Closing summary
It is 5pm in Westminster. Here is a roundup of the day’s main news stories:
EU officials believe a deal with the British government over the Northern Ireland protocol is close to being done, as talks continue in Brussels. The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, began a meeting with the EU official in charge of Brexit, Maroš Šefčovič, at around 11.30am local time in Brussels, in a sign that talks have entered the final stretch. The EU is understood to have conceded ground on the issue of customs checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said “we’re not there yet” on a Northern Ireland protocol deal but added that he was “quietly confident” there could be an agreement within a fortnight. “I think a lot of progress has been made. We’re not there yet, but certainly a lot of trust has been built up between the European Commission and Ireland and the British government,” he told reporters in Limerick.
The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has said progress has been made across several areas but further work is required before a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol is struck. Speaking after a meeting with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, he said the negotiations should be led by getting it right and not by timelines.
The Sinn Féin president, Mary Lou McDonald, said that indications of progress on the Northern Ireland protocol was heartening. “It’s clear now that significant progress has been made and we’re very heartened by that,” she said after meeting the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister and one of the SNP’s longest-serving senior figures, has called for the party to unite and focus on concerns of mainstream voters as he ruled himself out of the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon. Swinney, who is widely respected amongst the membership and was SNP leader 20 years ago, said the party needed “a fresh perspective” after Sturgeon’s shock resignation on Wednesday.
Humza Yousaf has become the first possible contender to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, with the current Scottish health secretary saying he is giving “serious consideration” to running. Yousaf paid tribute to the outgoing first minister, saying she had “put Scotland’s interests first”. But he also said you could “see the personal toll it has taken on her”, adding she had “put her life into progressing our movement and putting the country first”.
Humza Yousaf would be “delusional” to run for the SNP leadership, the Scottish Labour deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, has said. Reports have suggested the health secretary is considering a run to succeed Nicola Sturgeon after her shock resignation announcement this week. But Baillie – Labour’s health spokesperson – derided the idea, attacking Yousaf as “without a doubt the worst minister I have ever had the misfortune of shadowing”.
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, says he wants to show unity with the government on its stance on providing fighter jets to Ukraine. Speaking from Poland after a visit to Kyiv, the Labour leader has told BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine programme the topic of war planes came up during his conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Thursday.
Parenting classes would be given to people whose children repeatedly committed crime if Labour won power. The shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, made the announcement as he gave a speech on the rule of law and crime at Middle Temple in central London, PA Media reported. Reed said Labour will help parents “take responsibility for tackling the behaviour of their own children if they repeatedly commit crime”.
Britain is in danger of a “disastrous” food scandal, owing to lax post-Brexit border controls on agricultural imports, the leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation has warned. Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to ensure food and other agricultural imports were safe. She said the government had failed to learn the lessons of the horsemeat scandal of 2013.
Thousands more ambulance workers have voted to strike in the long-running dispute over pay and staffing. Unison said the growing NHS dispute will now cover ambulance services and other NHS organisations across most parts of England, PA Media reports.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary, Pat Cullen, has said she has not spoken with the health and social care secretary for more than a month. Cullen told BBC Breakfast there has been “no communication” with Steve Barclay during that time.
England’s £2 cap on bus fares will be extended by three months, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced. The promotion, launched at the start of the year, was due to expire at the end of March but will now run until 30 June.
Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as British prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it is too late”. Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative lawmakers that included the former Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along and, for now, goodnight.
Updated
UK risks ‘disastrous’ food scandal due to lax post-Brexit border controls – NFU chief
Britain is in danger of a “disastrous” food scandal, owing to lax post-Brexit border controls on agricultural imports, the leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation has warned.
Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to ensure food and other agricultural imports were safe. She said the government had failed to learn the lessons of the horsemeat scandal of 2013.
“We are seeing little to no checks on imports that are coming in from the EU,” she told the Guardian. “We have the massive risk of African swine fever in Europe, and to not be investing in our defences for keeping our biosecurity and animal and plant health safe, I think is just a dereliction of duty.”
After the horsemeat scandal, in which products such as burgers and lasagne purporting to contain 100% beef were found to show traces of horsemeat, stricter controls were put in place on many food systems.
But Batters said those controls were being eroded, with “so little checks” on imports, and pointed to recent findings that many lorries entering the UK contained fraudulent meat. “If there was a food scare from Europe, it would be very difficult to trace it right now,” she said.
