Summary
Here are the key points from the hearing.
- Keith Vaz, the chair of the Commons home affairs committee, has accused the boss of the company involved in the “red doors for asylum seekers” controversy of acting in a “Pontius Pilate-like” manner. Vaz said that many people seemed to be aware that residents were unhappy about this, but that Stuart Monk, managing director of Jomast, was refusing to accept there was a problem. See 4.42pm.
- Monk has claimed that the issue was “blown out of all proportion”. He said that the homes in question had had their doors painted red 20 years ago, that there was no policy of identify homes occupied by asylum seekers in this way and that there was no record of people complaining about this. But, in response to questioning, he accepted that he had not asked all his 40 employees if they were aware of complaints; instead he had just asked his son, who managed that side of the business. Vaz asked him to check more thoroughly to see if any complaints had been received.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Vaz tells Monk he found his evidence unsatisfactory.
He says Monk blamed ministers, G4S, the Times and at one point apparently the people of Middlebrough for what went wrong.
He asks Monk to find out if his employees did know about complaints. Monk several times he personally was “not aware”.
And Vaz tells the G4S executives that this committee is disappointed that the firm is involved in another controversy.
And that’s it.
I will post a summary shortly.
Keith Vaz is summing up.
He says the committee will want to look at this again.
Q: How many asylum seekers are in hotels?
Whitwam says 322 are in hotels, typically two or three-star hotels.
Q: Do you foresee a crisis in this sector?
Neden says over the last three years G4S has gone from housing 9,000 asylum seekers to 17,000. It is getting harder finding accommodation for them, he says.
Keith Vaz asks Monk to ask his son about the case of Ahmad Zubair. See 4.51pm.
Vaz also says he has clarified the point about the complaints line being free. It is free, but that was because Ofcom insisted on this last year.
Q: Do you give asylum seekers a freephone number?
Yes, says Whitwam.
Q: I was told it was an 0800 number that costs £1 time.
Whitwam says he thinks the number is free to call. But he will clarify this, and report back to the committee.
Whitwam says people who move into G4S properties are given a welcome pack, in one of eight languages. They have a number to call if there are problems. And there are inspections once a month.
Victoria Atkins, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: How many employees do you have?
Monk says he has more than 200 employees over all, but about 40 in the asylum sector.
Q: So there are probably only around 40 email accounts. Have you checked them all to see if you have had any complaints?
Monk says he has asked his son, who runs this part of the business. His son told him he had not received any complaints about this.
Q: Did your son ask all 40 employees?
Monk says he thinks he did.
Q: So you cannot be sure that there were no reported incidents?
Monk says employees have a duty to log recorded incidents. And they get sent to G4S.
Q: But you have not checked, and your son has not checked, with the 40 employees?
Monk says they have checked to see if there is a record of incidents.
Keith Vaz asks Monk to check with employees and to report back to the committee by Friday.
James Berry, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: Not all your homes have red doors. So what decides what colour door a home has?
Whitwam says 60% of the homes in Middlesbrough have red doors, and 53% in Stockton.
That is too high, he says.
He says he would like to ensure people cannot identify asylum seekers from the housing they are in.
Q: A question for G4S. Why are so many asylum seekers housed in Middlesbrough?
Whitwam says companies like his have to first to go local authorities, and then find landlords who have property available. Then the local authority has to approve the property. And it gets inspected regularly.
Q: So why are so many asylum seekers in Middlesbrough, accounting for more than one in 200 of the local population.
Whitwam says Middlesbrough council has asked for those numbers to come down.
Q: You profit from deprivation and people’s need for refuge. To many people, that seems unseemly and unsavoury.
Monk says the accommodation needed is not available in the market place.
Labour’s Chuka Umunna goes next.
Q: You buy up cheap homes and you house people in some of the poorest areas of the country. Is that right?
No, says Monk. He says he provides some of the best accommodation for asylum seekers in the country.
Q: But you do buy cheap homes, don’t you?
Monk says he buys accommodation in appropriate locations. It’s a sophisticated business, he says. He has to spend money on his properties.
He says his accommodation is, by a significant margin, better than other accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK.
