NI will no longer have to follow EU laws under deal to restore power sharing, DUP says – politics live | Politics

Q: When will the election take place? And can you win?

Sunak says he has said what he has said about timing.

He says the country has gone through a tough time.

But he really believes the country has “turned a corner” and his plan is working.

Q: So when will it be?

Sunak says he has addressed that.

But, by tomorrow, everyone will have received the benefit of the tax cut that came into force in January.

Q: Are you feeling confident?

“I am, absolutely,” Sunak says.

And that was it.

I’ll run this block under the headline “Sunak claims he is ‘confident’ about his election chances because Britain has ‘turned a corner’”, but I trust readers don’t need reminding that sometimes politicians don’t always tell the truth (especially when they are making election predictions).

Q: Will you order a public inquiry into the Nottingham attacks?

Sunak says what happened was unimaginable. He says he has spent some time with the relatives of the victims. Their questions are reasonable. He has said the government will ensure that they get those answers. There are independent inquries into different services. When the findings of those inquiries come back, the government will decide if a further inquiry is needed.

A reader asks:

This seems to be one of those times when a piece of parliamentary news falls off the bottom of the radar with no trace. After your evening summary there’s been no news of the 2nd reading of the Rwanda bill. I finally found the Hansard report which ends “that the bill be committed to a committee of the full house”. So what does this mean in practice? They can add amendments? Do these then have to be voted on by whole House of Ls? Is there a set end date? Must the Commons wait? Cd gov just decide to send a plain load of refugees in the meantime to Rwanda?

The House of Lords voted to give the second reading of the Rwanda bill at 9.30am.

The Lib Dems forced a vote on an amendment to block the bill, but it was easily defeated. The Lords never normally votes on bills at second reading, and it only votes down bills at this point very rarely (just three times this century). Labour is opposed to the bill, but it did not vote with the Lib Dems because it accepts the convention that the Lords is there to revise bills passed by the Commons, not to reject them, as its spokesperson explained in the debate yesterday.

Here is the division list naming the handful of Labour and crossbench peers who voted with the Lib Dems for the blocking amendment.

The bill will now go to a committee of the whole house, which means that all peers can participate in the line-by-line debate on the bill. They will debate amendments, and some will almost certainly be passed. There will then be a vote at third reading. At that point peers could again, in theory, throw out the whole bill. But they won’t’; they’ll send it back to the Commons amended.

There will be debates in February but the report stage, when most votes take place, is not due to start until March. The third reading debate is provisionally scheduled for 12 March.

The government cannot sent refugees to Rwanda until the bill becomes law because the supreme court has ruled that unlawful.

People with “close connections” to the UK and their local area are to be favoured for social housing in England under a new government consultation, PA Media reports. PA says:

Applicants will be required to demonstrate a connection to the UK for at least 10 years and their local area for at least two years in an “overhaul” of the system.

Those with unspent criminal convictions or certain civil sanctions for antisocial behaviour could be banned from social housing for up to five years.

People who “repeatedly make their neighbours’ lives hell” through antisocial behaviour also face being evicted under a “three strikes and you’re out” policy.

Terrorists with certain convictions could also be blocked from living in social homes.

New social tenants on high incomes would also no longer qualify. The salary threshold is yet to be determined and existing tenants would not be affected.

A consultation will run until 26 March and can be accessed through an online survey.

The government has suggested some of the measures may be implemented by secondary legislation, which would mean they do not require a vote in parliament.

As this briefing from the House of Commons library says, most local authorities in England already have requirements saying people applying for council or housing association homes must have lived in the area for a certain amount of time.

Last week, after the Guardian reported that this announcement was imminent, 16 leaders from the social housing sector signed an open letter saying that this move could increase homelessness and that what was really needed was just more social housing. They said:

Social housing is designed to support those in the greatest need. Government data shows that 90% of new social housing lettings go to UK nationals, with long waiting lists in all areas. Imposing extended qualification periods before people can even get on the housing register is likely to force more people into homelessness. If the government’s main concern is to increase the availability of social lettings, it could achieve this far more effectively by building more social housing.

In an interview this morning Lee Rowley, the housing minister, was asked if refugees could be barred from social housing under the new plans. He said there was a recognition there “will be certain scenarios where there are exemptions”, giving the example of the Afghan resettlement schemes.

Pressed on whether that could change, he said: “Well, if the state has an obligation to house people that will continue, that’s part of a different set of rules to make sure that people are not homeless.”

