Sunak’s Rwanda treaty to face first test in Lords
The first test of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda immigration policy in the House of Lords will come on Monday afternoon with a debate on a motion seeking to delay it.
Monday’s debate will centre on a report by the Lords international agreements committee recommending parliament should not ratify the Rwanda treaty until ministers can show the country is safe.
The government agreed the legally binding treaty with Kigali in December, saying it addressed concerns raised by the supreme court about the possibility of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda then being transferred to a country where they could be at risk.
But the committee said promised safeguards in the agreement are “incomplete” and must be implemented before it can be endorsed.
The treaty underpins the government’s safety of rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill which compels judges to regard Rwanda as safe.
The motion in front of the Lords today is:
This House resolves, in accordance with section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, that His Majesty’s Government should not ratify the UK-Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership until the protections it provides have been fully implemented, since parliament is being asked to make a judgement, based on the agreement, about whether Rwanda is safe.
The bill is likely to receive its second reading in the Commons by the end of January, with a third reading possible around the middle of March.
Key events
Starmer has said in this Q&A that the current government after 14 years is going to leave the country worse off than they found it, and that is unforgiveable for a political party, any political party, he says. He stresses again he is talking about a “decade of national renewal” because it isn’t just about fixing things but fixing them and then improving them, and it has to be sustained over more than five years.
Starmer says that he is convinced that among the main problems of the last 14 years has been “sticking plaster” politics which “mask the problem for a short period of time” but then when they come off they usually reveal an even bigger problem. During his speech he said that real and lasting change takes longer than the election cycle, and talked about a decade of work that needed to be done.
Clare Moriarty, managing director of Citizens Advice, is now doing a Q&A with Keir Starmer at the Civil Society event. You can watch that here.
My colleague Mark Sweney has more dismal news on the economy this morning:
More than 47,000 UK companies are on the brink of collapse after a 25% jump in businesses facing “critical” financial distress in the final three months of 2023, according to a new report.
It marks the second consecutive quarter-on-quarter period when critical financial distress has risen by a 25%, the latest “Red Flag” report by insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor found.
The construction and property sectors accounted for 30% of all businesses facing critical financial distress.
Eighteen of the 22 sectors covered by the report recorded double-digit percentage growth in the number of firms whose finances have reached critical condition.
Julie Palmer, partner at Begbies Traynor, said the tough macroeconomic conditions have created a “perfect storm” for UK businesses.
“After a difficult year for British businesses that was characterised by high interest rates, rampant inflation, weak consumer confidence and rising and unpredictable input costs, we are now seeing this perfect storm impact every corner of the economy,” she said.
Read more of Mark Sweney’s report here: More than 47,000 UK businesses on ‘brink of collapse’, warn insolvency experts
Keir Starmer has started this talk by praising the work of community groups and volunteers, saying that they are the people that “bind government, business and community together” and that they are able to reach the places that the public and private sectors can’t reach.
He has criticised the Conservatives for failed idea of “no society” and rampant individualism during the Thatcher years, and David Cameron delivering not the “big society” he talked about, but a “poor society” through austerity.
You can watch a stream of it here.
Keir Starmer making speech at Civil Society summit
Keir Starmer has just started speaking at the Civil Society summit. You can watch that live here.
Some of the content has already been trailed, including that he is planning to defend the National Trust and the RNLI, accusing the Conservatives of attacking them to stoke a “desperate” culture war.
My colleague Kiran Stacey previewed this overnight, writing:
“The Tories seem set on sabotaging civil society to save their own skins,” Starmer will say. “They got themselves so tangled up in culture wars of their own making, that instead of working with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution – an organisation the late queen was patron of for 70 years – to find real solutions to stop the small boats, their rhetoric has helped demonise them.”
“Instead of working with the National Trust so more people can learn about – and celebrate – our culture and our history, they’ve managed to demean their work. In its desperation to cling on to power, at all costs, the Tory party is trying to find woke agendas in the very civic institutions they once regarded with respect.”
In 2019, the RNLI was criticised by Conservative backbenchers for spending money on anti-drowning charities abroad. It then came under fire in 2021 from Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who accused the institute of acting as a “taxi service for illegal immigration” because of its work helping distressed asylum seekers in the Channel.
The National Trust, Britain’s largest charity, has been torn apart by an internal battle over its stance towards rewilding Britain’s countryside and how to depict the links between the properties it oversees and the UK’s colonial legacy.
In 2022 a group headed by a Conservative donor and including two “anti-woke” historians launched an attempt to gain control of the charity, while the Tory MP Andrew Murrison set up a parliamentary group to “scrutinise” its work.
Just a quick note that one of the ministerial statements due to be made in the Commons on Monday includes an update on the measles situation. The UK declared a national health incident over the disease on Friday.
