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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Andrew Sparrow

Pro-Europeans praise Nigel Farage for backing second Brexit referendum – as it happened

Nigel Farage.
Nigel Farage. Photograph: Dabko/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Here is this week’s Guardian Politics Weekly podcast. It features Heather Stewart, Anushka Asthana, Sonia Sodha, Torsten Bell and Neal Lawson discussing the government reshuffle and the concept of a universal basic income.

'Relatively significant proportion of leave voters' starting to change their mind, says Demos report

According to a report published by the Demos thinktank yesterday, “a relatively significant proportion of leave voters” are starting to change their mind about Brexit.

The report, Citizen’s Voices, is based on the findings of an extensive series of focus groups conducted in the last three months of last year. The research was not primarily about Brexit, but Demos says the topic came up repeatedly. It says leave voters divided into three groups.

Over the course of these focus groups, we observed the emergence of three clear schools of thought amongst leave voters about the Brexit negotiations and Britain’s future after Brexit: those who remain tremendously buoyant about Brexit and its opportunities; those who are increasingly concerned with the process of negotiations and becoming somewhat anxious about its material impacts; and those who are regretful about their decision to vote leave.

This is what Demos said about those in the third group.

This series of focus groups distinctly captured an emergent sense of regret amongst a relatively significant proportion of leave voters. We saw a growing anger at having been forced to take such a momentous decision, without sufficient understanding of the consequences. Many of these participants challenged the purpose of a referendum such as this in a parliamentary democracy, feeling it was too complex and beyond the remit of citizens. They perceive the negotiations are not playing in Britain’s favour, and are becoming acutely fearful about the future.

Updated

Polling figures on a second referendum

Over the last year polls have consistently shown that only around a third of voters are in favour of a second referendum. Around 50% of voters are opposed. The excellent What UK Thinks website has the figures here. And this chart sets out how opinion has shifted (or not).

Public opinion on holding a second referendum
Public opinion on holding a second referendum Photograph: What UK Thinks

And this What UK Thinks chart shows polling figures when people are asked how they would vote in a second Brexit referendum.

Polling figures showing how people would vote in a second Brexit referendum.
Polling figures showing how people would vote in a second Brexit referendum. Photograph: What UK Thinks

Updated

David Miliband, the Labour former foreign secretary who now runs the International Rescue Committee aid organisation in America, says remainers should back a second referendum.

Many journalists agree with Iain Duncan Smith (see 3.38pm) and think Nigel Farage’s support for a second Brexit referendum is just a ploy to keep his name in the news.

From the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

From the Guardian’s Deborah Orr

The conventional wisdom is that a second referendum won’t happen.

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

But the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn thinks a second referendum is likely.

And my colleague Dan Roberts thinks Farage’s intervention could be a game changer.

Jonathan Isaby, editor of the pro-Brexit BrexitCentral website, says Nigel Farage’s backing (of sorts - his actual quote is equivocal) for a second referendum is “epically stupid”.

The Brexit minister Steve Baker, a leading figure in the leave movement, thinks Nigel Farage’s call for a second referendum is harmful to the Brexit cause.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory Brexiter and former work and pensions secretary, thinks Nigel Farage is backing a second referendum as an act of Trump-style attention seeking. This is from the Evening Standard’s Kate Proctor.

Chris Williamson stands down from Labour front bench to speak out on broad range of issues

Labour has announced that Chris Williamson, the Derby North MP, is leaving the front bench. He was shadow fire services minister.

Explaining his move, he said:

I will be standing down from my role with immediate effect so that I can return to the backbenches, where I will be campaigning on a broader range of issues. I will continue to loyally support the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn from the backbenches and hope to be a voice for the party’s members.

Corbyn said he was grateful to Williamson of his work and that as a backbencher Williamson would be “a strong campaigner on a range of crucial issues as well as serving his constituents with dedication”.

Williamson is a very strong supporter of Corbyn’s, but probably not a natural fit as a junior shadow minister, where sticking to a brief and accepting collective responsibility are de rigueur. Since the general election he has made various headline-grabbing interventions unrelated to fire policy, including using a Christmas message to hint that moderates should be deselected and this week proposing doubling council tax for people in valuable homes.