He says in recent years 90% of of his investment has been in Newcastle and Gateshead, and not in the poorest areas.
Monk says about 30% of his business involves asylum seekers. But this part of the business is not particularly profitable, he says.
Labour’s David Winnick goes next.
Q: [To Monk] Do you think this has been blown out of all proportion?
Yes, says Monk.
Q: So you think James Brokenshire, the Home Office minister, was wrong to tell MPs last week this was a matter of concern?
Monk says the community police officer did not know asylum seekers were housed behind red doors.
He says his firm has some information that suggests some of the reports about this might not be correct.
Q: A Times reporter visited 66 homes with red doors in Middlebrough and 62 of them housed asylum seekers.
Monk says the community welcomes asylum seekers.
Q: The Sunday Times says your wealth is worth £175m. If you were an asylum seeker with a red door identifying you, would you take the same “complacent attitude”.
Monk says he is not being complacent.
Q: But you are repainting the doors. That is because of the concern expressed.
Monk says this has become an issue, and his firm has responded. Previously it was not an issue, he says.
Q: There has been evidence given to the committee about very inappropriate comments being made to residents by G4S staff?
Whitwam says he does not think that is the case.
Q: Were you failing to treat people with dignity and respect?
Neden says if G4S had known than, as it does now, that this caused offence, it would have acted sooner.
Burrowes reads a statement from G4S a few days ago saying that it reviewed this matter at the time and that it decided that it was not significant enough to merit action. But G4S went on to say that decision was ill-judged and that the doors were being repainted.
Q: Do you accept the original decision not to act was ill-judged?
Neden says if G4S had known then, as it does now, that people objected, it would have repainted the doors.
David Burrowes, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: Do you agree that asylum seekers should be treated with dignity and respect?
Of course, says Peter Neden.
They should also be given adequate accommodation, says John Whitwam.
Whitwam says the Compass contracts with the Home Office for the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers is worth £60m. But G4S makes a loss on it, he says.
Stuart Monk says the doors will be repainted over the next couple of weeks.
Q: James Brokenshire said last week that it would take much longer, three months or more?
Monk says the company decided to speed things up.
The hearing has resumed.
John Whitwam, the G4S managing director, immigration and borders, is speaking now.
He says Suzanne Fletcher raised this in 2012. The company looked into this, and found there was no policy of housing asylum seekers in homes with red doors.
The issue was raised again. Again, G4S looked into this, and again found there was no policy.
When the Times broke the story, G4S went up to count its homes. It has 298 homes in Middlesbrough. Some 175 had red doors, or 59%.
Q: Why are you painting the doors if there was nothing wrong?
Whitwam says G4S found no linkage between red doors and anti-social behaviour. It spoke to the police who said the same thing.
But, as a precaution, G4S decided to repaint the doors.
This is what Keith Vaz said to Stuart Monk about why Jomast should have been aware of the complaints.
This morning I spoke to Ahmad Zubair, one of your former tenants, who was an asylum seeker, and he told me he had gone to your staff and told them specifically, over the years - this was two years ago - that he was suffering abuse because the door of his house was red and the door of other asylum seekers was also red. He then went with a pot of paint and he painted his door white because he was fed up of having people abusing him because they identified the property as being the property of an asylum seeker. Your officers then went round and repainted the front door red. That’s not acceptable behaviour, is it?
Monk said he was not aware of reported incidents regarding red doors. And G4S did not receive any complaints either, he said.
But Vaz did not accept this. He went on:
Former councillor Suzanne Fletcher approached you, approach parliament, approached representatives of G4S, and she, a local councillor, said that this was the case. This morning, on BBC Radio Middlesbrough, the former member of parliament for Redcar, a member of the public accounts committee, two years ago said that he was concerned that asylum seekers were subjected to abuse because the doors of their property were painted red. So it appears that everyone knew about this.
Here are the main points so far.
- Stuart Monk, the owner and managing director of Jomast, says there was no policy to paint the doors of homes housing asylum seekers red. He said his properties had their doors painted red 20 years ago, before asylum seekers were housed in them.
