Afternoon summary
- The head of the union that represents border staff has said that a “knee-jerk” decision to remove discretion from officials taken while Theresa May was home secretary contributed to the Windrush-generation scandal. (See 9.28am.)
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
At a press conference in London Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambasador to the UK, said Moscow had “dozens” of proofs that the attack on Douma had been deliberately staged. As the Press Association reports, he showed Russian television footage which, he said, showed an 11-year-old Syrian boy who had appeared in a video of the incident in Douma issued by the White Helmets humanitarian group. He said the boy, who was unhurt, had told Russian television that he had been called to hospital by the White Helmets where he had been offered “sweets and cookies” to appear in the video.
Yakovenko said:
The facts that have been presented by the Syrian government and Russia to show that the incident has been deliberately staged has been ignored. We have dozens of these kinds of proofs. Everything that was done in Douma was staged.
He also said there was no justification in international law for the airstrikes against Syria launched by the US, France and the UK last week. The UK government said they were justified on humanitarian grounds. Yakovenko said:
We have a legal justification that is based upon a non-existent rule of international law. Under international law the military operation in Syria was blatantly unlawful.
The former Irish taoiseach Brian Cowen has described Brexit secretary David Davis as a “rightwinger” who has never shown any interest in Ireland.
The ex-Fianna Fáil leader, who was part of the Celtic Tiger government, said Davis’s recent remarks about the Irish government’s Brexit position being influenced by Sinn Fein revealed how little he knew about Ireland.
He said Davis “is very rightwing, always has been”. He went on:
He’s not a person who has shown much interest in Ireland in the past in my experience, and I was involved for a very long time.
I think [the remarks were] a pretty ham-fisted effort to see if the Irish government would relent from their position. I don’t think that will carry any weight with the government.
He was responding to recent comments by Davis who observed that Leo Varadkar had taken a different Brexit approach to his predecessor, Enda Kenny, suggesting this showed “quite a strong influence from Sinn Féin.”
The remarks were ridiculed in Ireland because of the historic opposition between Fine Gael and Sinn Fein.
UK's proposed technology solution to Irish border problem seen as 'fantasy island unicorn model', says former ambassador
On the subject of Brexit, and the government’s plans for how customs will be managed after the UK leaves the EU, it is worth flagging up what Sir Ivan Rogers, the former British ambassador to the EU, said on this subject at a Policy Exchange event last night.
The UK has proposed three options to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: a comprehensive trade and customs deal that would make border controls unnecessary; failing that, solutions involving new technology; and, if those options don’t work, regulatory alignment as a fallback.
Rogers said said the first solution was not seen as “a runner” on the other side of the Channel because of the government’s determination to leave the single market and customs union. He went on:
The Brits are therefore focused above all on Option B - the technological solution. That, candidly, from everything I’ve heard from various places is still viewed as a bit of a fantasy island unicorn model.
The Irish and Brussels in particular - but I think backed, as far as I can see, by Berlin and Paris - have said the only solution to this is the so-called backstop Option C, which is what the commission put in print and got the toxic reaction both from the DUP and the prime minister.
Russia claims to have evidence Britain staged Douma chemical attack
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Russia has “plenty of evidence” that Britain staged the chlorine gas attack in Douma, including chemicals he claims were made in Salisbury. In an interview with the state-run Rossiya Segodnya news agency, Lavrov also alleged that videos showing people suffering the after-effects of the gas attack in the Syrian city were “staged by the White Helmets” rescue organisation, which he said had terrorist links. He said:
Just recently, our defence ministry’s troops liberating Douma found a stockpile of chemicals produced in Germany, Porton Down and Salisbury, among others. Experts are now analysing the substances found there.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has urged Zimbabwe to ensure upcoming elections are free and fair as he welcomed his counterpart to London for the first time since the end of Robert Mugabe’s rule. After a meeting with Zimbabwe’s foreign minister Sibusiso Moyo, Johnson said that while Zimbabwe had made much progress since Emmerson Mnangagwa replaced Mugabe, “democracies are not made in a day”. He went on:
July’s election will be a bellwether for the direction of a new Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe government must deliver the free and fair elections the people of Zimbabwe deserve and which it has promised. The UK stands ready in friendship to support a Zimbabwe that fully embraces the rule of law, human rights and economic reform.