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Varadkar 'quietly confident' of NI protocol agreement within fortnight
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said “we’re not there yet” on a Northern Ireland protocol deal but added that he was “quietly confident” there could be an agreement within a fortnight.
“I think a lot of progress has been made. We’re not there yet, but certainly a lot of trust has been built up between the European Commission and Ireland and the British government,” he told reporters in Limerick.
He went on:
I do believe the prospect is there of having an agreement possibly within a week.
It’s not finalised, we haven’t all seen the final text yet, but we are getting there. I’m quietly confident that within the next week or two we could be in a position to sign off on agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, and that would be a big boost, I think.
First of all because it would allow us to normalise political and trading relationships between Britain and the European Union, including Ireland – putting an end to a very difficult period that started with the Brexit referendum.
But most importantly, it opens the prospect of getting the assembly and executive up and running in Northern Ireland, so the people have a government functioning in Northern Ireland and have the Good Friday agreement working again.
Updated
Rishi Sunak is embarking on the highest-stakes talks of his premiership as he tries to tie up a deal on post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland that satisfies leaders there and across Europe, as well as the hardliners in his own party.
But despite the prospect of a breakthrough between Downing Street and Brussels, there are still plenty of potential pitfalls.
These are the key political hurdles the prime minister will have to clear if he wants to finally “get Brexit done”, rated by difficulty.
England’s £2 cap on bus fares will be extended by three months, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.
The promotion, launched at the start of the year, was due to expire at the end of March but will now run until 30 June.
A three-month extension to funding introduced at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to keep bus services running despite the drop in demand was also confirmed by the DfT.
Humza Yousaf would be “delusional” to run for the SNP leadership, the Scottish Labour deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, has said.
Reports have suggested the health secretary is considering a run to succeed Nicola Sturgeon after her shock resignation announcement this week.
But Baillie – Labour’s health spokesperson – derided the idea, attacking Yousaf as “without a doubt the worst minister I have ever had the misfortune of shadowing”.
She told the party’s conference in Edinburgh:
Even by the standards of previous SNP health ministers, Humza Yousaf stands out for his incompetence. But conference, I hear the most astonishing news – having been the worst health secretary on record, his condition has deteriorated further.
He now aspires to be the worst first minister on record. The lack of self-awareness might be considered by clinicians to be delusional. Conference, they can have as many runners and riders as they want.
We know the best option for our next first minister is [Scottish Labour leader] Anas Sarwar.
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Humza Yousaf weighing up tilt at succeeding Sturgeon as first minister
Humza Yousaf has become the first possible contender to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, with the current Scottish health secretary saying he is giving “serious consideration” to running.
Yousaf paid tribute to the outgoing first minister, saying she had “put Scotland’s interests first”. But he also said you could “see the personal toll it has taken on her”, adding she had “put her life into progressing our movement and putting the country first”.
He said he was now speaking to his family about whether he should put himself forward to replace Sturgeon as both SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister.
Candidates have until noon on Friday (24 February) to put themselves forward, with a ballot of party members then taking place before the new leader – and Scotland’s sixth first minister – is declared on 27 March.
Asked if he would be putting himself forward, Yousaf said:
From my own perspective I am giving it serious consideration, why would you not? It is the top job in Scotland, it is a job you don’t get the opportunity to go for very often.
On the flip side of that it can take a big toll on you personally, and on your family, and I have got to really speak to my family about whether this is the right thing for us as a collective unit.
That discussion is ongoing and I will make my decision known in the coming days.
Updated
Starmer has told the same programme that any British people going out to join Ukrainians in fighting Russia’s occupying troops needed to be “very carefully done”. Asked if it was “good that British people are going out to fight”, he says:
I think a lot of British people are going out to offer all sorts of support. Some of them, we saw yesterday and this morning.
Obviously, if people are going out to fight, it has got to be very carefully done because you’ve got the Ukrainian forces there. They are disciplined, they are professional, they are working to a strategic plan and nothing should be done that gets in the way of that.
So, Ukraine wants all the support it can get but nothing that undermines their strategy, their tactics.
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, says he wants to show unity with the government on its stance on providing fighter jets to Ukraine.
Speaking from Poland after a visit to Kyiv, the Labour leader has told BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine programme the topic of war planes came up during his conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Thursday.
The government has said it should be part of the conversation, so it is not ruling it out. I think they are right about that and it needs to be in lock-step with Nato.
What I’ve been trying to do quite carefully is, I’ve said to President Zelenskiy and our government that we will be united. I don’t want to try to politically outbid the government here because if I’ve said we will be united, I mean it.
