Peter Black

The David Cameron lobbying scandal has highlighted once more the weaknesses in the system, where the Prime Minister is then judge and jury over his own alleged misbehaviour, whilst former Ministers can apparently ignore the rules on lobbying and future employment at will, with no sanctions being taken against them.

Of course that does not mean there are not proposals for reform. The Independent highlights proposals from the Institute for Government that could make a difference. Amongst their suggestions is that cabinet ministers should be banned from lobbying for private firms for five years once they step down from that post.

The think tank’s report recommends:

* Giving proper teeth to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), with the power to levy fines and impose outright bans on former ministers and civil servants taking certain jobs. At the moment, it can only make recommendations, forcing it to “rely on individual embarrassment” as its only deterrent;

* Banning former cabinet ministers, for five years after leaving government, from “lobbying for any organisation that could profit financially”;

* Putting the ministerial code “on a statutory footing”, with the same status as codes for civil servants and special advisers;

* Giving the prime minister’s adviser the power to investigate alleged breaches of the code, instead of requiring a go-ahead from the prime minister;

* Tougher rules for civil servants with outside interests, with permanent secretaries of departments responsible for enforcing them; and

* Expanding rules on registering financial interests to include all special advisers and government appointments.

The big obstacle to this of course is Boris Johnson himself. The paper says that the report, entitled Improving Ethical Standards in Government, comes as the government is engulfed by sleaze allegations – and criticism they are not being properly investigated:

Nigel Boardman, a non-executive director at the business department, was appointed to investigate Mr Cameron’s lobbying for Greensill, a collapsed finance firm which employed him.

But he does not have legal powers to gather evidence or examine the behaviour of ministers – including Matt Hancock and Rishi Sunak – who were lobbied privately.

It was then revealed that a former head of government procurement also became a Greensill adviser while still a civil servant.

Christopher Geidt, the new adviser on ministerial interests, will – along with the Electoral Commission – investigate the flat makeover controversy, but Mr Johnson refused to commit to publishing his full findings.

With this record it does not look as if reform is likely anytime soon.

 

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This is not the Downing Street flat refurbishment that has allegedly cost £88,000 but it is an example of work by the same designer and there is a good chance that it is a fair approximation of the final design. It is hideous, a good argument to restore the John Lewis furniture that Boris Johnson and his fiance ditched.

But of course what the flat looks like is not the issue, it is how it was paid for and whether any rules have been broken in its commissioning. It seems likely that they were, or at least that the relevant declarations were not made in good time. What is more the Bywire website believe that they have another angle on the whole affair.

They say that the Conservative Party donor who paid £58,000 so Boris Johnson could refurbish his Downing Street flat is the founder of a company who may have benefitted from lucrative public contracts worth up to a staggering £120 million:

Leaked emails from October 2020, which were initially revealed by the Daily Mail last week, showed that the multimillionaire Peer, Lord Brownlow, was the person who had handed almost £60k to the Tory Party in order for the Prime Minister to renovate his Downing Street flat.

However, in addition to being a member of the House of Lords, Brownlow is also a business magnate who is listed at a total of 36 companies on the official Companies House website.

One of these companies is Huntswood CTC - a company who, according to both Companies House and the Huntswood corporate website - Brownlow is the founder.

According to the government’s official public contract finder website, on May the 3rd, 2017 Huntswood CTC were awarded a public contract alongside 36 other firms as part of a framework agreement worth between £60-£120m in total.

The public framework contract was to provide the Financial Conduct Authority with Skilled Person Reports, and it is unclear how much public money Huntswood CTC may have benefitted from out the agreement

In addition to their framework contract, Huntswood CTC were also handed a direct public contract worth up to £60,000 to supply “accounting, auditing and fiscal services” to the Student Loans Company on February the 16th 2018.

Brownlow has repeatedly donated huge sums of money to the Conservative Party and their MPs - to the tune of almost £3m - with his first donation to the party in April 2005.

In 2019, The Huntswood founder was made a Peer by the outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May. Brownlow has donated over £100,000 to May’s Maidenhead Conservative Association.

There is no suggestion that Huntswood CTC acted illegally or improperly in order to win the public contracts nor is there any suggestion that Lord Brownlow has acted illegally or improperly in donating to the Conservative Party or founding a company that has won government contracts.

We all await the outcome of the Electoral Commission inquiry with interest.

Yet another impact of Brexit has been highlighted by the Independent. They report new figures have revealed milk and cream sales to the EU have slumped 96 per cent as a result of Brexit-related trade barriers:

The Food and Drink Federation said the new trading arrangement with Europe had cost exporters more than £1.1bn since January, when Britain left the customs union and single market.

Milk and cream exports collapsed by 96.4 per cent while cheese sales to the EU fell by 64.6 per cent in the year to February.

Figures published by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, citing HMRC data, also showed that in February 2020, just under 76,500 tonnes of milk and 901 tonnes of bulk cream were exported to Europe – compared to just 131 and 436 tonnes of milk and cream sent respectively in February 2021.

Buttermilk and yoghurt exports were also down 91 per cent, comparing February 2021 with the same month a year earlier, while butter exports plummeted by 89 per cent, milk powder was down 86 per cent, whey fell 83 per cent and cheese dropped 75 per cent.

Experts have blamed extra paperwork and delays which particularly impact fresh products with a short shelf life.

Extra costs, and the necessity for additional preparation to be made before items are packaged and shipped, are also said to be turning European importers off British products. These hurdles are said to be affecting smaller businesses disproportionality.

The industry has warned that the resulting collapse of “groupage” movements – where goods from different companies that are being shipped to different locations are grouped on one lorry – is compounding the problem, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

For example, The Cheshire Cheese company said earlier this year it could no longer sell barrels of cheese directly to consumers in the EU because of Brexit red tape – forcing it to consider setting up in France.

The company sold £180,000 worth of truckles, the traditional name for cheese shaped like a barrel, to countries across Europe last year.

However, managing director Simon Spurrell said that was no longer possible because of the huge additional costs now involved in shipments.

The company found that sending specialist cheeses worth around £25 to EU customers requires a health certificate, signed off by a vet, that costs £180 pounds per consignment.

I'm sure none of this was on the side of the Prime Minister's bus during the referendum campaign.

The Mirror has an interesting adnission fron the Foreign Secretary which should give us all cause to pause and think what sort of country we are living in and, more inportantly, why Government Ministers who know there is a problem, have not been doing more to prevent it happening over and over again - until now.

Dominic Raab told the House of Commons that the UK is a "honey pot" for "corrupt actors" who "seek to launder their dirty money". Anybody who has read 'Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How To Take It Back' by Oliver Bulloughh will already know this is the case. It is also the basis of my third novel, which is still in draft stage.

