Kemi Badenoch criticised by ERG chief and other Tories over ‘massive climbdown’ on retained EU law – UK politics live | Politics

It will be “very difficult” to recoup money lost to fraud and error in the allocation of Covid-19 business support grants, MPs have been told.

Gareth Davies, permanent secretary at the Department for Business and Trade, said the way that initial grants were distributed in March 2020 has made it harder to recover a large proportion of the estimated £1.1bn in outstanding losses.

As PA Media reports, Davies told the public accounts committee today that the amount clawed back so far had increased from £11.4m in February to £20.9m.

But Davies said the speed with which the grants were distributed to protect businesses in crisis led to “ambiguities” that have made responding to fraud and errors problematic. He told the committee:

We are doing all we can but I just caution – my early judgement on this is I think it is going to be very difficult [to recoup money] given that scheme design at the start.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, has dismissed the prospect of long-term nationalisation of rail services despite TransPennine Express (TPE) being brought under government control, PA Media reports

In a statement to MPs, Harper said the government intends to put all contracts out for competitive tendering once the market allows.

The proportion of journeys on Britain’s railways which are on nationalised services will be around a quarter once TPE services are brought under the Department for Transport’s Operator of Last Resort (OLR) from 28 May, PA says.

The OLR already controls London North Eastern Railway, Northern and Southeastern services.

In a statement to MPs, Harper said:

The OLR is just the next stop on the line, it’s not the terminus station, and once market conditions allow we intend to subject this and indeed all contracts – both private sector and those under the OLR – to competitive tendering.

There will be some, unfortunately, who use today’s decision to further their ideological ends, to argue that this somehow justifies all rail contracts being brought under public control. That would be a mistake.

The majority of taxpayers do not use the railways regularly, but they could be saddled with the huge cost of nationalisation only to inherit the industry’s problems with no plan to fix them.

Nationalisation is a soundbite, not a solution and this government will always be guided by the evidence to help make the best decisions for passengers, which is why earlier this year having seen the noticeable improvements on Avanti West Coast I resisted calls to bring the franchise into public ownership, I extended Avanti’s contract by six months.

In response, Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, said:

For the Conservatives to have nationalised one railway may be regarded as misfortune, to have nationalised four demonstrates something much more fundamental.

The privatised model they have rigidly lauded in the face of all evidence is collapsing.

Government still considering alternative to rejoining Horizon, science minister tells peers

Lisa O’Carroll

The government has come under attack in the House of Lords over the length of time it is taking to negotiate participation in Horizon Europe, the €95bn flagship science research programme.

British scientists been locked out of the funding cycle in a tit-for-tat row over the UK’s failure to apply the Northern Ireland protocol but the door was thrown open to the UK’s membership in February when Rishi Sunak and European commission chief Ursula von der Leyen agreed the Windsor framework.

Lord Kinnoull, the crossbench chair of the Lords EU affairs committee, said the delay was causing “mutual harm to the UK and the EU, damage to both our science bases”.

He urged science minister Lord Camrose to treat the matter with “extreme urgency”.

Camrose told the house the government’s “preference” was still the EU programme but if it could not agree a “good deal” and discount for the two years it was locked out it would go ahead with plan B. He said:

If we are not able to secure association on fair and appropriate terms we will implement Pioneer, a bold and ambitious alternative.

No 10 accepts Jenrick wrong to claim UN refugee convention says people must apply for asylum in first safe country

Peter Walker

Downing Street has effectively conceded that Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was wrong to say that under the UN refugee convention asylum seekers should apply in the first safe country they reach, saying instead it is merely “an important principle” for the government.

In a bullish performance on Channel 4 News on Wednesday evening, Jenrick said refugees arriving across the Channel in small boats were “essentially asylum shoppers or economic migrants” who were “choosing to come to the UK for whatever reason”. Jenrick went on:

The refugee convention also says that people should seek sanctuary, should seek asylum in the first safe country.

On being told by the interviewer, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, that this was incorrect, Jenrick said the convention “does encourage people to do that”.

Asked about Jenrick’s comments, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said he had not asked the PM about it, but did not disagree with the fact the UN convention does not say people should apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach.

