Business secretary defends move, saying it ‘puts to bed myth that Rwanda is not a safe place’

Good morning. When the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill was in the House of Lords before Easter, a mysterious delay crept in. There was plenty of time to get it passed before the Easter recess, but the government held it back, without giving a good reason, and even when parliament returned, the government did not make passing the law a matter of urgency. It only cleared parliament, and got royal assent, last week.

And now it is fairly clear why. With the bill on the statute book, we are seeing a flurry of Rwanda-related activity from the government – which, by miraculous coincidence, seems to be turning up in the papers just days and hours before people in England vote in the local elections.

The Tories are so desperate to get any flight off to Rwanda before the local elections that they have now just paid someone to go.

British taxpayers aren’t just forking out £3,000 for a volunteer to board a plane, they are also paying Rwanda to provide him with free board and lodgings for the next five years. This extortionate pre-election gimmick is likely to be costing on average £2m per person.

This is cynical nonsense from a Conservative party that is about to take a drubbing at the local elections. Paying someone to go to Rwanda highlights just how much of a gimmick and farce their plan is.

This is somebody who has actually volunteered to go to Rwanda, which puts to bed this nonsensical myth that Rwanda was not a safe place.

It is. People go on holiday there. I know somebody who’s having a very lovely gap year there. We need to move past a lot of those myths, which are actually just disparaging about an African country.

There is no cost free option, that is the truth of it. It’s better this way than for him to be in the UK, either claiming benefits or being entitled to things that other people in this country can’t have, which be much more expensive for the taxpayer. But there is no free way to police our borders.

Peers pass four amendments inserting safeguards into bill, including exempting migrants who helped British troops

Good morning. It is now more than five months since Rishi Sunak promised “emergency” legislation to address the supreme court judgment saying the government’s Rwanda deportation policy was unlawful. It has not proceeded at the pace of normal emergency legislation, but the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill is now expected to clear parliament within the next 24/36 hours, and it should become law by the end of the week. (It does not became law until the king grants royal assent, and it can take a few hours to get Charles to sign the relevant bit of paper.)

But before parliamentary officials can send the bill to the Palace, the Commons and the Lords have to agree, and there are still four outstanding issues unresolved. Last night peers passed four amendments inserting safeguards into the bill. They would:

The problem is, we have no evidence that Rwanda is safe. All the evidence that is put before us demonstrates that at the moment it is not. The supreme court said in November it wasn’t safe. We signed a treaty with Rwanda which was supposed to remedy the defects, and this Act will come into force when the treaty comes into force. But even the treaty itself accepts that signing the treaty doesn’t make Rwanda safe.

All this amendment would say is that, instead of us in parliament in London being expected to assert in legislation that Rwanda is safe, when the evidence is including, from the government itself last night, that it isn’t currently safe, it’s a work in progress – instead of having to sign up to that untruth, the government would invite the monitoring committee to certify that Rwanda is safe and when it is safe, the flights can begin.

And should by any chance Rwanda ever cease to be a safe country, well the monitoring committee should say that as well.

Keir Starmer takes shots at open goals while PM is running on fumes as the disasters keep coming

MDMA, before it was called ecstasy, was going to be called empathy, having been devised as a marriage counselling drug. The theory was that it would amp up your compassion and dial down your threat response to the degree that you’d be able to hear the truth with an open heart.

Then it turned out to be better as a party drug and was criminalised, and maybe it’s all for the best, but just once I would love to hear PMQs with everyone on E. Because a lot of what Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday was probably true: Keir Starmer, if he wasn’t Labour leader, probably would enjoy going back to being a lawyer. He probably did get a lot of satisfaction from successfully defending people’s human rights. “I would have thought that, out of everybody, [Starmer] would be the most grateful”, Sunak said of his – always subject to revision – plan to hold an election later rather than sooner. And isn’t that, if you think about it for five seconds, most likely true? Say what you like about the Labour leader, he’s no seat-of-pants merchant.

