Gavin Williamson has Sunak’s ‘full confidence’, says No 10, as Starmer calls for him to be sacked – UK politics live | Politics

EU and UK not ‘worlds apart’ on solving Northern Ireland protocol problem, says Šefčovič

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU and UK positions on the protracted Northern Ireland Brexit dispute are not “worlds apart” and can be solved, the European Commission vice president Maroš Šefčovič has said.

He was speaking as it emerged that Brussels was about to start testing a live data feed from HMRC listing the precise goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain.

The access represents a significant breakthrough in negotiations between Brussels and London and will give both sides evidence for the first time on what goods entering ports in Northern Ireland stay in the country and what precisely goes over the border to the republic.

Speaking at a specially convened Westminster assembly of 70 parliamentarians from both the EU and the UK, Šefčovič said both sides more or less agreed on the need to allow goods destined to remain in Northern Ireland to pass unimpeded from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

But there was some minor disagreement on level of checks for smuggled goods. He told the new EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly (PPA):

Our respective positions are not worlds apart.

A lot has been said about “a UK’s green lane” versus “an EU’s express lane”.

The issue here boils down to “no checks” versus “minimum checks”, stemming from Brexit itself.

The UK wants no checks on goods destined to remain in Northern Ireland but the EU is arguing minimum checks are needed to guard against rogue goods not complying with EU standards or diseased good products going across the border into the republic.

The UK’s minister for Europe, Leo Docherty, told the PPA that his “priority” was to “strengthen the relationship”.

Keir Starmer has dismissed claims that leftwing candidates are being purged by Labour ahead of the next election. Speaking to reporters this morning, he said the priority was getting “the very best candidates” in place. He said:

We are preparing for the next election, the sooner the better.

I am determined to have a team of incoming MPs, who are the team for the future.

We will have a big challenge and so of course we are making sure we have got the very best candidates to put before the public for that general election which we so desperately need.

At the weekend the Telegraph ran a story saying “a number of leftwing candidates have been blocked from standing for Labour at the next election in what sources have said is a biased move against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.” But one of the best recent accounts of what has been happening is in today’s Times, where Patrick Maguire has a column saying that of the 39 candidates selected so far in the seats that Labour must win if it is going to form a government, not one has been won by a leftwinger. Maguire says:

Two years ago, Starmer promised to give local members full control over selections. Yet since day one of his leadership he has delegated the important but dirty business of professionalising/preparing for government/purging — it’s all the same thing — to a tight circle of flea-bitten faction fighters from the party’s old right and New Labour wings, and conscientious objectors who kept the Blairite faith during the Corbyn years. In so far as they vet candidates, insiders insist, it is to stop anyone capable of bringing a Labour government into disrepute getting anywhere near a ballot paper, even in the safest of Tory seats.

Maguire says Starmer’s allies say people are being excluded not on the grounds of ideology, but on the grounds of competence. But it is leftwingers who are losing out.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, said that he would sack an MSP from a shadow ministerial job if they sent message to a colleague like those sent by Gavin Williamson to Wendy Morton. In an interview with Times Radio, he said language of that kind was unacceptable. Asked if he would sack someone from the frontbench for communication like that, he replied:

Yes, they wouldn’t be in my frontbench with the language that’s been used.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson defended the government’s decision to send trade minister Greg Hands to Taiwan. Asked about China’s criticism of the visit (see 11.59am), the spokesperson said:

We have a long-established trade relationship with Taiwan, it’s worth £8bn a year.

These are annual talks between the UK and the ministry of economic affairs in Taiwan, we have a vibrant, long-standing relationship on areas like trade and culture, and this will form part of that engagement.

Conservative supporters who read the main pro-Tory newspapers may have found this morning’s offering rather confusing. The Daily Mail led on a story implicitly criticising “Red Ed” Miliband for proposing that the UK pays “climate change damages”, as it put it in the headline, to poorer countries most affected by the climate crisis.

But the Daily Telegraph splashed on a story saying that the same policy could end up being adopted by Rishi Sunak – or “Red Rishi” as perhaps the Mail will be calling him tomorrow.

In fact, as the Mail story acknowledges several paragraphs in, Miliband said yesterday he was not explicitly calling for the UK to pay “reparations”. He said the terminology mattered, because some people “are allergic to the term reparations”. Miliband said he was talking about the need for the UK and others to help poorer countries facing massive problems.