Chris Williamson.
Chris Williamson. Photograph: Handout

Nicola Sturgeon also faced tough questioning on Scotland’s health service at first minister’s questions today, with three out of four opposition leaders demanding answers in the light of some shocking personal stories of poor performance by the ambulance and A&E services.

Sturgeon was explicit about the difficulties facing the service, with flu cases doubling over the past week alone, but insisted that the service was “coping admirably” and repeatedly describing it as “the best performing NHS in the UK”.

Meanwhile, analysis by BBC Scotland finds that Scottish A&E units performed better than those in England in December, with figures just released by the NHS in England showing that 77.3% of attendances at major “type 1” A&E units were dealt with inside the four-hour target last month, while a calculation of weekly Scottish figures gives a figure of 82.3%.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson was especially critical of cuts to acute care beds, which Sturgeon insisted should be seen in the context of a shift in the balance of care to increased intermediate and social care. Sturgeon pointed out that Davidson’s Westminster colleague and health secretary Jeremy Hunt had only this week been given the social care portfolio to add to his health brief, an integration which has been ongoing in Scotland since 2016.

Nicola Sturgeon at first minister’s questions.
Nicola Sturgeon at first minister’s questions. Photograph: Andrew MacColl/REX/Shutterstock

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon described as “disgraceful” the UK government’s failure to bring forward amendments this week to the EU withdrawal bill relating to powers already devolved to Holyrood.

At today’s FMQs Sturgeon told the chamber “clause 11 of the Bill is a power grab”, adding: “We need to see amendments without further delay.”

Ministers were due to publish amendments to the highly contentious clause in the bill in the Commons on Wednesday that centralises more than 100 European powers in Whitehall after Brexit, even though they involve policy controlled by the devolved parliaments.

Sturgeon reiterated that the Scottish government will not recommend to parliament approve the bill without the amendments they are seeking.

In response to the failure of the Westminster government to bring the amendments in time, Scotland’s Brexit minister Michael Russell yesterday announced that the Scottish government has begun preparations to introduce an EU continuity bill to prepare Scotland’s laws for Brexit. He said that the government had an obligation to plan for Holyrood deciding not to give legislative consent to the EU withdrawal bill if amendments to protect devolution are not made.

Although David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, reportedly called both the Scottish and Welsh governments on his first day in post in an attempt to defuse tensions, ongoing negotiations face a stumbling block given that the SNP does not send representatives to the Lords because its membership is unelected. It is understand that a number of cross-bench peers are being sounded out to act as representatives for the Scottish government in their stead.

Ukip rejects Farage's proposal for second Brexit referendum

Nigel Farage has split Ukip. Although the former leader has said he is warming to the idea of a second referendum (see 2.30pm), the party’s current leader, Henry Bolton, said it was a bad idea. In a statement Bolton said:

I am convinced that the Leave side would win a second referendum, should one be held, with an even larger majority than before. Many remain voters can now see that the campaign led by the then prime minister and Chancellor as deliberately misleading. We have also seen greater investment and growth in a number of sectors since the summer of 2016. We are already seeing the benefits of leaving the European Union.

None the less, to hold such a referendum would be to call into question the decisive importance of the largest democratic exercise ever held by this country and the unambiguous mandate the people gave the government on that day - the mandate take us out of the European Union. Such a second referendum would set a precedent for revisiting any democratic decision made in future; it would undermine the fabric of our democratic principles and would weaken the clarity and effectiveness of democratic decision.

A second referendum would be damaging to the nation.

Updated

Pro-Europeans praise Nigel Farage for backing second Brexit referendum

As my colleague Rowena Mason reports, the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has said that he is warming to the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum. It was a surprising intervention because most Brexiters are strongly opposed to the idea, which they say is unnecessary and which they fear could lead to Brexit being reversed.

But pro-Europeans have welcomed Farage’s apparent conversion to the cause.

In a statement issued by Open Britain, which is campaigning for a soft Brexit, the Labour MP Chuka Umunna said:

For perhaps the first time in his life, Nigel Farage is making a valid point.

In a democracy like ours, the British people have every right to keep an open mind about Brexit.

If the Brexit that is delivered does not match up to the promises of Leave campaigners - with no sign of £350 million extra per week for the NHS but a whopping great divorce bill of £39bn - then everyone is entitled to ask if this is the right choice for our country.

The Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said:

Tony Blair and Nigel Farage aren’t two people I’d normally like to be put in a group with, but on this issue they are speaking sense.

