Nicola Slawson
Police will have to explain the response to a pro-Palestine protester chanting “jihad”, a cabinet minister has said ahead of a meeting between Suella Braverman and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.
The home secretary will urge Rowley to use the “full force of the law” after video emerged of a protester chanting “jihad” at a demonstration by the Hizb ut-Tahrir fundamentalist group, which was separate to the main pro-Palestine rally, PA Media reports.
Officers said no offences were identified in the footage from the demonstration in central London over the weekend.
Braverman’s cabinet colleague, Mark Harper, said the footage from the weekend was “disturbing”.
The transport secretary told Times Radio:
The home secretary will make it clear that the government thinks the full force of the law should be used.
The police are operationally independent, which I think is appropriate, and they will have to explain the reasons for the decisions they have taken.
The Met has pointed out that jihad has “a number of meanings”, and said that specialist counter-terrorism officers had not identified any offences arising from the specific clip from Saturday.
Instead, officers spoke to the man to “discourage any repeat of similar chanting”.
But the home office minister Robert Jenrick said chanting the word on the streets of the capital is “inciting terrorist violence”.
Braverman will use her scheduled meeting to discuss protests surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict to ask Rowley for “an explanation over the response to incidents” on Saturday.
A source close to the home secretary added:
There can be no place for incitement to hatred or violence on Britain’s streets and, as the home secretary has made clear, the police are urged to crack down on anyone breaking the law.
Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’m covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I’m on [email protected] or @Nicola_Slawson on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
Key events
Kalyeena Makortoff
The business secretary Kemi Badenoch has reportedly dealt another blow to the scandal-hit Confederation of British Industry (CBI) by turning down an invite to speak at the lobby group’s annual conference.
Badenoch’s team have told the CBI that she would not be able to address the conference due to scheduling clashes leading up to the chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement on 22 November, according to Sky News.
It leaves the CBI without a high-profile speaker at the annual event, the details of which have yet to be revealed by the lobby group.
The summit is usually a major event for UK businesses, but was rumoured to have been scrapped as the CBI tried to recover from the fallout of a string of sexual misconduct allegations.
Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by members of the lobby group including a woman’s claim that she was raped by a manager during a 2019 summer boat party on the River Thames, and a separate woman’s allegation that she was raped by two male colleagues when she worked at an overseas office of the CBI.
Its director general Tony Danker was sacked in April, after separate allegations of misconduct were made against him, unrelated to the allegations of rape.
Since then, nearly 100 British companies have paused or suspended their membership, including the carmakers BMW, Ford and Jaguar Land Rover; the supermarkets Tesco and Sainsbury’s; the asset managers Aviva, Fidelity and Schroders; the US banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan; and the oil companies Shell and BP.
The mass exodus nearly pushed the CBI towards collapse, forcing it to secure emergency funding from a series of banks last month.
Read more here:
Keir Starmer says he had ‘productive’ talks during visit to Tata steel’s plant in Port Talbot, south Wales
Keir Starmer has said he had “productive” talks during a visit to Tata’s giant Port Talbot plant in south Wales.
The Labour leader told broadcasters:
We have ambitious plans for the steel industry. We see this as the future, not the past. That requires strategic thinking about our economy. We want to go to clean power, that will bring down energy costs.
He said it was necessary to “drive them down to ensure the future of British steel”.
If we are able to put in place our mission for clean power 2030, that will require more steel – and therefore we want the demand for steel to go up. Of course, we need to transition to green steel. But we must do this transition very carefully, protecting the jobs and the skills and the history that we have here in south Wales. Connecting and bridging that to the future, which is green steel.
So, we have been having productive discussions this morning about what I think will be a very bright future for steel. But only with strategic thinking around it.
Humza Yousaf’s mother-in-law has said she is living through “torture” in Gaza, the first minister said.
Speaking to journalists from flood-hit Brechin on Monday, Yousaf was seen to step away from cameras to take a call, which he later said was from Elizabeth El-Nakla.
El-Nakla and her husband Maged – the parents of Yousaf’s wife Nadia – travelled to Gaza to visit family when hostilities flared up.
He said:
They’re really living in a situation that my mother-in-law describes as torture.
The whole night there will be missiles, rocket fire, drones – they don’t know whether they are going to make it from one night to the next.
They’re down to six bottles of clean drinking water in a house of 100 people including a two-month-old baby, she tells me.
