Sunak’s Rwanda treaty to face first test in House of Lords – UK politics live | Politics

Sally Weale is the Guardian’s education correspondent

School inspections in England resume this week after a two-week pause to allow inspectors to undergo mental health awareness training, after an inquest into the suicide of Reading primary head teacher Ruth Perry ruled that the schools inspectorate Ofsted had contributed to her death.

Perry’s school, Caversham primary, was downgraded from outstanding to inadequate over safeguarding issues during an Ofsted inspection, that the inquest heard had triggered a fatal deterioration in Perry’s mental health.

The mental health awareness training was ordered by the new chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, who said he would do everything in his power to prevent any future tragedies after taking over in January.

From today, schools across England could receive a call from the inspectorate, ahead of a visit. Under new Ofsted arrangements, however, once the inspection is under way, the lead inspector or the school can request that an inspection be paused for up to five days in exceptional circumstances.

Headteachers remain concerned however. Executive principal Vic Goddard, of Educating Essex fame, posted on social media: “Knowing that the @ofsted call could come tomorrow for up to 4 of our schools certainly changes how I feel and not for the better. I’m an experienced and generally robust leader. It’s not right is it?”

Libby Brooks

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent

Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf has written to Keir Starmer, inviting him to his official Edinburgh residence Bute House, to discuss how relations between the Scottish and UK governments might be improved in the event of Labour winning the next general election.

It’s no secret that relations between Westminster and Holyrood have been turbulent over the past few years – a cursory glance at evidence from the UK covid inquiry will tell you that.

But this is an interesting move from Yousaf, as he attempts to counter Scottish Labour’s appeal to independence voters to defect from the SNP in order to secure Starmer in Downing Street.

It’s also puts Starmer in a tricky position – not wanting to alienate those very independence supporters whose votes he is relying on, but also well aware of previously successful Tory attacks about Labour’s relationship with the Nationalists – remember the 2015 image of tiny wee Ed Milliband poking out from Alex Salmond’s pocket?

It is interesting too that, in his letter, Yousaf sets out specific policy areas he wants to discuss with Starmer – child poverty, just transition, the ongoing cost of Brexit – rather than going straight for the section 30 jugular.

When Yousaf succeeded Nicola Sturgeon as first minister, he asked for a S30 order to grant Holyrood the powers to hold a second referendum at is first meeting with Rishi Sunak. Perhaps this is an acknowledgment that voters are increasingly turned off the endless process-driven back and forth on independence and are keen to see both Scottish and UK governments concentrate on what they consider more pressing concerns around cost of living.

Keir Starmer has just started speaking at the Civil Society summit. You can watch that live here.

Some of the content has already been trailed, including that he is planning to defend the National Trust and the RNLI, accusing the Conservatives of attacking them to stoke a “desperate” culture war.

My colleague Kiran Stacey previewed this overnight, writing:

“The Tories seem set on sabotaging civil society to save their own skins,” Starmer will say. “They got themselves so tangled up in culture wars of their own making, that instead of working with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution – an organisation the late queen was patron of for 70 years – to find real solutions to stop the small boats, their rhetoric has helped demonise them.”

“Instead of working with the National Trust so more people can learn about – and celebrate – our culture and our history, they’ve managed to demean their work. In its desperation to cling on to power, at all costs, the Tory party is trying to find woke agendas in the very civic institutions they once regarded with respect.”

In 2019, the RNLI was criticised by Conservative backbenchers for spending money on anti-drowning charities abroad. It then came under fire in 2021 from Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who accused the institute of acting as a “taxi service for illegal immigration” because of its work helping distressed asylum seekers in the Channel.

The National Trust, Britain’s largest charity, has been torn apart by an internal battle over its stance towards rewilding Britain’s countryside and how to depict the links between the properties it oversees and the UK’s colonial legacy.

In 2022 a group headed by a Conservative donor and including two “anti-woke” historians launched an attempt to gain control of the charity, while the Tory MP Andrew Murrison set up a parliamentary group to “scrutinise” its work.