“The first safe country principle is recognised internationally as a feature of the common European asylum system,” he said, referring to the Dublin convention on how refugees are dealt with across the EU – which the UK is no longer party to after Brexit.

Asked why he was citing this when it no longer included the UK, the spokesman said:

It is an important principle that people seeking refugee status do so in their first safe country.

Downing Street has rejected the claim from Jacob Rees-Mogg (see 9.34am) and others that the retained EU law U-turn shows that Rishi Sunak does not keep his promises.

Asked if Sunak was a man of his word, the PM’s spokesperson said: “Yes.”

He also said there was still a “clear deadline” for revocation for some laws by the end of the year and that “of course we will continue with further removal beyond that”.

When Sunak was running for the Tory leadership in the summer he issued a press notice headlined:

Rishi Sunk to overhaul EU law in first 100 days to unleash growth.

But he did not commit to getting rid of all retained EU law within 100 days. He promised a review of all remaing EU regulations and his team said: “The first set of recommendations as to whether these laws should be scrapped or changed would be made within the first 100 days.”

Sunak himself also said:

I have a plan, if elected prime minister, to have scrapped or reformed, by the time of the next election, all the EU law, red tape, and bureaucracy still on our statute book that is holding back our economy.

The government says it has already revoked or reformed around 1,000 EU laws since Brexit and an amendment to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill identifies around 600 more that will be revoked by the end of the year.

But Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, has admitted that the process of reviewing all retained EU laws will take longer – implying it won’t necessarily be over by the time of the election.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has told MPs that the UK is donating long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. In a statement, he said:

The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves.

These are from my colleague Dan Sabbagh.

Joe Biden, the US president, has claimed that his recent visit to Ireland was partly motivated by his desire to ensure that “the Brits didn’t screw around” with the Good Friday agreement.

As the BBC reports, speaking at a Democratic party event, Biden said:

I got to go back to Ireland for the Irish accords, to make sure they weren’t – the Brits didn’t screw around and Northern Ireland didn’t walk away from their commitments.

This is embarrassing because it implies an assumption that the UK government was operating on the basis of bad faith. Rishi Sunak, and his predecessors as prime minister, always argued that they wanted to reform the Northern Ireland protocol set up under Brexit, not because they wanted to undermine the Good Friday agreement and the institutions it set up, but because, without change to the NI protocol, the GFA and its institutions would not survive.

Asked about the comment, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists:

The Windsor framework was a culmination of substantive work between the UK and the EU, and at its heart the UK priority was always protecting the GFA.

Here is some Twitter comment on Kemi Badenoch’s response to the urgent question on the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill.

Badenoch is regularly seen as one of the favourites to be next Conservative party leader, not least because for some time now she has been second in the ConservativeHome survey of Tory members about how well cabinet ministers are performing. Only Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, is ahead of her, and he has twice declined to stand for the leadership himself. But, given the hardline Brexiter leanings of the party membership, this U-turn is likely to set her back.

Instead, today, Badenoch was branding herself as a pragmatist on Brexit.

This is from my colleague Ben Quinn.

These are from the i’s Paul Waugh.

And this is from Jill Rutter, a Brexit policy specialist at the Institute for Government thinktank.

What this repositioning might mean in a future Tory leadership contest is not immediately clear, although it is not obvious that it will repair the damage caused by a breach with the European Research Group. Badenoch may have to take up sword carrying.

As well as Badenoch’s new-found Brexit pragmatism, the other stand-out feature of her performance during her urgent question today was her astonishing rudeness. Badenoch has always been abrasive, and in the past her blunt, scornful, no-nonsense response to criticism from opposition MPs has probably gone down well with members of her party.

But today she was just crass and offensive, repeatedly accussing the opposition of not understanding what she was doing (they do understand), and blithely claiming to be happy about facing scrutiny in parliament, when she clearly isn’t. And she wasn’t just patronsing the opposition; Tory MPs got some of this too. A minister can get away with being arrogant when they are in a strong position, but that’s not where Badenoch was today, and much of it just sounded tin-eared and unpleasant.

Waugh thinks this is just the way she is.