It has been reported that the changes to the way the Windsor framework operates proposed as part of the deal to get the DUP to resume power sharing will limit the scope for Britain to diverge from EU laws. (Northern Ireland in effect remains in the EU’s single market, and the more Britain diverges from single market rules, the stronger the case for checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland, where they can easily enter the EU because there are no controls at the Northern Ireland/Ireland border.)

But this morning Steve Baker, a Northern Ireland minister, has insisted that the deal will not stop Britain diverging from single market rules. He has posted these on X.

I welcome this news and I look forward to fulfilling our side of the deal.

For the record there are no commitments of any kind as part of this deal to align GB with EU law; prevent GB from diverging from any retained EU law; or increase alignment in Northern Ireland beyond the strictly limited scope Parliament has approved – which is itself subject to democratic consent and safeguards.

And for the avoidance of doubt, there is no legal mechanism to prevent divergence or force alignment across the whole of the UK.

Ministers retain full freedom to diverge from retained EU law.

The taoiseach (Irish PM), Leo Varadkar, has welcomed the news that the DUP is willing to resume power sharing in Northern Ireland, while saying he has not seen the “fine detail” of it yet.

Speaking this morning ahead of a meeting of his cabinet, he said that he wanted to be sure that the deal would not undermine the Windsor framework (the revised version of the Northern Ireland protocol, negotiated by London and the EU), but that assumed it wouldn’t.

He told reporters:

At the outset, I want to welcome the news from Co Down that came in the early hours of this morning, news that the DUP is willing to re-enter the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland.

That’s really important because it means that devolved democratic government can be restored in Northern Ireland and the executive can get down to the hard work of dealing with some of the everyday problems that people face north of the border …

I hope to speak to the prime minister later on today to discuss matters a little bit further.

I should say that while there have been consultations between the European Commission, the Irish government and the British government from the last number of months, we haven’t seen the fine detail of what’s been agreed just yet.

So obviously we’ll need to see that and and be confident that it doesn’t have any negative consequences for the Windsor framework or for the Good Friday agreement.

I don’t anticipate that it does but we have to see the exact detail of that first.

David Cameron, the foreign secretary, has said that Britain will consider recognising a Palestinian state as part of concerted efforts to bring about an “irreversible” peace settlement. Ben Quinn has the story.

Good morning. Rail strikes are still going on in England, but in one part of the UK a long-running “strike” by key public sector workers seems about to come to an end. DUP MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) have been boycotting power sharing at Stormont for almost two years now. But, following a long and difficult party meeting in private last night (or not quite private – someone was leaking details to loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, who was tweeting the proceedings in real time), the party is set to resume power sharing after accepting the compromise offer put on the table by the UK government.

The DUP were angry about the Northern Ireland protocol, and the modified version negotiated by Rishi Sunak last year, the Windsor protocol. The DUP supported Brexit, but they were angry about the protocol, and the framework, imposing post-Brexit trading rules affecting goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland. As a result of their two-year Stormont boycott, they have secured some changes to the framework and, as is standard in London negotiations with the Stormont parties, a large wodge of cash for Northern Ireland.

Rory Carroll has the details here.

The UK government has not yet published details of what changes it will make to the framework, but this is how Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, explained what’s on offer.

(The new deal) will remove checks for goods moving within the UK and remaining in Northern Ireland and will end Northern Ireland automatically following future EU laws.

There will be legislation to provide new legal and practical protections for the Acts of Union and which guarantees unfettered access for Northern Ireland businesses to the rest of the United Kingdom.

In the coming days, in addition to the publication of the details of the new package of proposals, the UK Government will be required to deliver on the legislative commitments they have made to us.

Donaldson also said there was cross-party support for the deal, meaning that the election of a Labour government would not lead to it being reversed. He said:

Regardless of who forms the next UK government, these agreed measures will be taken forward beyond the forthcoming general election.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Kate Forbes, the Scottish government’s former finance secretary, gives evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in Edinburgh. She will be followed by John Swinney, the former deputy first minister.

11am: Sunak is due to be interviewed on ITV’s This Morning.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Andrew Mitchell, the development minister and deputy foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

2.30pm: Judge Thomas Teague KC, the chief coroner for England and Wales, gives evidence to the Commons justice committee.

And David Cameron, the foreign secretary, is in Oman, where he is due to give a speech.

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