Justice minister resigns over No 10 Covid fines and PM’s ‘official response’ – UK politics live | Politics

Marine Le Pen’s plan for a new partnership with a post-Brexit Britain is dangerous for France, ignorant and completely misunderstands the basis of British alliances, Peter Ricketts, the former UK national security adviser and UK ambassador to France, has told the Guardian.

He said the far-right presidential hopeful’s proposals represented a plan for French isolation from its main strategic partners, the US, Germany and the UK.

In her defence manifesto, Le Pen held out the hope of a restored Lancaster House treaty, the Franco-British defence cooperation treaty first signed in 2010, and underlined this by illustrating her defence plans with a picture of the union jack and tricolour flags.

The government has announced conditional allocations for the UK’s shared prosperity fund, saying it has matched previous EU funding but with less bureaucracy and more local control.
The fund will provide £2.6bn by 2025, and the government says it will be “a central pillar” of its “levelling up” agenda. With conditional allocations available for each area of the UK, local authorities will be able to put forward investment plan submissions from June to receive the money, PA reports. However, the Scottish government said the fund fell short of what was expected to replace EU structural funds. The fund includes £559m for Multiply, a UK-wide adult numeracy programme, to offer maths courses for adults with no or low maths skills, including a digital learning platform.

The Welsh secretary, Simon Hart, indicated Boris Johnson would not resign even if he was fined multiple times in the Metropolitan police’s Operation Hillman probe.
On Tuesday, Johnson did not rule out the prospect he could be fined again for further events. Hart told Times Radio: “I don’t necessarily see the difference between one or two [fines], for example, the principle is the same.” He said: “I personally don’t think that for people in public life – or any other walk of life, for that matter – that should necessarily be accompanied by another penalty, which is the removal of your job or similar.”

From my colleague Aubrey Allegretti

David Gauke, the former secretary of state for justice, said he is “not surprised” by the resignation of Lord Wolfson as a justice minister.

He told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme:

[I’m] not altogether surprised, I think it’s a particularly uncomfortable issue for anybody in the Ministry of Justice or for that matter the law officers.

Or at least it should be an uncomfortable situation, because you can’t have those who are making the law breaking the law. Particularly if it’s happened on repeated occasions.

Of course we’ve only had one fixed penalty notice for the prime minister so far, but frankly expectations are that there will be more. It is a very difficult situation … if you have particular responsibility for the rule of law, if you see rule makers breaking it.”

This is a striking sign of how much Rishi Sunak’s reputation has suffered since the spring statement three weeks ago – he is now even less popular than Boris Johnson, according to this Savanta ComRes poll.

Commenting on the findings, Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta ComRes, said:

While the Partygate fines may have changed the headline here, in that the prime minister’s favourability may too have taken a tumble had fieldwork been delayed another week, the fact we’ve seen such a drop in favourability during a tumultuous month for the chancellor ultimately points to the fact that all public goodwill he may have built up during the pandemic has all but evaporated. For context, even during the Partygate scandal, the PM’s favourability took two months to drop by a similar margin.

Of course, the Partygate scandal was leaked over a longer period, while a Christmas recess and the fact that Sunak has simply a greater height from which to fall will contribute to these numbers, a 26pt drop in one month feels unprecedented – and had it been conducted after being issued a fixed penalty notice, it could have been even more severe.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has complained about Tories using Ukraine as a “shield” to protect Boris Johnson, the BBC’s Andrew Kerr reports.

A former deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan police has told Sky News that officers have a “huge amount” of Partygate evidence that they still have not reviewed. Asked if it was correct that the Partygate investigation has further to go, Stephen Roberts said:

Yes, that’s my understanding as well. There’s a huge amount of material that the team still has to sift through and collate and then submit to lawyers, to be absolutely certain that they have a cast iron case and are able to prosecute if needs be.

This backs up Nigel Mills’ claim that future revelations could be worse for the PM. (See 1.52pm.)

