Sunak fails to give full backing to NatWest chair as Farage banking row continues – UK politics live | Politics

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has said he will not expel a former minister from the SNP over terse criticism of the party’s policies, PA Media reports. PA says:

Fergus Ewing has become a frequent opponent of Scottish government policy in recent months, including over plans to limit human activity in at least 10% of Scottish waters, the introduction of a deposit return scheme and the long-awaited dualling of the A9.

Speaking on the Holyrood Sources podcast this week, Ewing said there was a “toxic” atmosphere within the SNP group at Holyrood, claiming some in senior positions within the party and in government had not spoken to him in “well over a year”.

Asked by journalists on Thursday if the recent criticism could lead to Ewing’s expulsion, Yousaf said the former minister’s position in the party was safe.

“People aren’t going to be expelled or punished for criticising me, or criticising the party’s direction on several positions,” he said.

“We will always look to adhere to the standing orders that apply to me just as much as they apply to Fergus or Angus Brendan MacNeil.”

Later asked if there is a “toxic” environment within the party, the first minister said “not in my experience”. He added: “There’s pretty robust debate, it’s fair to say.”

Peter Flavel is stepping down as head of Coutts, Graeme Wearden reports on the business live blog. Flavel is the second senior figure from the NatWest group to lose their job over the row that erupted after Coutts closed Nigel Farage’s account. Dame Alison Rose, the NatWest chief executive resigned yesterday.

There are more details on Graeme’s business live blog.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has responded to Rishi Sunak’s attack on his housebuilding record (see 1.18pm) by accusing the PM of “desperate nonsense”.

In a statement Khan said:

This is pathetic gesture politics by the Tories in an attempt to distract from their out of touch government’s inaction on the mortgage crisis and Rishi Sunak’s failure to stand up to his own backbenchers on housebuilding. Londoners won’t be fooled in the slightest.

The Tories have a miserable record of continually blocking badly needed new housing in London across the board while Labour in London has exceeded the government’s own affordable housing targets, delivered higher council home building than the rest of England combined and built more homes of any kind than since the 1930s.

In a briefing note for journalists, Khan said that there were 25,658 “genuinely affordable” housing starts in London in 2022-23, a record high, and that 23,092 council homes had been started in London since 2018, which is the highest level of council home building since the 1970s.

He also highlighted multiple ways in which he said the Tories were holding back building in the capital, including: ministers blocking new housing developments that would have delivered hundreds of homes; funding for affordable housing being cut and delayed; limits being imposed on the construction of tall buildings in London; the government failing to extend infrastructure in the capital.

Rishi Sunak was visiting a housing development in west London today to promote an announcement from Downing Street that it is spending £200m on housing initiatives in the capital.

In a news release, sent out to journalists but not yet on the No 10 website, Downing Street says the money will fund “densification” and brownfield regeneration in the capital. It says:

A direct allocation of £150m for housebuilding to London boroughs, bypassing the Greater London authority – to unlock development by preparing brownfield land and supporting infrastructure like new roads and green spaces. Because of the mayor’s failure to deliver the number of homes required in London over his years in office, someone working in inner London can, on average, expect to pay 17 times their earnings to buy a home – a ratio more than double the national average. This is why the government needs to change the approach, working directly with other local leaders in the capital.

Further government investment worth £53m to Old Oak West – a project that will deliver over 9,000 new homes, support 12,000 jobs, and transform the area neighbouring the £1.7bn Old Oak Common HS2 station.

The news release is particularly critical of Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London. As well as suggesting that he is to blame for London property prices being so high, it says the government will be launching its own review into housebuilding in London because, it says, the target for 52,000 new homes per year in London’s housing plan is not being met.

In a quote in the news release, Sunak says:

The mayor has failed to deliver the homes that London needs. This has driven up house prices and made it harder for families to get on the housing ladder in the first place.

That is why we are stepping in today to boost house building and make home ownership a reality again for people across this great city.

The Tories have been criticising Khan’s record on housing for years. But normally government press releases are not as implicitly party political as this one, and this could be seen as fresh evidence that Sunak has decided to adopt a more “gloves off” approach to campaigning.

(Making assessments on which party has the best record on housebuilding in London is famously complicated. This article, by Inside Housing’s Peter Apps, published during the Boris Johnson premiership, explains why.)

Rishi Sunak has failed to give his full backing to Sir Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest, in interviews this morning, PA Media reports.

PA says that Sunak did not back calls for the resignation of Davies in a pooled interview this morning – but also that Sunak would not say whether he had confidence in him.

Davies has been under pressure to quit because he and the NatWest board initially backed Dame Alison Rose on Tuesday, after she admitted being the source of the BBC story that wrongly said Nigel Farage’s political views were not a factor in the decision by Coutts to close his account.