Raab made his remarks, while announcing sanctions on 22 people involved in corruption cases in Russia, South Africa, South Sudan and Latin America. They were targeted with asset freezes and travel bans, in the first wave of sanctions under the government's new global anti-corruption regime. Fourteen of those hit with sanctions were involved in one of the largest tax frauds in recent Russian history, as exposed by the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The Government have now taken powers to enable thems to target those who are either facilitating or profiting from such corrupt acts, those who conceal, those who transfer the proceeds of serious corruption and those who obstruct justice relating to serious corruption, and apparently that won't be limited to state officials:

Responding to the announcement, Duncan Hames, Director of Policy at Transparency International UK, said: “Corruption is a global problem that needs global action, so we welcome the UK Government's new sanctions regime that will enable it to act in concert with its allies in the US and Canada. With adequate resourcing, strategic deployment and some refinement, these new capabilities should provide a useful addition to the UK's toolkit for tackling kleptocracy. Now it’s time to put these powers to good use in practice.

“Whilst this regime is by no means a silver bullet for tackling the UK’s role as a safe haven for the corrupt, it is a very positive development. The use of these powers should send a firm message to corrupt individuals and their enablers who have enjoyed the freedom to travel to and invest in the UK, that they will no longer be welcome here.”

We will see if this makes a difference.

The full weight of the Downing Street media operation has swung into gear to attempt to crush suggestions in today's newspapers that Boris Johnson said he would rather see bodies piled “high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown.

Despite this more and more sources are coming forward to verify the story, while those of us who have no idea if it is true or not are taking the Nicola Sturgeon line. She also says that she has no idea if it happened but knowing Boris Johnson as she does, it would not surprise her if he did indeed speak those words.

The Guardian reports that defence secretary, Ben Wallace, says the story is untrue while also dismissing claims that the government was “sleazy” amid mounting allegations that the prime minister accepted undeclared donations from Conservative donors:

Wallace’s denials came after the Daily Mail reported an unnamed source as claiming Johnson said at a Downing Street meeting in October: “No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

The incendiary claim follows a briefing war this weekend between Johnson and his former key adviser Dominic Cummings, who resigned from his No 10 job after what was believed to be a power struggle with Johnson’s partner, Carrie Symonds.

Whatever the truth, the impression coming out of Whitehall over the last few days is of a government unravelling under a constant stream of allegations about special access, in appropriate donations to redecorate the Prime Minister's flat, and threats of more to come. Is it any wonder Boris Johnson is losing the plot?

As usual The Sunday Times has the inside track on the latest government controversy and it does not look good for Boris Johnson.

Caroline Wheeler and Gabriel Pogrund say that Boris Johnson’s closest allies have compared the prime minister to one of Shakespeare’s most tragic heroes: King Lear, though to be frank he seems more like Macbeth near the end, isolated and just awaiting his fate. All we are need now is for Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane to finish him off:

On Thursday, the PM decided to finger Cummings for the leaks. It is suggested he may have briefed newspaper editors himself. It was a co-ordinated hit with the story appearing in three newspapers. The Daily Mail, which has been the outlet for most of the leaks, was left out.

Few aides in No 10 now believe Johnson made the right decision in launching the attack on Cummings, prompting Friday’s incendiary riposte. It is understood that he overruled advisers who warned him that the move was “suicidal”.

Some blame the recent departure of so many once-trusted aides for the PM’s “error in judgement”. He is without many of the people who stood by him throughout his first year and a half in office. Cummings, once loyal, is gone. So too is Lee Cain, once described as Johnson’s right-hand-man. The PM has told friends that Cain has repeatedly tried to contact him but that he has ignored his texts.

Allegra Stratton has been elbowed out as press secretary by male aides and is now spokeswoman for the Cop26 climate change conference. Her planned regular live TV briefings have been scrapped.

Lord Udny-Lister, who has advised Johnson since his days as London mayor from 2008 onwards, has quit amid the lobbying scandal and is expected to join the private sector.

As the paper says, the question for Johnson is what the unpredictable Cummings will do next. “This falling out was never going to end well,” conceded one source.

Johnson's aides believe Cummings has nothing to lose and think he has enough “kompromat” to “destroy” Johnson when he gives evidence on Covid-19 to MPs on May 26. I have marked the date in my diary.

It really is starting to fall apart in Borisland, isn't it? From Barnard Castle to Rasputin to political assassin, Dominic Cummings knows how to make an impression, and this week he hasn't disappointed.

As the Guardian reports, the former Prime Ministerial aide has launched an unprecedented and extraordinary attack on Boris Johnson, alleging that the prime minister tried to quash a leak inquiry as it implicated an ally, and hatched a “possibly illegal” plan for donors to pay to renovate his flat.

The paper says that Cummings used a lengthy post on his personal blog to deny he had leaked private text messages between Johnson and the billionaire James Dyson. Instead, he accused the Prime Minister and his team of a series of wrongdoings, claiming his former employer had behaved in a way he considered “mad and totally unethical”, and warninf that he would happily give evidence under oath to an inquiry.

“It is sad to see the PM and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves,” he wrote.

It is nice to see Cummings has finally caught up with rest of us in his assessment of Boris Johnson, but perhaps we should wait for the evidence he has promised, and hopefully some effective cross-examination, to see who actually did what and why.

One suspects that there is a lot more yet to come out.

Once more the government has been caught out in its eagerness to be seen as tough on immigration, with the Guardian revealing that almost half of the Vietnamese migrants forcibly removed from the UK on a Home Office charter flight being understood to have been put on the plane in breach of the Home Office’s own rules.

The paper says twenty-seven Vietnamese nationals were removed on Wednesday on the flight, which took off from Birmingham. It is believed to have been booked with the holiday airline Tui, although the company refused to confirm or deny this. Fourteen were enforced returns and 13 were voluntary departures.

But, according to an email from a government lawyer seen by the Guardian, of the 14 enforced removals, six did not spend the required five working days in an immigration removal centre (IRC) prior to the flight and instead were held in prisons or a short-term holding facility for part of that period, where it is more difficult to access legal advice.

They add that government rules state everyone should be given five working days in such a centre prior to being removed to give them an opportunity to seek legal advice about whether the planned removal is lawful. As Vietnam is one of the top source countries for trafficking into the UK, there are concerns that some of those deported might be victims of trafficking who are entitled to protection here:

Human rights campaigners have expressed concerns about the safety of the returnees. Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said: “In these cases, Britain should have reflected that Vietnam is a country that punishes unauthorised departure of its nationals and will certainly mount a hostile investigation of these returnees for dissident activities or other undesirable behaviour while they were in the UK.

“Given this reality, Britain should be bending over backwards to ensure opportunities to seek protection are offered, and safeguard procedures are followed to the letter, not trying to rush people on to planes for deportation in the midst of a pandemic.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds, the refugee and migrant rights director at Amnesty International, said: “Amnesty is extremely concerned about reports that several people were forcibly removed from the UK by charter flight to Vietnam without proper opportunity for them to seek or receive legal advice and assistance. There is a serious and wholly unacceptable risk that on this flight were people whose removal was unlawful, including people who are victims of human trafficking and other serious abuses.”

What sort of country have we become, when dubious policy considerations are put before human rights and the welfare of innocent human beings?

