Brexit
Telegraph
Rishi Sunak is considering a compromise in Brexit talks with the EU in a move that would risk major conflict with Conservative MPs.
The Telegraph has been told the Prime Minister is exploring a pact that will retain a role for European judges in Northern Ireland.
It is understood UK negotiators are scoping out a system that would put the court at arms-length but still see it able to hand down judgements.
Members of the European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are organising a joint resistance to the plan.
They will demand that the EU court must have no further role in Northern Ireland, as has previously been the UK Government’s position.
Mr Sunak is keen to strike a deal with the bloc to end the long-running row over the Protocol and improve relations with European countries.
As part of a new push for an agreement, ministers are said to no longer see the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), once a totemic issue, as a major roadblock.
UK officials have instead conceded that Luxembourg-based judges will have to be the final arbiter of EU laws that apply inside Northern Ireland.
They will seek to insert a layer of protections within an “overarching framework” to prevent the European Commission from referring disputes straight to its court.
Instead, any disagreements would go before an independent panel, which would have to ask the ECJ’s permission if they concerned Brussels regulations.
When the Protocol was signed, around 300 EU rules were said to apply in Northern Ireland but the list has grown since, a source briefed on the talks said.
British officials are confident a deal can be struck and have already begun writing their sales pitch for the Brexit hardliners in the ERG and the DUP.
They have accepted that the Protocol itself will not be changed but want to sign a declaration that would sit above the current text.
The document would spell out how the two sides had agreed to drastically reduce red tape on goods travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
DUP and ERG sources suspect ministers are already trying to lay the groundwork for a compromise by playing them off against each other. But the two groups have put on a united front.
David Jones, deputy chairman of the ERG, and Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s spokesman on Brexit, have warned they will not accept a “fudge”.
“The ultimate test of any deal will be whether it ends Northern Ireland’s semi-colonial status as a client of the EU, automatically accepting EU laws without any input from elected representatives,” the pair said.
“That is a fundamental problem that simply can’t be fudged. A deal should address not only the symptoms of the Protocol by reducing the level of checks.
Conservative Party
Express
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is all set to hold a Cabinet away-day at Chequers this week.
The Conservatives are gearing for the next general election amid concern about a rise in support for Reform UK, a news report has claimed. The Telegraph has claimed Conservative HQ is “significantly” increasing efforts to attract new donations and is set to embark on hiring campaign managers.
A survey by People Polling, published on Friday, showed that support for the rebreanded Brexit Party has risen to eight percent.
The Telegraph reported that while Reform UK is unlikely to take any seats from the Tories, it could syphon off votes in key marginals and help Labour pick up seats by splitting the right-wing vote.
Reform UK leader Richard Tice has said he has been in contact with several Conservative backbenchers about defecting at the next election.
Tory MPs have expressed fears that those who voted for them in 2019 will turn to Reform UK because the Conservatives have “failed to deliver” on immigration.
Zahawi
Sun
CRISIS-hit Tory Nadhim Zahawi was prevented from getting a knighthood after Whitehall staff raised questions about his tax affairs.
The bombshell revelation heaps fresh pressure on the party chairman, who is battling for his political career.
Multi-millionaire Mr Zahawi, 55, was nominated for the gong in the recent New Year’s Honours List.
But the former Chancellor did not appear on the list of recipients after experts at HMRC were contacted by the Cabinet Office, which oversees the vetting of honours.
Questions were raised over his tax affairs during the discussions, which took place in December.
A source told The Sun on Sunday: “Nadhim had been put forward for a knighthood. As part of the normal due diligence, Cabinet officials contacted HMRC in December. Nadhim subsequently did not appear on the list in the New Year.”
Telegraph
Nadhim Zahawi said that HMRC deemed errors in his tax affairs “careless and not deliberate” as he sought to head off growing calls for his resignation on Saturday.
The embattled Conservative chairman released a statement on Saturday admitting he had agreed to settle unpaid tax relating to shares kept in an offshore trust, following reports that he had paid millions to HMRC including a penalty.
However, critics said he must release further information to prove he had no conflicts of interest with HMRC during his stint as chancellor. Mr Zahawi has since last summer faced questions over why shares from YouGov – the polling company he co-founded in 2000 – were kept in Balshore Investments, a Gibraltar-registered family trust.
Tax experts have estimated the capital gains tax that would have been incurred from selling the shares would have amounted to some £3.7 million, had they been owned by Zahawi directly.
Guardian
Nadhim Zahawi was battling to save his political career on Saturday night after he finally admitted reaching a tax settlement with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) following an “error” over a controversial multimillion-pound shareholding in the polling company YouGov.
In a carefully worded statement, Zahawi appeared to confirm that HMRC had carried out an investigation into his financial affairs while he was serving as chancellor last summer. Zahawi, now the Tory party chairman, said that the tax authority had concluded that he had made a “careless but not deliberate” error.