Graeme Wearden
There is continued chatter about potential spring tax cuts ahead of the election later in the year, but as my colleague Graeme Wearden reports, Britain may well have slipped into recession at the end of last year.
Martin Beck, chief economic adviser to the EY ITEM Club said this morning “there’s a good chance” the economy may have shrunk slightly in the final three months of 2023.
That would mean two negative quarters in a row – after the 0.1% fall in GDP in July-September – meaning a technical recession.
Beck told Radio 4’s Today Programme “We know that GDP shrunk in the third quarter and looking at the high frequency numbers for Q4, there’s a good chance that it may have shrunk slightly again.”
The official GDP data for the October-December quarter are due on 15 February.
Beck points out “it doesn’t make a massive amount of difference to the person on the street” if the economy shrank by 0.1% or grew by 0.1%, but headlines declaring the UK in recession would not be good news for the government, as the Conservatives try to plot a tricky path to another election win.
Read more here: ‘Good chance’ UK may have fallen into technical recession – business live
A quick scoot around the front pages. The Guardian’s main UK story lead was Robert Booth’s exclusive that modern slavery exploitation in the social care sector has soared with more than 10 times as many potential victims as in 2021 since visa rules eased.
The lead for the Telegraph is that report from the government on the BBC which promises more oversight for Ofcom over the corporation’s output. The Times leads with the government’s free childcare policy being in chaos.
The Express, Mail and Sun all lead with the news that Sarah Ferguson has been diagnosed with malignant melanoma. The Mail also wanrs of an NHS heart care “crisis”. The Mirror has England captain Harry Kane joining a campaign about mental health.
Culture secretary: not appropriate for BBC to have ‘criminal tools in its armoury’ to enforce licence fee payment
The Post Office Horizon IT scandal has placed into sharper focus the number of bodies that can bring prosecutions, and the TV Licensing authority is one of them. Possibly not for much longer, if the words of the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, this morning carry any weight.
She said it was not appropriate for the BBC to have “criminal tools in its armoury” to prosecute people for not paying their TV licence fee.
Asked about a series of cases brought against people by TV licensing, PA Media reports Frazer told Times Radio: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for the BBC to have criminal tools in its armoury in relation to prosecutions.”
She said she would look at the prosecutions in an upcoming review.
Culture secretary: BBC has ‘on occasion’ been biased
During the morning media round the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, said she believed the BBC had “on occasion” been biased.
She told Sky News that “evidence” suggested there was a “perception amongst audiences” that there was some bias at the BBC.
Frazer said: “There are only perceptions and perceptions are important. What’s important about the BBC is that it’s funded by the public, so the perception of audiences of the public are important.”
She added: “I think that on occasions it has been biased,” citing its reporting of a hospital attack in Gaza.
Sunak’s Rwanda treaty to face first test in Lords
The first test of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda immigration policy in the House of Lords will come on Monday afternoon with a debate on a motion seeking to delay it.
Monday’s debate will centre on a report by the Lords international agreements committee recommending parliament should not ratify the Rwanda treaty until ministers can show the country is safe.
The government agreed the legally binding treaty with Kigali in December, saying it addressed concerns raised by the supreme court about the possibility of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda then being transferred to a country where they could be at risk.
But the committee said promised safeguards in the agreement are “incomplete” and must be implemented before it can be endorsed.
The treaty underpins the government’s safety of rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill which compels judges to regard Rwanda as safe.
The motion in front of the Lords today is:
This House resolves, in accordance with section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, that His Majesty’s Government should not ratify the UK-Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership until the protections it provides have been fully implemented, since parliament is being asked to make a judgement, based on the agreement, about whether Rwanda is safe.
The bill is likely to receive its second reading in the Commons by the end of January, with a third reading possible around the middle of March.
Welcome and opening summary …
Good morning. Rishi Sunak’s immigration policy faces its next hurdle today as the House of Lords debates a motion seeking to delay the proposed new UK-Rwanda treaty. Sunak, who was appointed prime minister by Conservative MPs, and is yet to face an election as party leader, has made much of the fact that the Lords are unelected and are opposing a policy which he claims has broad public support. Voters appear to think differently, with a YouGov survey earlier this month suggesting a narrow majority is in favour of scrapping the plan altogether.
Here are the headlines
In Westminster the Commons is sitting this afternoon, with oral questions on levelling up and then a debate on the second reading of the offshore petroleum licensing bill. The Lords, as mentioned, will be debating the proposed UK-Rwanda treaty. In Wales the Senedd has committee meetings. The Scottish parliament is not sitting.
It is Martin Belam with you today. I will try to dip into the comments if I get the chance, but if you want to draw my attention to anything – especially if you spot an error or typo – it is best to email me at [email protected].
