EU to use ‘all measures at its disposal’ if UK abandons parts of Northern Ireland protocol – as it happened

• Micheál Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach, has criticised the UK government for introducing measures to deal with unsolved crimes committed during the Troubles without Dublin’s support. Martin said any changes to the mechanisms agreed in the 2014 Stormont House agreement should be made in conjunction with the Irish government and the Stormont parties and involve “serious and credible engagement” with victims. He was speaking as the UK government announced plans introduce a form of statute of limitations for people involved in killings during the Troubles who cooperate with a Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. The Stormont House agreement said unsolved crimes from the Troubles should be investigated by a historical investigations unit.

• Liz Truss has claimed the east-west relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been “undermined” by the Northern Ireland protocol as she confirmed plans to table legislation that would scrap parts of the agreement. The foreign secretary told MPs during her statement that 78% of people in Northern Ireland thought the protocol needed to change, according to a poll from December. Truss seems to have been referring to polling from Lord Ashcroft published in December. The figure 78% only appears once in that report in relation to the protocol, in a passage saying 78% of unionists thought the protocol had been a major cause of food shortages. The same poll found, amongst the Northern Ireland population as a whole, only 42% of people said the protocol should be scrapped (33%) or needed serious reform (9%).

• Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commisison vice-president in charge of Brexit negotiations for the EU, issued to the Truss statement. In it he stresses the EU’s desire to reach a negotiated settlement with the UK on changes to the Northern Ireland protocol, and says “the potential of the flexibilities” proposed by the EU have “yet to be fully explored”. But Šefčovič says the UK plan to ignore parts of the protocol “raises significant concerns”. If the UK goes ahead with this, Brussels will respond “with all measures at its disposal”, he added.

• Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero, accused Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, of missing three chances to act on energy bills in the last seven months. The chancellor told MPs in the Queen’s speech debate that it would be a mistake for the government to try using unrestrained borrowing and spending to address the cost of living crisis. Sunak said that history showed that an “unconstrained fiscal stimulus” at such a time risked “making the problem worse”.

• Two byelections in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton will take place on 23 June with the Conservatives fighting to keep the seats from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Both seats will be fought after the Tory MPs resigned following scandals. The former Wakefield MP Imran Ahmad Khan resigned after being found guilty of child sexual assault against a 15-year-old boy. In the Devon seat, Neil Parish resigned as MP after admitting watching pornography twice in the House of Commons chamber.

That’s it for today. Thanks for following along.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes of Cumnock took aim at former chief Brexit negotiator and minister Lord Frost, who was sat on the backbenches in the upper chamber for the government statement on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

He said: “We are just a wee bit fed up with those people who were responsible for it and got their peerages as a result of supporting that campaign get up now and criticise what they advocated.”

Having “pushed this on us”, Lord Foulkes said the Tory peer now “snipes from the sidelines”.

“We should blame those whose responsibility it really is,” he added.

Referring to the protocol, former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Empey said: “All of the consequences were foreseeable and indeed were foreseen.”

The Home Office intends to move 60 asylum seekers into a disused North Yorkshire RAF base by the end of the month, the local council has said.
Hambleton District Council says it has asked the Government to pause the controversial proposal “immediately” amid opposition from residents in the village of Linton-on-Ouse. Ministers announced plans for the new accommodation and processing centre last month. The Home Office says the asylum reception centre will provide “safe and cost-effective” accommodation for single adult males who are claiming asylum in the UK and meet the relevant suitability criteria. A Home Office spokesperson said: “The asylum reception centre at Linton-on-Ouse will help end our reliance on expensive hotels which are costing the taxpayer almost 5 million a day. We are engaging with local stakeholders about the use of the site.

“The New Plan for Immigration will fix this broken asylum system, allowing us to support those in genuine need while preventing abuse of the system and deterring illegal entry to the UK.”

17 May 202212.36 EDT

Sunak says government should not just borrow and spend its way out of cost of living crisis

Andrew Sparrow

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, told MPs in the Queen’s speech debate that it would be a mistake for the government to try using unrestrained borrowing and spending to address the cost of living crisis. He said that history showed that an “unconstrained fiscal stimulus” at such a time risked “making the problem worse”. He explained:

Prices pushed up still further, expectations of higher inflation becoming ingrained, a vicious cycle leading inexorably to even higher interests and more pain for tens of millions of mortgage holders and small businesses.

Make no mistake, simply trying to borrow and spend our way out of this situation is the wrong approach and those paying the highest price would be the poorest in our society.

