Closing summary
It is “nonsense” for protesters outside MPs’ homes to claim they are not seeking to intimidate, James Cleverly has said. “Someone saying: ‘I’m standing outside someone’s private house in numbers, but we don’t seek to intimidate’, I’m sorry, that’s clearly nonsense,” the home secretary told the BBC’s Today programme. “Where a mob of people are outside someone’s private residence, clearly with the intention of distorting their future votes, that is unacceptable and we expect the police to deal with it.”
Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, has lost an appeal against the decision to remove her British citizenship. Begum travelled to Syria in 2015 at the age of 15. Her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Downing Street has briefed that it was “wrong” for a controversial pro-Palestinian message to be projected onto Parliament but stopped short of saying police should have intervened, PA reports. The phrase “from the river to the sea” was reportedly beamed onto the building on Wednesday as Gaza protesters descended on Westminster.
Rishi Sunak has hit out at the behaviour of protesters who he says are threatening MPs, after warnings that politicians’ safety was put at risk during this week’s chaotic parliamentary debate on Gaza. The prime minister said on Friday it was “unacceptable” for MPs to feel intimidated in their jobs, amid an ongoing row over whether the Commons speaker was right to bend parliamentary rules this week in an effort to protect MPs’ safety.
The Scottish government has announced it will provide £24.5 million to secure the investment of a Japanese firm in a Highland cable factory, PA reports. Scotland’s Wellbeing Economy Secretary, Mairi McAllan, has used her first speech in the brief to confirm the funding at an event in Edinburgh.
EU sources are playing down the significance of the new deal between the bloc’s border agency Frontex and the UK. Insiders in Brussels say the UK as an important partner of a global alliance to counter migrant smuggling. However the new arrangement with the UK is one that Frontex has with 18 different partners around the world helping to identify trends and patterns including organised crime and people smuggling.
Rishi Sunak has offered his support for protesting farmers in Wales.
Taking questions after a speech at the Welsh Conservative conference in Llandudno on Friday, the prime minister said: “You can just really tell the visceral anger amongst the farming community here in Wales about what has been done to them.
“That anger is palpable, and they have every right to be angry.
“By the Welsh government’s own assessment, their ideas are going to lead to thousands of job losses, reduce our food production and food security and destroy farm incomes.
“It just demonstrates again why their plans are the wrong ones, and the wrong ones particularly for rural Wales.
“There are farmers outside here today and they are expressing that anger and we will do everything we can, and you guys are doing a great job of highlighting that this is the reality of a Labour in power.”
MPs are reminiscing about football chats in a very empty chamber as they debate the second reading of a bill to create a specific offence of unauthorised entry to football matches.
Home Office minister, Tom Tugendhat, admitted to having been tongue tied at Henry Kissinger’s funeral earlier this year as the latest season in London’s football was discussed. “I have to confess I found myself slightly wanting for words but it was an environment in which there were many others to supply them so I was delighted to stay silent as the progress of the various football teams were discussed,” he said.
The reason for all the football anecdotes was a private members’ bill introduced by Labour’s Kevin Brannon, to create an offence of unauthorised entry at football matches that could result in a football banning order. Brannon said the measures were needed after an independent review found that the mass entry of those without tickets to the Men’s Euros final at Wembley could have resulted in fatalities.
Brannon said: “The mere though that such a catastrophe is still possible in this century at a football match in the 21st century, after the tragedies of the latter part of the last century is a profoundly unsettling thought.”
The Scottish government has announced it will provide £24.5 million to secure the investment of a Japanese firm in a Highland cable factory, PA reports.
Scotland’s Wellbeing Economy Secretary, Mairi McAllan, has used her first speech in the brief to confirm the funding at an event in Edinburgh.
The power cable factory at the Port of Nigg in Easter Ross was billed by First Minister, Humza Yousaf, as part of “Scotland’s green revolution”.
The Highland factory, which could create 330 jobs and plough £350m into the economy, will be run by the Japanese company Sumitomo. Yousaf said the plans were “great news” for the Scottish economy.
Downing Street has briefed that it was “wrong” for a controversial pro-Palestinian message to be projected onto Parliament but stopped short of saying police should have intervened, PA reports.
