Afternoon summary
- The Tory MP Owen Paterson faces a 30-day suspension from the House of Commons for an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules, raising the possibility he could lose his seat if enough constituents trigger a byelection. Paterson has strongly reject the Commons standards committee’s findings, and claimed the inquiry into the accusations against him contributed to his wife taking her life last year. (See 2.24pm.)
- Plans to take tougher action against water companies for pumping sewage into rivers and the sea will once again be opposed by the government, Downing Street has announced. Peers are debating the environment bill, and later today they are expected to debate a new amendment from the crossbencher, the Duke of Wellington, who tabled the original proposal to protect rivers from raw sewage that was controversially voted down by MPs. Wellington’s latest amendment says water companies should “take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows into inland & coastal waters”.
- Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has told MPs that he does not think Nato was militarily defeated in Afghanistan. Instead there was a failure of political resolve, he told the Commons defence committee. He said:
I don’t think that we were defeated. Our resolve was found wanting, I would say, rather than defeated
Nato were there to enable a political campaign and I think that is what failed. The military were there to put in place the security environment in order to try and deliver that.
When that is withdrawn, that is when you find out whether your political campaign has worked. What was we discovered is it didn’t work.
It was the western resolve and the western narrative or political foundations they had laid failed. There are a lot of searching questions there for all of us.
That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog.
These are from Nick Triggle, the BBC’s health correspondent, on the DHSC saying the asymptomatic testing of pupils will continue at least until January. (See 4.02pm.)
The logic behind this is that you can’t keep isolating kids for 10 days based on asymptomatic case - ie when they are not even ill. There’s lots being considered including shortening isolation period. All part of transition from pandemic to endemic approach https://t.co/qOk7TOG69a
— Nick Triggle (@NickTriggle) October 26, 2021
But these are all issues for 2022 I’m told. No major changes expected until after winter
— Nick Triggle (@NickTriggle) October 26, 2021
The Climate Change Committee, an independent government advisory body, has published its assessment (pdf) of the government’s net zero strategy published last week. It describes it as “an ambitious and comprehensive strategy that marks a significant step forward for UK climate policy, setting a globally leading benchmark to take to Cop26”.
But it says for the strategy to succeed some “key issues will need to be resolved quickly”, including delivery mechanisms in agriculture.
In evidence to the Commons science committee this morning, Prof Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, said the government wanted the testing of asymptomatic pupils in schools, as well as pupils with symptoms, to continue at least until January.
Beyond that, people were considering how long asymptomatic testing should continue, she said. She told the committee:
I would like to think that in five years’ time we won’t all be lateral flow testing. There’s a stretchable point between those five years clearly.
Between now and January, it’s clear that we’ve committed to testing. We are then reconsidering where we go beyond January, beyond spring.
Chappell was speaking after Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the same committee that he thought there should be a move away from the testing of asymptomatic pupils.
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Giving evidence to the Commons environment committee, Graeme Dear, chair of the British Poultry Council, said there was likely to be a shortage of UK-produced turkeys at Christmas because of labour shortages. He said:
We have been given access through the seasonal workers scheme for up to 5,500 but that finishes on December 31.
We would have loved to have known about that in June, and therefore could have placed enough turkeys for a full Christmas.
We will do our utmost to make sure that Christmas is as normal as it can be, but there is a likelihood that there will be a shortage – had we known back in June or July that would have been fixed.
Around 90% of our shortages are in the processing plants, and the irony is that we may find ourselves having to import turkey from France and Poland for a British Christmas, probably with some of the very workers we trained and left to go back to their homelands.
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Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has announced details of government plans to change the way nuclear power stations are financed. Following a recommendation from the National Audit Office, the government will replace the existing Contracts for Difference funding mechanism with the Regulated Asset Base model. The RAB model, also used to fund projects like the Thames Tideway tunnel and Heathrow Terminal 5, means investors start receiving returns more quickly. But Kwarteng also claims it could save consumers £30bn for every new large-scale power station.
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Amount of farm produce being wasted due to labour shortages 'completely inexcusable', MPs told
The amount of farm produce being wasted because there are not enough workers available to harvest it is “completely inexcusable”, MPs have been told.
Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the Commons environment committee that almost a quarter of this year’s daffodil crop was wasted as it could not be picked. He went on:
The food waste we are seeing at a farm level, whether courgettes, apples going unpicked, autumn raspberries not being picked at the moment and tragic culls going on in the pig sector, is completely inexcusable.
It is within the gift of this government to put solutions in place which will mean that this doesn’t happen next year, but that needs to happen urgently because the lack of confidence we’ve got across multiple sectors means investment plans are put on hold and many are mothballing facilities.
We have glasshouses that should be growing tomatoes which are currently being mothballed because they don’t know if they will have the labour to pick them while energy costs are also spiralling and having an impact.
Farmers were heavily reliant on seasonal workers from the EU before Brexit, and the UK’s departure from the EU has created a labour shortage, which has also been exacerbated by Covid.
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Sturgeon ended her statement by explaining the Covid arrangements for Cop26, which starts in Glasgow at the weekend.
She said, as far as possible, steps have been taken to ensure delegates are vaccinated.
People arriving from outside Britain and Ireland will have to show a negative test result, she said, and people arriving from red list countries will have to quarantine.
She said people entering core Cop26 venues would have to do a lateral flow test every day, wear masks, and follow one-metre social distancing.
And delegates would have to follow Scotland’s Covid rules in public spaces and on public transport, she said.
Sturgeon says from 4am on Sunday people arriving in Scotland from abroad will have to take a lateral flow test, rather than a more expensive PCR test, on day two after their arrival. This will bring the Scottish rules into line with England’s.
But if the lateral flow test is positive, people will need to have it confirmed with a PCR test.
Sturgeon says the NHS is deliving the biggest ever winter vaccination programme.
Covid boosters and flu vaccinations are being co-administered wherever possible, she says.
She says that means some people might be getting their flu vaccine a bit later than usual.
Sturgeon announces no changes to Scotland's Covid rules, but an extra £482m for NHS
Sturgeon says today marks the latest point for a three-week review of regulations.
But the cabinet decided this morning that no changes were needed, she says.
She says the decline in cases has levelled off. In recent days there has been a slight increase.
But Scotland currently has the lowest Covid rate of the four UK nations, she says.
She says the NHS remains under significant pressure.
There has been a slight change in the age distribution of people going to hospital, she says. More of them are older patients.
She says a further £482m is being allocated to the NHS. This includes £120m for the test and protect programme, and £130m for the vaccination programme.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is giving a statement to Scottish parliament about Covid. She says there will be no immediate changes to the rules in force.
She starts with the latest figures. There have been 2,262 new cases, she says, with 11.5% of tests being positive.
She says there are 917 Covid patients in hospital – 15 more than yesterday.
And there have been 20 further deaths.
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David Davis, the Conservative former Brexit secretary, has said he does not believe Owen Paterson received a fair hearing from the parliamentary investigation into the lobby accusations against him.
I am afraid Charles Moore and Owen Paterson make valid points.
— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) October 26, 2021
This system of investigation would not be acceptable for our constituents, as it does not meet the rules of natural justice, or even ACAS rules. https://t.co/FvsUsHYz6q
I note that none of the 17 critical witnesses appear to have been interviewed by the Commissioner.
— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) October 26, 2021
And of course, there is no appeal process, which I would demand for my constituents. https://t.co/4P70DUQE8P
Owen Paterson rejects report saying he broke lobbying rules, claiming inquiry contributed to his wife taking her life
In an interview with the BBC’s World at One Owen Paterson strongly rejected the findings of the Commons standards committee report saying he had broken parliamentary lobbying rules. (See 9.35am). He also claimed the manner in which the investigation against him was conducted contributed to his wife, Rose, taking her life last year. He told the programme:
[There is] absolutely no doubt whatever in my mind that the manner in which this inquiry was conducted led to the extreme anguish which caused Rose to hang herself. I wasn’t spoken to for 17 months and during that time a number of letters were sent ...
