Labour says allowing MPs just one day to debate Lords amendments to EU withdrawal bill a 'disgrace'
The Times’s Sam Coates has posted a copy of the letter to Conservative MPs from the chief whip about the EU withdrawal bill debate next week.
Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes)
Cancel all plans for June 12 pic.twitter.com/LSHBwCsXId
June 4, 2018
And Labour has said allowing just one day for MPs to debate the Lords amendments to the EU withdrawal bill is a “disgrace”. This is from Labour Whips, an official account.
Labour Whips (@labourwhips)This is an absolute disgrace if true. Must be out of sheer panic. The HoC has had nothing to do for months in terms of substantive business and to try to ram through in one day shows the contempt that the Government have for the role of Parliament. Hopefully they’ll think again. https://t.co/QhSsMxpYTS
June 4, 2018
Updated
It looks like we’ve got a long night next Tuesday. These are from the Telegraph’s Steven Swinford.
Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford)BREAKING: EU withdrawal bill will come back to the Commons on June 12. It will be one bruising 12 hour session for all 15 amendments, starting at 12.30
June 4, 2018
Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford)Julian Smith has written to Tory MPs urging them to 'make sure you are working from the estate at all times' and telling them to expect 'frequent contact from your whip'. That's putting it mildly
June 4, 2018
Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford)He ends the letter with a clear warning to Tory rebels, saying that he wants EU withdrawal bill to return to Lords 'in a way that reflects both the referendum result and the Conservative Party manifesto we all stood on last year'
June 4, 2018
Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford)The subtext is clear - unless Tory rebels explicitly argued against leaving Customs Union and Single Market during election campaign, they will be expected to back the Government
June 4, 2018
Fallon says Grayling must explain how rail timetable 'disaster' was allowed to happen
At one stage, when he was deputy chair of the Conservative party, Sir Michael Fallon’s main job seemed to consist of going on TV and defending the government in almost all or any circumstances.
This afternoon Fallon, now a backbencher after resigning as defence secretary last year, took to the airwaves again. But this time he was so critical of his erstwhile cabinet colleague Chris Grayling that almost sounded like a Labour MP. He said that the introduction of a new rail timetable had been “a disaster”, that he would be passing on the “raw anger” of passengers to Grayling, the transport secretary, and that Grayling had to sort it out.
Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks in Kent, told BBC News:
This is now week three and this is becoming a scandal. My constituents can’t get to work in London. Their children can’t get on trains to school. And we are now into more cancellations even with the emergency timetable. So it really is time now that ministers got a grip on this and forced Thameslink to get on and run a decent service, if necessary borrowing drivers from other companies who know the routes ...
I shall be meeting Chris Grayling at three o’clock and I will be leaving him in absolutely no doubt as to the real, raw anger of my constituents. All of this was supposed to be an improvement. That was supposed to be the point of the new timetable, and it’s turned out to be a disaster ...
I met passengers on the line this morning who had come south to try and get a better train back up to London. They are certainly not passive about it. They are very angry that their lives have been disrupted. They are running into trouble by being late for work, their children are being penalised for being late for school. So it’s not acceptable. And the secretary of state is in charge and he’s got to find some solutions to this.
More train drivers, trained drivers, seconded from other companies. Borrow freight train drivers if necessary. They know the routes. And, above all, Thameslink being told they’ve got to sort out a problem that they should have addressed properly.
Fallon also suggested that Grayling was at fault for letting the rail network get into this situation in the first place. He said:
There are a lot of questions now as to how this ever happened in the first place, why it wasn’t properly prepared. I shall be pressing [Grayling] on how much longer the Thameslink franchise has to run, and whether it is feasible to take the franchise away, or whether that would just simply make the situation even worse. But clearly the transport secretary has to demonstrate today that he has this situation on board and that he’s ready to use all his powers to start putting things right ... Commuter patience is running very, very thin. There is real anger in the villages.

Lunchtime summary
- Labour has said that Chris Grayling should resign because of the chaos facing rail passengers today, particularly in northern England. In an interview on the World at One, Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, said:
Chris Grayling is the head of Network Rail at the end of the day ... He should resign. But this prime minister is so enfeebled that she cannot dismiss him, so he’s not going to resign. She can’t dismiss him. So we’re stuck with the status quo in terms of the DfT. But he should accept that this is yet another complete failure on his part. And in ordinary times any self-respecting secretary of state would resign today, I have no doubt about it.