The phrase “from the river to the sea” was reportedly beamed onto the building on Wednesday as Gaza protesters descended on Westminster.
A No 10 spokeswoman told journalists: “It is rightly a decision for the independent police to make operational decisions on the ground.
“But at the same time, I think most people would agree, irrespective of operational decisions which are rightly for the police, that that that was wrong. And we are extremely mindful and would continue to urge people to be mindful of the fear and distress felt by people and many communities around the country.”
She added: “We’re very clear that harassment, abuse, intimidation is unacceptable”
Updated
Downing Street welcomed a Court of Appeal decision to dismiss Shamima Begum’s challenge over the removal of her British citizenship.
“We welcome the decision,” a No 10 spokeswoman told reporters on Friday.
“I wouldn’t comment on the details of individual cases.
“We’re pleased the court has found in favour of the Government.
“Beyond that I would just say that our priority remains on maintaining the safety and security of the UK.
“We’ll always take the strongest possible action to protect our national security and we never take decisions around deprivation (of citizenship) lightly.”
Shamima Begum loses appeal against removal of British citizenship
Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, has lost an appeal against the decision to remove her British citizenship.
Begum travelled to Syria in 2015 at the age of 15. Her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Last year, the now 24-year-old lost a challenge against the decision at the special immigration appeals commission.
Begum’s lawyers brought a bid to overturn this decision at the court of appeal, with the Home Office opposing the challenge. All three appeal judges ruled against her on Friday.
Dame Sue Carr, the head of the court of appeal, said the judges unanimously dismissed Begum’s appeal: “It could be argued that the decision in Miss Begum’s case was harsh.
“It could also be argued that Miss Begum is the author of her own misfortune. But it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either point of view.
“Our only task is to assess whether the deprivation decision was unlawful. We have concluded it was not and the appeal is dismissed.”
EU sources are playing down the significance of the new deal between the bloc’s border agency Frontex and the UK.
Insiders in Brussels say the UK as an important partner of a global alliance to counter migrant smuggling.
However the new arrangement with the UK is one that Frontex has with 18 different partners around the world helping to identify trends and patterns including organised crime and people smuggling.
The deal does not repair the rupture in the relationship with EU security authorities caused by Brexit.
However it will give the UK an “early warning system” on migration trends through access to data from Eurosur, the EU surveillance system involving drones and other tools.
It means, for example, if there is a surge in irregular migration in the Mediterranean, the UK will be able to plan appropriately for a potential surge in cross-channel people smuggling as experience has shown there is usually a connection between the two, said a British source.
Protesters outside MPs' homes 'unacceptable', says home secretary
It is “nonsense” for protesters outside MPs’ homes to claim they are not seeking to intimidate, James Cleverly has said.
“Someone saying: ‘I’m standing outside someone’s private house in numbers, but we don’t seek to intimidate’, I’m sorry, that’s clearly nonsense,” the home secretary told the BBC’s Today programme.
“Where a mob of people are outside someone’s private residence, clearly with the intention of distorting their future votes, that is unacceptable and we expect the police to deal with it.”
He said police already have the powers that they need to stop protests outside MPs’ homes and offices, “and we also want them to understand that they have our backing when they use those powers”.
“The only thing that politicians should fear is the ballot box,” Cleverly said.
“It’s incredibly important... that we do not allow a situation to be created where people cannot vote with their belief and conscience because of fear of reprisals.
“The ballot box is where people and organisations should make their views clear.”
Updated
Rishi Sunak has claimed the public are “feeling that the economy has turned the corner” and “things are getting better”.
Taking questions after a speech at the Welsh Conservative conference in Llandudno on Friday, the prime minister said:
There is a palpable sense out there, regardless of what Keir Starmer might want to say because he’s always keen to talk down Britain, I can tell actually on the ground people are, since the beginning of this year, feeling that the economy has turned the corner.
They do see those green shoots. They can see that things are getting better. Inflation has been more than halved, mortgage rates starting to come down, wages have been rising for six, seven months in a row now.
We just saw today ... energy bills significantly down. Consumer confidence, business confidence, again, survey out yesterday, highest it’s been in years. Businesses like yours feeling better about the future.
And that is why it is so important that we stick to our plan.