“So that I could focus on my life as a public servant, I chose to settle the matter and pay what they said was due, which was the right thing to do,” he stated. Tax experts said the statement was a tacit acknowledgment that Zahawi had paid a penalty.
The admission raises questions for Rishi Sunak over what he knew about the settlement and when.
ITV News
The government’s propriety and ethics team raised the issue of Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs directly with Boris Johnson before he was appointed as chancellor, ITV News can reveal.Sources said that officials in the Cabinet office told the then prime minister about the questions surrounding his dispute with HMRC at the time of appointment, in July 2022.
Whatever discussion was had, Mr Johnson went ahead with the appointment – placing Mr Zahawi in charge of the country’s taxation.It comes after Mr Zahawi, now Conservative party chair, admitted today that reports he had paid back paying millions of pounds in tax to HMRC were correct.
He has not denied the suggestion that around £1m of the total was a penalty fee.
Saying he wanted to address “confusion” over his finances, Mr Zahawi admitted that HMRC had disagreed with him about the allocation of founder shares in the polling company he helped to set up – Yougov – his father was entitled to.
“Twenty one years later, when I was being appointed Chancellor to the Exchequer, questions were being raised about my tax affairs. I discussed this with the Cabinet office at the time.”He said the HMRC accepted that he had made a “careless and not deliberate error”. “So that I could focus on my life as a public servant I chose to settle the matter and pay what they said was due, which was the right thing to do.”
NHS
Telegraph
An NHS triage system aimed at pinpointing which A&E patients do not need hospital admission is as accurate as “flipping a coin”, health experts have admitted.
Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) is used in most hospitals to free up beds by identifying which patients can be sent home on the day they arrive at casualty departments.
Centres are encouraged to use scoring systems such as the Amb score, recommended by the Royal College of Physicians, and the Glasgow Admission Prediction Score, to select patients.
NHS Improvement has highlighted use of the systems as “good practice”, but experts have warned that they are only 50 per cent accurate, largely because they were developed predominantly using results from white men, often in rural areas.
“We have tested their performance in a diverse urban population and found the ability to identify SDEC patients is 50 per cent – the same as flipping a coin,” a document released by Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) warns.
iNews
People should take care when using online primary care services due to “significant concerns” over patient safety, the health regulator has warned.
Care Quality Commission inspectors found some companies were too quick to sell medicines without doing enough to check whether they were appropriate, meaning that patients could be at risk of harm.
Although the CQC does say that well-run services can offer a convenient and effective form of treatment, it is calling on people to act with caution when using internet services.
“If patients are able to buy prescription drugs online, without appropriate health checks in place, and with decisions about whether to supply them being made by someone who doesn’t have access to their relevant medical history, it is a very real threat to their safety.”
In a joint statement, four regulatory bodies – CQC, the General Medical Council, the General Pharmaceutical Council, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency – have reminded providers and healthcare professionals working for these services that they must provide safe and effective care, including following professional guidelines.
Mirror
A quarter of children aged two are missing out on vital wellbeing checks due to a shortage of more than 5,000 health visitors.
The crisis is threatening the life chances of hundreds of tots through delays in diagnosing developmental conditions such as autism, deafness and cerebral palsy.
Since October 2015, the number of health visitors in England has been slashed by 40%, from 10,309 to 5,842.
Research shows one in 10 are juggling caseloads of more than 1,000 kids – four times the recommended ratio – and nearly a third have more than 750 children on their books. As trained nurses, health visitors are meant to conduct five mandatory checks before a child reaches the age of two-and-a-half.
But the shortages mean many checks are delegated to non-qualified staff – or not done at all.
One in five health visitors have turned to mental health services for work stress, an Institute of Health Visiting poll found.
Child migrants
Guardian
Dozens of asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south coast, an Observer investigation can reveal.
A whistleblower, who works for Home Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources describe children being abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars.
“Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers,” said the source.
It has also emerged that the Home Office was warned repeatedly by police that the vulnerable occupants of the hotel – asylum-seeking children who had recently arrived in the UK without parents or carers – would be targeted by criminal networks.
About 600 unaccompanied children have passed through the Sussex hotel in the past 18 months, with 136 reported missing. More than half of these – 79 – remain unaccounted for.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, described the revelation as “truly appalling and scandalous” and called on the government to reveal how many children had disappeared and what was being done to find them.
She added: “Suella Braverman [the home secretary] has failed to act on the repeated warnings she has been given about totally inadequate safeguards for children in their care.
“It is a total dereliction of duty for the Home Office to so badly fail to protect child safety or crack down on the dangerous gangs putting them in terrible risk. Ministers must urgently put new protection arrangements in place.”
