] was not matched at junior ministerial levels: 44% of all ministers across government were new to their roles after the post-election reshuffle. This upheaval came less than a year after May’s first set of government appointments in 2016, when 11 cabinet attendees left government, three new departments were created, and only at the Ministry of Defence did more than half of ministers stay in post.

The January 2018 reshuffle caused even more upheaval. Moves at cabinet level were relatively limited – 31% of attendees were new to their roles, and media attention focused on mooted moves which failed to materialise. However, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) each welcomed their sixth secretary of state since 2010. Junior ministerial turnover was high: 38.5% of all government ministers were new to their roles, including the entire ministerial team at the Cabinet Office and three quarters at the MoJ. 71% of ministers have been appointed to their roles since the 2017 general election.

Turnover at the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) has been notable. Only the Secretary of State, David Davis, and one other minister (Robin Walker) have remained in place since the department was created in July 2016. Half of DExEU’s ministers changed at the June 2017 reshuffle. The Department’s Lords minister, a critical role given the challenge of navigating Brexit legislation through the upper house, has changed three times since June 2017. DExEU had two permanent secretaries in 2017, and the National Audit Office has reported that DExEU’s staff turnover is 9% a quarter, when most departments average 9% a year.More positively, given all this churn, DExEU’s ministerial team survived the January 2018 reshuffle intact (indeed, the department gained an extra minister).

I will post more from the report later.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: The Institute for Government publishes its annual Whitehall Monitor report.

9.30am: Michael Gove, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

9.30am: Annual rough sleeping statistics are published.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes crime figures for England and Wales.

9.30am: NHS England publishes weekly hospital performance figures.

Around 10.30am: Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, makes the weekly business statement in the Commons.

1pm: Theresa May delivers a speech in Davos. My colleague Graeme Wearden will be covering it on his Davos live blog.

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 at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ 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 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.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter

Updated

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International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
"I was like, 'Wow, I'm about the same size as this huge animal!'" How a close encounter with wolves, a rough break-up and a Spider-Man director helped Evanescence produce one of their most important singles
Needing a follow-up to one of the biggest albums of the 2000s, Amy Lee wrote some brutally honest lyrics and a classic song to soundtrack them
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
‘That is a CLEAR sign not to drink from that’: Chicago woman buys water bottle from Primark. Then she puts it in the dishwasher
Years since the Stanley Cup craze, water bottle tumblers still remain extremely popular. Nearly every retailer has some form of them in various brands, colors, and sizes making them convenient and sustainable. But how durable are they if they run through the dishwasher? If this thought has ever crossed your…
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
U.S Soccer releases new World Cup kit. Fans have thoughts
‘The Waldo remix,’ joked one onlooker
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Ex-Adult Entertainer Speaks Out On Alleged Romance With Timothée Chalamet Before Kylie Jenner
“I see these things about him dating Kylie Jenner, and I was very confused about that,” Sarah Tena said.
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass”: Derek Trucks plays Jerry Garcia’s ‘Tiger’ guitar on stage just hours after it sold for $12 million
The second most expensive guitar of all time is already playing out its new owner’s promise of an active second life
Guitar World
Guitar World
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