But Farage shouldn’t be so confident of winning. People are now far more aware of the costs of Brexit and the fabrications of the Leave campaign.

Lord Malloch Brown, chairman of Best for Britain, which is fighting Brexit, said:

A second referendum: my message is clear - bring it on.

This is something that the country needs. Every day we see the disaster of Brexit as we see its impact on our economy, jobs, communities and our society.

And the Labour peer Andrew Adonis has written an article for the Guardian claiming that Farage has “some insight into the mood of the British public”. He writes:

It pains me to concede it but [Farage] has shown that instinct for populism again today by calling for a second referendum. Of course, Farage believes that a second vote will vindicate him and his hard Brexit comrades. He is asking not for a plebiscite so much as some sort of reckoning, with violent language to boot (he said: “I think that if we had a second referendum on EU membership we would kill it off for a generation”). But the underlying argument he makes is essentially correct – Brexit is not a done deal, the future is still up for grabs and the debate about Britain’s place in the world continues.

You can read Adonis’s article here.

Updated

Lunchtime summary

  • A senior Tory has called for the creation of a special tax to fund the NHS. Speaking on the BBC the former minister Nick Boles said national insurance should be increased and ring-fenced to fund the NHS. He said:

What I propose is what I call a square deal for the NHS whereby we give it a separate stand-alone funding basis; that we convert National Insurance, which people currently pay when they are employed, or self-employed, we convert it into National Health Insurance.

It goes into a separate national health fund and it funds the NHS and probably the public contribution towards the cost of social care in perpetuity.

That money can’t be spent on anything else, can’t be raided by the Treasury to divert to some other priority, and then the public would know that the money they were seeing on their pay slip as going into National Health Iinsurance, they would know where it was going.

And on that basis I think the public would accept an increase in National Insurance in order to pay for the NHS which clearly does need more money over the long term.

Later Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee said he might back Boles’s idea. Brady also said he favoured the creation of a royal commission to look at NHS funding, a proposal gaining increasing support among Tories.

  • Jeremy Corbyn has said the NHS is in a permanent state of crisis. Speaking at an event in Swindon he said:

It is no longer a winter crisis - it is a 12-month crisis in the NHS. The prime minister told the House of Commons that the NHS was fully prepared for all eventualities over winter. That was three weeks ago. We have had three weeks of crisis.

Impact of Brexit on UK economy under various scenarios
Impact of Brexit on UK economy under various scenarios Photograph: London mayor

Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff has been accused of meddling in education policy after he claimed Justine Greening had to be sacked because she had blocked attempts to reduce university tuition fees and frustrated schools reform, my colleague Rowena Mason and Patrick Greenfield report.

Jo Johnson, who was universities minister until he was moved in the reshuffle, used Twitter this morning to say Timothy was wrong.

Timothy replied:

Laura Kuenssberg has posted a good Twitter thread on this. It starts here.

Updated

Government appointments watchdog says Toby Young's Twitter history should have been considered before he was offered education post

The government’s appointments watchdog has said that Toby Young’s offensive social media tweets should have been taken into account before he was considered for a position on the board of the new regulator, the Office for Students.

Peter Riddell, the commissioner for public appointments, has made the point in a post on his blog about the appointment, which led to Young resigning this week in the face of repeated claims that sexist and homophobic comments he had made in the past on Twitter made him an unsuitable candidate. Riddell says he plans to publisher a fuller report on this in due course.

Riddell says on his blog that the appropriate procedures were followed when Young was appointed. But he says those procedures are flawed, because officials in the businesss department, who advised the then universities minister Jo Johnson on the appointment, did not take into account Young’s embarrassing tweets. Riddell says:

Jo Johnson, the then minister for universities, science, research and innovation, said that neither he nor the department were aware of the offensive tweets before the appointment was made, but there is nothing unusual about that. Many of the remarks were made years – in some cases, decades - ago and it is not reasonable or proportionate for the government to trawl through tens of thousands of tweets over many years when making public appointments’.

The problem with that view is that in Mr Young’s case, some of his offensive tweets were unearthed publicly almost as soon as his appointment was announced, and had been the subject of media coverage in the past ...

The main lesson of this episode is that department and interview panels should not just focus on a candidate’s specific suitability for post. They should also press candidates on the potential embarrassment question, as they are already do on conflicts of interest. Any additional points should be included in the material sent to ministers who make the final choice.