Paterson said he thought he had answered the initial allegations, but then subsquently, twice more, he received further letters, extending the accusations “way beyond” the original ones. He went on:
And I remember very clearly the last weekend before Rose hanged herself, [her] really going to me in the kitchen, saying: ‘Don’t you realise,this inquiry is going to go on and on and on, until [the parliamentary commissioner for standards] finds some spurious reasons for finding you guilty. She is determined to catch you out. And then you’ll have to resign and I’ll have to resign and we’ll end our days in humiliation and disgrace.’ There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the manner in which this inquiry has been conducted, in complete breach of the rules of natural justice, was a major factor in my wife’s decision to hang herself in June last year.
Paterson said that, although the Commons rules ban lobbying on behalf of a paying client, there is an exception if an MP needs to raise a “serious wrong” with the authorities. He said this was the case for him because Randox, one of the companies he was working for, found 15% of random milk samples from supermarkets contained a carcinogenic antibiotic.
Paterson has set out his objections to the report in full in a statement on his website.
(The committee said that, although this exception covered one of the lobbying interventions by Paterson, it did not cover the others.)
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Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group that developed the AstraZeneca vaccine, told MPs this morning that some of the charts showing Covid cases in the UK to be far higher than in other European countries were misleading. In evidence to the Commons science committee, he said the figures partly reflected the fact that the UK is doing a lot more testing. He explained:
If you look across western Europe, we have about 10 times more tests done each day than some other countries, this is per head of population.
So we really have to always adjust by looking at the data ... we do have a lot of transmission at the moment, but it’s not right to say that those rates are really telling us something that we can compare internationally ...
If you make the adjustment of cases in relation to the rates of testing, and look at test positivity, currently Germany has the highest test positivity rate in Europe. So I think when we look at these data it’s really important not to sort of bash the UK with a very high case rate, because actually it’s partly related to very high testing.
I’m not trying to deny that there’s not plenty of transmission, because there is, but it’s the comparisons that are problematic.
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No 10 denies planning to impose plan B Covid measures for whole winter
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson also played down claims that its plan B for Covid could cost the economy up to £18bn. The figure comes from a leaked government assessment. (See 10.09am.) But the analysis was based on the premise of plan B being in force for five months, and the spokesperson said this was not government policy and “not something we’re planning to”. He went on:
If it were to become the case, the plan B measures would allow venues to remain open and remain trading.
We are confident the plan B measures taken as a package will help curb Covid cases while also striking that important balance of allowing parts of the economy to remain open that will otherwise face severe restrictions or even closure.
In the Commons a few minutes ago, during the UQ on pre-budget announcements, Sir Desmond Swayne, a lockdown-sceptic Tory, asked why this plan B assessment had not been made public. Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury, prompted loud laughter when he replied saying he could not talk about leaks.
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Yesterday the UK recorded 36,567 new coronavirus cases. As the government’s dashboard shows, the total number of cases in the week up to yesterday was just 2.2% up on the previous week. But the seven-day average figures on the “cases by date reported” graph, which only go up to Thursday, show cases falling.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman said it was too early to conclude that cases were plateauing. He said:
It’s always encouraging when you see reductions like that and including, I believe, a levelling off of admissions. But it’s too early to draw full conclusions from the case rates and we would continue to urge the public to abide by the guidance as set out and those eligible to get booster doses.
UPDATE: The figure for new cases on the UK’s dashboard yesterday did not include data from Wales.
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In the Commons Bridget Phillipson, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, is asking the Labour urgent question about budget measures that have been pre-announced.
Before she started Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, made a statement restating his opposition to the government briefing budget measures to the media in advance of the actual statement.
He said he made this clear yesterday. But that did not stop the Treasury briefing out further budget announcements (the end of the public sector pay freeze), he said. He went on:
If the government continues to treat this house in the discourteous manner, I will do everything in my power to ensure ministers are called here at the earliest opportunity to explain themselves ... This house will not be taken for granted. It is not right for everybody to be briefed. It is not more important to go on the news in the morning. It is more important to come here.
As Speaker, Hoyle has the power to grant urgent questions every day, which require a minister to come to the Commons to respond.
Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is responding to the UQ. In his opening remarks he said that it was important for the government to explain its policies to the public and that most budget announcements, including the market sensitive ones, were not being unveiled until tomorrow.