Sunak decries ‘intimidation’ by protesters amid row over chaotic Gaza vote
Rishi Sunak has hit out at the behaviour of protesters who he says are threatening MPs, after warnings that politicians’ safety was put at risk during this week’s chaotic parliamentary debate on Gaza.
The prime minister said on Friday it was “unacceptable” for MPs to feel intimidated in their jobs, amid an ongoing row over whether the Commons speaker was right to bend parliamentary rules this week in an effort to protect MPs’ safety.
Sunak told reporters during a tour of north Wales: “It’s simply unacceptable for intimidation or aggressive behaviour to threaten our parliamentary democracy and our freedom of expression.
“Some of the scenes we’ve been seeing in recent months, particularly antisemitic behaviour, are appalling and unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has urged a potential incoming Labour government to make him ambassador to the US in the “national interest”.
He says he is “half-joking” but also said he would be “ideal” for the role in a future Keir Starmer government.
He told The Sun:
Labour must think very, very hard in the national interest about what they are going to do with an incoming Trump administration. And right at the moment, I think they are ignoring it.
You’ve got to have someone who can actually walk into the Oval Office and talk face to face with an incoming President Trump.
So, half jokingly I could say me, but I can’t see them ever appointing me.
But, I would be ideal for it. I would be, I am being serious, I would be. But they need to think very hard.
It is “unacceptable” for intimidation to threaten democracy, Rishi Sunak has said.
Speaking during a tour of North Wales on Friday, the prime minister was asked about protests outside MPs’ homes.
He told reporters:
I think MPs’ safety is incredibly important. And it’s right that in our society, democracy needs to be able to function smoothly. People need to be able to raise their views and debate things without the fear of being intimidated or indeed attacked.
And that’s why we’re giving police more powers to clamp down on protests.
It’s simply unacceptable for intimidation or aggressive behaviour to threaten our parliamentary democracy and our freedom of expression.
And some of the scenes we’ve been seeing in recent months, particularly antisemitic behaviour, are appalling and unacceptable. That’s why we’re giving the police more powers and I expect them to use them to make sure we clamp down on all of this.
The government will not be “distracted or deterred” from providing compensation to sub-postmasters wronged in the Horizon scandal, James Cleverly has said.
The home secretary was asked about a letter from the Post Office chief executive Nick Read last month telling the government the organisation would stand by the prosecution of more than half the cases of those convicted of fraud.
Cleverly told Sky News:
That letter is not going to divert us from what we know to be the right course of action, which is do the right thing by hard-working people who found themselves, through no fault of their own, being targeted for criminal actions.
So we are relentlessly focused on that, and that exchange won’t change that at all.
Home secretary backs speaker following Gaza ceasefire debate row
Home secretary James Cleverly firmly backed Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle amid criticism of his handling of the Gaza ceasefire debate.
The senior Cabinet minister told Sky News on Friday:
I think the speaker has done a fantastic job. I think he’s been a breath of fresh air compared with his predecessor.
He made a mistake. He’s apologised for the mistake. My view is that I’m supportive of him.
Cleverly said it was his personal view because the selection of the speaker is “house business” rather than for government ministers to decide.
Cleverly says politicians should not make decisions based on 'fear or favour'
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. We start with news that the home secretary has said he would not “impinge on operational decisions” by the police when asked whether officers should have stopped a controversial pro-Palestinian message being projected onto Parliament.
The phrase “from the river to the sea” was reportedly beamed onto the building on Wednesday as Gaza protesters descended on Westminster.
James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s very difficult for me to second-guess the operational nature of this.
I don’t know where those images were projected from. I don’t know how easy it would have been for the police officers to get there.
But the fact is they are deeply, deeply offensive words... The implication is the eradication of the state of Israel. And both personally and as a government, we completely reject that.
He said the operational nature of policing was a matter for chief constables, the police commissioner Mark Rowley and mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
Cleverly also said that politicians should not make decisions based on “fear or favour”.
He told Sky News:
I’ve not had any specific threats brought to me, but we will stay constantly vigilant.
But the point I would make is ultimately members of parliament and indeed elected officials through all layers of government have got to act without fear or favour.
They need to be defended and we’re absolutely determined to do that.