Clearly, he does want further support. It is not straightforward with the fighter aircraft because there is a lot of training involved, the logistics mean it would take a little while and I think we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that other weaponry must be provided, as we are now.
Updated
Shanker Singham, a trade expert involved in the Conservative party’s Brexit strategies, has called on the government to go ahead with mooted plans for setting up a freeport in Holyhead to alleviate Brexit trade friction caused with Ireland.
Singham, who helped develop the “alternative arrangements” model for Conservative MPs opposed to an Irish sea border, has said:
Logistically, the island of Britain and island of Ireland are connected by a circuit of trade corridors around both islands. When one of these does not work properly, all of this trade is adversely affected.
Ironically, part of the solution to this issue is one created by Brexit: freeports. Specifically, a freeport on Anglesey which is currently being considered by the government following a bid by Stena Line and Isle of Anglesey county council. A decision on the freeport is due imminently, around the time of the budget.
The UK can do little about Irish controls, but by accepting a freeport in Anglesey, it can take actions to simplify and facilitate controls at Holyhead. This would have a positive impact on the flow of trade along this vital trade route, re-establishing the GB land-bridge transit route by creating a ‘digital trade corridor’ that simplifies or eliminates checks for traders, and recovering the dramatic fall in trade freight.
Updated
Donaldson insists his party has not been involved in the negotiations, which he said are strictly between Westminster and the European Union.
What I’ve sought to do consistently throughout this process is to ensure that our government is aware of our concerns.
We’re not at the table but we are seeking to reflect the very genuine and real concerns of unionists; those concerns need to be addressed and need to be included within the context of any agreement.
Asked whether the DUP is prepared to compromise, Donaldson said:
It’s not a question of us compromising. It is a question of the UK government honouring the commitments they’ve made to the people of Northern Ireland, delivering on those commitments in the negotiations with the European Union and providing the basis upon which Northern Ireland’s place within the UK and its internal market can be respected and protected, and our institutions here can be restored on a stable basis.
Updated
After emerging from the talks with Rishi Sunak, Donaldson is asked by reporters about the prospect of continued European court of justice oversight in Northern Ireland.
When we trade within the UK then we should follow UK standards and UK rules, that is our clear position. When we’re trading with the European Union, then of course the products that we make, the goods that we want to sell to the European Union, have to meet EU standards, that’s the same across the whole of the United Kingdom.
So, we are looking for an outcome that addresses the issue of where do we stand in relation to our ability to trade within the United Kingdom and its internal market, and that is, in essence, what we need to get as an outcome from this negotiation.
Updated
Donaldson adds that he’s “hopeful” an agreement between the EU and UK could be reached.
It is absolutely crucial that this opportunity is taken, that the issues are grasped, that solutions are found that respect Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom and its internal market that enable us to continue trading with the European Union, but that remove, in the context of our seven tests, the barriers to trade within the UK internal market, so that Northern Ireland can trade freely with the rest of the United Kingdom.
We need to see an agreement that delivers that; we’re hopeful that that can happen. But, in the end, we will wait to see the final text to make our judgments as to whether, in fact, that has been delivered.
He says the prime minister has offered “some clarity” on some of the main issues up for negotiation with the EU.
It’s not for me to characterise where the EU and the UK have got to in their negotiations. I will simply say that on some very important issues I think there has been real progress, but there remain some outstanding issues that that we need to get over the line. We will then examine the final text of any agreement and come to our decision.
Updated
Donaldson has said:
If and when a final agreement is reached, we will want to carefully consider the detail of that agreement and decide if the agreement does in fact meet our seven tests. We’ve been very clear with the prime minister that those seven tasks remain the basis upon which we will judge any agreement.
I’ve indicated to the prime minister that it is fundamentally important that he agrees the right deal. I want to hear that Brussels will stretch itself to recognise the concerns that we have as unionists and that this process will correct the wrongs of the last negotiations.
I do not believe that anyone should be led by a calendar. What is fundamentally and most important here is getting it right. That must be the ultimate goal. That is our goal. That’s what we’re committed to – getting this right and getting it done.
We will keep working at this until we’ve got to the place where we can say that an outcome meets our seven tests and enables us to move towards the restoration of the political institutions here in Northern Ireland, which remains our objective.
DUP says progress made but more work needed on protocol after Sunak talks
The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said progress has been made across several areas but further work is required before a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol is struck.
Speaking after a meeting with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, he said the negotiations should be led by getting it right and not by timelines.