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The UK government is facing fresh calls for funding to help secure Wales’s coal tips and avoid future disasters, PA Media reports. PA says:
Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, wants Boris Johnson to commit to long-term investment in coal tip safety which would “help communities who have already given so much”.
It comes as a survey shows where the higher-risk tips are located, including 71 now revealed to be in the worst category.
Wales has 2,456 identified tips, of which 327 are classified as higher risk, and these have been broken down into local authority area.
It is estimated the cost of dealing with the disused coal tips over the next 15 years will be between £500m and £600m.
Drakeford said: “These sites pre-date devolution. Our funding settlement does not recognise the substantial, long-term costs of remediating and repairing these sites. Tomorrow’s spending review is an opportunity for the UK government to use its financial powers to help communities who’ve given so much to Wales and the United Kingdom during the coal-mining years.”
Teaching unions have welcomed the chancellor’s plans to end the public sector pay freeze, but say it is too little too late.
The NASUWT teachers’ union claimed that teachers had already suffered 17% erosion to their pay over the last decade, while the NAHT school leaders’ union expressed concern about how a pay rise might be funded, warning that if schools were asked to foot the additional salary bill from existing budgets headteachers would be forced to make “heart-breaking decisions”.
And Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, asked the government to honour its promise to raise teachers’ starting salaries to £30,000, a move which has also been delayed. “Over the past decade teacher pay has fallen in real terms, and this government has failed utterly to stem the tide of recently qualified teachers leaving the profession in their first five years, an exodus which can only serve to damage the education system,” he said.
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Labour has tabled an urgent question in the Commons on “all the provisions in the upcoming budget that have been made public in advance of the chancellor’s statement”. It will be heard at 12.30pm.
London mayor should have delayed Ulez extension, says minister
In his LBC interview Paul Scully, who as well as being business minister is also minister for London, also criticised Sadiq Khan, the capital’s mayor, over his introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez).
A massive expansion of the Ulez, which is intended to price the most pollutiing vehicles off the road, came into force on Monday.
But when it was put to Scully that the Labour mayor should have delayed the Ulez expansion, because of the impact of the pandemic, the minister agreed. Scully, who represents Sutton and Cheam in south London, said:
[Khan] should’ve delayed it. The mayor of London should have looked at the effect that it’s going to have on disabled people, for example, because the exemptions don’t cover all disabled people. He should be putting more money into a scrappage scheme because you need to give people alternatives. You can’t just suddenly bring a charge in when there’s no realistic alternative for a number of people.
Plan B could stifle economic recovery, minister suggests
There are two reports out this morning suggesting that ministers are reluctant to implement their Covid plan B because they are worried about the impact on the economy.
Plan B is set out in the winter Covid plan (pdf) published in September and it comprises four elements: warning the public of the increased risk (something which the government is arguably already doing); mandating vaccine passports for some settings; mandating face coverings in some settings; and possibly asking people to work from home.
In his London Playbook briefing for Politico, Alex Wickham says leaked government papers say plan B could cost the economy up to £18bn. Wickham writes:
An internal Treasury impact assessment seen by Playbook warned that moving to plan B would cost the economy between £11bn and £18bn in the period up until March 2022 — or more than £800m per week. The document warns the main hit will be on businesses as millions of people go back to working from home. WFH is envisaged to have a moderately positive impact on reducing transmission.
And in the Daily Telegraph Ben Riley-Smith says an internal assessment by the culture department suggests vaccine passports would be costly and counterproductive. Riley-Smith reports:
Vaccine passports could fuel the spread of Covid-19 by encouraging people to go to poorly ventilated pubs instead of large venues, the government’s own impact assessment has warned.
The policy would also slash turnover for the organisers of events required to use vaccine passports, and necessitate the hiring of thousands of new stewards which may be hard to deliver, it was concluded.
In an interview with LBC this morning Paul Scully, the business minister, was asked about the Playbook leak. He said he had only just been told about it, but he did suggest a move to plan B might stifle the recovery. Asked about plan B, he said:
We don’t want to be stifling the recovery, so no sense that there’s anything at the moment that’s suggesting plan B is needed ....