Corbyn calls for more funding for the NHS now

Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News the Labour would put more money into the NHS now. Commenting on the A&E figures, he said:

We would put more resources, money, into the NHS straight away, but also look at the wider question of why those figures are so high, and in part it’s a symptom of lots of other things. Some of those people going into A&E have come from care homes where there was not sufficient support for them. Some of those people have come in because of a level of desperation in their lives and they need that support. But there has to be more resources put in.

Because it also means there is a very quick quantum leap. If you’ve got a car park full of ambulances with highly skilled paramedics and ambulance staff in the ambulance trying to treat the patient [who] ought to be in the hospital, but can’t go in because the A&E is full and there are no beds to move people on to, then down the line there’s a whole lot more people with chest pains, with strokes, who are not being treated because nobody can get to them. Very quickly you get into a pretty big disaster.

Jeremy Corbyn.
Jeremy Corbyn. Photograph: Sky News

May's Q&A - Summary

Here are the main points from Theresa May’s Q&A after the speech.

  • May said an increase in the number of people getting flu was partly to blame for A&E departments finding it so hard to treat patients on time this winter. (See 11.43am.)
  • She said the government would try to overturn House of Lords votes last night legislating for a new inquiry into the press and extra legal costs for papers that do not sign up to an official regulator. Asked about the votes, May said:

Look, I think that the impact of this vote would undermine high-quality journalism and a free press. I think it would particularly have a negative impact on local newspapers which are an important underpinning of our democracy. I believe passionately in a free press. We want to have a free press which is able to hold politicians and others to account, and we will certainly be looking to overturn this vote in the House of Commons.

  • She dismissed claims that she had previously shown little interest in the long-planned environment strategy. In an article in today’s Times (paywall), Katie Perrior, who was Mays’ communications director until the general election, said that May never used to be interested in this agenda and that, when Andrea Leadsom was environment secretary, she was told to make the environment strategy boring. Asked about the Perrior comments, May said that the strategy was not boring and that she was not a recent convert to this cause. She said:

This is an issue that I have looked at previously, I’ve been a shadow environment secretary as well, so this is not something that is new to me.

In her article Perrior said:

Theresa May’s enthusiasm for protecting the environment may not be insincere but it is certainly new. The pretext for today’s speech is the 25-year environment plan. When I was at No 10, Andrea Leadsom, then the environment secretary, was told to make the plan as boring as possible.

She duly delivered, and it sat on a shelf gathering dust. Michael Gove’s arrival, and his insight that Tory redemption lies in challenging producer importance in the interests of the environment, have changed everything. Under Ms Leadsom, staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs walked around Westminster with a stoop. Now they swagger, the new lords of Whitehall.

  • May said that, as part of her own contribution to the environment, she and her husband had an owl box and bat boxes in the garden. Asked what she was doing personally to help the environment, she said:

We will certainly be making sure that we are recycling as much as possible.

I’m proud of the fact that we have put a barn owl box, bird boxes and bat boxes up in our garden.

So we are trying to do our little bit there as well.

We love walking in the countryside.

Theresa May walks through the grounds of the WWT London Wetlands Centre with Martin Spray, CEO of the WWT (left) and Michael Gove, the environment secretary.
Theresa May walks through the grounds of the WWT London Wetlands Centre with Martin Spray, CEO of the WWT (left) and Michael Gove, the environment secretary. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/PA

May says flu outbreak partly to blame for A&E departments missing waiting targets

This is what Theresa May said when asked about the NHS. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg said the A&E waiting figures out today showed performance at a record low. Referring to the NHS Providers’ call for NHS spending to rise significantly, and the fact that even some Tories are calling for increased NHS spending, Kuenssberg asked May if she thought they were wrong. Here is May’s reply in full.

As we know, every year in winter the national health service comes under additional pressure. We have seen the extra pressures that the NHS has come under this year.

One of the issues that determines the extent of that pressure is flu and we have seen in recent days an increase in the number of people presenting at A&E from flu, and the NHS today has launched their national flu campaign. And I would encourage people to act on the advise that the NHS is giving, and also encourage NHS staff who haven’t had the flue vaccine yet to have that vaccine.

We have put more funding into the NHS for these winter pressures. We’re putting more funding into the NHS overall.