He said:
Clearly this is a big moment, the next generation of Northern Ireland and its people requires us all, I think, collectively, to use our best efforts – particularly the prime minister and the European Commission president – to get these issues resolved and to get to a place where the political institutions can be restored.
The decisions that will be taken by the prime minister and by the European Commission will either consign Northern Ireland to more division or they will clear a path towards healing and to the restoration of the political institutions.
Over the last 48 hours we’ve been engaging with officials and met the prime minister last evening and this morning.
We have not yet seen the final text of an agreement, clearly there will be further discussions between the UK government and the European Union but I think it is safe to say that progress has been made across a range of areas, but there are still some areas where further work is required.
Updated
The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said he has had a “constructive meeting” with The European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič on the Northern Ireland protocol.
After their talks in Brussels, Cleverly tweeted:
We discussed the work ongoing between the UK and EU to find a solution on the NI Protocol. Intensive work continues.
Šefčovič said there had been “constructive engagement” and that “good progress” had been made.
“The shared objective clear: joint solutions, responding to the everyday concerns of people in NI. Hard work continues,” he tweeted.
Updated
The brutality of political life had taken its toll on her, said Nicola Sturgeon as she announced her resignation on Wednesday. That same day, a 42-year-old man was jailed for sending her an email saying she was going to “face a hanging” for treason. Two weeks earlier, a 70-year-old man was found guilty of threatening to assassinate her.
It may come as no surprise, then, that Scotland’s outgoing first minister recently described the environment for women in politics as “much harsher and more hostile” than at any time in her decades-long career.
“Social media provides a vehicle for the most awful abuse of women, misogyny, sexism and threats of violence for women who put their heads above the parapet,” Sturgeon, 52, told the BBC’s Kirsty Wark in a documentary that will air on Tuesday.
This vitriol has left female politicians fearing for their safety. Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of parliament’s women and equalities committee, said she had reported death threats to the police. “The worst was from a bloke who said he wanted to rape and torture me until I was dead,” she said.
Updated
Parenting classes would be given to people whose children repeatedly committed crime if Labour won power.
The shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, made the announcement as he gave a speech on the rule of law and crime at Middle Temple in central London, PA Media reported.
Reed said Labour will help parents “take responsibility for tackling the behaviour of their own children if they repeatedly commit crime”.
He told the legal society:
We will expand the use of parenting orders, so the courts can require parents of persistent young offenders to attend parenting classes.
We will support parents to steer their children’s lives back on track before the crime in a young life becomes a life of crime.
Antisocial behaviour will be met with consequences, because we know how damaging it is for communities that feel powerless in the face of it.
Speaking to reporters after his speech, Reed noted “the important point is that if you are a parent and your kid is repeatedly committing antisocial behaviour or low-level offending, you need first of all to take responsibility as a parent for the behaviour of your kids, but you may also need support and help to get control of them”.
He said there are parents in his constituency who are “genuinely at their wits’ end because they don’t know how to get back control of their kids”, adding that their fear is that “this low-level offending” might lead on to “more serious offending later in life”.
Updated
Thousands more ambulance workers have voted to strike in the long-running dispute over pay and staffing.
Unison said the growing NHS dispute will now cover ambulance services and other NHS organisations across most parts of England, PA Media reports.
Announcing re-ballot results of thousands more health workers, Unison said staff at another four English ambulance services and five NHS organisations, including NHS Blood and Transplant, will now be able to strike in a “significant escalation” of the dispute.
The union said ambulance staff at four services in England – South Central, East of England, West Midlands and East Midlands – had voted to take industrial action.
They’ve been joined today by health workers at NHS Blood and Transplant, Great Ormond Street hospital, the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust; Liverpool Women’s hospital; and the Bridgewater community trust.
The 12,000 staff involved in the re-ballots can now take part in the ongoing dispute alongside their NHS colleagues at ambulance services in London, Yorkshire, the North East, North West and South West.
Since the dispute over pay and staffing began in December, staff at these service have taken strike action on four occasions.
Updated
EU officials believe Northern Ireland protocol deal with UK is close
EU officials believe a deal with the British government over the Northern Ireland protocol is close to being done, as talks continue in Brussels.
The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, began a meeting with the EU official in charge of Brexit, Maroš Šefčovič, at around 11.30am local time in Brussels, in a sign that talks have entered the final stretch.
The EU is understood to have conceded ground on the issue of customs checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. The UK had proposed a system of red and green lanes for lorries that would allow goods in the latter category to avoid customs declarations.