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is facing the sack in the coming months, Harry Lambert claims in a good article for the New Statesman. Lambert says he has heard this from three high-placed Tory sources. He writes:

Inside No 10, I am told that Johnson has become openly contemptuous of Sunak, referring to him disparagingly by at least two expletive-laden nicknames. Both convey the sense of betrayal that Johnson feels after Sunak failed to offer his full support to Johnson at the peak of the partygate crisis in February.

At Chequers 10 days ago – prior to the damning tax revelations that have scuttled Sunak’s national standing – Johnson was already delighting in the blowback Sunak was facing after his spring statement fell flat three weeks ago. Nadine Dorries, a cabinet colleague of Sunak’s and a long-time Johnson loyalist, was a guest that weekend.

Perhaps most fatally, Lynton Crosby – the most trusted political strategist in the Tory party, who is informally advising Johnson in No 10 – is also gunning for Sunak. He has let it be known that he intends to finish the chancellor off. And a senior cabinet minister who has not always opposed Sunak now thinks that the he “deserves everything he gets”.

And this is from the former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron on the same topic.

A majority of the public think it would be acceptable to change the prime minister now, a YouGov poll suggests. But, by two to one, Conservatives supporters do not think it would be acceptable.

Some Tory MPs have been saying that, even though there may be a case for replacing Boris Johnson, doing so now would be wrong because of the war in Ukraine.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, has not joined other cabinet ministers in tweeting support for Boris Johnson since he was fined over Partygate yesterdday. But that should not be taken as some sort of snub, according to a Home Office source. The source said Johnson had Patel’s full support, but that it was difficult for Home Office ministers to comment on ongoing police investigations.

The UK is imposing sanctions on 178 individuals who are deemed to be “propping-up the illegal breakaway regions” in eastern Ukraine, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has announced. Another 28 Russians have also been sanctioned, including six oligarchs. The Foreign Office says this means more than 100 oligarchs and their relatives have been sanctioned since the war in Ukraine started.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has used Twitter to deliver a message to the Extinction Rebellion activists who glued themselves to the front of his department today, telling them the government will not abandon domestic oil and gas production.

Commenting on the ICO’s decision to end its criminal investigation into the leak of the Matt Hancock CCTV footage (see 2.44pm), the Department of Health and Social Care said:

We note the outcome of the ICO’s investigation and will continue to work with them to learn any lessons from this incident.

We take the security of our personnel, systems and estates extremely seriously.

Since this incident, we have worked with security specialists from across government to review procedures and will keep them continually under review.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has said there is not enough evidence to prosecute two people suspected of leaking footage of former health secretary Matt Hancock kissing his then aide in his office in the Department of Health (DHSC).

The footage was leaked to the Sun and led to Hancock’s resignation, on the grounds that his behaviour was in breach of government social distancing rules. Hancock subsequently left his wife to continue with relationship with Gina Coladangelo, who had been his adviser.

The ICO launched a criminal investigation after it received a report of a personal data breach from DHSC’s CCTV operator, EMCOR Group plc. Last year two homes in the south of England were raided as part of the investigation.

The ICO said in a statement:

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found insufficient evidence to prosecute two people suspected of unlawfully obtaining and disclosing CCTV footage from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) …

Given the seriousness of the report and the wider implications it potentially had for the security of information across government, the ICO had a legal duty to carry out an impartial assessment of the evidence available to determine if there had been a breach of the law.

Forensic analysis revealed that the leaked images were most likely obtained by someone recording the CCTV footage screens with a mobile phone.

Six phones retrieved during the execution of search warrants did not contain the relevant CCTV footage. After taking legal advice, the ICO concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with criminal offences under the Data Protection Act 2018.

The ICO has therefore closed its criminal investigation.

Chris Mason has been named as the BBC’s new political editor, replacing Laura Kuenssberg in one of the most prominent and powerful roles in British journalism, my colleague Jim Waterson reports.