Humza Yousaf has arrived in Brechin, Angus, to assess the damage of Storm Babet.
The Scottish first minister visited a home which was flooded following heavy rains caused by the storm on River Street in the town.
He was also able to speak to local residents, one of whom told of how he had a close escape from flood waters while rescuing his dog.
Yousaf was also able to meet and thank emergency service and search and rescue staff who have been working since the storm hit.
Yousaf told a resident of Brechin it will be a “long road to recovery” from severe flooding that hit the town.
He was heard to tell one:
We’ll support you as much as we can. It’s going to be a long road to recovery.
His visit comes as a local councillor said some people living in Brechin could be permanently out of their homes following the massive flooding.
Conservative councillor Gavin Nicol, who represents the Brechin and Edzell Ward on Angus Council, called for more funding from the Scottish Government, telling BBC Radio Scotland on Monday:
I can tell you the repercussions of the flooding will take months and years to resolve.
Angus Council, unfortunately, does not have the resources to do the job, it needs to to protect the residents.
We really need finance from the Scottish government in order to protect our residents, to rehome them.
Some will be out for months, if not permanently.
Ireland’s minister for finance Michael McGrath has told a meeting of Irish and UK parliamentarians that the relationship between the two governments is “back on a positive trajectory” following Brexit, PA news reports.
Speaking to politicians at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, McGrath said:
On Brexit, mercifully, the debate is not where it was five or so years ago.
He said the Windsor Framework has stabilised the UK-EU relationship and brought a “degree of certainty” to Northern Ireland.
The full economic effects of the UK exit still cannot be known but thanks to extensive contingency planning, and a large-scale response across government, the impacts for Irish business and trade are not what they otherwise would have been – and certainly not what would have been once feared.
He later added:
My message today is that the British-Irish relationship is, after some turbulent years which we have to acknowledge, back on a positive trajectory.
But we have work to do, in many ways we always will.
In that context, a close, equal and respectful partnership between London and Dublin, and all of our respective centres of power, will always be crucial.
Robert Booth
Judges are to be asked to rule on whether private landlords can “reasonably” deny a tenant’s request to keep a pet, under sweeping reforms to the private rented sector facing a key parliamentary debate on Monday.
The shake-up in the balance of power between England’s 2.3 million private landlords and their 11 million tenants proposed in the long-awaited renters reform bill will finally be considered by MPs. It proposes a ban on no-fault evictions, four and a half years after the Conservative government promised to end the practice.
However, the government has warned of fresh delays even if the bill passes, telling MPs last week that it must speed up the courts process first before the ban comes in.
Landlords can currently deny tenants who want pets, and some have charged “pet rent”. The new bill “requires landlords not to unreasonably withhold consent”, leaving a new ombudsman for private renting, and ultimately the courts, to decide what is reasonable – creating a new grey area in landlord-tenant relations.
The National Residential Landlords Association is calling for “comprehensive guidance” on when landlords can refuse animals, and fears “tenants and landlords will be in a state of limbo, with the prospect of inconsistent judgments by the courts”.
The bill will also ask courts to rule on cases of antisocial behaviour, as the government plans to give landlords stronger powers to turf out badly behaved tenants. It is a move seen as reducing the impact of ending no-fault evictions for landlords.
Shelter’s chief executive, Polly Neate, said this was “deeply concerning” and “risks opening a new loophole for unscrupulous landlords to continue unfair evictions”.
The bill will also:
-
Allow landlords to evict tenants for persistent rent arrears, if they are selling up or moving a close relative in.
-
Allow landlords to raise rents annually to market prices with two months’ notice. Tenants will be able to fight excessive increases in the courts to prevent “back door” evictions.
-
Establish a national ombudsman with whom tenants can raise complaints. Membership of a redress scheme will be mandatory for landlords.
-
Set up a new database of private landlords and properties.
The bill will deliver “a private rented sector that is fit for the 21st century”, a government spokesperson said.
However, any ban on no-fault evictions will not take effect until at least next year – five years since the then prime minister Theresa May said they were “wrong” and “unfair”.
The government said last week it must first improve the courts system and said: “We will not proceed with the abolition of section 21 until reforms to the justice system are in place.”
Read the full story here:
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has argued it is not the right time to be considering taking refugees from Gaza.
He told Sky News:
Reaching for the tool of refugees at this stage is not the right one to do.
