Braverman says she was offended by Lineker’s Nazi comparison because her husband is Jewish – UK politics live

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Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, has suggested that MPs will vote on the Northern Ireland protocol deal by the end of the month. Speaking on a visit to a garden centre on the outskirts of Belfast, he told reporters:

There’s some European processes that also are happening. So, the European parliament will have its say on this, I believe, next week, and then I think there’s one more stage in the European political sphere for it to go through, so that’ll be in the next two or three weeks.

We will be having a vote in parliament on a similar timetable.

The government’s illegal migration bill has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. In a statement it said:

Today’s British Jewish community is descended from refugees and/or migrants. We have significant concerns at the potential for newly proposed migration legislation to breach both the refugee convention and the Human Rights Act.

While we understand that small boat crossings to the UK have increased notably in recent years, we believe that strengthening and enhancing safe, legal and viable routes to gaining asylum in this country will be a far more effective way to significantly reduce such numbers.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, was asked about this in an interview with Robert Peston on ITV on Wednesday. In reply, she said that she had not seen the statement from the Board of Deputies, but that she was confident the bill complied with the refugee convention and other international obligations.

Suella Braverman has said that she was particularly offended by Gary Lineker’s claim that the language she has used to describe migrants is reminiscent of the language used in Nazi Germany because her husband in Jewish. (See 2.11pm.)

In the light of that, it is worth pointing out that some Jewish people feel differently. In January the Guardian published this article by Joan Salter, a Holocaust survivor, who explained why she confronted Braverman at a public meeting to ask her to explain why she was using words like “invasion” to describe the arrival of migrants.

In the article Salter makes an argument that is very similar to Lineker’s. She says:

The Holocaust began in a country where Jews and non-Jews had lived together in peace for generations. The small Jewish population – less than 1% – was so integrated into German culture that the majority looked upon themselves as Germans, with a variety of degrees of adherence to Jewish culture and traditions. So how did this relative harmony turn to hatred in such a short period of time? Through the use of language. The language of hate and division.

Ipsos has now published full details of the polling on the SNP leadership contest for Channel 4 News mentioned earlier. (See 11.13am.) It shows that Kate Forbes is the only one of the three candidates who has a higher net rating than Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, on who would do a good job as first minister. But all three SNP candidates outperform Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, who has by far the worst ratings of the five MSPs polled.

The full text of Bridget Phillipson‘s speech on childcare is now available here, on the FE News website. In one sense it was unsatisfactory, because she notably did not give any detail about the childcare reforms that a Labour government would introduce. But as a criticism of government policy it was more robust, and some of her arguments about this policy area were interesting.

My colleague Kiran Stacey has already posted on what she said about Sure Start. (See 1.28pm.) Here are some of the other points.

Phillipson said that in the 100 most marginal Conservative seats in England the parents of children under 11 make up more than a quarter of the population. “So in Britain next year, as in Australia last year, childcare will be central,” she said. “Family is the fight ahead.”

She said Liz Truss was right to identify the cost of childcare as a factor holding the country back.

But Phillipson said that the solutions offered by the Tories did not work. Truss favoured relaxing staff/child ratios, but Phillipson said that would only “drive down quality with minimal impact on costs”. And she said just offering parents free hours of childcare, which is current government policy, did not work either, because the subsidy to providers from government does not cover the costs, which means providers either go out of business, or have to jack up fees for the hours where parents are paying. She said:

Adding a few hours here and there is not going to work either.

More ‘free hours’ for parents, means more underfunded hours for nurseries, more costs piled on to providers struggling to deliver services as they are now, and more need for cross-subsidy.

The model they have built fails everyone.

There is speculation that Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, might increase the number of free hours available in next week’s budget. If so, this speech was a pre-buttal.

She said she was looking to other countries for ideas as to how to build a better system. She said:

We have to look not just around these islands, but around the world.

That’s why I was pleased to visit Estonia in the autumn, to see how they have made high-quality childcare a part of every childhood, a support for every family, and integral to the education system all our young people deserve.

That’s why I visited Australia, to see a system on the move, where the salience of a general election, and a new government hungry for change, is delivering for families at pace.

That’s why I am planning to visit Singapore, to see what Britain can learn from their childcare and skills systems.

And it’s why I plan to visit Ireland, to see a new funding model and a new sectoral deal for childcare.

Because the reform agenda of the next Labour government, will be lit up with the achievements of successful, future-facing governments from right around the world.

She said Labour was the “party of the family” and that “what matters about families is not the shape they have, but the love they give”. She went on:

I want strong families where the bonds are of love, and the foundation of that love is time spent happily together.