- He claimed that he had not received complaints about this. But Keith Vaz said he had spoken to a tenant who was an asylum seeker who had repainted his door because having it red led to him being abused.
- Vaz accused Monk of being “Pontius Pilate-like”.
The hearing has been suspended because there is a vote in the Commons. It will resume in about 10 minutes.
Vaz says Monk should have acted in a humane way when this was brought to his attention. He suggestions Monk is acting “Pontius Pilate” like.
Monk says that he did not receive complaints about red doors.
He says he has more than 300 properties in Middlesbrough.
Q: How many have red doors?
Monk says it is 59%.
Vaz says people living in Middlesbrough knew that asylum seekers had their doors painted red.
Monk says he had no complaints about this.
Q: So the first you knew about this was when you read it in the Times yesterday?
Monk says he was contacted by the Times, but that he was not allowed to comment.
Stuart Monk says that the doors of his properties were first painted red 20 years ago.
He says there was no policy of using red to identify the homes of asylum seekers using red doors.
Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, says that he spoke to a tenant who decided to change the colour of his door. But then Jomast came back and painted it red again.
There are three witnesses giving evidence.
Peter Neden - G4S’s regional president
John Whitwam - G4S’s managing director, immigration and borders
Stuart Monk - owner and managing director of Jomast
MPs question G4S and Jomast over 'red doors' policy for asylum seekers in Middlesbrough
The Commons home affairs committee is about to take evidence from G4S and Jomast, its contractor, about the policy of putting asylum seekers in Middlesbrough in homes with red doors.
Here is our original story about the case.
And here is our most recent story, about how the doors are being repainted.
Labour’s national executive committee has postponed a decision on giving the NEC more say over policy making, the BBC’s Lewis Goodall reports.
Just been told by Labour NEC source that the decision on changes to party decision making has been kicked down the road til March
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) January 26, 2016
The Electoral Commission has announced that groups and individuals who want to spend more than £10,000 campaigning in the European referendum will be able to register from 1 February.
In a news release, it also said this about donations.
Campaigners should also start recording all donations received and loans entered into on or after 1 February 2016 for referendum campaigning that are over £7,500 because these will be reportable by registered campaigners in pre-poll reports. Spending on referendum campaigning before the start of the referendum period does not count towards a campaigner’s spending limit. Once registered, campaigners must follow the rules on checking permissibility of donations and loans before they accept them.
London council 'set to vote in favour of UK leaving EU'
A London council is going to become the first publicly-elected body in Britain to vote to leave the EU, Ukip claims.
There are six Ukip councillors on Havering borough council in north East London, but they are acting with Conservative and independent councillors and Lawrence Webb, leader of the Ukip group, says he is “quietly confident” that they win a vote tomorrow night on a motion saying:
Due to the negative impact that EU directives such as the agency working time directive and EU procurement rules have on the ability and cost of Havering council to fulfil its obligations, this council agrees that Britain would be better off outside the European Union.
The full council meeting agenda is here. Webb said:
Many of the 22 Conservatives on Havering council - covering Romford and elsewhere - are firmly in favour of the UK leaving the EU and have indicated their support for this motion as have a number of the independent local residents’ representatives on the Council, so we have sufficient numbers to carry this, and we will lay down the gauntlet for councils up and down the country to follow suit.
Updated
Here are the regulations that will determine the conduct of the EU referendum that have been published today.
And they include, in schedule 4 at the end, a picture of what the ballot paper will be like.
Blair says Scotland will leave UK if Britain votes to leave EU
Tony Blair has given an interview to a French radio station in which he said that, if Britain votes to leave the EU, Scotland will vote for independence. He told them:
In my opinion if the United Kingdom votes to leave Europe, Scotland will vote to leave the United Kingdom.
Lunchtime summary
- One of England’s most senior judges has strongly criticised court fee increases, saying people could be denied access to justice as a result. Giving evidence to the Commons justice committee, Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls, singled out the decision, confirmed in January last year and implemented in March, to raise the fee to issue proceedings for the recovery of money to 5% of the value of all claims over £10,000. This could have a severe impact on small businesses and people on modest income, he said
I’m afraid that the risk of denying access to justice to a lot of people is so intense in those proposals.