I think the most important thing is to support people in the region and that’s why we’ve been urging the Israeli government and the Egyptian government to make sure that aid can get into Gaza.
We saw the first stages of that at the weekend, and that was very welcome, and we will continue to urge that and we will continue to put our support into helping people on the ground.
You can follow our dedicated liveblog on the Israel-Hamas war here:
Scotland’s justice secretary, Angela Constance, said the Scottish government has to have a “frank” conversation with vulnerable communities about how Scotland prepares for events such as Storm Babet.
She told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland:
We do have to have some frank conversations with government and our communities because, with the best will in the world, the best flood defences will not give 100% protection, 100% of the time.
What we’ve seen with Babet is, over two days, two months’ worth of rainfall, which is exceptional, and the impact of that will be with communities for some time.
Of course there’s been some really tragic consequences of the storm and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those affected.
Two people died in Scotland during the storm, which prompted the issuing of a rare red weather warning by authorities, warning of a danger to life in the north-east.
Police confirmed on Monday morning that a search is continuing for a second man reported missing on Friday, who is said to have been trapped in a vehicle in flood water in Marykirk, Aberdeenshire.
Humza Yousaf to visit Brechin, Angus, after flooding
The Scottish first minister will visit Brechin on Monday to see where the River South Esk burst its banks and flooded dozens of homes.
Humza Yousaf is expected to meet people affected by the flooding during his visit and thank volunteers, local authority staff and emergency service personnel who played a part in the evacuation.
Respite centres were set up in the town for those forced to leave their homes, and people only started returning in large numbers on Sunday to assess the damage done.
In the early hours of Friday, emergency services increased efforts to move people out of their properties as water started to spill over the sides of the defences and flood the street.
Angus council said it has had an “overwhelming” response to an appeal for accommodation for people unable to return to their properties because of the flood damage.
A call for clothing and toiletries for those affected by the floods also led to hundreds of donations, the local authority said.
Yousaf said ahead of his scheduled visit:
My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives to the extreme conditions caused by Storm Babet during what will be a difficult time.
I want to pass on my thanks to local authorities, volunteers and the emergency services for all their efforts in these extremely challenging conditions.
The local community in Brechin, like others across Scotland, has come together to offer support to all those affected by the floods, with Angus council receiving hundreds of offers of alternative accommodation for those forced to leave their homes.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has said a video appearing to show a tube driver leading chants on the London Underground of “free Palestine” was “disturbing”.
He told Sky News:
I saw that clip and on the face of it it was disturbing, but I know the British Transport Police and Transport for London are investigating that.
Because they are investigating that it wouldn’t be right for me to comment on an ongoing police investigation, but they took that very seriously and I thank them at the weekend for their vigilance on that matter.
I want to make sure people across the country are secure and those sorts of things will have been very concerning, particularly to people in the Jewish community.
Nicola Slawson
Police will have to explain the response to a pro-Palestine protester chanting “jihad”, a cabinet minister has said ahead of a meeting between Suella Braverman and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.
The home secretary will urge Rowley to use the “full force of the law” after video emerged of a protester chanting “jihad” at a demonstration by the Hizb ut-Tahrir fundamentalist group, which was separate to the main pro-Palestine rally, PA Media reports.
Officers said no offences were identified in the footage from the demonstration in central London over the weekend.
Braverman’s cabinet colleague, Mark Harper, said the footage from the weekend was “disturbing”.
The transport secretary told Times Radio:
The home secretary will make it clear that the government thinks the full force of the law should be used.
The police are operationally independent, which I think is appropriate, and they will have to explain the reasons for the decisions they have taken.
The Met has pointed out that jihad has “a number of meanings”, and said that specialist counter-terrorism officers had not identified any offences arising from the specific clip from Saturday.
Instead, officers spoke to the man to “discourage any repeat of similar chanting”.
But the home office minister Robert Jenrick said chanting the word on the streets of the capital is “inciting terrorist violence”.
Braverman will use her scheduled meeting to discuss protests surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict to ask Rowley for “an explanation over the response to incidents” on Saturday.
A source close to the home secretary added:
There can be no place for incitement to hatred or violence on Britain’s streets and, as the home secretary has made clear, the police are urged to crack down on anyone breaking the law.
Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’m covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I’m on [email protected] or @Nicola_Slawson on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