Tony Blair understood it perfectly, and Boris Johnson is not much different, the successful exercise of power requires, knowledge, the ability to use that knowledge and access, but even Blair stopped short of giving his mobile phone number out to all and sundry, or at least there is no evidence that points to the contrary.

According to the Guardian, Boris Johnson is regularly texted by business leaders and politicians, though a loophole in the ministerial code means only meetings and not text messages need to be disclosed. However, texts to the prime minister concerning government business are covered under freedom of information legislation..

The paper says that sources have described internal Downing Street concerns after the prime minister was revealed to have texted the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Dyson last year, promising that his staff would not have to pay extra tax if they came to the UK to make ventilators during the pandemic. “I will fix it tomo! We need you. It looks fantastic,” Johnson wrote:

There is also growing concern inside Whitehall that “government by WhatsApp” and text message is no longer sustainable, and some of the seven inquiries newly commissioned into lobbying are likely to recommend change.

At prime minister’s questions, a defiant Johnson said he would publish his text messages and “make absolutely no apology” for the exchanges, which were revealed by the BBC. The SNP leader, Ian Blackford, said Johnson must “publish all personal exchanges on these contracts before the end of the day”.

Johnson said: “There’s absolutely nothing to conceal about this and I am happy to share all the details with the House, as indeed I have shared them with my officials, immediately.” No 10 could not commit to when the disclosures would happen.

There is concern that the prime minister has distributed his number liberally in the past and was regularly contacted by businesses leaders, politicians and other individuals. “He is constantly lobbied by phone,” a Tory source said. “He may be running everything past private office but it could become a big issue.”

One adviser said the PM had brought up in meetings that he had been texted by individuals offering advice on policy issues.

Johnson is reported to have been texted by the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman, over the proposed takeover of Newcastle United football club. He also reportedly joined the ultra-secure messaging service Signal.

The main problems here are transparency and accountability. As Hannah White, the deputy director at the Institute for Government, says: “Ministers need to tread an incredibly fine line when deciding whether a text exchange with an acquaintance has crossed the line into lobbying and so should be declared ... In case of any doubt they would be well advised to treat texts as formal communications.”

There needs to be clear and very firm rules put in place governing this particular form of access.

The Mirror reports that Boris Johnson has axed his plans for White House-style TV press briefings despite already spending £2.6million of taxpayer cash on the venue:

The PM's £125,000-a-year Press Secretary Allegra Stratton was meant to be leading thrice-weekly televised briefings with journalists since last year.

But the start date was repeatedly delayed due to Covid and after Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings, who were originally proponents of the idea, quit No10 in a wave of infighting.

Ms Stratton, who has now spent around six months in Downing Street without appearing on TV once, will now become the PM's spokeswoman for the COP26 climate conference this Autumn, the Times revealed.

It leaves an uncertain post-pandemic future for the wood-panelled No9 Downing Street briefing room.

The former courtroom has only just finished being made over at £2.6m expense with Tory blue colouring and soundproofing.

It's funny how the prospect of having to answer detailed questions on his record proved too much for the Prime Minister and his spokesperson in the end.

It comes to something when six opposition parties unite to call for an inquiry into the Prime Minister's “consistent failure to be honest” in statements to MPs.

Prime Minister is meant to be the most important job in the UK, the summit of a politician's career, representing the country to the outside world, commanding respect from his peers and demonstrating a strong grasp of issues and the authority to do something about them. And yet somehow Boris Johnson has failed to understand and achieve any of that, or even begin to live up to those expections.

The Guardian reports that the opposition want the Speaker to let them table a motion saying that Johnson’s conduct should be referred to the committee of privileges, on the grounds that making a deliberately misleading statement to MPs amounts to a contempt of parliament under the Commons rulebook, Erskine May. Although given the size of the Conservative majority, there is no realistic chance of MPs approving such a motion. 

As if we needed reminding why vaccine passports are a bad idea, the Independent reports that more than 1,000 clergymen and women from across the UK have written to Boris Johnson to warn against them, describing these passports as an "unethical form of coercion". They also claim the documents could herald a "surveillance state":

The message is contained in an open letter from ministers from a number of different Christian faiths.

As lockdown restrictions ease, the certificates could play a role in allowing the safe reopening of theatres and nightclubs.

Significantly, however, they have not been included in a series of pilot projects of large scale events due to get underway shortly.

In the letter the group say introducing passports would create a "medical apartheid".

They add: "This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives.

"As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics."

The ministers also threaten to ignore any potential restrictions which would ask them to refuse entry to their churches to anyone without a vaccine passport.

And so say all of us.

The Independent reports on the views of Lord Evans, the head of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, who believes that Government ministers’ financial ties to private companies should be scrutinised more closely.

Lord Evans, whose watchdog monitors standards among holders of public office, said that “a number of allegations” in the past year “haven’t been completely investigated”, adding that it could prove “very corrosive” if such cases are left unresolved.

He has also highlighted the fact that the post of independent adviser to the prime minister on ministerial interests has been left vacant since November, following the resignation of Sir Alex Allan, and that – even when the role is fulfilled – such advisers don’t have the power to launch investigations:

Given that the Tories are the alleged party of law and order, Thursday's vote on amendments to the domestic abuse bill must have been quite painful for some MPs. For not only did they allow themselves to be outflanked by the opposition but, in doing so, they failed to support measures that may have helped victims.

The Guardian reports that the government is facing growing anger after voting against putting serial stalkers and domestic abusers on a national register, despite briefing they were likely to support the measures following the death of Sarah Everard:

Conservative MPs voted against amendments to the domestic abuse bill on Thursday that would have placed serial domestic abusers and stalkers on the current Violent and Sex Offender Register (Visor).

MPs also voted down House of Lords-supported amendments that would have given family court judges training on sexual abuse and provided greater protection to migrant victims of domestic violence.

The stalking amendment gained overwhelming support in the Lords last month and the home secretary, Priti Patel, suggested the government was likely to support the measures, telling MPs: “There is something about perpetrators and their serial offending that has to be addressed. There is no question about that at all … I will be very candid: we will look at all measures.”

After the death of Sarah Everard, government sources told the Sunday Times that the move also had the backing of the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, while a Change.org petition urging the government to introduce the stalkers’ register has attracted almost 250,000 signatures.

All but two Conservative MPs voted against the amendment to add persistent stalkers and domestic abusers to a national register. It was defeated 351 to 227.

Domestic abuse and stalking survivors and campaigners were disappointed and frustrated, said Sophie Francis-Cansfield, the senior campaigns and policy officer at Women’s Aid.

“Domestic abuse remains underreported and only a small proportion of survivors see criminal sanctions against their perpetrator – a register could have been a useful tool,” she said. “We have to find ways to proactively hold perpetrators to account and prioritise survivors’ safety.”

The domestic abuse campaigner David Challen, whose mother, Sally Challen, spent decades as a victim of her husband’s coercive and controlling behaviour, said the government was putting countless lives at risk by not creating a register to monitor abusers. “Abusers and stalkers commit a pattern of violent acts across multiple victims, this register was a vital opportunity to track and stop this violence,” he said.