But, in terms of these winter pressures that we see the NHS under, there have been a number of measures that we’ve taken that have helped. For example, for the first time ever, urgent GP appointments being available through the Christmas period. That was a decision taken to improve the service for people, but also to ensure that the NHS had that better capacity to deal with these winter pressures.

To summarise:

  • May said an increase in the number of people getting flu was partly to blame for A&E departments finding it so hard to treat patients on time this winter.
  • She brushed aside calls for an increase in NHS funding, saying that the NHS had already received extra money.

It was a surprisingly bland answer giving the scale of the problems in the NHS and the amount of airtime they are attracting on the news. You would not expect her announce a new NHS initiative on a day devoted to environment policy, and all prime ministers spend half their time resisting spending demands. But seeming to imply that it was just a matter of more people getting flu struck the wrong note, and it was not just a case of May saying no to calls for extra money; she made no real effort to even engage with the debate about whether or not the NHS needs increased funding.

Theresa May speaking at the London Wetland Centre in south west London.
Theresa May speaking at the London Wetland Centre in south west London. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

Q: What do you say to the claim you have only adopted this agenda recently for electoral reasons?

May says she has a long-term interest in this. She used to be shadow environment secretary, she says.

Q: Are you in favour of a bottle deposit scheme?

May says she is old enough to remember when you could get a sixpence deposit by returning a corona bottle. She says what matters is what works. She wants to look at the evidence, she says.

And that’s it.

I will post a summary soon.

May says government will seek to overturn Lords vote legislating for Leveson inquiry part two

Q: [From the Daily Mail] What impact has the Mail’s campaign on plastics had? And do you and your husband plan to change your plastic use habits?

May says the Daily Mail has done a good job on this.

She says she and her husband try to recycle as much as possible. She says she is proud of the fact that she has a barn owl box and a bat box in her garden.

She likes walking in the countryside, she says. But don’t worry - she is not about to go walking in Wales [where she decided to call the election].

Q: What do you think of the Lords vote last night to “muzzle the press”?

May says the proposed inquiry will be be bad for quality journalism. And it will have a negative impact on local papers. She says the government will seek to reverse it when the bill comes to the Commons.

Updated

Q: Why do most the plans you have announced refer to consumers having to change their conduct, not producers?

May says everyone has to play their part in improving the environment.

Q: The mayor of London has produced a report saying Brexit could damage growth. Do you agree? And why haven’t you published your own impact assessment?

May says she has not read the report.

The report highlights what might happen under a no deal scenario. But she wants a deal, she says. She says she is confident about getting a good deal.

May's Q&A

May is now taking questions.

Q: This plan was designed in 2015. We have found it was originally meant to be boring. Are you serious about it?

May says this is an inspiring plan. It is a plan that speaks to everyone who cares about the environment.

She says the government has already taken steps to help the environment. Look at the ban on micro-beads, or the charge for plastic bags already introduced, she says.

Q: What is your reaction to the A&E waiting time figures out today?

May says the NHS comes under pressure every winter. Flu is a factor, and there has been an increase in the number of people coming to A&E with flu in recent days. She encourages people to get flu vaccines.

She says for the first time ever this year urgent GP appointments have been available during the winter period.

May confirms the govenrment will extend the 5p plastic bag charge.

But I want us to go step further.

We have seen a powerful example over the last couple of years of the difference which a relatively simple policy can make for our environment.

In 2015 we started asking shoppers to pay a 5p charge for using a plastic bag.

As a direct consequence, we have used 9 billion of them since the charge was introduced.

This means the marine-life around the shores of the UK is safer, our local communities are cleaner and fewer plastic bags are ending up in landfill sites.

This success should inspire us.

It shows the difference we can make, and it demonstrates that the public is willing to play its part to protect our environment.

So to help achieve our goal of eliminating all avoidable plastic waste, we will extend the 5p plastic bag charge to all retailers, to further reduce usage.

May returns to plastics.

We look back in horror at some of the damage done to our environment in the past and wonder how anyone could have thought that, for example, dumping toxic chemicals untreated into rivers was ever the right thing to do.

In years to come, I think people will be shocked at how today we allow so much plastic to be produced needlessly.

In the UK alone, the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls.

This plastic is ingested by dozens of species of marine mammals and over 100 species of sea birds, causing immense suffering to individual creatures and degrading vital habitats.