Northern and Govia Thameslink Railway have cancelled services to allow themselves more time to adjust to a new timetable introduced two weeks ago. McDonald said that Grayling should have been aware of the problems in advance and cancelled the move to the new timetable to avoid disruption to travellers. He said:
I’d want to know why on earth this wasn’t red flagged weeks and weeks ago, and somebody pressing the pause button. If I had been secretary of state, I’d be saying, ‘Could you guarantee me that these services will take place in accordance with the new timetable?’ And in the absence of those guarantees I’d be saying, if we’re not ready, we pause it. It’s as simple as that. And I’m aghast that Chris Grayling has been so far removed from this, and seeks to blame all and sundry, rather than accepting his responsibility as secretary of state.
Grayling is due to make a statement to MPs about the situation this afternoon. Compounding his embarrassment, he has also had to reschedule meetings planned with MPs to discuss the problem, as the Labour MP Lisa Nandy points out on Twitter.
Lisa Nandy (@lisanandy)You literally could not make this up. Chris Grayling is having to rearrange or cancel meetings with MPs about Northern today because he underestimated demand and cannot make the timetable work
June 4, 2018
Lisa Nandy (@lisanandy)The DfT did not foresee the large numbers of MPs who would want a meeting, or that they might need to make a statement. Is there any understanding of the scale of this crisis in Whitehall? pic.twitter.com/0kDKLhDawA
June 4, 2018
- Richard Leonard, the Scottish Labour leader, has accused the SNP and the Conservatives of both backing austerity. In a speech in Glasgow he said:
The real divide in the UK is not between the people of the four nations. It is between the richest and the rest of us. 1 in 4 Scottish children are living in poverty at a time when the richest one per cent in Scotland own more personal wealth than the poorest 50 per cent.
That won’t change by redrawing lines on a map, it will only change with a rebalanced economy and a redistribution of wealth, power and opportunity.
That’s why we need to stop dividing people on the basis of nationality and start uniting people on the basis of class to bring about real change.
Only Labour can offer this unifying vision. Austerity is a political not an economic choice, and it is the choice being taken by both Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon.
Liberty, the human rights group, has criticised the government’s new counter-terrorism strategy. Its advocacy director, Corey Stoughton, issued this statement.
Terrorism is a serious issue deserving serious thought. Sadly this ‘strategy’ is a regurgitation of failed thinking - heavy on soundbites, light on substance.
The government continues to use dangerously vague definitions of extremism to tarnish communities, encourage policing by prejudice and press service providers and local authorities into becoming unwilling and untrained agents of the security services.
There is one urgent question in the Commons today, then three statements, then an application for an emergency debate on the abortion laws in Northern Ireland.
Labour Whips (@labourwhips)UQ at 3.30: 1 @Debbie_abrahams to @EstherMcVey1 on withdrawal of her appeal re: PIP. 3 statements:
June 4, 2018
1 US steel & aluminium tariffs - Fox
2 Rail timetabling – Grayling
3 Nuclear Power – Clark Then SO24 application @stellacreasy abortion in NI
Here is a round-up of some Brexit news around today.
- Katya Adler, the BBC’s Europe editor, says there is a lot of talk in Brussels about the possibility of a last-minute EU summit being scheduled for November because the Brexit deal may not be ready by October. She says so in a Twitter thread starting here.
katya adler (@BBCkatyaadler)Forget June as a key #Brexit summit - says Germany’s Brexit co-ordinator 1 https://t.co/i8KBAZGUe8
June 4, 2018
In a letter seen by the Financial Times from Mel Stride, financial secretary to the Treasury, to Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover, the minister also says: “The government aims to keep VAT processes after EU exit as close as possible to what they are now.”
If Britain seeks to remain inside the EU VAT area, it will continue to be bound by rules set in Brussels that are ultimately policed by the European Court of Justice, breaking one of Theresa May’s negotiating red lines.
If Britain leaves the EU VAT regime, it will need border infrastructure to impose VAT at borders, as occurs on the Swiss-German border, or accept a loss of control of VAT revenue. The EU VAT area is separate from the bloc’s customs union and single market.
European officials have told the government that they will not ask the EU’s trading partners to allow Britain to benefit from current trade deals with key countries such as Japan or South Korea until Theresa May signs the final legal text of a Brexit deal.
The decision means that Liam Fox, the trade secretary, will have less than three months between the conclusion of withdrawal negotiations at an EU summit in December and Brexit day, March 29, 2019, to negotiate the continuation of Britain’s current free trade agreements. Without the trade deals Britain faces a cliff edge of tariffs and economic disruption despite having agreed a transition period covering membership of the single market and customs union until the end of 2020.
According to a survey of Conservative party members for ConservativeHome, almost 70% of party members think Theresa May should either resign now (24%) or before the next general election (45%). As the ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman says in his write-up, there are only two other months since the general election when May’s standing on this measure was worse.