The decision to exclude migrant women from protections offered under the new bill was “deeply troubling”, said Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters, which is taking part in a government pilot project to support migrant women and address an “evidence gap” around the need for support. “Copious evidence already exists,” she said. “The pilot is no substitute to the need for meaningful, long-term measures of protection for some of the most vulnerable women in our society. We will not be celebrating the bill when it becomes law because it is not a bill for all women.”

Let's hope that the Lords reinstate these amendments and send them back for reconsideration.

As the David Cameron/Greensill scandal continues to grow with more revelations spilling out from Commons Committee inquiries the question has to be asked as to what the watchdog set up to stop this sort of thing has been doing?

According to the Mirror, they are effectively toothless with only 108 appointments out of the 34,000 people leaving the civil service being scrutinised last year:

Lord Pickles, chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), warned of the challenges scrutinising new jobs for officials as he said there did not appear to be "any boundaries at all" between civil servants and the private sector.

The “revolving door” of top officials joining businesses has created the assumption among them that they will be “looked after” by the next cohort of officials, he told MPs.

It comes as Cabinet Secretary Simon Case told all Whitehall departments to notify him of any senior officials with paid jobs outside Government by the end of the week.

In an appearance before the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), Lord Pickles demanded a "full and frank" explanation over how a top civil servant was allowed to work as a part-time adviser at Greensill Capital while still in Whitehall.

He said he had been “surprised” to discover that Bill Crothers’ position at the now collapsed firm was green lit by the Cabinet Office in September 2015, despite the fact that he did not leave his civil service role until November that year.

"I mean, if Mr Crothers had decided he wanted to have a milk round or something, I don't think we would be terribly worried," Lord Pickles said.

"But his particular position, in terms of running procurement and working for a commercial organisation, is something that does require a full and frank and transparent explanation."

Lord Pickles said the case "highlights a number of anomalies" in vetting of ex-ministers and civil servants, adding: "There does not seem to have been any boundaries at all.”

He said he was "really unhappy" with gaps in the ethics system and has been "warning of the possibility of a scandal" for some time.

Lord Pickles told MPs: "I was worried that there was an element of a tick the box in terms of the responses that were coming from departments.

"Perhaps uncharitably I had the vaguest feeling that you might be looking at a cohort entitlement, whereby the existing cohort looked after the cohort that just left, in assumption that the cohort that was coming up would look after them."

He warned that most of the problems were due to "a lack of leadership from those in authority", blaming frontbench politicians on all sides and civil service bosses.

"Those who have power have a responsibility to set a very clear tone," he said.

Pickles is concerned that a more effective system would cost too much to implement but if that is price of restoring confidence in government then it has to be done.

If you ever wondered why the Tories want to repeal human rights legislation then this Guardian article may offer up a clue. The paper reports that a landmark court ruling has held the home secretary, Priti Patel, accountable for failures in ensuring that deaths in immigration detention centres are properly investigated:

Two judges in the immigration court ruled on Wednesday that three of the home secretary’s detention policies breached human rights rules and that she could not frustrate or undermine inquiries into these deaths.

Lawal proved to be a key witness, but the Home Office tried to deport him five days after the death before he could provide any evidence. He took the case to the high court and a judge halted his removal.

Lawal gave evidence in person at the inquest in November 2020. The inquest jury found that Okwurime had died unnaturally, as a result of neglect following a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which can rupture due to hypertension. His blood pressure reading on 22 August 2019 showed hypertension. The jury found that this reading was not repeated as a result of multiple failures to adhere to healthcare policy. Given these opportunities to repeat this basic medical test on a vulnerable person, neglect contributed to the death.

Lawal’s legal challenge, which resulted in the ruling, focused on whether the home secretary can remove a potential witness to a death in custody before it is clear whether they will be needed as a witness.

The judges found that the home secretary’s decision to remove Lawal to Nigeria was unlawful as she had failed to take reasonable steps to secure his evidence relating to Okwurime’s death before starting removal proceedings.

A replacement policy in August 2020 was also found to be unlawful as it failed to identify and take steps to secure the evidence of those who may have relevant information about a death in detention.

The home secretary’s current policy was found to be “legally deficient”. The judges found that the absence of a policy to direct what should happen following a death in immigration detention was unlawful and concluded that there needed to be such a policy.

Lawal’s solicitor, Jamie Bell of Duncan Lewis solicitors, said: “This case demonstrates the cavalier attitude of the Home Office when enforcing removals. Despite a tragic death within a detention centre, the home secretary did not hesitate to maintain her plan to remove potential witnesses by charter flight, ignoring anyone who wished to come forward to give evidence.”

It is appalling that it has taken a court hearing to highlight these deficiencies and stop this deportation. Thank goodness for the courts.

At last some accountability for the Home Office with the Guardian reporting that MPs and peers from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on immigration detention have agreed to proceed with an inquiry into the government's use of sites such as military barracks to accommodate asylum seekers.

Members of the group have described the Home Office’s use of large-scale, institutional sites as “quasi-detention”, saying that although the likes of Napier barracks in Folkestone are not technically immigration detention the accommodation shares many features with it.

The group say these include isolation from the wider community and related difficulties accessing medical and legal support, visible security measures such as use of patrols and barbed wire, reduced levels of privacy and restriction of movement such as signing in and signing out and curfews.

Alison Thewliss MP, the chair of the APPG, said: “The recent report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) on this type of contingency accommodation underlined serious deficiencies in provision. Indeed, the group has written on a number of occasions to ministers regarding concerns such as ineffective safeguarding, unsanitary conditions, inadequate social distancing, and many other issues besides.

“Responses – when they have arrived – have fallen way short, and failed to provide any sort of reassurance. It remains a significant concern that people are being transferred to Napier barracks given the nature of the complaints that many have made about the conditions there. Given the serious nature of the concerns raised, the group feels it is appropriate to undertake an inquiry to properly examine the conditions that people are being asked to endure”.

A Home Office spokesperson said that asylum seekers at Napier have the same access to health services as other members of the community and denied that a curfew has operated at the barracks.

The news comes as at least 10 new legal challenges have been launched by asylum seekers transferred to Napier over the last few days.

It is thought that about 45 asylum seekers have been moved there since 9 April after the Home Office moved out the last of the previous group accommodated there this month. Up to 400 people have been housed at Napier since it opened as asylum accommodation in September 2020, half of whom contracted Covid following an outbreak there.

Many of the new residents at Napier are understood to have arrived in the UK on small boats in recent weeks. Some have been identified as victims of torture and potential victims of trafficking. The new legal actions focus on claims that the Home Office has failed to carry out vulnerability assessments and that some of those accommodated there should not be there due to their past experiences.

This accommodation is not fit for purpose and this investigation is very welcome.

Amongst all the other news this week, we must not lose sight of the fact that the government's insistence on a hardline Brexit is continuing to hamper the UK economy's recovery.