Armed forces
Mirror
Our armed forces are battling a shortfall of 4,000 troops after one of the worst years for people marching out.
More than 16,000 left last year – a six-year high. And only 12,000 joined, 5,000 fewer than in 2021.
The losses follow growing complaints about pay and the shoddy standard of service housing.
And they come despite the Ministry of Defence spending more than £70million on recruitment campaigns between 2019 and 2021. These include the Snow Flake campaign to show the forces look beyond stereotype warriors. An MoD survey in May revealed most quitting troops blamed “impact on family and personal life”.
It also found housing was “well below levels reported in 2015”.
One soldier with 12 years’ service living in married quarters in Aldershot, Hants, told us he was quitting to save his relationship. He said: “The boiler hasn’t worked properly for weeks.
“We have mould, damp, ceiling leaks. My kids are suffering. My wife has said either I leave the Army or she’ll leave me. I don’t blame her.”
MoD figures show thousands of maintenance callouts over damp and mould in the past eight months.
More than 1,300 properties were out of use last year due to the same issues. In 2020 that figure was just 800.
Almost 2,700 service families called an emergency hotline to complain about damp and mould between April and December last year.
Coronation
Mail
The historic coronation of King Charles III will champion refugees, diversity and volunteering but will likely not see Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle join the rest of the family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, it was revealed last night.
The dazzling celebrations are said to reflect Charles’ desire to be the ‘people’s King’ and will also give representatives from the Commonwealth and NHS workers a chance to shine, before members of the public are encouraged to spend time volunteering on the nation’s extra Bank Holiday.
The three-day extravaganza will give millions of Brits an day of, with tens of thousands expected to line the streets in central London to watch the ceremony – the first of its kind in more than 70 years.
It comes as royal insiders claimed last night that Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle are ‘unlikely’ to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony, should they attend the event at all following the fallout of the Duke’s bombshell memoirs.
The coronation is scheduled to take place on May 6, followed by a huge concert at Windsor Castle the day after which will focus on showcasing Charles’ vision for the Commonwealth.
The historic celebrations are set to be a world away from Queen Elizabeth II’s ceremony, with millions of people tuning in live all around the world.
The Government has already launched a consultation on extending pub opening hours throughout the coronation weekend.
Telegraph
King Charles III is to put refugees and the NHS at the heart of a diverse Coronation that will bring the nation together in a three-day celebration designed to reflect modern, multi-cultural Britain.
A Coronation Choir made up of amateur singers representing the nation’s “faces and voices”, including LGBTQ+ groups and deaf signers, will perform at a star-studded concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday May 7.
They will be accompanied by a Virtual Choir featuring singers from across the Commonwealth as the King signals his commitment to the international “family” of 56 nations.
A Coronation Big Lunch, at which friends and neighbours will join forces to celebrate at street parties, will take place on the same date. At the Big Jubilee Lunch, millions joined forces to celebrate the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee last June.
It will be followed by The Big Help Out, a volunteer scheme devised in tribute to His Majesty’s many decades of public service and reflecting his desire to create lasting change.
Express
A concert featuring global music, film, theatre and dance stars will be the centrepiece of three days of events celebrating the Coronation of King Charles in May.
Thousands of members of the public will be chosen through a national ballot to get a pair of tickets to the coronation concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday May 7. The King and Queen Consort will appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with family members after Charles is crowned at Westminster Abbey on Saturday May 6.
And a day of volunteering will be held on Monday May 8, a bank holiday, in tribute to the King’s public service.
The palace on Saturday revealed new details of the events planned to celebrate the Coronation, which are hoped to unite the nation.
A senior royal source said: “Our intention is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to take part in the celebrations.”
Black lives
Mail
Men and women queue outside a municipal office in order to have their racial origins examined. As well as personal documents, they clutch the results of DNA tests and fading family photographs.
If they can prove to the authorities that they are descended from a 19th Century black slave, they will be eligible for millions of dollars of official compensation.
While this may sound like something from a Black Lives Matter campaign wish-list video, such a scene could become a reality in California and other American states.
For in one of the most controversial political initiatives in recent times, the first multi-million-dollar payments could, in the coming months, be distributed as part of a scheme which, in the words of one Left-leaning Californian legislator, would be compensation for ‘decades of socio-economic disparity going all the way back to the days of slavery’.
Last Monday, a US national holiday to celebrate civil rights hero Martin Luther King, San Francisco’s reparation committee proposed that every eligible black citizen in the city should receive a $5 million (£4 million) payout – a total bill of at least $50 billion (£40 billion) for the city alone.
