Ex-Tory Brexit minister Lord Frost rejects party’s claims over Europe-wide customs scheme – as it happened

• Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, has rejected the Conservative party’s claim that joining the PEM customs scheme would be a betrayal of Brexit. (See 3.59pm.)

• Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary, has suggested it is not impossible that Britain could become an Iran-style enemy of America, led by an Islamist government, within the next 20 years. (See 4.47pm.)

The US will take a “big interest” in the war in Sudan, because “failed countries become a haven of Jihadist extremist activity”, David Lammy has said.

As PA Media reports, the foreign secretary confirmed he had had “a brief conversation” with incoming US secretary of state Marco Rubio about the conflict in the region.

Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including the vast western Darfur region, PA says. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said there are grounds to believe both government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.

During a statement, asked by the Lib Dem MP Olly Glover if he could ensure Sudan was a priority for the US, Lammy replied:

I listened to the secretary of state, Rubio’s first press conference, and he talked about wanting prosperity for the United States, wanting, of course, security for the United States, and wanting safety for the United States.

And the truth is, the tremendous problems that we’re seeing in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Sudan, are deeply worrying, not just for us here in Europe, but also for the United States, because failed countries become a haven of Jihadist extremist activity that washes back up on our shores, that is the truth of it.

And when big countries, or indeed more powerful countries, invade small countries, particularly countries with minimal resources, we should be very concerned indeed and raise it as a big issue.

So for all of those reasons, I expect the United States will take a big interest in what’s happening in this regard.

Lammy earlier stated that the conflict in Sudan has created “the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”, with 30 million people now in “urgent need”. He said:

Just to make it clear to the house that’s more than Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Gaza and Mali combined. That is how bad the situation currently is.

Lammy also said the UK had an interest in the crisi. “Irregular migration from Sudan to Britain alone increased by 16% last year,” he said.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is flying to India in February for talks on a trade deal. He told an India Global Forum in parliament today:

I want to reaffirm the UK’s commitment to deliver growth in both countries, through the trade deal … I can let you know exclusively, I hear what you say about urgency, I’ve just been finalising my own visit to India next month to make sure we proceed.

MPs have voted to back an SNP bill saying compensation should be paid to the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) – although the government and the Conservative party abstained, and the bill will not proceed any further and will not become law.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, engineered the vote using the 10-minute rule, which allows a backbencher to make a short speech in favour of a private member’s bill that will not be allocated further time.

The 10-minute rule motion was passed by 105 votes to zero. The motion was backed by 61 Lib Dem MPs, 10 Labour MPs, 9 independent MPs, 7 SNP MPs, 5 DUP MPs, 3 Green MPs, 3 Reform UK MPs, 3 Plaid Cymru MPs, 2 Conservative MPs, 1 UUP MP and 1 TUV MP.

Waspi women have been campaigning for compensation to cover the fact that they were not properly informed about the government’s plan to raise the state pension age for women. In March last year the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said the women should receive compensation worth up to £10.5bn. But the then Tory government did not accept the proposal, and last month the new Labour government said it would not pay the compensation either.

Flynn’s bill would require the government to draw up plans for a compensation scheme.

The 10 Labour MPs who voted for it were: Jonathan Brash, Julia Buckley, Neil Duncan-Jordan, Chris Hinchliff, Terry Jermy, Brian Leishman, Emma Lewell-Buck, Melanie Onn,, Jon Trickett, and Steve Witherden.

The two Tories backing the motion were Roger Gale and John Hayes.

Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary, has suggested it is not impossible that Britain could become an Iran-style enemy of America, led by an Islamist government, within the next 20 years.

She raised the suggestion in a speech today to the rightwing Heritage Foundation in Washington, reviving a suggestion originally made by JD Vance before he was picked by Donald Trump to be vice president.

Braverman, who is one of the most rightwing figures in the Conservative party and who is seen as a potential defector to Reform UK, devoted much of the speech to praising Trump, saying that his re-election could lead to the demise of “progressive thinking” in the west.

She went on:

More importantly, what will happen in the west, if it does not? What will happen if democracy is indeed thwarted by the existing political class?

Vice President JD Vance said, at the National Conservative conference at which I also spoke in the summer, that the UK was going to be the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons. I don’t think he was joking.

Is it an impossibility that 20 years from now, it will be the UK, not China or Russia, that will emerge as the greatest strategic threat to the USA? Born out of a broken relationship and weak leadership. What happens if the UK falls into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism, our legal system gets substituted by Sharia Law and our nuclear capabilities vest in a regime not to dissimilar to that of Iran today?

Regardless of whether one thinks this is a realistic outcome, which I do not, should we not have the courage to ask these questions?

Braverman indulged in further anti-Muslim scaremongering in the Q&A. Referring to Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, she falsely described him as an “Islamist extremist”.

She justified this by saying that he had looked at Islamist material online. But Rudakubana came from a Christian family, and although he had looked at Islamist material online, he had also looked at lots of other extremely violent material online that did not have an Islamist connection. Sentencing Rudakubana last week, the judge, Mr Justice Goose, said:

The prosecution have made it clear that these proceedings were not acts of terrorism within the meaning of the terrorism legislation, because there is no evidence that Rudakubana’s purpose was to advance a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.

Last week, when Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice president, floated the prospect of the UK joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM), a Europe-wide customs scheme, Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, denounced this idea as a “betrayal” that would “shackle us to the EU”.

But this means that the Conservative leadership is now taking an even more hardline approach than some of the most prominent Brexiters in the party.

In an interview in the Times today, Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister who negotiated the post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, said that joining PEM would not threaten any of Britain’s Brexit freedoms. He said, when he was in government, he considered the case for joining. He explained:

We didn’t see it as raising any issue of principle, but we equally didn’t consider it to be particularly in UK interests. The EU also seemed to lose interest rapidly so the negotiations on this point quickly ran out of steam.