Instead, on this side of the house we’re taking a careful, deliberate approach. We will act to cut costs for those people without making the situation worse, we will continue to back people who work hard - as we always have - and we will do more to support the most vulnerable.

Sunak also repeated his claim that “no option is off the table” in relation to a windfall tax. He said:

We are pragmatic and what we want to see are energy companies who have made extraordinary profits at a time of acutely elevated prices investing those profits back into British jobs, growth and energy security.

But as I have been clear, and as I have said repeatedly, if that doesn’t happen soon and at significant scale then no option is off the table.

That is all from me for today. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is now taking over.

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, told MPs during her statement that 78% of people in Northern Ireland thought the protocol needed to change, according to a poll from December. (See 1.17pm.)

Truss seems to have been referring to polling from Lord Ashcroft published in December. The figure 78% only appears once in that report in relation to the protocol, in a passage saying 78% of unionists thought the protocol had been a major cause of food shortages.

The same poll found, amongst the Northern Ireland population as a whole, only 42% of people said the protocol should be scrapped (33%) or needed serious reform (9%).

More than half of people said either it was acceptable with some adjustments (36%), or that it did not need to change at all (21%).

Ashcroft’s report said:

In our poll, one third (33%) of voters said they thought the protocol was wrong in principle and should be scrapped – including 83% of 2017 DUP voters and 66% of unionists as a whole. A further 9% – including 32% of UUP voters – said the protocol as it stands is too much of a burden and needs serious reform.

Another 36% of all voters – including 81% of 2017 SDLP voters, two thirds (67%) of Alliance voters and neutrals, and 26% of 2017 UUP voters – said they thought the protocol would be acceptable with some adjustments. Only 4% of 2017 DUP voters said this.

Just over one in five voters overall (21%) – including a majority (56%) of those who voted Sinn Féin in 2017 – said they thought there were no problems with the protocol.

Those currently leaning towards voting UUP at the next assembly elections were much more inclined to accept the protocol with some adjustments than those inclined to support the DUP and (especially) the TUV – 96% of the latter said they thought the protocol was wrong in principle and should be scrapped.

If you add 33% and 9% and 36%, you reach 78%, and so Truss may have been referencing this calculation - and not misremembering the figure used in the report that only applied to unionists. It would be fair to say that 78% of people, according to this polling, favoured some sort of changes to the protocol.

But Truss implied that the majority of people in Northern Ireland favoured change along the lines she is proposing. But the polling shows that, of those people who do want change (or did in December), almost half wanted more modest adjustments (which is in line with what the EU is offering).

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I am grateful to bats2in2the2belfry in the comments below for flagging up these figures.

Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero, accused Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, of missing three chances to act on energy bills in the last seven months. Speaking in the Queen’s speech debate, he said:

The chancellor wants us to believe that his measures in response are the best we can do. But they are not. Not by a long shot. The cost-of-living crisis is driven most of all by what is happening to energy bills. Let’s look at the three chances he has had in the last seven months to act on energy bills.

It was last August, last August, nine months ago, when the first energy price rise was announced. A £139 increase in the price cap. So, way back then he knew what was happening. And then in October, he delivered his budget. Wholesale energy prices were rocketing, the warning signals were flashing, but the chancellor did nothing.

In February another chance he had as the largest energy price rise in our history, 52%, was announced. He could have responded, commensurate with the crisis. He says he did, let’s look at it. What was his grand offer to the country - a £150 council tax discount based on outdated property values, which misses out hundreds of thousands of the poorest families. And of course, his £200 buy now, pay later loan scheme. A loan scheme, which he reasonably claims isn’t a loan, although it has to be paid back, and a scheme that doesn’t even come in til October.

His recent spring statement was his most recent chance for the Chancellor to redeem himself. Days before the April energy price rise came into effect. It was apparent to everyone across this House and the country that what he had offered was woefully inadequate.

Miliband also said he and other MPs would have no idea how to manage on the sums available to benefit claimants. He explained:

The basic level of universal credit this year for a single person over 25 is £334 a month. [Sunak’s] measures this April are so feeble that someone on that benefit will be expected to find as much as £50 more a month or more to simply cover the increase in their energy bills. That’s leaving aside the soaring costs of food and other goods. It’s about 15% of their income. So, what are they going to do? They won’t be able to afford to pay their bills. They will get deeply into debt and they will go without food. It’s already happening to millions.

I met someone in the CAB [Citizens Advice Bureau] in my constituency on Friday in similar circumstances, and let me be honest, I would have no idea how I would cope in these circumstances. Would any member of this house? Maybe the chancellor can tell us what somebody in these circumstances is supposed to do?