The Independent reports on a new survey that has found Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal with the EU has put the future of many exporting businesses at risk, with 41 per cent reporting decreased overseas sales in the first three months of the new arrangements:

The British Chambers of Commerce called on the UK government to get back round the table with the EU for fresh negotiations to lower some of the barriers to trade created by Mr Johnson’s Christmas Eve Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).

While some of the collapse in trade with continental Europe was due to the Covid pandemic, the BCC said many firms were blaming Brexit for shipping delays, increased cost of transporting goods and extensive new paperwork requirements.

And the group dismissed ministers’ claims that the difficulties experienced by exporters were down to “teething problems” following the transition out of the EU’s single market and customs union on 1 January.

Instead, co-executive director Hannah Essex warned: “They are structural issues that, if they continue to go unaddressed, could lead to long-term, potentially irreversible weakness in the UK export sector.”

The paper says the report comes ahead of the hotly-anticipated release on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics of trade figures for February, which will be keenly studied for evidence of the long-term impact of Brexit on exports to the EU, after the government blamed teething troubles for a staggering 41 per cent (£5.6bn) fall in sales to the bloc in January:

One exporter, Alfred van Pelt from Somerset-based clothing and accessories wholesaler Something Different, said sales to the 27 EU member states had “collapsed dramatically” since the transition.

“Not only did this cause an immediate drop in turnover and the need for redundancies, but also killed a massive growth opportunity of our business. Our foreign investor had plans for the UK entity to become a European distribution hub.

“This is now no longer on the cards as the only distribution that can be done from within the UK cost effectively is to UK postcode addresses.”

Project fear has become project reality.

Anybody watching the Prime Minister's performances from one of the devolved nations during the last 18 months will already know this, but at last it is being acknowledged in the UK media a the Guardian reports on the views of Sir Philip Rycroft, who was permanent secretary to the Brexit department until 2019.

He has worked with Professor Michael Kenny and researchers from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, to look at two decades of devolution from inside UK state machinery, concluding that the pandemic has seeded the idea of a prime minister “who speaks for England alone” as relations between the four nations of the UK deteriorate amid “deep-rooted complacency”. 

One of the consequences of the sad death of Prince Phillip on Friday is that it pushed the increasing unrest in Northern Ireland off the main news channels. This is unfortunate, because not only does the world and the UK Government in particular, need to be focussing on finding a solution to the problems faced there, but the appalling consequences of an unsustainable and unthinking Brexit agreement needs to be highlighted at every opportunity.

In yesterday's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland nails the problem. He makes it clear that the origins of the current violence are many and complex but his conclusion is damning about Boris Johnson and his fellow Brexiteers in the government:

This is the ineluctable logic of Brexit. Once Britain chose to be outside the single market and customs union while the Irish republic remained inside, there would always have to be a border. The only question was where. One option was a land border on the island of Ireland, once again separating north and south – which would appal nationalists. The other was a frontier in the Irish Sea, appalling unionists. Boris Johnson swore blind that he would never agree to any such thing, only to do exactly that – devising, negotiating, signing and passing into law the Northern Ireland protocol, which gives that part of the UK a separate status. The result is that loyalists feel that, once again, they have both lost out to the nationalists and been betrayed by London.

Of course, once Johnson had decided to break his own solemn pledge, loyalism and unionism were always going to be disaffected. But he has made things so much worse. Incredibly, the prime minister of the United Kingdom saw fit to do nothing at all until 9.33pm on the sixth day of unrest, when he issued a tweet calling for an end to violence. The former civil servant Tom Fletcher, who once had responsibility for Northern Ireland in Downing Street, tweeted that “there were moments when PM had to rip up grid, cancel break, let people down, stay up late, hit phones, spend, flatter, arm twist and do nothing else for week”. This, wrote Fletcher, was just such a moment. Yet Johnson is doing none of those things. What’s worse, if he did decide to get a grip, who among us thinks he would be capable of it? The patience, the diplomatic nous, the grasp of detail, the ingenuity and empathy required in such a situation – Johnson has none of them.

OK, so maybe he could delegate. Except even the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, wasn’t actually in Northern Ireland until Thursday, Lewis being the latest holder of the post to embody the government’s disregard – some might say contempt – for that part of the UK. Recall his predecessor, Karen Bradley, confessing that she had only just learned that “nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.” An exception was the diligent Julian Smith, who naturally was sacked for insufficient fealty to Brexit.

The obligation now is to make the protocol work, to minimise the tension it causes, which will demand flexibility from both London and Brussels. But it will always be a sisyphean task, because the protocol is an adjunct of Brexit – and Brexit took a wrecking ball to the delicate mechanism that was so painstakingly assembled 23 years ago. I don’t believe Johnson and his fellow Brexiters actively sought the unravelling of peace in Northern Ireland. In a way, it is worse than that. They were literally careless of the heartbreak and grief that had scarred that place. They did not care.

This is another fine mess Johnson has created.

This is my tribute to Kirsty Williams published in the latest edition of Liberator magazine:

When I first met Kirsty Williams, she was a recent graduate living with her parents in Llanelli, having been brought into the Liberal Democrats a few years earlier by her teacher, the late and much-missed Nick Burree.

She had just won (or possibly lost) the toss of a coin and had been appointed the agent in a local council by-election on the now defunct Llanelli Borough Council in a ward briefly held on Dyfed County Council by the current Conservative Secretary of State for Justice. The other half of this act of chance was the candidate.

It is fair to say that there was not much experience of community campaigning in Llanelli, but Kirsty took on the role enthusiastically. Perhaps. though she should not have listened to those who told her election day was a formal occasion. I am sure she still regrets wearing high heels for the good morning delivery.

By this time, I had been a Swansea Councillor for a decade and was involved in helping to run the Welsh Party, as a result I brought Kirsty to meetings and got her involved at a national level.

She was asked to speak at a Welsh Party Conference rally and made a huge impression on everybody there. Subsequently, Kirsty came on board as part of the small team of politicians tasked with running the 1997 General Election in Wales.

At the same time, she agreed to be our candidate in the Ogmore constituency, an area we had not contested for some considerable time. It was my turn to be her agent, though, apart from one public meeting, neither of us spent much time there, concentrating instead in helping Richard Livsey regain Brecon and Radnorshire, and organising daily media conferences.

Kirsty was heavily involved in the 1997 referendum campaign that narrowly voted in favour of setting up a Welsh Assembly and was subsequently appointed as the Welsh Liberal Democrats representative on the National Assembly Advisory Group by the Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies, tasked with drawing up the first standing orders for the nascent body.

During this period she was also thinking about her own future, showing the sort of single-minded determination that has characterised her political career by winning a selection battle to be the candidate in Brecon and Radnorshire against local councillor and the future MP for the area, Roger Williams.

In May 1999, Kirsty was elected as the Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire and almost immediately thrown into the deep end as chair of the body’s Health and Social Care Committee and as the party’s health spokesperson.

She embraced the role and made it her own, impressing everybody with the way she quickly became an authority on health matters and marshalled experts within the party to support her work.