Debbie……..the key to whether political the right will ever have a voice again lies with Farage. Until somebody else comes along with all the right attributes, he is the only one who has all the qualities that the position demands. I am still hopeful that he will come to our rescue but that hope is diminishing. It certainly doesn’t rest with Richard Tice that’s for sure even though their opinion poll is presently 8%. That opinion poll rating is peanuts compared with what UKIP was achieving in its heyday. I was impressed with what William Clouston, the leader of the SDP said on Farage’ programme the other evening, but I never see any of their candidates standing anywhere. So it matters not what he says because he will never be able to put his policies into action unless candidates are stood en masse the length and breadth of the country. And of course that goes for any right of centre political party. Sadly time is not on our side, and we need a party PDQ to challenge the thoroughly inept Conservatives at the next general election. Where it will come from I know not.
The Conservative Party under Sunak really are kidding themselves if they really think those of us on the right including a sizeable chunk of Conservative members and voters will turn away from them and vote Reform UK instead on the basis that they haven’t sorted out the Immigration issue. Its more than that, the Conservatives have sorted very little out since 2019 and utterly wasted their landslide majority apart from sort of getting us out of the European Union on a half baked deal that only Johnson and a few of his misguided ministers thought was good because they wanted to keep their cabinet jobs. What about tearing up the that trade deal altogether and trading with the rest of the world and the EU on WTO rules, and take back control not only Northern Ireland, but also our Fishing and Territorial Waters and ridding ourselves of all laws relating to the European Union without further discussion and pulling out of the European Court for Human Rights. This country is the most democratic country in the world and we do not need to be taking lessons from Verhofstadt and Co on human rights, as we could easily put legislation in place in our own parliament to safeguard rights. However this would take require a bit of common sense, some backbone, guts and courage, commodities of which are in short supply in the House of Commons as a whole, and in the chamber next door.
CH- are you going to contest the next election? Is it too late to get going? How much (spons) would you need?
Biscotte…..well thanks for the compliment, but I am too old to be getting involved in national politics now. Politics needs younger and dynamic people who are at work to get involved. Besides which there isn’t a lot that one person can do independently and one needs to have a party machine behind you to do all the things that need to be done. It is hard enough to do this at a local level with a handful of activists let alone at a national level. We (the country that is) needs someone of Nigel Farage’ calibre and ability, but he doesn’t appear to be motivated enough to do it at the moment. And of course setting up a party is a time consuming and expensive business. I am pretty sure that there are others who comment on this site are more qualified than me and who are good wordsmiths etc. Stout Yeoman and POS for example, or perhaps even yourself. Or indeed perhaps either Viv or Debbie, who is ex UKIP like myself.
I think you’ll find that the majority of people who read or comment on this site are ex-UKIP, Colin, or certainly UKIP-friendly. After all, we used to be UKIP Daily.
Debbie…….so very true. Back in the good old days…..the majority yes, but not all I wouldn’t have thought.
Those were the days … Will the political right ever have a voice again?
‘This country is the most democratic country in the world’ Switzerland?
Jake…….I’ve never lived in Switzerland though. Yes, I know it holds referendums on important issues which was also a UKIP policy, but on the negative side it allows the WEF and green agenda conferences to be held on its soil (Davos etc) so probably in the light of this, that country is all wrapped up in the net zero green crap agenda, a subject that is dear to the hearts of many politicians in this country who probably feel that is where their long term political futures lie. Maybe you’ve been a snowman there!!!
They profit from holding the Net Zero hysteria conferences just like they profit from being the global headquarters of NGOs. This is a huge industry for them. Their robust sovereignty and democracy may suggest they don’t necessarily sign up to the agendas the organisations they host.
Many would like to have an income of several million a year, let alone an income that attracts millions in tax. He had made a “careless and not deliberate error”. Was that on his CV to become chancellor? Perhaps chancer better describes this oilygark.
HNS- white rural dwellers data. Clearly out of date by two generations ~35 yrs of silent invasion. Dont the NHS realise Britain is no longer white let alone rural. Another 12 thousand million pounds for another 1997 XP spreadsheet update?
Black Lives Matter California style
Just as a matter of interest,
supposing it was accepted – just how does a community fund that sort (any)of payout?
Updated “furlough scheme”? just print the money (except it is a state that just doesn`t get to print its own money)
I will accept that very few of the original slaves `volunteered` to emigrate to America, surely the chiefs and others that rounded them up and `sold` these people in the first place are the ones who should pay part of this bill.
Anyway if many of the slaves were available for ship ment to the West, it was possibly because they had evaded gangs of East African slavers who marched them across the country and shipped them to perhaps a worse slave state in the middle East
It is the Northern Ireland bit that upsets me. Snake is clearly aiming to give Northern Ireland to the E.U.. Hope the ERG and DUP win that one.
Black lives – a remake of Kunta Kinte!
Brexit – they just don’t get it do they?
NHS – it just isn’t working and will continue to be a money pit.