As the Press Association reports, Dyson said he was “particularly concerned” about people on modest incomes who do not qualify for help with charges known as fee remission.
They are the sort of people I think would be inevitably deterred from litigating. I don’t say in all cases of course. But I am particularly concerned about the small and medium enterprises. I take the example of the builder who is seeking £50,000 from a client, he now has to pay £2,500 up front as a condition of starting his claim.
Dyson said this as a “massive increase” compared to the previous system, in which the builder would have faced a fee of around £800.
It is bound to be severely deterring. Obviously not the really rich people - it won’t deter them. But the small businesses, the sort of businesses actually this government says time and time again they want to encourage because they will be the engine that provides the growth that this country so needs - they are the very people many of whom are most at risk and who are most likely to be put off.
- HMRC has defended its tax settlement with Google. Speaking to the World at One, Jim Harra, HMRC’s business tax director general, insisted that Google had agreed to pay all the money due.
We only accept the full amount of tax, interest and penalties that is due, otherwise if we can’t reach an agreement on that amount we will go to tribunal. We certainly don’t apply any rate of tax other than the statutory rate that parliament has published.
At its regular lobby briefing Number 10 also defended the deal. (See 1.30pm.) But John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, wrote to George Osborne demanding a full explanation as to how it was decided that Google should pay £130m. McDonnell told Sky News:
People will be extremely angry about this, particularly other businesses that pay their way in this country, pay their taxes and are not getting this sort of deal from HMRC. It looks as though the settlement of £130m is about a 3% tax rate over the last 10 years, when other companies are paying anything between 20% and 30% so you can understand why people are angry.
- The Labour MP Gareth Thomas has used the 10-minute rule procedure to present a bill saying employees should be entitled to a share of firm’s profits in some circumstances. He says that in France firms have to share 5% of their profits with staff. (Sadly, here at the Guardian, such a provision would be unlikely to be of much use.)
Updated
No 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- Downing Street insisted that there was no split between David Cameron and George Osborne over the merits of the tax deal with Google. “The prime minister and the chancellor are of the same mind,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. “It is a good deal”. The spokesman declined to describe it as a great deal, or a “major success” (the term used by Osborne at the weekend, but not yesterday, by when he was talking about it in less triumphalist terms). Given the front page of today’s Financial Times, the Number 10 clarification is 24 hours too late.
Tuesday's FT front page: Downing St lukewarm on £130m Google tax ‘success’ #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/WQv9kZgZyM
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) January 25, 2016
- The spokesman defended HMRC’s tax settlement with Google, saying that under its litigation settlement strategy (a public document) HMRC is not allowed to reach a settlement with a firm if it would expect to get a larger settlement by taking the company to court. The spokesman also played down the implications of reports saying the French authorities are trying to get a settlement from Google worth three times the UK one. As yet, the French have not struck a deal, the spokesman said.
- The spokesman refused to comment on reports that Thursday 23 June is the government’s favoured date for the EU referendum. “I’m not going to speculate on dates,” the spokesman said. He also refused to comment on the Times story about the split between the Germans and the British over the proposed curbs on welfare payments for EU migrants. (See 10.41am.)
- Ministers are planning further help for the North Sea oil industry, the prime minister’s spokesman said. This was discussed at cabinet, where Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, gave a presentation about the problems facing the industry because of low oil prices. “Part of the discussion focused on how we can continue to support the industry,” the spokesman said.
- Ministers will publish “single departmental plans” setting out their departmental priorities, and what progress they are making towards achieving their goals, “shortly”, the spokesman said. At cabinet Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, gave a presentation covering what the government’s priorities were. The spokesman said one guide to the government’s priorities was the prime minister’s speech to the Conservative conference, highlighting the importance of economic security, national security and life chances.
- The spokesman sidestepped questions about whether the UK government agreed with the assessment of the US Treasury that Russian President Vladimir Putin is corrupt. Asked about this, the spokesman said that David Cameron was clear about how difficult relations with Russia are in his statement last week following the publication of the report into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Russia was one of the topics discussed at cabinet, with presentations from Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, and Theresa May, the home secretary.