This figure stood at seven out of ten party members last June, in the immediate aftermath of the calamitous general election campaign. It peaked again in January in the wake of the bungled Cabinet reshuffle.
Now it is at its third highest rating on record. The only credible explanation is that May’s policy of delay over the Brexit negotiation is damaging her position, and further procrastination is likely to do so even further.
Her best rating came in February in the aftermath of her impressive handling of the Salisbury attack. The only other time it has dipped below 60 per cent was in December, in the wake of that month’s draft agreement with the EU (the “joint report”).

Updated
Javid's speech and Q&A - Summary
Here are the main points from Sajid Javid’s speech on the government’s new counter-terrorism strategy (pdf) and Q&A afterwards.
- Javid said that MI5 intelligence will be shared with bodies outside the security community in a drive to stop terror attacks at an earlier stage. The Home Office explained this in its news release like this:
Responding to the recommendations of MI5 and the counter-terrorism police’s Operational Improvement Review into the 2017 terrorist attacks, which was overseen by David Anderson, new multi-agency approaches – initially in London, Manchester and the West Midlands – involve MI5 and the police using and sharing information more widely, working with partners such as local authorities to improve our understanding of those at risk of involvement in terrorism and enable a wider range of interventions.
Through Prevent, the government, local authorities, police and communities will continue to safeguard and support vulnerable people from the risk of being drawn into terrorism, working with a wide network of partners to prevent radicalisation and build resilience.
In his Q&A Javid explained that information would be shared in a declassified form and that it would go to agencies like neighbourhood police officers, councils, the ministry for housing, the Charity Commission and probation officers.
He also said the security services closely monitor 3,000 “subjects of interest” but that they also have another 20,000 “closed subjects of interest” on their books - people who are not longer being closely monitored, but who are still potential suspects. He went on:
Of that 20,000, there will always be a few hundred that, although they are closed subjects, at a local level these agencies might be able to help with them and maybe come up with an intervention programme of some sort. When we start with the pilots, it won’t be in the hundreds. We’re going to start with one to 100 or so. They are pilots. We want to see what kind of interventions work best.
We do understand and accept that one of the lessons from 2017 was that we need to work more broadly and share that data more locally.
- He said the government wanted to work more closely with the private sector to identify potential terror suspects. The security minister Ben Wallace explained how this might work in an interview this morning. (See 9.46am.)
- Javid dismissed suggestions that sharing intelligence information with officials outside the intelligence community could involve breaching people’s human rights. He said there would be safeguards because those who received the information would be professionals trained in handling sensitive information. (See 11.11am.)
- He said EU plan to limit security cooperation with the UK after Brexit could increase the chances of a terror attack on the continent. That was why, although the European commission wanted to limit post-Brexit security cooperation, EU member states wanted it to continue, he said. And he said he was confident that cooperation at the level that exists now would continue. This is what he said about this in his speech:
When the British people voted to leave the European Union, they were not voting for us to stop working with our European allies to keep everyone safe.
So it would be wrong and reckless for anyone to advocate any unnecessary reduction in this co-operation.
He also went into this in more detail in his Q&A. (See 12.09am.)
- He said “machine learning” (ie, the use of algorithms) was allowing the big internet companies to get much better at taking down extremist or terrorist-related content. He said 98% of the extremist content taken down by Google was identified by machine learning. And for Twitter the figure was 93%, he said. He said, of that 93%, 74% was removed before a tweet was even posted.
- He said a new counter-terrorism bill would help the police to disrupt attacks at an early stage by making it easier for them to arrest suspects. In his Q&A he explained:
One thing that was a lesson from the 2017 attacks was that we need to be better at disrupting potential attacks earlier on. And at the moment we don’t feel that there are enough offences on the statute book, maybe less serious offences, that would give the police or the CPS [the ability] to charge someone or prosecute someone early on.
I’ll give you an example. Today if someone is encouraging terrorism online, they are sharing information clearly, they are sharing images, there’s a certain threshold that needs to be reached before the police or CPS can act. And we want to lower that threshold because it would allow us to intervene and bring that person in a lot earlier. And I think that’s sensible.
The planned bill will also: making streaming terrorist videos online an offence (currently only downloading them is an offence); increase maximum sentences for some terrorist offences; and extend the range of terrorist offences that can be prosecuted in the UK if committed abroad. (See 10.53am.)