And Daniel Hannan, the peer and former MEP who was one of the leading Tory pro-Brexit campaigners in 2016, has also indicated that he would not mind the UK joining PEM. In his column in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, referring to the response to the Šefčovič proposal, Hannan said:

Immediately, Conservatives were denouncing “membership through the back door” while Lib Dems were exulting in Brussels being “receptive to the UK joining the Customs Union”. But the PEM is not a customs union (something which, for the avoidance of doubt, the UK, as a global trading nation, should not join). Are we really going to oppose, on principle and without looking at it, anything containing the word “Euro”?

This article by Jennifer Rankin explains how PEM works.

Parents have ‘lost trust’ in special educational needs provision, MPs told

Richard Adams

Parents have “lost trust” in special educational needs provision for children in England because of the hurdles they face getting help from local authorities, MPs were told.

A joint session of three parliamentary select committees – education, health and social care, and housing and local government – heard evidence from charities and organisations on the crisis facing children with special needs and disabilities in England.

With the number of children and young people granted education, health and care plans (EHCPs) heading towards 600,000, and local authorities reporting rising high needs budget deficits, the experts said resources were being strained to breaking point.

Imogen Steele, policy and public affairs officer for Contact, said her organisation was overwhelmed by calls to its helpline, and was trying to help parents rebuild their trust in what has becomeaninaccessible system.

A lot of parents don’t have trust in the system because they have been trying to get in touch with local authorities and they don’t reply, so they feel lost in the system.

Amanda Allard, director of the Council for Disabled Children, said:

What happens at the moment is that we have a ‘many wrong doors’ policy in too many areas, as opposed to one front door. And that is because of the different agencies involved and the different things that they commission, and the arguments – quite frankly – that happen over who pays for what.

Asked about improving the current distribution of high needs funding, Allard said:

I think that is a really, really difficult question…. what I would say is that the money couldn’t be spent any more badly than it is currently being spent.

Later witnesses were asked about the link between pupils with special needs and permanent exclusions. Tania Tirraoro, co-director of the Special Needs Jungle support group, said it was often only after pupils had been excluded from their school that they were found to have special needs. Tirraoro said:

We think that this should be banned – we don’t think a school should be allowed to exclude a child until an assessment of need has been carried out.

Paul Kohler, MP for Wimbledon and the Lib Dem transport spokesperson, told the Commons that Heathrow expansion would make it impossible for the UK to meet its climate commitments. He told MPs:

Whilst we must grow the economy, we must not do so at the expense of the environment. Expanding Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports will drive, fly, even, a coach and horses through our climate commitments, adding 92 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to our carbon footprint by 2050.

Why has [Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary], the former London deputy mayor for transport, now changed her mind? Two, how can the government reconcile this massive growth in carbon emissions with our carbon commitments? And three, why if the government is looking to grow our economy isn’t the government engaging meaningfully with Europe by negotiating a customs union?

Ministers are normally relatively respectful when responding to Liberal Democrat spokespeople in the Commons (they tend to make a point of taking them seriously, in part to make the Tories look more lightweight). But Mike Kane, the transport minister, was withering about Kohler. He replied:

One foot in, one foot out, you know, sort of ‘shake it all about’. Say one thing to one community under a flight path, saying another thing about jobs to another community on the flight paths.

Whatever I say will end up on [Lib Dem Focus leaflets], but you can’t have it both ways – you can’t support growth, you can’t support jobs, you can’t support airspace modernisation, you can’t support sustainable aviation fuels and then go to your constituents and say, ‘well look at what this terrible government is doing’.

MPs representing constituencies in west London expressed reservations about the Heathrow third runway plan during the urgent question.

John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor whose Hayes and Harlington constituency includes Heathrow, is a strong opponent of the third runway and he asked:

Has the department provided … an assessment for example of where the 8-10,000 people in my constituency who have their homes demolished or rendered unliveable will live if the Heathrow expansion goes ahead?

Has [the minister] also mapped out for the chancellor the flight paths of the additional quarter of a million planes flying over the homes of people in those marginal seats of Uxbridge and Watford and Harrow and elsewhere?

And also has he advised the chancellor on some of the figures that have been bandied about about the economic benefits which seem to derive from the Airport Commission’s figures that are out of date – that his own department rubbished very thoroughly only in recent years.

Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, said some of her constituents would want “a better not a bigger Heathrow”.

And Deirdre Costigan, the Labour MP for Ealing Southall, said while some of her constituents would “welcome the good-quality, well-paid jobs airport expansion will bring” but others would have environmental concerns.

Gareth Bacon, the shadow transport secretary, told MPs that his party supported a third runway at Heathrow – but he suggested that Labour was not serious about the proposal.

Speaking during the urgent question, he said:

We have heard that the chancellor is about to announce her support for airport expansion at Luton, Gatwick and Heathrow. His Majesty’s opposition are supportive of airport expansion because we recognise the huge economic benefits that that would bring.

In the case of Luton and Gatwick, the planning processes are well under way, but the situation at Heathrow is rather different. A completed third runway at Heathrow would undoubtedly bring economic benefits, which we would support, but delivering it will not be straightforward because there are major logistical barriers to its construction.

After asking for an assurance that a new planning application for a third runway would be submitted, he went on:

I sincerely hope that the minister can answer these questions today because if not, it will be clear that this is not a serious policy, but rather a panicked and rushed attempt by the chancellor of the exchequer to distract attention from the state of the economy, which is currently withering under this floundering Labour government.

Mike Kane, the transport minister, said Bacon was showing “brass neck” in criticising Labour on the economy given his party’s record.