But late on Tuesday night, after the board realised that No 10 and the Treasury were pushing for resignation, there was a change of heart, and Rose quit.

Farage has been calling for the entire NatWest board to be replaced.

Asked about NatWest, Sunak said:

What I said right at the start of this was that it wasn’t right for people to be deprived of basic services because of banking, because of their views.

This isn’t about any one individual, it’s about values – do you believe in free speech and not to be discriminated against because of your legally held views?

Do you believe in privacy, particularly on matters as sensitive as your financial information. Those are the values and questions at stake here and that’s why I said what I did.

Here are extracts, via PA Media, from Mr Justice Chamberlain judgment at the high court saying the Home Office’s “routine” use of hotel accommodation for unaccompanied child asylum seekers is unlawful. He said:

Ensuring the safety and welfare of children with no adult to look after them is among the most fundamental duties of any civilised state …

The home secretary has been accommodating children in hotels for over two years.

It may be that, in June and July 2021, the home secretary could plausibly have contended that the commissioning of hotels was intended and functioning an emergency measure.

It is much more difficult to make that case after September 2021, when she agreed the Kent protocol, which formalised the cap on the numbers of unaccompanied asylum seeking children that Kent county council would accept, against a common understanding that any unaccompanied asylum seeking children children who arrived when the cap had been reached would be accommodated by the home secretary in hotels.

She and Kent county council may well have hoped that it would not be necessary to use hotels, but it rapidly became clear that this intention was not being realised.

The judge also found that Kent county council is acting unlawfully in failing to accommodate and look after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. He said:

In ceasing to accept responsibility for some newly arriving unaccompanied asylum seeking children, while continuing to accept other children into its care, Kent county council chose to treat some unaccompanied asylum seeking children differently from and less favourably than other children, because of their status as asylum seekers.

The Home Office’s “routine” housing of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels is unlawful, the high court has ruled.

According to PA Media, the charity Every Child Protected Against Trafficking (Ecpat) brought legal action against the Home Office over the practice of housing unaccompanied youngsters in Home Office hotels, claiming the arrangements are “not fit for purpose”.

In a ruling this morning, Mr Justice Chamberlain said the use of hotels for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children had become unlawful, as the power to place the children in hotels “may be used on very short periods in true emergency situations”.

He told the court in London:

It cannot be used systematically or routinely in circumstances where it is intended, or functions in practice, as a substitute for local authority care.

From December 2021 at the latest, the practice of accommodating children in hotels, outside local authority care, was both systematic and routine and had become an established part of the procedure for dealing with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

From that point on, the home secretary’s provision of hotel accommodation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children exceeded the proper limits of her powers and was unlawful.

There is a range of options open to the home secretary to ensure that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are accommodated and looked after as envisaged by parliament.

It is for her to decide how to do so.

Ecpat’s challenge was heard in London alongside similar claims brought by Brighton and Hove city council and Kent county council against the department, PA reports. It says the Home Office and Department for Education had opposed the legal challenges and said that the hotel use was lawful but was “deployed effectively as a ‘safety net’ and as a matter of necessity”.

The government’s failure to bring down the level of school absences could lead to “a moral and social failure of epic proportions”, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said today.

He made the comment in a foreword to a report by the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank he chairs, saying that “crisis levels” of absence in schools in England are becoming entrenched.

The problem became a lot worse during the pandemic, and absence levels have never returned to pre-Covid levels. The CSJ, which has been monitoring this problem since 2021, says steps taken by the Department for Education to increase attendance figures have been inadequate.

According to the CSJ’s latest report, in autumn 2022 1.7 million children were persistently absent from school – defined as missing 10% or more of possible sessions. That was equivalent to 24.2% of all children in England, and it was an 84% increase on the pre-Covid figure for autumn 2019 (13.1%).

And the report says 125,222 children were severely absent in autumn 2022 – defined as missing 50% or more of possible sessions. That was 1.7% of all children – a 108% increase on the figure for autumn 2019 (60,244 pupils) and the highest figure on record for an autumn term.

Commenting on the figures, Duncan Smith said in his foreword to the report:

The government risks creating a lost generation if it doesn’t act urgently to return so called ‘ghost children’ to the classroom. This would be a moral and social failure of epic proportions, creating a bow wave of problems for decades to come.

Duncan Smith said school absences would make the attainment gap worse. He explained:

It is a sad but unsurprising fact that among these children, the vulnerable are over represented. In the 2021/22 academic year, the rate of severe absence among children in receipt of free school meals was more than three times than among their higher income peers, while children in receipt of SEN [special educational needs] support were three times more likely to be severely absent.