And this is broadly the UK government’s position too. At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said the UK was already helping poorer countries deal with the consequences of climate change. He went on:

My understanding is that neither reparations or liability is what’s being discussed at Cop27. It’s about working together to support a climate vulnerable countries …

We are not talking about reparations or liability. We are talking about continuing to provide support for countries to adapt to the impact of climate change.

This morning the Guardian published an article in the Cop27 secret negotiator series (articles by Cop27 negotiators from developing countries, speaking with more candour because they are writing anonymously), addressing this very issue. Here is an extract.

One of the key issues is whether the agenda item should include the terms “liability” and “compensation”. The developed countries want a footnote that says the ideas of liability and compensation are excluded. This goes back to article 8 of the Paris agreement. In paragraph 51 of the decision text on the Paris agreement, it says liability and compensation are excluded from loss and damage.

But in the original treaty, the 1992 UNFCCC, they are not excluded. So we want to leave this open, to be freer in our discussions, by not having these exclusions referred to in the agenda item. Developed countries won’t agree.

And here is the full article.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson said Rishi Sunak retains “full confidence” in Gavin Williamson. That was not particularly surprising, because Williamson has not been sacked and the “full confidence” question is always a binary one; either the answer is yes, or the minister is out.

But the spokesperson confirmed that Williamson is still being investigated by the Conservative party. Asked why Williamson was still in government if Sunak thought his messages to Wendy Morton were unacceptable, the spokesperson replied:

As you know, there is a process going on. I think, obviously, that’s run by the Conservative party. So, it’s not one for me.

I think the prime minister has said that it’s right to let that process happen and he welcomes that Gavin Williamson has expressed regret about those comments, which as you say he doesn’t think are acceptable.

Asked why Williamson was given a job, the spokesperson replied: “Obviously [the PM] thinks he has an important contribution to make to government.” But the spokesperson was unable to say much about what this important contribution might involve. He said Williamson would be involved in the GREAT campaign, a campaign to promote the UK, but otherwise he said the Cabinet Office would be able to give details of Williamson’s full ministerial responsibilities.

I’ve approached the Cabinet Office, and will publish their reply when I get it.

UPDATE: The Cabinet Office said they would publish the details shortly. See 1.25pm.

Speaking to reporters during a visit this morning, Keir Starmer criticised Rishi Sunak for initially saying he would not attend the Cop27 summit. Explain how a Labour government would take a different approach on climate issues, Starmer said:

The first difference a Labour government would make is that you would have a prime minister who wanted to go to Cop because we realise just how important it is, because we realise that is not just about climate, it is also about the cost of living, it is about energy, it is about the next generation of jobs.

You would have a prime minister, a Labour prime minister, on the world stage, pulling leaders together. I think Rishi Sunak made a big mistake in saying initially he wouldn’t go, because it gave the impression that the UK no longer wants to be leading on the global stage.

Starmer also said he hoped Sunak would use his meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to discuss how the UK and France can “work upstream” to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats. Starmer said:

I would, of course, talk to President Macron about those who are crossing the Channel and the focus for my discussion would be on how we work upstream to stop the people smugglers. Before I was a politician I was director of public prosecutions, I know how these cross-border operations work.

We would work with France, upstream, to stop the smugglers in the first place. That is the discussion I would have, I hope it is the discussion that our prime minister will have.

China has lashed out at the UK for sending trade minister Greg Hands to talks in Taiwan, insisting that “official contacts” with the self-governing island republic must cease, PA Media reports.

Hands is kicking off a two-day visit with discussions aimed at “boosting trade” and promoting UK expertise in hydrogen and offshore wind. He is due to meet President Tsai Ing-wen and co-host the UK-Taiwan 25th annual Trade Talks in Taipei during the trip.

But China – which claims Taiwan as its own territory and has threatened to annex the island by force – has urged Britain to back off, PA Media reports. At a daily briefing, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the UK should uphold the so-called “one-China principle” and stop “any forms of official contacts with Taiwan”. Zhao said:

[The UK should] earnestly respect China’s sovereignty, uphold the one-China principle, stop any forms of official contacts with Taiwan and stop sending wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces.

In a statement quoted in the news release about his visit, Hands said: “Boosting trade with this vital partner is part of the UK’s post-Brexit tilt towards the Indo-Pacific and closer collaboration will help us future-proof our economy in the decades to come.”