EU officials believe a compromise with lighter checks is possible, because the UK has now agreed to share real-time customs data to track the movement of goods.
The role of the European court of justice in policing the Northern Ireland agreement will remain, but there will be more layers of arbitration before disputes are referred to Luxembourg. Currently, the first port of call for disputes is a UK-EU “specialised committee”, but there will be additional bodies for airing disputes about the protocol before they go to the European court.
EU sources expect Rishi Sunak to announce a deal on Tuesday, but remain unsure whether he can sell the deal to his Eurosceptic backbenchers in Westminster and the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland. “With the UK, you never know,” said an official. “We should hope [there is a deal] because I don’t see anyone else who is capable of doing it.
“The question is, to what extent can [Sunak] convince his party members that there is enough meat for them to accept - to what in their eyes will always be a sub-optimal deal.”
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Labour will help Sunak get protocol deal through parliament, says shadow justice secretary
Labour will offer Rishi Sunak the additional votes he needs to get a Northern Ireland protocol deal through parliament, the shadow justice secretary has said.
Steve Reed told reporters:
We’ll wait and see what the government is coming forward with. It’s very important for everybody in the United Kingdom that this problem is resolved. It’s a problem that is of this government’s own making, of course.
He added:
Labour wants this problem fixed, so we are prepared to give Rishi Sunak the additional votes he needs to get this through parliament and it’s important that the prime minister works with the Labour party rather than listen to the extremists in his own ranks who do not want to resolve this problem that has caused a division inside our United Kingdom.
On the bill of rights, Reed warned:
We have got the prime minister today in Northern Ireland, we hope with a deal to resolve the issues around the Northern Ireland protocol.
What we do not want to happen is that that self-same prime minister then rips up the Human Rights Act, which underpins the Good Friday agreement, because if he puts peace in Northern Ireland in peril in that way, that is an act of unforgivable irresponsibility for which you would never be forgiven.
Updated
Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as Britain’s prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it’s too late”.
Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative politicians, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015.
She said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
Updated
Swinney rules himself out of SNP contest to replace Sturgeon
John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister and one of the SNP’s longest-serving senior figures, has called for the party to unite and focus on concerns of mainstream voters as he ruled himself out of the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon.
Swinney, who is widely respected amongst the membership and was SNP leader 20 years ago, said the party needed “a fresh perspective” after Sturgeon’s shock resignation on Wednesday.
Encouraging leadership candidates to “anchor the SNP in the mainstream of Scottish politics”, he told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good morning Scotland: “We’ve got to keep ourselves very, very close to the priorities and the issues that matter to people in Scotland. Independence cannot be some abstract concept.”
Asked about the divisions within the party caused by recent gender recognition reforms – which have been blocked by the UK government – Swinney said unity was “absolutely critical”, adding “when the party has been united, we’ve actually achieved phenomenal results for our party and for the people of Scotland”.
But he added he had “no regrets” that the legislation had passed. He said: “It’s important that we address the concerns of communities within our country who are marginalised, who are isolated, and who face very significant challenges”.
Following a meeting of the party’s national executive committee on Thursday night, candidates will have until next Friday to put their names forward. A six-week contest will follow, with ballots of 100,000-plus membership members closing on 27 March.
The NEC also announced that a special party conference in March, where members would vote on Sturgeon’s de facto referendum plan after the supreme court ruled that Holyrood did not have the powers to run another independence vote without Westminster’s consent, would be postponed.
Updated
Sinn Féin heralds 'significant progress' after NI protocol talks with Sunak
The Sinn Féin president, Mary Lou McDonald, said that indications of progress on the Northern Ireland protocol was heartening.
“It’s clear now that significant progress has been made and we’re very heartened by that,” she said after meeting the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
She added:
We now want to see a speedy conclusion of matters and, above all else, we want to see the institutions restored, government restored here in the north.
The bottom line is that we have to ensure that any deal provides for ongoing access to the European single market, no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland and a protection of the Good Friday agreement in all of its parts.
Those are the core elements and aspects that need to be protected. But it seems to us that it’s very much game on.
We’re very heartened by that, we’re very conscious that a deal can be done, should now be concluded speedily. We hope that that will be the case. Then it’s a matter for everyone, for each of the political parties, to step up, get back to work and deliver for people here.
She also said:
I think we’ve all seen in recent weeks certainly an upping of the pace of political engagement and activity. That, to our mind, is a very, very positive thing. It’s absolutely necessary that there is intensive goodwill, good faith work done between the parties.
