The Business Committee is hearing this morning from subpostmasters, their solicitors and key figures from govt/Post Office Limited and Fujitsu which designed Horizon.

The Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake is sitting listening to all of the evidence - he's up at 12. Solicitor for many of the affected subpostmasters Neil Hudgell says just three people have so far been fully compensated for the scandal.

As if the Conservative Party didn't have enough problems, we now begin day 2 of Boris Johnson's evidence to the Covid Inquiry... Was Eat Out to Help Out a 'perverse acceleration' of lockdown lifting?

Boris Johnson resists temptation to criticise Rishi Sunak, who designed it.

"It was not presented to me at the time as something that would add to the budget of risk", it wasn't a "gamble" he says.

BREAKING: Rwanda government threatens to pull out of the deal if it does not adhere to international law.

Hugely problematic - and potentially humiliating - for govt if its partner country decides the deal is too toxic.

Statement below 👇 Part of the issue with the deal for judges in the Supreme Court is that Rwanda has been accused of breaking international agreements in the way it treats asylum seekers. Now Rwanda says the UK government's potential attitude to international law is a step too far.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules that the government’s policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is UNLAWFUL. Supreme Court unanimously decides that Rwanda might return asylum seekers to their country of origin before having their cases properly considered (breaking the principle of non-refoulement).

On 3rd March 2020 Dominic Cummings sent this message to others in No10 saying Boris Johnson "doesn't think it's a big deal" and that Covid will "be like swine flu".

"He thinks his main danger is talking economy into a slump." #CovidInquiry We are hearing from Lee Cain, Director of Communications in No10 during the initial months of the pandemic.

He is asked about his statement in his written evidence that "the government had no plan" for a pandemic.

NEW: Home Secretary Suella Braverman brands pro-Palestinian protests as “hate marches”.

She says police must take “zero-tolerance approach” to them when slogans like ‘from the river to the sea’ are chanted. Here is the clip.

Suella Braverman is branding all the pro-Palestinian marches as “hate marches” which have the aim, in her view, of “wiping Israel off the map”.

She includes all the tens of thousands of protestors in that statement.

EXCLUSIVE: The doctor who helped catch Britain’s worst baby killer.

Dr Ravi Jayaram spent two years pleading with hospital managers to investigate Lucy Letby.

Instead, they made him apologise and attend mediation with her.

The government has just ordered an inquiry into the circumstances around the murders and “how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with”.

Our full story here:

itv.com/news/2023-08-1…

BREAKING: Privileges Committee concludes that Conservative MPs and peers deliberately tried to undermine its inquiry into Boris Johnson and intimidate its members.

They single out Nadine Dorries, Michael Fabricant, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel, Mark Jenkinson and more.

Committee says:

“Their aim was to (1) influence the outcome of the inquiry, (2) impede the work of the Committee by inducing members to resign, (3) discredit the Committee’s conclusions if those conclusions were not what they wanted, (4) discredit the Committee as a whole.”

Woah, Boris Johnson is stepping down as an MP before he’s potentially pushed, after Privileges Committee recommends a suspension of more than 10 days over partygate. His parliamentary career is over (for now).

https://twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1667246044512505865

In a long statement, Boris Johnson accuses the Privileges Committee of bias.

BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s resignation honours…

Damehoods - Andrea Jenkyns, Priti Patel.

Knighthoods - Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Fabricant, Conor Burns.

Honours for staff at centre of partygate Jack Doyle, Rosie Bate-Williams and Shelly Williams-Walker.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… Peerages for other key aides including Dan Rosenfield, who lost his job amid partygate, and Ross Kempsell who continues to be Boris Johnson’s spokesperson.

Also peerages for Mayor of Tees Valley Ben Houchen and former London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey.

“I’m not familiar with that particular case”.

Suella Braverman says she didn’t know about 12 refugees being killed in Rwanda in 2018 after protesting about their conditions.

Moments earlier she insisted “Rwanda is safe for refugees”.

