Nicola Sturgeon wins confidence vote in Scottish parliament by 65 votes to 31 – UK politics live

We will get the precise breakdown later but, on the basis of those voting numbers, it looks as though the SNP and the Greens voted for Sturgeon, the Scottish Conservatives and one other MSP voted against her, and the others – mainly Labour and the Lib Dems – abstained.

The Scottish parliament has rejected the Tory no confidence motion in Nicola Sturgeon by 65 votes to 31, with 27 MSPs abstaining.

The vote in the Scottish parliament is now taking place.

Here is the motion.

That the parliament has no confidence in the first minister, in light of confirmation that the Scottish government ignored legal advice on its prospects of success in Alex Salmond’s judicial review case, and multiple credible witnesses indicating that the first minister misled the parliament.

Tonight’s Downing Street press conference will be the 34th led by Boris Johnson in the past year, according to the Express’s Martyn Brown.

On the basis of his calculations, out of 122 ministerial appearances at the No 10 briefings in the past year, only 3% of them have involved a woman – and it’s always been Priti Patel, the home secretary.

But a higher proportion of the scientists appearing have been women.

In the Scottish parliament the debate has now ended, and MSPs are moving on to the vote.

The Scottish Conservatives do not have enough votes to win this vote, but a major polling study looking at Scottish attitudes to independence commissioned by the centre-right thinktank Onward and published today here suggests that the Salmond affair has already damaged the nationalist cause. It says:

Between the end of February and the first weekend in March, the Yes lead (in response to whether they would vote in favour of Scottish independence) fell by 6 percentage points from 56%/44% to 53%/47%. This was driven in large part by a 9 point drop among women and a 25 point drop among 18-24 year olds. This was the week that Nicola Sturgeon gave evidence to the Scottish parliament inquiry into the Salmond trial.

Summing up the findings of the study, Will Tanner, director of Onward and a co-author of the report, said:

The breakup of the United Kingdom is not a foregone conclusion. Headline support for Scottish independence may be worryingly high, but it is clear that Scots do not want a referendum until coronavirus has been eliminated and the economy recovered. In addition, the Alex Salmond trial appears to be sowing doubt in voters’ minds at exactly the moment the vaccine programme is proving the benefits of partnership within the union.

Patrick Harvie, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, said the Holyrood committee investigating Nicola Sturgeon was partisan, and it sent the message to women who complain that their concerns will be turned into “tawdry political theatre”.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, said the government had failed the complainers. But he said the Tories were only interested in bringing down Nicola Sturgeon.

He says his party would listen to see if John Swinney, the deputy first minister, addressed their concerns in his summing up before they decided how they would vote.

Anas Sarwar, the new Scottish Labour leader, said the report today was a litany of failure. There were no winners, he said.

He said he accepted the conclusions of the Hamilton report published yesterday. But he accepted the conclusions of the commitee’s report too, he said.

He said he had tabled an amendment to the Tory motion, but it was not accepted.

He said he did not have confidence in the government. But he did not have confidence in the Tories either, and they were playing games with this motion, and trying to obtain a “cheap, political scalp”. He said Labour would not be voting with them.

Nicola Sturgeon is responding now.

She says the Conservatives had decided she was guilty before the reports were even published.

She says the Holyrood committee’s report will be taken seriously by the government.

Serious mistakes were made by the government, she says.

She says she wants to apologise again unreservedly to the women who were let down by the failure of the Scottish government’s investigation.

She says she was confronted with an extremely difficult situation when the Salmond complaints were made. Some people may have acted differently, she says.

But she says she rejects entirely the claim that she misled parliament. She says James Hamilton cleared her.

Before the Hamilton report was published, all parties said they would accept its conclusions, she says.

She says, if she was found to have breached the ministerial code, she would have resigned. But she was cleared, she says.

She says Scotland needs strong leadership. If her opponents want to remove her, they should do so at the ballot box, she says.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader at Holyrood, is now opening the debate on her party’s no confidence motion in Nicola Sturgeon.

She says nobody has come out well from the Alex Salmond affair.

She says Sturgeon said she would respect the verdicts of the investigations into her.

But now the verdict from the Holyrood committee is in, she says. As MSPs heckle, she says SNP members are disrespecting it, she says.

She says her party respected the findings of James Hamilton’s inquiry. But Hamilton said it was up to the parliament to decide if it had been misled, she says. (See 9.20am.)

She says the committee concluded Sturgeon misled the parliament. (See 8.36am.)

But she says the most difficult part of the report is the section setting out the views of the women who complained.

She says the honourable thing would be for Sturgeon to resign.

A total of 25,823,406 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 22 March, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 346,997 on the previous day.

As PA Media reports, NHS England said 24,137,423 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 282,561 on the previous day, while 1,685,983 were a second dose, an increase of 64,436.

NHS England has recorded a further 98 coronavirus hospital deaths. The details are here.

A week ago today the equivalent figure was 101 hospital deaths.

More than 149,000 deaths involving coronavirus have now occurred in the UK, PA Media reports.

A total of 149,117 people have had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate since the pandemic began, with more than a third of deaths (37%) occurring since the start of 2021.

The highest number of deaths to take place on a single day was 1,465 on 19 January.

During the first wave of the virus, the daily death toll peaked at 1,459 deaths on 8 April.

The European commission has announced it will adopt a “revision” of its vaccine export rules, with details due to be published tomorrow morning. Chief spokesman Eric Mamer told a Brussels briefing: “The commission will adopt tomorrow morning a revision of the export transparency and authorisation mechanism.”

A government watchdog led by the Bank of England’s chief economist has said Boris Johnson’s plans for “levelling up” Britain are unlikely to succeed because they rely too heavily on infrastructure spending and one-off funding schemes controlled from Westminster, my colleague Richard Partington reports.