1 million birds, and over 100,000 other sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste.

This truly is one of the great environmental scourges of our time.

Today I can confirm that the UK will demonstrate global leadership.

We must reduce the demand for plastic, reduce the number of plastics in circulation and improve our recycling rates.

So we will take action at every stage of the production and consumption of plastic.

As it is produced, we will encourage manufacturers to take responsibility for the impacts of their products and rationalise the number of different types of plastics they use.

As it is consumed, we will drive down the amount of plastic in circulation through reducing demand.

Government will lead the way by removing all consumer single use plastic in central government offices.

And I want to see other large organisations commit to doing the same.

Supermarkets also need to do much more to cut down on unnecessary plastic packaging, so we will work with them to explore introducing plastic-free aisles, where all the food is sold loose.

And we will make it easier for people to recycle their plastics, so less of it ends up in landfills or our waterways.


May says she wants more children to visit countryside

May says she wants more children to visit the countryside.

Today, more than one in ten young people do not spend time in the countryside or in large urban green spaces, meaning they are denied the benefits which spending time outdoors in the natural environment brings.

These young people are disproportionately from more deprived backgrounds and their effective exclusion from our countryside represents a social injustice which I am determined to tackle.

The National Park Authorities already engage directly with over 60,000 young people a year in schools visits, and they will now double this figure to ensure that even more young people can learn about our most precious environments.

And to help more children lead happy and healthy lives, we will launch a new Nature Friendly Schools programme

Targeting schools in disadvantaged areas first, it will create improved school grounds which allow young people to learn about the natural world.

And she refers to the plans for a new northern forest announced at the weekend.

It will be a new community woodland for Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, provide a new and enduring amenity for the growing population of the north of England, and act as a carbon sink for the UK.

Decades from now, children as yet unborn will be exploring this forest, playing under the shade of its trees and learning about our natural world from its flora and fauna.

May says the government wants to increase protections for trees and woodlands.

A tree is a home to countless organisms, from insects to small mammals.

They are natural air purifiers. They act as flood defences.

May turns to plastic waste.

While the water in our rivers and beaches are cleaner than ever, around the world eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into the oceans each year.

The problem was vividly highlighted in the BBC’s recent Blue Planet II series, which was public service broadcasting at its finest.

And I also pay tribute to the Daily Mail for its tireless campaigning on this issue.

May says UK will be 'world leader in tackling abuse of animals'

May turns to animal welfare.

When animals are mistreated, our common humanity is tarnished.

So we are pursuing policies to make Britain a world leader in tackling the abuse of animals.

Here at home we are introducing mandatory CCTV into slaughter houses, to ensure standards of treatment are upheld.

We are increasing the maximum sentence for the worst acts of animal cruelty in England and Wales ten-fold.

We recognise that animals are sentient beings and we will enshrine that understanding in primary legislation.

We have consulted on plans to introduce a total ban on UK sales of ivory that contribute either directly or indirectly to the continued poaching of elephants.

In 2014, we convened the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, the first of its kind, to help eradicate an abhorrent crime and to better protect the world’s most iconic species from the threat of extinction.

In October we will host this conference again and will press for further international action.

Updated

May says UK will 'strengthen and enhance' environmental protections after Brexit, not weaken them

May says the UK has already gone beyond EU requirements in environmental protection.

Our record shows that we have already gone further than EU regulation requires of us to protect our environment.

Thanks to action we have taken, 7,886 square miles of coastal waters around the UK are now Marine Conservation Zones, protecting a range of nationally important, rare or threatened habitats and species.

Our ban on the use of microbeads in cosmetic and personal care products is another positive step towards protecting our marine environment.

And we want to further restrict neonicotinoids to protect our bees.

After Brexit the UK will go further, she says.

We will use the opportunity Brexit provides to strengthen and enhance our environmental protections – not to weaken them.

May says environmental standards will not be lowered after Brexit

May says the government will not lower environmental standards after Brexit.

Because we recognise their value, we will incorporate all existing EU environmental regulations into domestic law when we leave.

And let me be very clear. Brexit will not mean a lowering of environmental standards.

And she says, after Brexit, a new body will hold the government to account.

We will set out our plans for a new, world leading independent statutory body to hold government to account and give the environment a voice. And our work will be underpinned by a strong set of environmental principles.