Barnier says Brexit withdrawal deal could still collapse because 25% not yet agreed
In an interview with France2 TV Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said there was still a risk the Brexit talks could fail because only 75% of the withdrawal deal was agreed. He said:
I say as the union’s negotiator that there are still difficulties, still a risk of failure. On 25% of the text, we don’t have agreement. If there is no agreement, there is no orderly withdrawal, there is a disorderly withdrawal and there is no transition.
Barnier also restated the EU’s insistence that the integrity of the single market, including free movement, was “non-negotiable”. When asked if the UK could obtain a “single market a la carte” deal, Barnier switched from French to English and replied: “No way.”
At the Number 10 lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman said the government did not “recognise” the claims in the Telegraph story about the EU rejecting the UK’s proposals for customs arrangements after Brexit. (See 11.14am.)
That is a classic ‘non-denial denial’ formula. It sounds like a way of staying the story is not true, but when translated from Whitehallese what it normally means is: “We wouldn’t have written it like that, but we can’t identify anything in the story that is factually inaccurate.”
The spokesman also said the government was still confident of getting a solution. He said:
We are confident that in the coming months, if all sides work together productively, we can achieve a solution to the Ireland/Northern Ireland border that works for everyone involved.
Britain could be included in a trade deal between the EU and Singapore after Brexit to prevent a “hard stop” in commerce, the city-state’s foreign minister has said. In an interview on the Today programme, Vivian Balakrishnan said he hoped that the EU-Singapore free trade agreement (EUSFTA) would be ratified this year to come into effect in 2019, allowing it to be extended to Britain as a “continuity arrangement”. He said:
If we can get it ratified and into force next year, then when Britain leaves or invokes the Brexit clause we will make what we call ‘continuity arrangements’ which will allow us to port the provisions of the EU-Singapore FTA to Britain.
Britain and Singapore have a special relationship. We are both free traders, we believe in integration, we believe in economic interdependence and we are keen to help Britain get across this transition with minimal disruption.
In due time we can subsequently look to upgrade, modify, improve the agreement but it is very important that in this transition period not to have a hard stop.
Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former policy adviser, seems to have deleted his Twitter account. After his claims in his Telegraph column yesterday about May not approving of the “go home” vans unravelled comprehensively (see 10.24am), he may be deciding to lie low. This is from Business Insider’s Adam Payne.
Well. Looks like Nick Timothy has deleted his Twitter account after BI and Bloomberg reports suggested he was lying about Theresa May’s ‘go home’ vans. pic.twitter.com/slrTdQ3HeY
— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) April 20, 2018
Presumably, for Timothy, Twitter became a “hostile environment” ...
Updated
Voters remain deadlocked over Brexit, poll suggests
Some readers have asked what happened to the last regular Guardian/ICM poll. We normally poll every fortnight, and the results normally appear here, but the last set of figures arrived last week on a day when there was no Politics Live and, when the blog did return, it was entirely Syria-focused for a while, and including voting intention figures did not really seem appropriate.
But it would be a shame to forget about them completely and, with the Westminster news machine on a go-slow today, it is a good time to post them.
Here they are, with an important caveat; the polling was done the weekend before last. They are not bang up to date. Although, as you will see in a moment, that might not matter very much.
Brexit
We asked two questions about Brexit that we asked at the start of the year when we did a big survey of Brexit opinion. And we found, as the PM once famously put it, that nothing has changed.
- A plurality of voters (47% over 37%) favour a second referendum on the final Brexit deal, but there has been little change since the start of the year. Opposition to the idea is slightly higher (three points) than it was, but support is at the same level.
- Voters remain fundamentally split on whether the UK should remain in the EU or leave, with remain now ahead by just one point in our survey, compared with a two-point lead in January.
Here are the figures in detail.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: I think the public should have the chance to take a final decision on whether or not to leave the EU in another referendum when the outcome of the negotiation is known?