Although case numbers have gone up, hospitalisations haven’t gone up in the same proportion, so there is still a suggestion there that we weaken the link through the excellent vaccination programme and the booster programme.
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Owen Paterson faces 30-day suspension from Commons for 'egregious' breach of lobbying rules
Owen Paterson, who served as Northern Ireland secretary and environment secretary when David Cameron was PM, repeatedly used his position as an MP to help two companies that were paying him, a report from the Commons standards committee says.
The committee has described this as “an egregious case of paid advocacy” and recommended that Paterson should be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. Its recommendation is almost certain to be adopted by the Commons as a whole.
The committee accepted that Paterson did not think he was doing anything wrong and that he thought his lobbying on behalf of the two companies he was working for - Randox, a clinical diagnostics company, and Lynn’s Country Foods, a processor and distributor of meat products - was in the public interest. But the report says he was still breaking Commons rules, which say MPs must not lobby on behalf of a paying client.
Here are extracts from the report’s conclusion.
Mr Paterson has an evident passion for dairy and farming matters, based on his undoubted expertise. We do not doubt that he sincerely believes that he has acted properly. Mr Paterson is clearly convinced in his own mind that there could be no conflict between his private interest and the public interest in his actions in this case. But it is this same conviction that meant that Mr Paterson failed to establish the proper boundaries between his private commercial work and his parliamentary activities, as set out in the guide to the gules. Mr Paterson told us multiple times in oral evidence before us that he was elected for his judgment, and that he judged that he was right to make the approaches he did. But no matter how far a member considers that the private interest of a paying client coincides with the public interest, the lobbying rules rightly prohibit members from initiating approaches or proceedings which could benefit that client. If such approaches were routinely permitted, the lobbying rules would be of little value. In failing to see the evident conflict of interest between his commercial work and his actions in this case, Mr Paterson has in turn convinced himself that he is the victim of an injustice in being investigated by the commissioner. That does not exculpate him. Being able to judge the difference between one’s private, personal interest and the public interest is at the very heart of public service and a senior member of the house with many years standing should be able to make that distinction more clearly ...
This is an egregious case of paid advocacy. Previous instances have led to suspensions of 18 days, 30 days and six months. Each of Mr Paterson’s several instances of paid advocacy would merit a suspension of several days, but the fact that he has repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a member of parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, is even more concerning. He has brought the House into disrepute. We therefore recommend that Mr Paterson be suspended from the service of the House for 30 sitting days.
Public sector pay rises next year could be lower than inflation, minister admits
Good morning. Tomorrow Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, will announce his combined budget and spending review, but the torrent of pre-announcements continues, and overnight the Treasury has said that Sunak will end the public sector pay freeze. Here is our overnight story by my colleagues Jessica Elgot and Rowena Mason.
As the report explains, details are sketchy at this point. Sunak is not announcing pay awards for public sector workers – those will only come after the independent pay review bodies have made their recommendations, in the usual way – and ending the pay freeze for public sector workers (or some public sector workers – there were exemptions for the low paid, and for NHS staff) is not the same as awarding a real-terms increase (that would overshoot inflation).
This was confirmed by Paul Scully, the business minister on Millbank duty for the government, who in interview this morning refused to commit to public sector workers getting a pay rise above inflation. Asked if the pay increases next year would be higher than inflation, he replied:
That will be determined by the pay review bodies. The chancellor is keen to give people a rise.
They will then take that into account as they look to what should be an appropriate rise for the public sector, given the public finances.
I can’t pre-empt what they are going to do. We will see where we are come next April when the review bodies have reported.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Academics and officials from the Department of Health and Social Care give evidence to the Commons science committee about the UK’s ability to deal with global disease outbreaks.
9.30am: Prof David Cunningham, chair of the Association of Cancer Physicians, and other experts give evidence to the Commons health committee about cancer services.
11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.
11.30am: Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee on the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
2.30pm: The NFU and other farming and food industry trade bodies give evidence to the Commons environment committee about labour shortages.
2.30pm: Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, gives evidence to the Lords European affairs committee.
Afternoon: Peers debate Commons amendments to the environment bill, including the vote overturning a Lords bid to protect rivers from sewage.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
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