Because those strong families, rooted and grounded in love, are the basis of strong societies, the society Labour exists to build, where opportunity is for everyone and where no one is left behind.

Gary Lineker would not tell journalists this morning (see 11.34am) what was said in his recent conversation with Tim Davie, the BBC director general, but he hasn’t lost his appetite for taunting Tory ministers over Twitter. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, referred to him in the Commons this morning.

In a response on Twitter, Lineker used a joke to suggest Mordaunt was a bit useless.

He has also tweeted about putting the asylum row behind him and getting back to his day job.

The government’s flagship vocational reform continues to struggle, as the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, announced in a written statement this morning that a series of T-levels due to launch this year will instead be delayed.

Keegan said four of the six new T-level subjects starting in September have now been put on hold for at least a year, with catering delayed until 2025, “to allow time to consult with employers and sector bodies”.

T-levels are intended to be a vocational rival to A-levels but so far there appears only muted appetite from students and employers. Colleges have repeatedly asked the government to delay scrapping alternative qualifications such as BTecs until T-levels have gained some credibility.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the abrupt cancellation was “massively disrupting” for colleges and students. He said:

Colleges already had plans in place for how to deliver these now delayed T-levels and have been marketing them to potential learners. Alternative arrangements will now need to be made urgently.

The DfE must guarantee any providers which are affected have the support they need to ensure no student misses out on learning because of these delays.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said she feels personally offended by Gary Lineker comparing her language to that used by the Nazis because her husband is Jewish.

In an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, Braverman escalated her criticism of the Match of the Day presenter over his comment, saying it was “offensive”, “flippant” and “lazy”. She said:

I think it is, from a personal point of view, to hear that characterisation is offensive because – as you said – my husband is Jewish, my children are therefore directly descendant from people who were murdered in gas chambers during the Holocaust. And my husband’s family is very – feels very – keenly the impact of the Holocaust, actually.

To kind of throw out those kind of flippant analogies diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that millions of people went through and I don’t think anything that is happening in the UK today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust. So I find it a lazy and unhelpful comparison to make.

When it was put to Braverman that the comment may have been a reflection of the “passion” that Lineker felt about this, she said that she has been called a Nazi during the Brexit period and that she would not use language like that herself. She went on:

I think it’s an unhelpful way to frame the debate which is actually focused on people’s lives, compassion control over our borders and ultimately fairness what the British people want.

Braverman’s husband, Rael Braverman, is reportedly a manager for Mercedes, and the couple have two children.

On Tuesday Lineker posted a message on Twitter describing a video by Braverman in which she set out her asylum plans as “beyond awful”. Later he posted another tweet saying that the language being used by Braverman and others was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

Pay talks with health unions have been “constructive and meaningful”, the government has said, although a deal is not yet immediately in sight.

The brief update from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the discussions with GMB, Unison and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy will carry on next week.

It is nonetheless a relatively upbeat assessment of the talks. Strike action planned for this week was called off after Steve Barclay, the health secretary, agreed to discuss pay, including a one-off cost of living payment for this year, a major concession.

The DHSC statement said:

The government, NHS employers and unions representing the Agenda for Change workforce have been holding constructive and meaningful discussions over the past few days, covering pay and non-pay matters. These talks will continue into next week.

Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, says that if she had a pound for every time someone told her Labour should bring back Sure Start centres, she would be able to personally solve the problems facing Britain’s beleaguered public services.

So when she gave her speech this morning in Westminster on how to fund childcare properly (see 9.26am), you might have expected that she would do exactly that. But not a bit of it. Here is what she told an audience at Methodist Central Hall:

Sure Start was many great things, but too often the educational and healthcare component fell down the priority list. That’s why when people tell me we need to bring back Sure Start, I know they have a set of policy priorities with which I am deeply sympathetic, a set of values I share – but an approach to reform with which I differ.

As those filing out of the speech remarked afterwards, given the scheme’s popularity not only with the party’s leftwing base but also its modernising reformers and swing voters, it might have been better to bring in a new system and simply brand it as Sure Start 2.0. But Phillipson was clear she wants a more significant break from the past.

Sure Start centres were seen as one of the success stories of Tony Blair’s government. They still exist, but many have closed since 2010 and in many places they have been replaced by, or rebranded as, family hubs.

Ministers are set to delay construction of key sections of the HS2 rail line, with a statement expected imminently outlining the extent of budget overruns amid soaring inflation, my colleague Gwyn Topham reports.