May says Conservatives have good record on the environment

May says the Conservatives have a good record on the environment.

In the nineteenth century it was Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative government which passed the River Pollution Prevention Act, providing the first legal environmental protections for our waterways.

A Conservative government in the 1950s passed the Clean Air Act, making the Great Smog of London a thing of the past.

Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to recognise the threat of global warming and helped to protect our ozone layers through her work on the Montreal Protocol.

And David Cameron restored environmentalism to a central place in the Conservative agenda.

May says the “clean growth revolution” is at the heart of the government’s industrial strategy.

And she says Britain already has a good record in this area.

The UK is already home to around half a million jobs in low carbon businesses and their supply chain.

We are a world-leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles.

We are the biggest offshore wind energy producer in the world.

May says promoting growth and protecting the environment can go together

May says she does not accept that protecting the environment is incompatible with promoting growth.

It is sometimes suggested that a belief in a free market economy which pursues the objective of economic growth is not compatible with taking the action necessary to protect and enhance our natural environment.

That we need to give up on the very idea of economic growth itself as the price we have to pay for sustainability.

Others argue that taking any action to protect and improve our environment harms business and holds back growth.

Both are wrong. They present a false choice which I entirely reject.

A free market economy, operating under the right rules, regulations, and incentives, delivering sustainable economic growth, is the single greatest agent of collective human progress we have ever known.

Time and again, it has lifted whole societies out of abject poverty and subsistence living, increased life expectancy, widened literacy and improved educational standards ...

The innovation and invention of a free enterprise economy will help to deliver new technology to drive a revolution in clean growth.

May goes on about the value of the environment.

In the United Kingdom, we are blessed with an abundance and variety of landscapes and habitats.

These natural assets are of immense value.

Our countryside and coastal waters are the means by which we sustain our existence in these islands.

They are where we grow and harvest a large proportion of the food we eat. Where the water we drink comes from.

Our green and blue places have inspired some of our greatest poetry, art and music and have become global cultural icons.

Having access to nature is good for people, she goes on.

The natural environment is around us wherever we are, and getting closer to it is good for our physical and mental health and our emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

Millions of us visit the countryside, the seaside, a local park or places like this, every week to recharge our batteries, spend time with friends and family, and to exercise.

So the environment is something personal to each of us, but it is also something which collectively we hold in trust for the next generation.

May says conservatism and conservation go together.

Britain has always been a world leader in understanding and protecting the environment, she says.

Conservatism and Conservation are natural allies.

The fundamental understanding which lies at the heart of our philosophical tradition is that we in the present are trustees charged with protecting and improving what we have inherited from those who went before us.

Updated

Theresa May's speech

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is introducing Theresa May.

He says she has ensured that the resources, the policy and the idealism has been in place to make the government’s 25-year environment plan a success.

Here is my colleague Denis Campbell’s story on the A&E waiting times.

Here is some more comment on the A&E waiting time figures.

From the Health Service Journal’s James Illman

(@gooroohealth is Dr Rob Findlay, an NHS demand specialist)

From the HSJ’s Dave West

The number of A&E patients being treated within the politically important four-hour target target has reached its lowest ever level, with hospitals managing to care for just 77.3% of patients within that time last month - far fewer than the 95% target.

Fewer than four out of five (77.3%) patients were treated and then admitted, discharged or transferred by emergency departments based at hospitals in England during December, what the NHS calls type 1 A&E units. That was the worst performance since records began and even worse than the previous low of 77.6% recorded in January 2017 and the 79.3% seen in December 2016.

Here is the NHS England summary of the figures out today (pdf). It is the “statistical commentary” on the A&E attendance and emergency admission figures for December.

The total number of attendances in December 2017 was 2,016,000, an increase of 3.7% on the same month last year. Of these, attendances at type 1 A&E departments were 1.0% higher. Attendances over the latest twelve months are higher than levels in the preceding twelve month period (an increase of 0.5%).

There were 520,000 emergency admissions in the month, 4.5% higher than the same month last year. Emergency admissions via type 1 A&E departments increased by 5.6% over the same period. Emergency admissions over the last twelve months are up 2.9% on the preceding twelve month period.

30.0% of patients that attended a type 1 major A&E department required admission to hospital, which compares to 28.7% for the same month last year.