In the 2006 Welsh Yearbook Political Awards, she was voted "Member to Watch 2006”.

 

The biggest test of leadership for Kirsty came with the decision of the group after the 2007 Assembly elections, by a slim majority, to become part of a rainbow coalition government with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives.

 

It was a decision that Kirsty and I bitterly opposed, taking our resistance to the Welsh Executive, and a subsequent special party conference. The failure of that initiative led eventually to the resignation of Mike German as Welsh Party leader, and on 8 December 2008, Kirsty became leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, having defeated Cardiff Central Assembly Member, Jenny Randerson.

 

Unfortunately, Kirsty’s first Assembly election as leader was a hard one. The party’s agreement to enter a coalition at a UK level had left us defending some difficult decisions and contending with growing unpopularity.

 

As a group we made our opposition to the tripling of tuition fees clear and struggled to keep up with a raft of policies and budget announcements, so as to defend them in the chamber and build our own initiatives around them. At one stage Kirsty had to publicly admonish Vince Cable for proposing that a planned £13bn defence training academy at St Athan be scrapped, without first notifying her or consulting us.

 

As a result, we barely survived the 2011 election, being reduced from six AMs to five, largely as a result of a small reduction in the Plaid Cymru vote that enabled us to hold on in the regions. Kirsty comfortably held onto her Brecon and Radnorshire seat due to her own personal popularity and hard work.

 

The party though was in a strong position to influence the agenda of the Welsh Government, with Labour having failed to secure a majority and not wishing to enter into another coalition.

 

As Finance spokesperson, I worked under Kirsty’s leadership to ensure that we gained significant concessions in return for our support in getting Labour’s budget passed.

 

In 2011, we agreed to support the Welsh Labour Government's 2012–2013 £14.5bn Budget on the basis, amongst other things, of securing the Welsh Pupil Premium, an extra £20m to spend on the education of the poorest pupils.

 

Teaching Unions welcomed the deal, with ATL Cymru director Philip Dixon saying, "Our children are our future and investment in them is investment for all. Labour and the Lib Dems deserve credit for ensuring that our children, especially those in most need, will now get a better start in life.”

 

In 2013, we more than doubled investment for the Welsh Pupil Premium in exchange for abstaining on the Welsh government's annual budget. In 2012, the Welsh Government agreed to take forward the Welsh Liberal Democrat idea of a Health Technology Fund to allow patients better access to innovative treatments. 

 

The following year, under Kirsty’s leadership we got a further £9.5m investment into the Health Technology Fund as well as the establishment of a £50m Intermediate Care Fund to drive integration of health, social services and housing

 

In December 2012, Kirsty won ITV Wales' Assembly Member of the Year Award in a ceremony at Cardiff's City Hall. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2013 she was appointed a Commander of the British Empire for public and political service.

 

Kirsty has never forgotten her roots as health spokesperson and in fact retained that role throughout her leadership, taking up the cause of a long-running ‘More Nurses’ campaign for a law requiring minimum staffing levels for nurses in Welsh hospitals.

 

She was successful in a legislative ballot on 11th December 2013 and given leave to proceed with her Bill. On 21 March 2016 the Nurse Staffing Levels Bill became law in Wales, one of only two private members bills to be passed that term, the other was my own on Park Homes.

 

Nevertheless, the 2016 Assembly elections were to prove even more difficult than those five years earlier. The Welsh Liberal Democrats Assembly group was all but wiped out as a result of continued unpopularity from the coalition and a rise in the UKIP vote in anticipation of the Brexit referendum six weeks later.

 

Only Kirsty held her seat, with an increased majority and, as the sole Liberal Democrat representative in the new Assembly, she stood down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats the day after the election.

 

On the first day of plenary she voted with the Government on the appointment of the First Minister effectively torpedoing a Conservative/Plaid Cymru/UKIP attempt to put Leanne Wood into the office.

Labour though only had 29 seats and after consulting with a special Welsh Liberal Democrats conference, Kirsty agreed to become Education Secretary to enact a programme that included our policies on a wide range of areas, including reducing infant class sizes, employing more nurses, in more settings, through an extended nurse staffing levels law, funding 20,000 extra affordable homes, introducing a new ‘Rent to Own’ housing model and ending mental health discrimination.

All of those policies have been put in place over the last five years during a period as a government minister in which Kirsty has shown what an outstanding political talent she is, demonstrating what Welsh Liberal Democrats can really do when given the opportunity.

The reforms that Kirsty has brought in as Education Minister are not just ground-breaking and far-reaching but will benefit young people for some considerable time. She has been the stand-out performer in the cabinet during the pandemic, handling the crisis with the sort of competence and imagination that Westminster has been crying out for.

While MPs were squabbling amongst themselves over the campaign led by Marcus Rashford to provide free meals for poorer children during the school holidays in England, Kirsty got on with the job. She put £11 million aside to provide free school meals over all holidays until at least Easter 2021, determined that no child should go hungry.

Kirsty also provided over £420,000 to help to deliver free meals to students who are shielding or self-isolating, announced that new starter teachers will receive an 8.48% pay rise, backdated to 1st September, and provided £2.3 million for schools and colleges to make face masks available for students so that they and staff felt confident and safe to return to their learning environment.

She introduced a capital grant for schools so they could accommodate smaller class sizes and ensured that all schools in Wales have superfast internet. She has also put in place a new school curriculum, which introduces a whole school approach to mental health, truly inclusive lessons on relationships and sexuality, a modern approach to modern languages, trusts teachers by giving them the freedom to be creative with lessons, and makes Welsh history, citizenship and identity compulsory for all pupils.

In addition, Kirsty has announced an extra £30 million to develop new Welsh- medium education. This capital investment aims to help reach the longstanding target of one million Welsh speakers by 2050, by supporting young learners to become Welsh speakers by the time they leave school.

I am proud to have worked alongside Kirsty and to see what she has achieved as an individual and as a Welsh Liberal Democrat. With her decision to stand down in the forthcoming election she has left a massive gap both in the party and in the Senedd itself.

Once more we face a difficult election, this time without Kirsty’s popularity and experience to guarantee us representation in the new Senedd and to help us move forward. After twenty-three years in front line politics, she has left Wales in better shape than when she started. Now, at last, she can rest and enjoy some family life.

After a significant Covid outbreak in which 50% of the near 400 residents of the Napier barracks site in Kent fell sick, multiple outstanding legal challenges, the closure of a sister site in Pembrokeshire and months of revelations over the suitability of the camp, one would have hoped that the Home Office had learnt its lesson. Asylum seekers are human beings fleeing war, torture, starvation, the effects of climate change and persecution, and they should be treated accordingly.

However, the Guardian reports that a new intake of asylum seekers will be sent to the controversial Napier barracks from Friday, despite mounting evidence the camp is not suitable for accommodation.