And if you are the chancellor of the exchequer and you can’t answer that question, it should tell you something. That you are failing in your duty to the people of this country who most need your help. And of course, what makes him even more culpable is that there is something that could help staring him right in the face, where the case has become unanswerable, where the government has run out of excuses, where oil and gas producers are making billions: a windfall tax.

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Micheál Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach, has criticised the UK government for introducing measures to deal with unsolved crimes committed during the Troubles without Dublin’s support.

As PA Media reports, Martin said any changes to the mechanisms agreed in the 2014 Stormont House agreement should be made in conjunction with the Irish government and the Stormont parties and involve “serious and credible engagement” with victims.

He was speaking as the UK government announced plans introduce a form of statute of limitations for people involved in killings during the Troubles who cooperate with a Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery

Speaking at a commemoration to mark the 48th anniversary of the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed 33 people, Martin said:

It has been our consistent position that the basis for progress on legacy is the Stormont House agreement that was reached between the two governments and political parties back in 2014.

Any attempt to depart from that agreement would need to be discussed by both governments and with all of the parties in an inclusive process.

And there would need to be serious and credible engagement with victims and families.

The Stormont House agreement said unsolved crimes from the Troubles should be investigated by a historical investigations unit. But the British government has been under pressure to adopt a different approach after complaints about army veterans being prosecuted under this process over events that took place decades ago and over which they were cleared at the time.

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These are from Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, on the Liz Truss statement.

In a Twitter thread starting here, Anton Spisak, the Brexit expert at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change thinktank, highlights aspects of the statement pointing to a similar conclusion.

Here are two of his conclusions.

And the Electoral Psychology Observatory, an academic project, has posted a thread on Twitter arguing it could all end very badly. It starts here.

And here are its conclusions.

In the Commons Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, have been speaking at the opening of today’s Queen’s speech debate.

As the Scotsman’s Alexander Brown points out, Miliband ridiculed Sunak’s response to the cost of living crisis.

And Sunak said he would be “pragmatic” when deciding whether or not to implement a windfall tax, as the FT’s George Parker points out.

I will post extracts from both speeches soon.

17 May 202210.02 EDT

Lisa O'Carroll

The UK’s announcement about the plan to change the Northern Ireland protocol is straining relations once again with Ireland. The Irish foreign secretary, Simon Coveney, said:

I deeply regret the decision of the British government to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that will unilaterally dis-apply elements of the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.

Coveney said such action was “damaging to trust and will serve only to make it more challenging to find solutions to the genuine concerns that people in Northern Ireland have about how the protocol is being implemented”.

Here is the Coveney statement in full.

This is from Matthew O’Toole, an SDLP member of the Northern Ireland assembly, on the line used by Boris Johnson yesterday, and Liz Truss today, about all parties in the Northern Ireland assembly wanting changes to the protocol.

It is true that parties like the SDLP, the Alliance party and Sinn Féin think aspects of the protocol regime could be improved, But the EU itself has also accepted that implementation of the protocol should be reformed, and it has proposed changes. There is a significant difference between the Northern Ireland parties wanting adjustments in line with that the EU would accept, and the DUP, which wants changes that are unacceptable to the EU and that would be tantamount to the abolition of the protocol.

The UK government’s position is much closer to the DUP’s than to Sinn Féin’s, the Alliance’s or the SDLP’s.

Back in the Commons, Claire Hanna from the SDLP says it is telling that Truss quoted opinion polling on the Northern Ireland protocol in Northern Ireland. (See 1.17pm.) Truss should instead consider the recent election results, Hanna suggests, which showed a substantial majority of people backing parties that support the protocol.

Boris Johnson has said the UK’s plans involve getting rid of “relatively minor barriers to trade”. Speaking on his visit to Paddington station, he said:

We need to address the problems with the [Northern Ireland] protocol. What that actually involves is getting rid of some relatively minor barriers to trade.

I think there are good, common sense, pragmatic solutions. We need to work with our EU friends to achieve that.

This is from David McAllister, the German MEP who chairs the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Sir Robert Buckland, the former Tory justice secretary, told Truss earlier that wording contained in article 1 of the Northern Ireland protocol meant “surely” that the Good Friday agreement “takes primacy over the protocol”. He said:

Article 1 of the protocol makes it very clear that that agreement is to be without prejudice to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement regarding the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. That means, surely, that the Good Friday agreement takes primacy over the protocol.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, asks Truss why she won’t agree a veterinary agreement with the EU.

Truss says her plan would reduce bureaucracy generally.