Updated
Truss urges west to safeguard Taiwan security ‘before it’s too late’
Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as British prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it is too late”.
Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative lawmakers that included the former Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
Truss told a meeting organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China that the G7 and other democracies should urgently agree on a package of coordinated defence, economic and political measures in support of Taiwan.
“Our governments must signal to [China] that military aggression towards Taiwan would be a strategic mistake,” said Truss, who is Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, having spent just 45 days in office when she resigned last October. “When it comes to China, a failure to act now could cost us dearly in the long run.”
Her keynote speech is being seen as an attempt to rebuild her political reputation, but also to add to pressure on her successor, Rishi Sunak, to take a stronger stance against Beijing.
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Tory former health minister Lord Bethell said NHS pay disputes need to be sorted “quickly”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, and asked if he is calling for the government and the Conservatives to engage in talks, he said:
Yes, I think … I am really worried that the government hasn’t got a positive attitude on this …
There is a workforce plan in place that needs to be [acted] on, they need to start preparing today for next winter.
He added:
From a political point of view there is an election to be fought in 20 months’ time or whenever it is going to be. I am worried that if this isn’t put away then politically the government will have created a big problem for itself.
I’m not in the room to make those discussions. I do acknowledge that there are enormous pressures on public finances.
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Nurses' union leader warns strike action will have 'significant impact' on NHS
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary, Pat Cullen, has said she has not spoken with the health and social care secretary for more than a month.
Cullen told BBC Breakfast there has been “no communication” with Steve Barclay during that time.
She went on:
I’m deeply disappointed that I go back every moment of the day to the 320,000 nurses who took part in this ballot for strike action and say to them that I have no news for them.
That I can’t give them any outcome so that they can get back to looking after their patients, so that they can get a decent wage and remain within the health service. It is devastating for those nurses actually.
She added:
We are not going to do anything that will place further risk on our patients.
The risk that those patients are feeling every single day by being denied treatment because of the nurse vacancies, not being able to get off those waiting lists.
We’re working night and day with NHS leaders, but we can also see NHS leaders stepping in and writing to the prime minister.
There’s no doubt there will be a significant impact and we are now urging the prime minister to step in with 12 days to try and resolve this, around a round table today.
Updated
Sunak in 'listening mode' as talks with Stormont leaders begin
The Alliance party leader, Naomi Long, has said the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is in “listening mode” and that there is “some heavy lifting still to be done” to secure a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol.
Speaking after meeting Sunak at a hotel on the outskirts of Belfast, she said it was “a very constructive and very positive meeting”.
She added:
He was very much in listening mode and keen to hear our views. It seems apparent that while he was not in a position to brief us about the details, that things are gradually moving in the direction of a potential deal.
But we are not over the line yet. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be very soon, but there’s clearly some heavy lifting still to be done.
Updated
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said “this is an important moment for our politics here” while on his way into talks with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
“Hopefully we’re getting very close to a deal,” he told reporters, adding:
I spoke to the taoiseach [Leo Varadkar] last night. I don’t think this is totally done and dusted yet but it’s nearly there.
We’re coming very close to the time where people have to decide whether or not they’re going to take ‘yes’ for an answer.
I think most of the issues that the DUP have put on the table will be resolved, and we all know in every negotiation you don’t get everything you want.
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DUP warns Sunak not to leave Northern Ireland ‘abandoned to EU’
Good morning. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is holding talks with Stormont leaders as speculation mounts that a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol could be close.
But the DUP has warned Sunak that the party will not return to power sharing if he leaves Northern Ireland “abandoned to the EU” under any new deal he has cut with Brussels over the Brexit trading arrangements for the region.
Sammy Wilson, the MP for East Antrim, has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the deal the prime minister is expected to share with Northern Ireland’s political parties in Belfast today must meet the seven conditions it laid down before it returns to power sharing.
“What we want to hear from him most importantly, is where the negotiations have reached in removing the automatic application of EU law to Northern Ireland without any democratic input from the representatives in Northern Ireland and without any ability to change those laws if they’re detrimental to Northern Ireland,” he said.
Sunak and the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, are meeting the politicians to discuss the contentious post-Brexit trading arrangements, with Sunak set to join European leaders in Germany this weekend for the Munich security conference.
There is mounting speculation that a deal between the EU and UK could be unveiled early next week. However, the Irish deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, has cautioned that he believes there is a “distance to go yet” before an agreement between the UK and the EU is over the line.
The Commons is still in recess. I’m Tom Ambrose and I am covering the UK politics live blog while Andrew Sparrow is away.
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