The paper says it has seen correspondence confirming that Clearsprings Ready Homes, the private contractor that runs the site on behalf of the Home Office, intends to bring in new arrivals from Friday:

The decision comes after a significant Covid outbreak in which 50% of the near 400 residents fell sick, multiple outstanding legal challenges, the closure of a sister site in Pembrokeshire and months of revelations over the suitability of the camp.

Critics expressed anger and disappointment over the Home Office’s decision to persevere with the use of the former Ministry of Defence (MoD) site.

Stuart McDonald, SNP MP and member of the home affairs select committee, said: “The Home Office doesn’t need to use these dilapidated former barracks to accommodate people fleeing war and violence but are choosing to do so anyway – despite a damning inspection and the ongoing pandemic. That choice is a political one.

“The whole Home Office machine is hell-bent on ensuring life for people seeking refuge is as miserable as possible in the hope it will put off others from applying for refugee status. The use of these dilapidated barracks is shocking and shameful – but it is consistent with everything else the Home Office is doing.”

Earlier this year, the high court heard that the Home Office ignored Public Health England advice that the dormitory-style accommodation at Napier barracks, which holds up to 28 men in a single block, was not suitable during the pandemic.

And HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the independent chief inspector of Borders and Immigration published a damning report following inspections of Napier and the now-closed Penally camp, branding the sites “filthy” and “impoverished”.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Local agencies in Kent and independent inspectors have all concluded that the barracks are unfit to house anybody. It’s shocking that the government is ignoring this and continuing to treat people who have experienced great trauma in their lives with a complete lack of compassion and humanity.”

Dr Jill O’Leary, lead doctor for the medical advisory advice at the Helen Bamber Foundation, who assessed former residents of Napier barracks, said: “We have consistently seen the threat these former military sites pose to the physical and mental health of residents. We have witnessed a devastating Covid-19 outbreak due to the dormitory-style accommodation, not to mention mental health crises, self-harm and suicide attempts as a result of the unsuitability of the environment.

“The Helen Bamber Foundation gave evidence to the home affairs select committee in February detailing the level of suffering that existed in these sites. The news that the Home Office are moving vulnerable asylum seekers back into Napier in the face of this evidence is deeply distressing to all involved.

“I anticipate further needless and preventable suffering of vulnerable people as a result of this decision.”

So the descent of the UK Government into a Hungarian-style popularist dictatorship continues.

Marina Hyde is especially cutting in this morning's Guardian on David Cameron ghosting us over thge Greensill lobbying scandal. As she points out, the former Prime Minister is still receiving funding from the taxpayer:

David Cameron is still allowed to claim up to £115,000 a year from the public purse, literally to run this office. Surely that’s enough for someone in it to return a call? Seemingly not. Maybe the “office” is just a burner mobile ringing out in a shepherd’s hut. Either way, the firm of which Cameron was a salaried employee – and on whose behalf he lobbied the current government – has now imploded. Furthermore, its administrators have been unable to verify invoices underpinning loans to its top client, steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta, with several companies denying they have ever done business with Gupta. This is becoming quite the shitstorm. And while no one is suggesting the former prime minister is to blame for the shitstorm, he is certainly shitstorm-adjacent.

For the second time in five years, then, Britain is being ghosted by David Cameron. You’ll recall that having tanked his own Brexit referendum, he promptly retreated into the usual lucrative prime ministerial afterlife, while the rest of us had to endure years of the winners – the winners! – arguing about what they’d won. Even so, this latest silence is a giant piss-take. Come on, former prime minister – we thought we had something. We KNOW you’re still watching our Instagram stories. HELLO? Helloooooooooo? Earth to Call-Me-Dave! Call me, Dave.

As the Independent reports, there is once more a strong call for all lobbyists to be included on a government register, thus ending an exemption, for "in-house" employees, that applied to the former prime minister.

As one MP says: 'The former Conservative prime minister’s conduct, and the immense access Greensill was given, illustrates perfectly both the toothlessness of current rules and Tory ministers’ complete disregard for any self-driven integrity when lobbying.'

Given that many of those in government today might wish to keep their options open once they step down, I am not holding my breath for any change in the immediate or distant future.

The good news this morning is that the government is facing a legal challenge over claims it funnelled cash to Tory areas with its "levelling-up" fund.

The Independent reports that The leafy market town constituencies of Rishi Sunak and Robert Jenrick are among areas to benefit from an unusual funding formula that critics accused of amounting to "pork parallel politics":

Now legal campaigners from the the Good Law Project are will take the government to court contending that the design of the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund is unlawful.

They cite an investigation by the National Audit Office, which found that the government's list of targets for the cash had been published without supporting information to explain why they had been chosen.

he House of Commons' cross party Public Accounts Committee had also said the lack of transparency had left to concerns of "political bias" in the allocation of funds.

Forty out of the first 45 schemes to be approved in March had at least one Conservative MP.

In a letter of claim sent last week, the campaigners argue that the project is unlawful on four counts.

They say ministers appear to have breached their duty under the equality act to carry out an equalities impact assessment, breached their common law duty of transparency, acted irrationally because of flaws in their methodology, and that “decisions were tainted by irrelevant considerations/improper purpose, namely the electoral advantage (or potential electoral advantage) of the Conservative party”.

Jolyon Maugham, the barrister who founded the campaign group, said: "If you think that it's coincidence that Tory marginals are huge beneficiaries I have a fine bridge to sell you. To ensure the Tories don't use public money for party purposes, the Good Law Project is suing."

The campaigners cite Chris Hanretty, Professor of Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, who looked at the funding formula and evidence presented by the National Audit Office and government.

"On the basis of the data collated by the ministry and published by the NAO, there is robust evidence that ministers chose towns so as to benefit the Conservatives in marginal Westminster seats," he wrote.

"Choosing towns to benefit a particular party goes against the seven principles of public life (the ‘Nolan principles’), and in particular the obligation to 'take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias'."

Is this another example of the Nolan principles of public life being subverted for party political ends? But let us be clear allegations like these do not just relate to the Tories.

In Neath Port Talbot the then-Labour Leader stepped aside when a recording was released, allegedly of him, stating public money and resources have been diverted to wards to assist candidates from his party. An investigation is now underway to uncover the facts.

Over at the Guardian, Zoe Williams has a few thoughts on the sleaze that is engulfing Boris Johnson's Tory Government and whether he is in breach of the Nolan principles on public life:

Michael Nolan didn’t have a lot to say about chastity or generosity or modesty or humility, I’m guessing because he assumed that the public would provide that firewall themselves. If a person was visibly greedy or wrathful or gluttonous, if they couldn’t handle government money without funnelling it through their friends, or have juniors at work without swearing at them, or had such poor impulse control that they would invite their girlfriend to their marital home for a cheesy pasta dinner, only to have run out of cheese, then they would never make it in public life in the first place. Standards for officials were a totally second-order affair, designed for the intricate moral dilemmas of duty versus ambition, openness versus discretion. They assumed a baseline of normal human decency. Asking whether Boris Johnson could have breached Nolan’s principles is like asking whether two pigeons trying to shag mid-air have violated public decency legislation. Maybe, technically. But they’re just pigeons, doing what pigeons do.