The CSJ’s recent inquiry identified anxiety, poor mental health, disadvantage and SEN needs as key drivers of school absence – as well as changing parental attitudes to school since lockdown forced millions out of the classroom.

This attendance gap will serve only to exacerbate the ‘attainment gap’ between poorer and more affluent children, already at its widest level in a decade.

The DfE has been taking measures to bring down school absences, including piloting attendance monitors. But Duncan Smith said “existing measures fail to match the scale of the crisis”.

Scotland would adopt a citizenship model similar to that of Ireland if it ever becomes independent, Humza Yousaf, the first minister, has announced. PA News reports:

Yousaf has published the fifth paper in a series laying out the prospectus for Scotland after separation, focusing on immigration and citizenship.

The Scottish government has long advocated increased immigration to cope with an ageing population, with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon publishing plans for a separate Scottish visa in 2020, which was almost immediately rejected by Westminster.

Yousaf said that anyone with a parent born in Scotland would be able to apply for Scottish citizenship if the country leaves the UK.

The paper explains the rights of British nationals to claim dual citizenship, as well as how the process for foreign nationals to apply will be streamlined.

Yousaf said: “I am in no doubt that alongside the climate crisis, the challenges of an ageing population are one of the biggest issues future generations will face in Scotland, unless action is taken today.

“The Scottish government wants to make it easier for people, including those seeking to reconnect with family roots, to gain citizenship and contribute to our economy, society and public services like the NHS.”

No 10 should bring in new fines for ex-ministers who break the rules on lobbying in time for Rishi Sunak’s next reshuffle and tighten restrictions on former civil servants, Eric Pickles, the head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), has said. Rowena Mason has the story here.

Rishi Sunak has been urged to close the holes in his “Swiss cheese” of a windfall tax on energy companies after Shell and British Gas reported significant profits, with Labour calling the government’s stance “perverse”, Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Good morning. A good way to think about the most important stories of our time is to imagine, if someone were to produce a news bulletin about what happened in the 21st century, what would be in it. Newspapers cover the most important stories of the last 24 hours. Live blogs, like this one, cover the most important stories of the last 24 minutes. But the story of the 21st century is obviously, obviously, the climate crisis, and this does feature in the daily news agenda too.

This morning Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, was on the Today programme and he was withering about the government’s backsliding on green issues (partly a matter of rhetoric, but there have been some policy shifts too) since the Uxbridge byelection result last week, which persuaded some Tories that fighting net zero measures could be an election. winning strategy.

Stark was particularly critical of the government’s failure to categorically reaffirm its commitment to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. This was “crackers”, he said. He was referring to the days of mixed messaging. According to the Daily Mirror, the government produced five positions on this issue within 24 hours. John Stevens, the Mirror’s political editor, summed them up here.

Here are the main points from Stark’s interview.

It’s a worrying situation. As somebody who works on climate issues, climate policies, we’ve seen this week a remarkable softening of the stance and the rhetoric from our political leaders on climate, in a period when frankly, we should be seeing the opposite.

He seemed to be referring mostly to the government, but he may have had Labour in mind too.

• He said that, although Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, said in an interview on the Today programme on Tuesday that the government was fully committed to implementing the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, by then the damage had been done. He said:

I was very reassured by what Michael Gove said when he sat in this chair. But, nonetheless, the damage was done because we had this discussion following Uxbridge result about whether the 2030 goal was the right one for the country.

That’s one of the things I’m very worried about, because we’ve just heard the the environmental case for having a net zero target ….

My own belief is that if you don’t make the economic case for it alongside that, then then we will really struggle in this mission towards net zero.

So it’s crackers, frankly, to invest £500m pounds in bringing Jaguar Land Rover to the UK to invest in a new gigafactory for making the batteries for those cars, and then similarly, almost within almost the same week, start to talk about softening that 2030 goal, removing the market for the vehicles that Jaguar Land Rover want to make.

The progress we’re making in this country against the targets that are set in law is just not fast enough. Let me give you one illustration of that. If you removed from the equation the one sector where we have been doing pretty well in this country, which is the power sector – we are moving towards a more renewable, cleaner electricity system – if you take that out of the equation and look at all the other sectors where of course the challenge now lies, decarbonizing our economy, moving towards a score of net zero, the average in recent years has been about a 1% fall in greenhouse gas emissions.

If we’re going to meet the 2030 goal that the government set in that Cop26 process back in Glasgow, that needs to quadruple over the next six or seven years. Now we are not seeing that kind of progress and the government’s plans.

It looks like a quiet day in politics, and there isn’t much in the diary. But Rishi Sunak is on a visit this morning, and is due to record a pooled interview, so we might get a response from him.

If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.