In the Commons the Conservative MP Andrew Selous joined opposition MPs who have criticised attacks on civil servants by his party. During business questions, Selous, a former minister, said:

While there may be a need for challenging discussions between ministers and officials, the use of generic descriptions like snowflake is unwelcome, inaccurate and entirely inappropriate.

This was taken as criticism of the email sent out by CCHQ on Tuesday claiming civil servants were part of an “activist blob” blocking government policy, but in fact it was Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, who accused civil servants of “snowflake” tendancies in January. He was suggesting that officials who complained about being bullied by Dominic Raab were being unduly sensitive.

In response Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, said there were “wonderful people” in the civil service who were “diligent, who are determined to deliver for the government of the day and I’m pleased to be able to have the opportunity to put on record our gratitude to them”.

The latest NHS performance figures for England also show that ambulances are still missing their targets for response times, but that waits in A&E lasting more than 12 hours, or more than four hours, are falling, PA Media reports. PA says:

– The average response time in February for ambulances dealing with the most urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, was eight minutes and 30 seconds, unchanged from January but above the target standard response time of seven minutes.

– Ambulances took an average of 32 minutes and 20 seconds last month to respond to emergency calls such as heart attacks, strokes and sepsis, up very slightly from 32 minutes and six seconds in January, while the target is 18 minutes.

– The number of people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments from a decision to admit to actually being admitted stood at 34,976 in February, down 18% from 42,735 in January and down 36% from a record 54,532 in December 2022.

– The number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission has fallen from 142,139 in January to 126,948 in February, a drop of 11%.

The number of people in England waiting to start hospital treatment has returned to record levels, though times for the longest waits have improved, PA Media reports. PA says:

Ambulance and A&E performance has held steady, despite the NHS continuing to face pressures from bed shortages, winter viruses and strike action.

The proportion of cancer patients receiving their first treatment within two months of an urgent GP referral has dropped to a record low, however.

An estimated 7.21 million people were waiting to start routine hospital treatment at the end of January, up from 7.20 million in December, according to new figures from NHS England.

It is the joint highest total since records began in August 2007. This was previously reached in October 2022.

The number waiting more than a year and a half to start treatment has dropped month-on-month by 17% from 54,882 to 45,631, in a sign that progress is being made on clearing the backlog of longest waits.

The government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than 18 months by April 2023.

Waits of more than 52 weeks are down from 406,035 in December to 379,245 in January, with a target for eliminating them completely by March 2025.

Downing Street has said that Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman do not view civil servants as part of an “activist blob” that stopped the government from implementing its policies to cut small boat crossings.

The Conservative party made this claim in an email sent out on Tuesday to supporters, purportedly written by Braverman. Yesterday the party said that was a mistake, because she had not seen the text, or approved its wording.

Asked about the email at today’s lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

It doesn’t represent her views and certainly does not represent the views of the prime minister …

From the prime minister’s point, he thinks the civil service is vital to the work of government and, as you’ve heard on other issues, he thinks civil service impartiality is crucial and he wouldn’t want to see anything done to have an impact on that.

Gary Lineker won’t face any disciplinary action from the BBC over his tweet comparing the goverment’s language about asylum seekers to Nazi rhetoric, the Sun’s Noa Hoffman reports.

?ric Zemmour, the French far-right commentator, supporter of the “great replacement” theory that Muslim immigrants are replacing native Europeans and candidate for president in last year’s election (he came fourth), has also praised Rishi Sunak’s new asylum policy.

In a tweet yesterday, Zemmour said:

The message is clear. In the UK, illegal immigrants are not welcome and will receive no preferential treatment.

Congratulations to the British prime minister who, unlike Macron’s government, has chosen to protect his people against submersion by migrants.

Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has praised Rishi Sunak’s anti-immigration measures as “harsh but fair”.

In a post on Instagram, Salvini, leader of the far-right League, quoted a tweet by Sunak, translated into Italian, in which Sunak said: “If you arrive illegally in the UK, you can’t claim asylum; you can’t benefit from our modern slavery protections; you can’t make spurious human rights claims; you can’t stay”.

Beneath the post, Salvini wrote:

Words from the UK prime minister. Harsh but fair.

Salvini, who turned 50 today, will attend a cabinet meeting later today in Cutro, the Calabrian town close to where 72 people are confirmed to have died in a shipwreck.

The meeting comes as debate rages over whether the immigration policies of Giorgia Meloni’s government contributed to the tragedy. The cabinet is expected to toughen measures against people smugglers while loosening bureaucracy for foreign workers to enter Italy via legal routes.