“Rwanda is a safe country” she repeats. Braverman won’t say whether or not she will reverse the policy should something serious like this happen to refugees again in future. #BBCLauraK

EXCL: Fire service is facing “watershed moment” as Inspectorate finds every service in England contains harassment & bullying.

In an exclusive interview, the Inspectorate tells me they’ve been shocked by our investigation - “the behaviour must stop”.

itv.com/news/2023-03-3… Inspectorate found misogyny, racism and homophobia in a quarter of services.

In one, a black firefighter was called the ‘n’ word.

In another, male colleagues simulated rape on a female firefighter.

In a third, homophobic language was scrawled on a locker.

Boris Johnson’s opening pitch:

“I accept that the Commons was misled by my statements that the Rules and Guidance had been followed completely at No. 10. But when the statements were made, they were made in good faith…I did not intentionally or recklessly mislead the House.” “There is no evidence at all that supports an allegation that I intentionally or recklessly misled the House. The only exception is the assertions of the discredited Dominic Cummings, which are not supported by any documentation.”

🧵Why are people picking up on Kate Forbes telling @BethRigby that conversion therapy is someone’s “choice”?

The argument gets complicated, but is actually very simple.

Question is whether someone can consent to their own harm. 1/ The medical consensus is that CT is harmful (a memorandum of understanding was signed by the major psychological and psychiatric bodies in UK).

Practitioners (almost all of whom are religious leaders) dispute this and say CT works. There is no scientific evidence for this. 2/

The preliminary report from the Privileges Committee today is quite damning.

What’s new? Well it concludes that Boris Johnson may have misled parliament on several occasions and includes new photographs of him attending events during lockdown, including with booze on the table. It also contains WhatsApp messages from his Director of Communications at the time, raising concerns about the PM’s birthday party.

“I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is within the rules in my head”.

ie No10 knew it was probably illegal (police concluded it was).

NEW: Understand witnesses are now being contacted by Privileges Committee to begin submitting written and later oral evidence re partygate.

They are being asked not just for evidence of parties but the briefing Boris Johnson was given in response to ITV News and Mirror stories. ie The Committee wants to know what No10 decided Boris Johnson should say in the media and in Parliament about the scandal. In other words, whether there was an attempt to mislead of course.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly looks utterly thrilled to be on the morning round today defending the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi and the financial affairs of Boris Johnson. #ridge “I don’t know” is the overall response to both scandals. In reality, ministers receive a thorough briefing before going on the airwaves and are acutely aware of the topics they’re likely to be asked about. Foreign Secretary clearly doesn’t want to be drawn into all this.

Rishi Sunak has been issued with a fixed penalty notice by police for failing to wear a seat belt.

He becomes the second Prime Minister (after Boris Johnson) to be found to have broken the law while in office. This adds to the FPN Sunak has already received for attending Boris Johnson’s birthday party during lockdown.

Though this one doesn’t quite come with same moral outrage of flaunting rules the whole nation had followed in the name of the greatest collective sacrifice since WWII.

EXCL: Boris Johnson joked about being at ‘the most unsocially distanced party in the UK’ during lockdown.

Explosive new revelations in our podcast series Partygate: The Inside Story have key implications for Privileges Committee.

itv.com/news/2023-01-1…

For the first time you hear from three of our sources - in their own words - about why they chose to expose the scandal and how No10 was reacting inside.

Including this extraordinary claim that staff began shredding evidence as soon as the story broke.

Some carers slept in care homes and left their children with family members for weeks to protect residents.

The sacrifice they made was unprecedented.

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock partly holding them responsible for deaths will cause huge upset. independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi… One dumbfounded source in the care sector tells me simply:

“He cannot be allowed to get away with this”.

Carers already felt let down. Now they feel blamed. Pretty explosive stuff.

BREAKING: Net migration rose to 504,000 in the year to June 2022. Far higher than pre-Brexit levels, with most coming from non-EU countries.

Will put further pressure on govt - and especially Home Secretary - to explain how this is ‘taking back control’ of UK borders. These ONS figures don’t include the further 35,000 people estimated to arrived in the UK via small boat crossings in the year to June.