- The spokesman hinted that the government would seek to reverse yesterday’s defeat on the welfare bill when the bill returns to the Commons. “The Commons has made clear its view,” he said. Asked what was wrong with publishing income-related figures for poverty, the spokesman said the government wanted to focus on measures relating to long-term life chances. Asked what was wrong with publishing the income-related poverty data alongside the life chances poverty data, the spokesman said the prime minister was clear that he wanted a focus on life chances.
In the Commons Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has been responding to an urgent question about the death of the one-year-old William Mead.
Jeremy Hunt apologises for death of baby William Mead: “Quite simply we let…William down in the worst possible way" pic.twitter.com/aJfidU3PQ9
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) January 26, 2016
I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. I will post a summary of it shortly.
The Green party has written to the BBC complaining that it has not been allocated any party political broadcasts for the elections in England. It says the decision to allocate three broadcasts to the Lib Dems but none to the Greens is “manifestly unfair”.
This is from Natalie Bennett, the Green leader.
The political landscape is fracturing as more and more people demand real change to deliver a safe climate, a public NHS and a fair economy. These proposals fail to recognise that, increasingly, people are rejecting the Westminster status quo and want to hear more about Green values and policies.
This is the year that we turn the ‘Green surge’ in to Green seats. We are a vibrant, united party committed to our values and, driven forward by our passionate members and supporters, in 2016 we are looking forward to increasing our number of seats on the London Assembly, putting in our best-ever performance in the London Mayoral contest, gaining a seat on the Welsh Assembly and growing our representation on councils across England and Wales.
I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing. I will post again after 12.30pm.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must-reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories.
And here are three articles I found particularly interesting.
Britain and Germany are locked in a stand-off after Angela Merkel’s government suggested that only employees earning less than £7,000 should be barred from claiming tax credits.
Downing Street believed that a German plan to toughen the EU-wide definition of a worker marked a breakthrough because it would allow Britain to block low-paid migrants from Europe claiming tax credits on top of earnings. However, Germany wants to set the threshold at a level that is politically unacceptable for No 10.
Tom Scholar, the top Downing Street official working on the renegotiation of EU membership, was told by German officials that they want a “worker” defined as someone employed for more than 20 hours a week at the minimum wage. In Britain, this would allow anyone earning £6,968 or more to keep tax credits, meaning few curbs in claims among the vast majority of EU migrants. Downing Street has been trying to move the bar much higher.
“The initial suggestion from Germany is 20 hours times the minimum wage, which is about £7,000. Downing Street was worried this was way too low and are pushing for something closer to £13,000,” a British official said.
Danny Alexander, the former Treasury minister, is poised to move to Beijing in a hotly contested carve-up of senior posts at China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Germany has fared better than Britain in the initial distribution of jobs at the AIIB, despite the fact that George Osborne, chancellor, took a big political gamble by giving his backing to the project at an early stage.
But Sir Danny, the former Liberal Democrat Treasury chief secretary, is expected to be named as one of five Beijing-based resident vice-presidents of the bank: China’s version of the Washington-based World Bank.
The Scot implemented the coalition government’s austerity programme but lost his seat at the general election; he has been rewarded by Mr Osborne who nominated him for the big international post.
Among those being considered for the part, in the Cabinet, Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, attracts much speculation, but most expect him to seek a seat at Mr Osborne’s right hand instead.
Cabinet colleagues say it’s almost certain Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, will run as a social reformer continuing Mr Cameron’s One Nation agenda.
Others tip Stephen Crabb, the Welsh Secretary whose talents demand a bigger job. One admirer also notes his life-story (from council estate to Cabinet, by way of an MBA) has real meritocratic appeal to a party whose pre-Cameron upwardly-mobile leaders include the daughter of a shopkeeper (Thatcher), the son of a circus performer (Major) and the son of Romanian immigrants (Howard).
Below Cabinet rank, the name most mentioned is that of Priti Patel, the employment minister and fierce critic of the EU. MPs say she has started asking colleagues what they would think if she ran. A prominent role in the campaign for Brexit may yet establish her as the champion of the Tory Right and a powerful force in what may be a fractured post-referendum party.