- Strongly agree (Jan: 28%; Apr: 30%)
- Tend to agree (Jan: 19%; Apr: 17%)
- Neither agree nor disagree (Jan: 14%; Apr: 11%)
- Tend to disagree (Jan: 11%; Apr: 12%)
- Strongly disagree (Jan: 23%; Apr: 25%)
- Don’t know (Jan: 6%; Apr: 6%)
If there was another EU referendum tomorrow, how would you vote?
- For the UK to Remain in the EU (Jan: 45%; Apr: 45%)
- For the UK to Leave the EU (Jan: 43%; Apr: 44%)
- I wouldn’t vote (Jan: 6%; Apr: 5%)
- Prefer not to say (Jan: 1%; Apr: 1%)
- Don’t know (Jan: 5%; Apr: 5%)
And here is a commentary on the figures from ICM’s Alex Turk.
What is remarkable here is the lack of any substantial change in public opinion on both of these questions. All of the results are within 2-3% of the percentages seen in January. It appears that there hasn’t been any significant change in the support of opposition to a second referendum in these circumstances and overall or the voting intention in a second referendum if it were to take place. Quite simply, people aren’t changing their minds on Brexit – it’s still the case that around 9 in 10 (89%) of those who voted either Remain and Leave back in 2016 would vote the same way if there were a second referendum held tomorrow. The wafer-thin lead for Remain can again be attributed to those who did not vote in 2016 or can’t remember how they voted breaking in favour of Remain (28%) over leave (12%).
Voting intention
Here is Turk again:
Our last Guardian/ICM poll showed the Tories opening up a three percentage point lead over Labour. With Ukip falling to a record low of 1%, it was plausible that this was the start of a shift away from the deadlocked polls we’ve got used to since the last election.
When it comes to public opinion, we should never speak too soon. These polling shows Ukip bouncing back up to 4%, whilst the Conservatives drop two percentage points, reducing their lead over Labour to a single percent. Figures are shown below, with any change versus our previous Guardian/ICM poll in brackets:
Conservative: 42% (-2)
Labour: 41% (nc)
Lib Dems: 7% (-1)
Greens: 3% (+1)
Ukip: 4% (+3)
ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative online sample of 2,012 adults aged 18+, between 6 and 8 April 2018. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
UPDATE: The full ICM tables are now on their website here (pdf), and their write-up of the poll is here.
In the first set of figures in the post above, there was an error in the “neither agree or disagree” line. Originally we gave the April figure as 17%, but it is in fact 11%. Thankfully, that does not change the headline figures. We have corrected it now.
Updated
There were three local council byelections yesterday. Britain Elects has two of the results.
Three council by-elections tonight, all with the Conservatives defending.@andrewteale's previews: https://t.co/VrNvm9FTop
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 19, 2018
Liberal Democrat GAIN Lymm South (Warrington) from Conservative.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 19, 2018
Lymm South (Warrington) result:
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 19, 2018
LDEM: 42.8% (+10.4)
CON: 36.2% (-2.3)
LAB: 18.3% (-1.1)
UKIP: 1.4% (-8.3)
GRN: 1.3% (+1.3)
LDem GAIN from Con.
Liberal Democrat GAIN Thatcham West (West Berkshire) from Conservative.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 19, 2018
Thatcham West (West Berkshire) result:
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 19, 2018
LDEM: 48.4% (+9.7)
CON: 30.9% (-16.9)
GRN: 7.7% (+7.7)
LAB: 7.7% (-5.9)
UKIP: 5.4% (+5.4)
LDem GAIN from Con.
There are two interesting Brexit stories in other papers today. We’ll find out what Number 10 is saying at the lobby briefing later, but both stories look solid and well sourced.
Senior EU diplomatic sources said that Mrs May’s plan for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland was subjected to a “systematic and forensic annihilation” this week at a meeting between senior EU officials and Olly Robbins, the UK’s lead Brexit negotiator.
“It was a detailed and forensic rebuttal,” added the source who was directly briefed on the meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. “It was made clear that none of the UK’s customs options will work. None of them.”
Foster also says that the UK was told that, even if it did stay in the customs union, there would have to be “full compliance” with EU rules on goods and agricultural products, not just for Northern Ireland.