85.1% of patients were seen within 4 hours in all A&E departments this month, compared to 88.9% in November 2017 and 86.2% in December 2016. The proportion of patients seen within 4 hours in all A&E departments in January 2017 was also 85.1%, which was the lowest performance figure since this collection began. This is below the 95% standard, which was last achieved in July 2015.

77.3% of patients were seen within 4 hours in type 1 A&E departments, compared to 83.0% in November 2017 and 79.3% for the same month last year. This is the lowest type 1 performance since this collection began.

There were 69,100 four-hour delays from decision to admit to admission this month, which compares to 61,700 in the same month last year.

Of these, 497 were delayed over twelve hours (from decision to admit to admission), compared to 553 in the same month last year.

4 out of 137 reporting trusts with type 1 departments achieved the 95% standard on all types during the month. When additional local activity is taken into account, 7 out of 137 reporting trusts with type 1 departments achieved this standard.

A type 1 A&E department is a major A&E department.

There are more detailed figures, including hospital by hospital figures, in the detailed charts that you can find here.

The collection of monthly A&E waiting figures goes back to 2010.

Figures for missed A&E waiting time targets in December at record high level

The latest NHS England A&E waiting figures are out. And the Health Service Journal has the headline numbers, for December.

Here is the 82-page “Preparing for Brexit” report (pdf) produced for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, by Cambridge Econometrics.

I will be looking at it in a bit more detail a bit later.

Theresa May's environment speech dubbed 'missed opportunity' as campaigners call for tighter plastics crackdown

Theresa May is keen to show that her government has an agenda that goes beyond Brexit and today she will be publishing a 25-year environment plan. Green issues were not a priority for her when she set out her core priorities when she stood for Conservative party leadership in 2016, but the Tories were surprised during the general election by how much damage was caused by their stance on fox hunting, and their lack of credibility on the environment and animal welfare generally, and since then they’ve been keen to make amends by embracing eco-politics with enthusiasm.

May’s speech has been well trailed, and our preview story is here. As Peter Walker reports, she will declare a war on plastic waste, with proposed policies including plastics-free aisles in supermarkets and a tax on takeaway containers.

But, by giving away so much of the speech in advance, May has laid herself open to attack, and campaigners and opposition politicians have accused her of not going far enough. Here is some of the reaction to what we’ve heard so far.

Greenpeace UK said the speech was “missed opportunity”. Louise Edge, its senior oceans campaigner, said:

This announcement was billed as a major push to tackle our plastic problem, but it looks more like a missed opportunity. It’s good that the government wants to make tackling plastic waste a priority, but the specific measures announced today don’t match the scale of the environmental crisis we face.

Encouraging more water fountains, extending charges on plastic bags and funding for innovation can all be part of the solution, but the overall plastics plan lacks urgency, detail and bite.

WWF said May should be more ambitious. Its CEO, Tanya Steele, said:

We welcome any step to reduce the plastic waste we produce, and policies like [having plastic-free aisles in shops] can spur change. But if we really want to solve this problem, we need to think bigger and ultimately move towards an end to single-use plastics.

Sue Hayman, a Labour environment spokeswoman, said May’s plan was “too little, too late”. She said:

This plan, years behind schedule, is a cynical attempt at rebranding the Tories’ image and appears to contain only weak proposals with Britain’s plastic waste crisis kicked into the long grass. This is all simply too little too late to reverse the damage of the Tories’ inconsistent and failed approach to environmental policy.

And Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, said May’s targets were not ambitious enough. He said:

The Conservatives should be eliminating all avoidable plastic waste now - a target of 2042 beggars belief. They ramped up expectations only to disappoint.

The Conservatives have shown a complete lack of ambition. Notably, they have failed to deal with the excessive waste of coffee cups through the levy proposed by the Liberal Democrats and recently embraced by a powerful group of cross-party MPs. This is only a small step rather than the leap that is needed. Even the extension of the 5p tax on plastic bags only closed exemptions unnecessarily introduced by the Conservative party.

I will be covering the speech in detail, and further reaction as it comes in.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has been giving interviews about the speech this morning. I will summarise them soon.

This morning Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has also published his own report on the impact of Brexit. Here’s our story, but there will be more on this too.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

9.30am: NHS England publishes A&E waiting times.

10.30am: Theresa May launches the government’s 25-year environment plan.

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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