The sleaze-politician never defends him or herself on the facts; their defence is always: “This is who I am, because this is who we all are, because this is what politics is, and the sooner you price it in, the less dispirited you will feel.” That’s why successful critique can only really come from within the political establishment. The argument isn’t really about right and wrong, which is pretty simple. The argument is: “Do politicians really need principles – God’s, Nolan’s or anyone else’s?” It takes another politician to say: “Yes, they really do.”

It is a cynical take on events, but one that seems perfectly justified in the light of the actions of this government.

Pandemic aside, those who are protesting about the government's bill to restrict the right to protest by giving more powers to the police are, in my opinion, on the right side of history. The list of those speaking out against the bill is growing, and even includes some surprising voices.

Amongst those voices are former Labour Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who writes in yesterday's Guardian that this anti-protest bill risks making the UK like Putin's Russia.

Blunkett writes that the government’s plans to use the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill to give police in England and Wales sweeping powers to put down protests look set to strain community relationships to breaking point. He adds it will leave a bad taste in the mouths of British people who value tolerance, democracy and open debate:

By giving police forces sweeping discretion about how they deal with protesters, this law would drive a wedge between them and the public. Among other things, the bill would allow police officers to impose any conditions they feel necessary on certain types of protest, and expand their power to shut down demonstrations they feel would be unacceptably noisy or a nuisance. Try defining the term “nuisance”, because parliament certainly won’t, and you see the problem.

Forcing the police, who are citizens in uniform, to make individual, highly charged decisions makes it inevitable that some will be inconsistent, and that means we’ll see individuals singled out for blame. The pressure on Cressida Dick and the Metropolitan police after the vigil for Sarah Everard gives us an inkling of the controversies that could blaze across the country if these sweeping powers are pushed on to the police. That risks making the force the scapegoat for every unpopular decision – a dangerous spot to be in for a service set up to police by consent.

Protest might be inconvenient for politicians, but it acts as a pressure valve, allowing citizens to express their views and vent frustrations that could otherwise boil over. Irish politicians such as John Finucane MP have drawn on their experience of the Troubles to warn that stifling protest won’t work and risks undermining the belief that each of us has a stake in society. If we suppress protest, we could see more anger towards institutions including the police, the judiciary and parliament. We would lose the civil engagement and sense of celebration that we see at events such as women’s marches or Pride.

It’s easy to stereotype protesters as leftwing. But this bill would mean alienating others across the centre and right wing of the electorate whom the government won’t want – or can’t afford – to lose: taxi drivers angry about Uber, say, or ardent Brexit supporters. The French gilets jaunes movement proved the appeal of a big-tent protest movement that mobilised citizens from the left, centre and right. However, the long burn turned out to be reactionary rather than revolutionary. The pendulum can swing either way.

Tolerating dissent and protest is a British value, and it’s central to our democracy. It’s ironic that this bill would mean far harsher treatment for protesters in Parliament Square, where statues commemorate Mandela and Gandhi, leaders of historic disruptive, noisy and annoying protest movements now taught in British schools.

He concludes: 'if this bill passes into law unamended, we’re heading for more ugly conflicts between the public and the police – and a police force that’s weaker for it.'

Although I welcome this intervention, I am not blind to the irony. Blunkett was one of the most illiberal Home Secretaries in my lifetime. If he thinks this bill goes too far then we really are in danger of slipping into dictatorship.

Considering that the Tory government's kneekerk response to black lives matter was that they were trying to rewrite history, it is ironic that the report they commissioned in response to that movement has received a similar criticism.

In today's Guardian, the historian and broadcaster, David Olusoga, has accused the authors of giving the impression they would prefer “history to be swept under the carpet”:

Olusoga said that, as a historian, for him the most disturbing passages in the report were those in which the authors “stumble, ill-prepared and overconfident, into the arena of history”.

“Shockingly, the authors – perhaps unwittingly – deploy a version of an argument that was used by the slave owners themselves in defence of slavery 200 years ago: the idea that by becoming culturally British, black people were somehow beneficiaries of the system,” Olusoga wrote in a Guardian article.

“Determined to privilege comforting national myths over hard historical truths, they give the impression of being people who would prefer this history to be brushed back under the carpet,” he added, describing the report as Britain’s version of the “1776 report” commissioned by the Trump administration, which urged the US to return to an era of “patriotic education”.

Hakim Adi, professor of the history of Africa and the African diaspora at the University of Chichester, told the Guardian that the report’s foreword failed to make clear that the subjugation of millions of African people was a crime against humanity.

“It is forgetting the hundreds of years of the crimes against the African people, the deaths of millions of African men, women and children,” said Adi. “We live in a country where [many] have denied this as a reality, they have refused to make any reparation, and for this report to put it in a paragraph in that manner – the word insulting does not do it justice.”

The British theologian Robert Beckford said it was consistent with the radical and “historical amnesia and vicious historical revisionism” of Caribbean and African history by the far right. Beckford, professor of Black theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, said the report had reduced slavery’s racial terror and Britain’s racial capitalism to a simple exchange of cultural ideas.

The paper adds that the report has drawn further criticism from hundreds of UK academics who came together to sign an open letter criticising its “selective and distorted use of academic research”:

While the report claims education was “the single most emphatic success story of the British ethnic minority experience”, the letter’s signatories said it had “completely overlooked the substantial base of evidence in educational research that has shown how structural, institutional and direct racism works in and through schools, universities and other sites of education”.

Those involved had a “limited knowledge of education research”, the letter writers said, adding that research was cited so as “to present simplistic understandings of education and divisive views of ethnic minority groups”.

“The report misrepresents, omits and elides longstanding and nuanced academic debate and evidence about the complex relationship between racism and educational practices, cultures, policies, and systems,” they added.

The report's authors feel that they have been misunderstood, and yet they stand by what is written in black and white in the document. Isn't it time the government disowned it?

Anybody who has read Maja Lunde's book 'The History of Bees' will understand the key role they play within the world's ecology system and the dramatic and devastating impact of them dying out will have on our environment and the survival of the human race. If you have not read it, then please do.

It was disturbing to read in the Guardian therefore, that new research has shown the toxic impact of pesticides on bees and other pollinators has doubled in a decade despite a fall in the amount of pesticide used.

The paper says modern pesticides have much lower toxicity to people, wild mammals and birds and are applied in lower amounts, but they are even more toxic to invertebrates. The study shows the higher toxicity outweighs the lower volumes, leading to a more deadly overall impact on pollinators and waterborne insects such as dragonflies and mayflies.

The research also shows that the toxic impact of pesticides used on genetically modified crops remains the same as conventional crops, despite claims that GM crops would reduce the need for pesticides.

Nearly sixty years after Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' documented the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, we are still posing a threat to our own existence by the use of these toxic chemicals.

Yesterday I referenced the report from No 10’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which rather optimistically concluded that the UK should be seen as an international exemplar of racial equality, playing down the impact of structural factors in ethnic disparities.