The Scottish Government's appeal has been rejected today in The Scottish Ministers v The Scottish Information Commissioner. 🧵 This case is about the refusal to disclose information behind James Hamilton’s independent report relating to Ministerial behaviour during the probe into Alex Salmond.

It is alarming to see calls for @GBNEWS to be shut down in the wake of Laurence Fox's comments. Those pushing for it clearly lack any comprehension of free speech. Fox's comments were crass and rude, indeed disgusting. But TV channels should not be shut down because one of the people on their channel says something offensive on live broadcast.

Further to reports in the media today - I would like to set out the below facts on how the Swedes deal with asylum seekers from what they deem to be safe countries.

On 1 May 2021 Swedish legislation came into force that established a list of countries regarded as 'safe'... This is where arrivals from such countries could be immediately returned to the country of origin.

This safe country list was instituted after a judgement by the European Court in July 2018 that stated Sweden's Migration Agency could not summarily reject an application...

I have been contacted by several constituents concerned about proposals to use Humber View Hotel in my constituency to house asylum seekers.

@East_Riding Council and I have been resisting the proposals since the Home Office first made us aware of them. Humber View Hotel is in entirely the wrong location for this kind of accommodation.

The Council made that clear to the Home Office. And so did I, when I met directly with @SuellaBraverman and the previous Immigration Minister earlier this month to discuss this exact matter.

Whether we like it or not Putin has effectively declared war on the West.

He will view confining our actions to Article 5 measures as legalistic weakness. While we should continue to impose the most ferocious sanctions they are no longer a deterrent. They are a punishment. They will not stop him.

If NATO does not act now, Ukraine will be defeated in a matter of days.

What should we make of @BorisJohnson claims that the Government is repealing the Coronavirus Act 2020?

🧵 While I am pleased to see the Government ending most covid restrictions, I am disappointed the Coronavirus Act 2020 is not being repealed in full.

This is bad legislation that should be entirely removed.

It is clear that asylum offshoring would be both a moral and economic failure. I have tabled an amendment to the Nationality and Borders Bill to remove these proposals.

Below, I set out why I believe this system would be a failure. 👇 Directly applying the cost of the Australian offshoring system to the 23,500 migrants who have crossed the Channel this year alone would leave the British taxpayer with an estimated £32.4 billion bill. That is 23 times higher than our current system.

Today's report on the government's Covid handling is a thorough and valuable study. However, in my view its statement that Operation Cygnus failed because it focussed too much on flu is over emphasised. Cygnus was a poorly organised and misleading exercise. Even if the current pandemic was flu, Cygnus would still have been a misleading exercise. In fact, the whole Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies set-up is not up to the task, and needs dramatic reform.

I am getting very irritated by the 20:20 hindsight briefing against Dominic Raab. Firstly, nobody was predicting last Friday what was going to happen two days later. Not US intelligence, not our agencies, and certainly not the covert critics of Mr Raab. As the Foreign Secretary is possibly the most workaholic minister in this government, this is a very odd criticism.

The Holyrood inquiry’s report today damningly concluded the First Minister’s written evidence to Parliament was ‘an inaccurate account of what happened, and she has misled the Committee’. This is but one of the report’s damning findings, many of which confirm the points I made in Parliament last week that the Scottish Government sought to discredit.

This is a very important study on vitamin D and Covid-19. Its findings are incredibly clear. An 80% reduction in need for ICU and a 60% reduction in deaths, simply by giving a very cheap and very safe therapy - calcifediol, or activated vitamin D. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… The findings of this large and well conducted study should result in this therapy being administered to every Covid patient in every hospital in the temperate latitudes.

Anybody interested in the erratic advice of the government about wearing masks should read this paper jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… It may be why countries like Austria/Czechia/Slovakia have made masks compulsory in some circumstances, and also why the CDC changed their advice.

I couldn't get into Treasury Questions to ask @Jesse_Norman about the Loan Charge today. These are the points I would have made: 1. Sir Amyas Morse's report raises the point that the Treasury was still losing significant test cases up to 2015 and it was only resolved by the Supreme Court in 2017.

The Treasury’s forecasts in the past have almost never been right and have more often been dramatically wrong. Take their forecasts for the effects of a Leave vote made in May 2016. They said that in the 18 months after the referendum the economy would contract by at best 0.1 per cent and at worst 2.1 per cent. Instead, it GREW by 2.8 per cent. This is an error of 4.9% - up to £100 billion.

I have spent the last few days in Washington talking to US Government Trade and Treasury officials encouraging a free trade deal with the UK. Excellent response. They have already started on the procedures to allow negotiations to start immediately once we leave the EU in March. This will not be possible if we accept the Government's proposed deal with Europe, which will block every avenue of negotiation with America.

Today we set out more detail on how we think the UK, as a third country, can continue to cooperate with the EU on security and keep our people safe and prosperous. As I travel around Member States I hear how much our partners value the UK commitment to the EU’s security.