Mr Crabb was first elected in 2005, Mr Javid, Ms Morgan and Ms Patel in 2010. Some Tories wonder if their next leader might come from an even later generation. One prominent member of the 2015 intake has been approached by colleagues urging him to run, but is so far resisting temptation.
Yesterday the Today programme interviewed Lord Rose from Britain Stronger in Europe. This morning it was the turn of John Moynihan from Vote Leave. Here are the main points he made.
- Moynihan accused the In campaign of scaremongering.
The point is the other side of trying to create FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt, they’re trying to say, ‘Oh it’s terribly dangerous, a leap into the unknown to Leave’. Nothing will happen. As Stuart Rose himself has said, they day we vote to leave the EU, nothing will happen. We still still have the same relationship. Then we’ll enter into a negotiation, at the end of it we’ll still have a relationship with the EU. It’s highly unlikely that it will be the sort of disastrous that they claim.
- He claimed that there had never been a “serious discussion” about Vote Leave merging with Leave.EU and that there was no need for a single, overarching Out campaign.
I don’t think there was ever any serious discussion of that, we think that Leave.EU is one of many very good organisations. I don’t think there’s any need for the kind of monolithic group that people talk about, Leave.EU has a very good constituency but we don’t need that.
There are plenty of campaigns and they are all very good campaigns. There are plenty of other organisations who are doing very good work in bringing to a segment of the population.
Vote Leave and Leave.EU are both competing to recognised by the Electoral Commission as the main Out campaign. Vote Leave is more Westminster-focused, while Leave.EU is more grassroots-focused. Vote Leave is accused of being too establishment-orientated, while Leave.EU is accused of being too Ukip-orientated.
I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.
According to Francis Elliott in the Times (paywall), Britain Stronger in Europe, which is campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU, has hired Jim Messina, the American political consultant whose micro-targeting expertise helped the Tories win the election in 2015. Here’s an extract from Elliott’s story.
Jim Messina, who was paid almost £400,000 by the Conservatives to help to identify and target key voter groups, has been appointed to the cross-party “remain” campaign group.
Mr Messina’s involvement underlines the extent to which the in-out referendum is likely to mark a further switch to digital campaigning with tailored messages for different groups.
It is understood that Mr Messina, a key figure in President Obama’s re-election to the White House, is already piloting campaign material and researching how it should be best delivered to target audiences.
Ukip doesn’t usually poll well with minority ethnic voters, but in a bold speech today Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s immigration spokesman is going to argue that those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU should appeal to them directly. Minority ethnic voters are “feeling the strain” caused by migration from the EU, he believes, and they are unhappy about the way the immigration system favours EU citizens over Commonwealth citizens. This is what he told the Today programme this morning.
[Minority ethnic voters] want prosperity, they want their culture protected, they want freedom and they also want to be secure. They see the European Union as something that damages that ...
If granny wants to come over from Pakistan or India for a wedding, they have got more difficulties in terms of visas and getting visas than would a granny from either Spain or France. If you look at the black community, they are more likely to be struggling on low wages in the low skilled and unskilled areas, and that’s the area that has been affected by large-scale migration.
And in his speech later today he will say:
If [the campaign to leave the EU] paints a positive and rational picture of what our border policy will be outside of the EU, we can win over the moderate majority of the black mixed ethnic community of which I am a member.
The British black, mixed and ethnic community have a crucial role to play in our quest to reclaim our independence - and they will vote leave in their thousands if they believe they are voting for an outward-looking, prosperous and secure future.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.45am: Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls, gives evidence to the Commons justice committee.
10am: Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee. My colleague Graeme Wearden will be covering this on his business live blog.
11am: Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s migration spokesman, gives a speech on why ethnic minority voters should support Brexit.
12 noon: Number 10 lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Liz Truss, the environment secretary, gives evidence to the Commons environment committee.
4.10pm: Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Lords EU committee.
4.15pm: G4S and contractors Jomast give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about the “red doors” policy for asylum seekers in Middlesbrough.
At some point today Labour’s national executive committee will also be meeting to discuss rule changes that would give the NEC a greater say over policy making and the recruitment of Labour party staff.
As usual, I will also be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
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