It was made clear that you cannot leave only Northern Ireland aligned on goods and agriculture and not the rest of the UK. In this scenario, you would still need full ‘third country’ barriers between Belfast and UK mainland ports,” the source said.
TELEGRAPH: Ireland Brexit proposal in tatters #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/lUkAwzv7P1
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) April 19, 2018
The immigration bill must finalise key issues such as the access that EU citizens will have to Britain’s labour market and whether they will have preferential treatment as visitors. Ms Rudd has said that she will not publish her plans until an official study, due this autumn, on the economic impact.
She has said that a deal to protect citizens’ rights has reduced the “urgency” of the bill. Brexiteers believe that the real reason for the delay is that some ministers want to trade preferential access for EU workers for a better outcome in talks with Brussels this summer ...
The Times has also learnt that Oliver Robbins, Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, privately told the EU on Thursday that the country was ready to discuss labour mobility as part of an overall deal. It is the first time the government has conceded that post-Brexit immigration is, in effect, up for negotiation.
FRIDAY'S THE TIMES: Cabinet split over immigration #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers (via @hendopolis) pic.twitter.com/yHJG0wzdNP
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 19, 2018
Carwyn Jones accused of causing 'considerable distress' to Sargeant family
Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones has been accused of causing “considerable distress” to the family of Carl Sargeant, the Press Association reports. The PA story goes on:
Former Welsh government minister Sargeant was found dead in November last year just days after being sacked by Jones.
Lawyers for Sargeant’s son Jack, who was elected to his father’s former Welsh assembly seat in February, have written to the QC leading an inquiry into the handling of the sacking.
The former Welsh communities secretary had been referred to a Labour party investigation over claims of “unwanted attention, inappropriate touching or groping” when he was sacked - allegations he denied but did not know the full details of.
In the letter to Paul Bowen QC, Jack Sargeant’s lawyers Hudgell Solicitors claimed the first minister was “perceived to be dictating terms” as to how the various inquiries surrounding the death of the former minister were taking place.
That would be “most certainly inappropriate as well as hugely insensitive”, the letter said.
Jones’s manner was “causing considerable distress to our client and his family”, the letter said, adding: “The inescapable fact here is that someone sadly has lost their life, a much loved family member, and due process needs to be followed expeditiously to enable those closest to him to try and find some closure.”
A Welsh government spokesman said: “It would not be appropriate for the Welsh government to comment on correspondence between the solicitor acting for the family and Mr Bowen QC.”
Coming back to Theresa May, yesterday her former adviser Nick Timothy used his Telegraph column to claim that, when May was home secretary, she was opposed to the plan to use “go home” vans to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the country. As my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, Downing Street refused to back Timothy’s claim and there is a lot of evidence to show that May did support the initiative.
There is more today from Business Insider, which is running a story quoting an unnamed former senior Home Office official saying that May was consulted about the plan when she was on holiday in Switzerland and that an email came back with wording relating to the proposal “toughened up”.
Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, announced this morning that a group of select committee chairs are getting together to form a group to coordinate their Russia-related investigations.
Calling themselves the Russia Coordination Group, they are going to meet regularly and ensure that the various select committees investigating issues relating to Russia pool their information to “maximise the potential for scrutiny”.
The committees involved, which are not proposing joint inquires, are foreign affairs, defence, culture, home affairs, the Treasury and national security strategy.
Explaining the initiative, Tugendhat said:
As unease about Russian malign influence grows, it is essential that we understand the extent of Putin’s activity. Parliament is well-placed to do this. House of Commons’ committees routinely hold evidence sessions in a bid to draw out information and deliver reports rooted in evidence and scrutiny. But as Committees tend to operate separately, they may not have the full picture – seeing the symptoms rather than the cause.
Take the question of sanctions on Russian government officials and oligarchs. While the Treasury committee examines economic crime and the UK’s anti-money laundering and sanctions regime, the foreign affairs committee is considering the actions open to our government to deal with the proceeds of Russian corruption being funnelled into the UK. Sharing information between committees will allow a more informed response.