Graeme Wearden

There is continued chatter about potential spring tax cuts ahead of the election later in the year, but as my colleague Graeme Wearden reports, Britain may well have slipped into recession at the end of last year.

Martin Beck, chief economic adviser to the EY ITEM Club said this morning “there’s a good chance” the economy may have shrunk slightly in the final three months of 2023.

That would mean two negative quarters in a row – after the 0.1% fall in GDP in July-September – meaning a technical recession.

Beck told Radio 4’s Today Programme “We know that GDP shrunk in the third quarter and looking at the high frequency numbers for Q4, there’s a good chance that it may have shrunk slightly again.”

The official GDP data for the October-December quarter are due on 15 February.

Beck points out “it doesn’t make a massive amount of difference to the person on the street” if the economy shrank by 0.1% or grew by 0.1%, but headlines declaring the UK in recession would not be good news for the government, as the Conservatives try to plot a tricky path to another election win.

Read more here: ‘Good chance’ UK may have fallen into technical recession – business live

The Post Office Horizon IT scandal has placed into sharper focus the number of bodies that can bring prosecutions, and the TV Licensing authority is one of them. Possibly not for much longer, if the words of the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, this morning carry any weight.

She said it was not appropriate for the BBC to have “criminal tools in its armoury” to prosecute people for not paying their TV licence fee.

Asked about a series of cases brought against people by TV licensing, PA Media reports Frazer told Times Radio: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for the BBC to have criminal tools in its armoury in relation to prosecutions.”

She said she would look at the prosecutions in an upcoming review.

During the morning media round the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, said she believed the BBC had “on occasion” been biased.

She told Sky News that “evidence” suggested there was a “perception amongst audiences” that there was some bias at the BBC.

Frazer said: “There are only perceptions and perceptions are important. What’s important about the BBC is that it’s funded by the public, so the perception of audiences of the public are important.”

She added: “I think that on occasions it has been biased,” citing its reporting of a hospital attack in Gaza.

The first test of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda immigration policy in the House of Lords will come on Monday afternoon with a debate on a motion seeking to delay it.

Monday’s debate will centre on a report by the Lords international agreements committee recommending parliament should not ratify the Rwanda treaty until ministers can show the country is safe.

The government agreed the legally binding treaty with Kigali in December, saying it addressed concerns raised by the supreme court about the possibility of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda then being transferred to a country where they could be at risk.

But the committee said promised safeguards in the agreement are “incomplete” and must be implemented before it can be endorsed.

The treaty underpins the government’s safety of rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill which compels judges to regard Rwanda as safe.

The motion in front of the Lords today is:

This House resolves, in accordance with section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, that His Majesty’s Government should not ratify the UK-Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership until the protections it provides have been fully implemented, since parliament is being asked to make a judgement, based on the agreement, about whether Rwanda is safe.

The bill is likely to receive its second reading in the Commons by the end of January, with a third reading possible around the middle of March.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak’s immigration policy faces its next hurdle today as the House of Lords debates a motion seeking to delay the proposed new UK-Rwanda treaty. Sunak, who was appointed prime minister by Conservative MPs, and is yet to face an election as party leader, has made much of the fact that the Lords are unelected and are opposing a policy which he claims has broad public support. Voters appear to think differently, with a YouGov survey earlier this month suggesting a narrow majority is in favour of scrapping the plan altogether.

Here are the headlines

In Westminster the Commons is sitting this afternoon, with oral questions on levelling up and then a debate on the second reading of the offshore petroleum licensing bill. The Lords, as mentioned, will be debating the proposed UK-Rwanda treaty. In Wales the Senedd has committee meetings. The Scottish parliament is not sitting.

It is Martin Belam with you today. I will try to dip into the comments if I get the chance, but if you want to draw my attention to anything – especially if you spot an error or typo – it is best to email me at [email protected].