- He spoke about having to explain to his daughter what lay behind the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris, and why he felt, Islam, the religion of his parents was being abused. In his speech he said:
Days after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, I recall being at a vigil in Trafalgar Square with my eleven year old daughter. She’d heard that something truly terrible had taken place in Paris, but she wasn’t entirely clear on the details or the context. She saw people in the crowd holding pens and pencils in the air, and she asked me why.
I told her that the men who were murdered at Charlie Hebdo had been targeted because they’d drawn cartoons. When you say it in such stark terms you realise just how absurd it sounds. And my daughter, with the innocence of a child, was troubled by this. She loves drawing, she wants to be an artist herself one day. So she looked at me and she said something that is seared into my memory. “Daddy … if I draw a cartoon, will they kill me too?” So I had to explain why not, and what the issues were, and why it had happened …
And that crash-course in religious bigotry and hatred was a pretty heartbreaking conversation. One that I do not think any father wants to have with his young daughter. I had to explain that these murderers called themselves Muslims. That they were invoking our religion, the religion of my parents, and my grandparents, and countless generations of Javids before them.
After any attack like this, a lot of well-meaning people will line up to say it has nothing to do with Islam. That the perpetrators are not true Muslims. I understand this reaction. I know they are not true Muslims.

Updated
Alan Travis, who until recently was the Guardian’s home affairs editor, has been looking at the new counter-terrorism strategy published today.
Alan Travis (@alantravis40)Today's refreshed counter-terrorism plans which see MI5 sharing intelligence on 'suspected terrorist sympathisers' with local govt, headteachers,etc appear to echo Theresa May's 2015 plans to blacklist extremists across the public sector.https://t.co/m5aVYbM1gv
June 4, 2018
Alan Travis (@alantravis40)Revised counter-terror strategy confirms (p.42) that security services are to identify people "who are vulnerable to radicalisation" are/have been "of interest to the police/MI5" because of possible terror links but aren't currently being investigated. Human rights issues here. pic.twitter.com/4XLor7V0zQ
June 4, 2018
Alan Travis (@alantravis40)Home secretary Sajid Javid launching revised policy has said "a few hundred" of the 20,000 terror suspects who have been investigated by the police/MI5 in the past "will be of particular interest". Their names, addresses and other details will be shared in the new pilots.
June 4, 2018
EU plan to limit security cooperation with UK after Brexit could increase chance of terror attack, Javid suggests
This is what Sajid Javid, the home secretary, said in his Q&A when asked about EU plans to stop full security cooperation with the UK after Brexit.
Javid said that there was a lot of cooperation at the moment and that the UK wanted this to continue. Then he went on:
Actually, the European Union is not speaking with one voice on this. Nothing unusual about that. The commission has got its hardline on so many things. It’s negotiating, you would expect a bit of that.
But one thing that is absolutely clear, although I’ve been in this role [five weeks], I’ve met with a number of European interior ministers, who are my equivalents, and every single one that I’ve met, they’ve absolutely agreed, they not only want the cooperation to continue as it is, but they also are open to how can we make it even deeper.
One of the reasons [for this is that] they rely so much on the intelligence information we provide them, and there’s not going to be a single European interior minister that, if we weren’t cooperating as we did today, would want to explain after an attack how it could have been stopped if the British had still been involved, perhaps with some secret intelligence.
And obviously the benefits are both ways. We all benefit. And that is very easy to see.
Those negotiations are just starting. But I am, from what I’ve seen, and from the reality of the situation, quite confident that we are going to get to keep working together in such a way.
- Javid said EU members states are opposed to the European commission’s plans to limit security cooperation with the UK after Brexit.
- He suggested the EU plan to limit security cooperation with the UK after Brexit could increase the chances of a terror attack on the continent.
- He said he was “confident” that the UK would get a deal to maintain security cooperation, despite the commission’s stance.
My colleague Simon Jenkins has written a ‘First thoughts’ column on Sajid Javid’s plans to share information about potential terror suspects more widely. He is horrified.
Here is his article.
And here is an excerpt.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has made an astonishing proposal among his raft of strategies to be unveiled today. It is that personal information possessed by MI5 on some 20,000 British “suspected” citizens be declassified and shared with local authorities, police “and others”. This is in order to “counter terrorism”. There is no way such material can possibly stay secret.
Since no one knows if they are on this list, they have no way of countering or correcting false identification or information. No one giving information to the state, including possibly the identity of the giver, will be able to trust its secrecy ...
Nothing is more dangerous to freedom than a new home secretary. He or she is bombarded with ideas from the backwoods of the security industry, ideas which failed to pass muster with predecessors. The industry knows that the newcomer will be desperate to win headlines as “tough on crime”. It will push eagerly for new powers and new controls. Javid appears to have fallen at the first fence.
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