This is a crucial time for UK-Russia relations. In areas of intelligence and security, interference in elections, disinformation as well as our co-existence post Brexit, it will be easier to respond to any aggression from an informed standpoint. Our work will be much more effective if it is co-ordinated.
David Laws, a Lib Dem minister in the coalition government, was also on the Today programme talking about the Windrush fiasco. He said the “cavalier pledge” to get annual net migration below 100,000 and their fear of Ukip led the Conservatives to introduce the policy of creating a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants. He explained:
Immigration control has been a big priority for the Conservative Party, David Cameron and Theresa May, going into the 2010 election.
They had made this rather cavalier pledge to reduce net immigration into the low tens of thousands without really having policies to deliver on that.
Then, of course, the political context in 2012 and 2013 was a rising Ukip vote in the polls, which David Cameron was very worried about in terms of the impact on Conservative support.
And so I think he and the Home Office then sought to come forward with plans to tackle immigration and I think that the focus that they put on was this sort of access to benefits and services constraint.
On our side of the coalition we were pressing very much for the restoration of a proper system of entry and exit checks so we would actually know who was in the country and who is entitled to be there and who is not.
Windrush crisis triggered by 'knee-jerk' Home Office decision to remove border staff discretion, union chief claims
Do you remember the Brodie Clark affair? It takes us back a bit, but this morning Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the ISU, the union for staff working on borders, immigration and customs, said “kneejerk” decisions taken at the time (when Theresa May was home secretary) help to explain why so many Windrush-generation migrants are now facing the loss of their jobs, or worse.
Clark was head of what was then called the Border Agency when he was sacked by May in 2011, in an episode strongly reminiscent of Michael Howard’s dismissal of Derek Lewis as head of the prison service in the 1990s. Both incidents involved home secretaries responding to a public/tabloid outcry about a service failure by despatching a senior officials, in circumstances that led to allegations of scapegoating. Clark was sacked after it emerged that border staff had relaxed passport checks to stop long queues building up at customs. Clark said he was acting in according with guidelines agreed by the Home Office, May said that he wasn’t, but after he was sacked he claimed unfair dismissal and the case was settled before it went to tribunal, with Clark reportedly receiving a pay-off worth more than £100,000. There is a good account of the whole affair here.
What’s this got to do with the Windrush fiasco? Well, Moreton told the Today programme that, before Clark was sacked, border staff were able to exercise discretion, and decide for themselves if someone was telling the truth about having lived in the UK for decades even if they lacked the appropriate paperwork. After the Clark affair, that discretion was removed, she said.
The discretion that these staff used to have in order to deal with individuals justly and fairly was removed in the wake of the scandal that saw Brodie Clark lose leadership of what was then an agency ...
We were able in immigration control and in immigration enforcement to take an educated, reasonable, experienced view. If someone told you that they had come to the UK on Windrush, or a similar vessel, that they had been here since the late 60s, or even just that they had been here pre the 1971 Act, you can talk to them a bit, you can understand if they’ve genuinely been here. There will be things that they know in the same way those of us who have lived here all our lives know, the drought of 1976 for example. You can tell with experience. And we were at one point on the border able to endorse their passports accordingly.
But then that discretion was removed, Moreton said.
It was a knee-jerk, a backlash reaction to what was perceived as an unfair exercise of discretion on the border control by Brodie Clark. And from there the series of steps, the reduction in the number of officers, the outsourcing of immigration law to what is in effect private service providers, each small step led to this inevitable consequences.
Moreton also said the Home Office was warned at the time that this decision would cause problems.
At the point at which that discretion was lost, the limitation of the warning was that people wouldn’t go to Croydon [the immigration centre], they wouldn’t pay the amount of money that was being charged to get their documents updated, and that that simply would be unjust.
But then, as the hostile environment started to emerge and this became more and more rigorous, then there are increasing warnings - not just from our members, but for outside agencies as well - that this was going to be a problem.
I expect there will be more on this as the day goes on.
Parliament is not sitting and it is a relatively quiet day at Westminster. The Commonwealth heads of government meeting is taking place at Westminster, but mostly that is behind closed doors until a press conference in the evening, which will be out of my time.
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.
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