Prime minister faces questions from MPs after Lee Anderson’s defection and controversy over Frank Hester as poll says voters want new leader for election

Good morning. Hands up who’s heard of John Robert Clynes? He was leader of the Labour party at the time of the 1922 general election and, according to a new history of Labour in opposition, he is the only leader of the party ever to be defeated in a leadership challenge. That is extraordinary when you consider that, at least since the 1970s, Conservative leaders normally haven’t resigned at a time of their own choosing and, even if they have not all been forced out after a leadership contest, at least the last three quit because they knew defeat after a leadership challenge was otherwise inevitable.

All of this helps to explain why today is a tricky day for Rishi Sunak; as Conservative party leader, you are permanently on probation, and today he has a tricky “performance appraisal” with his employer – the 1922 Committee. He has also got PMQs, another form of performance review.

We are well and truly on the path to sustainably lower taxes.

We started that journey in the autumn with a 2p cut to national insurance worth £450 for the average worker on £35,400 a year. And the Chancellor cut taxes again in this month’s budget which now means that 27 million employees will get an average tax cut of about £900 a year.

We did this because I believe in the fundamental dignity of work. When people work hard, they should be rewarded, not taxed more. It’s not right that income from work is taxed twice, while all other income is only taxed once. This is why I have cut national insurance, the second tax on work, by a third in the last six months. And it is why my long-term plan, ultimately, is to cut it to zero.

Hester may be the Tories’ biggest donor, but this is not only an issue for one party as the Forde inquiry showed

• Diane Abbott accuses Tories of aiming to play ‘race card’ before election

As we move even closer to the general election, race, whether explicitly or implicitly, is at the heart of the debate in British politics. And the issue is not just about a particular political party, but all of our institutions.

I was in the chamber of the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon for prime minister’s questions. I wanted to put a question to the the prime minister about Frank Hester and his racist comments . Over the nearly 40 years that I have been an MP, under any speaker of the House of Commons that I can remember, I would have been called. I thought, in particular, that I would’ve been called on Wednesday, because Hester’s abusive comments about me had led the news bulletins that day, and I was referred to several times in PMQs itself. I cannot say why Lindsay Hoyle would not call me. He claimed there wasn’t enough time after going through those listed on the order paper. But I’m not convinced – and, the truth is, he can call on whoever he likes.

Diane Abbott is the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Kevin Hollinrake says ‘on the basis he is not a racist, has apologised for what he said, yes’ party would be comfortable spending £10m donation

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have released a joint statement warning that Michael Gove’s new defintion of extremism could cause further “division” and threaten the country’s “rich diversity”.

Gove is set to unveil the government’s new definition of extremism on Thursday and use parliamentary privilege to name groups that he says fall foul of this new definition, despite pushback from government lawyers who have warned about the legal implications of doing so.

How our leaders respond to this is far too important for a new definition of extremism to be its cure.

Instead of providing clarity or striking a conciliatory tone, we think labelling a multi-faceted problem as hateful extremism may instead vilify the wrong people and risk yet more division.

Esther Ghey’s presence humanised the targets of these attacks. Had she not been there, it would have been business as usual

Being trans in Britain takes “you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry” to new, nightmarish levels. Before I come across all Rishi Sunak, rest assured I’m not being flippant: I don’t mean “laugh” as in anything is remotely funny. I mean like when your jaw is slack and you scoff slightly, as if you can’t believe something you’ve just heard. The scoff is actually a panicked bid to rebut the “something” and, at the same time, there’s terror in your eyes. That kind of laugh.

Hearing that our prime minister had insulted trans people to score cheap political points did not surprise me (nor does the lack of self-awareness it takes for Sunak and the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, et al, to level the same accusation at Starmer ). To be honest, it wasn’t even a surprise that it might have happened in the presence of the mother of a murdered trans girl. I cannot imagine it surprised any trans person who’s lived in Britain during the past six-odd years of relentless, coordinated, cynical and very loud attacks, not just on our legal protections but our very humanity.

Former prime minister expected to argue that he got ‘most of the big calls right’ as relatives of bereaved protest outside hearing

As we report this morning , there has been plenty of coverage in the papers about what Boris Johnson is likely to say to the Covid inquiry. In fact, there has been more advance leaking than you get with a budget. Some of this seems to be authorised, although probably not all of it. (If the editor wants a story on what Johnson is expected to say, a resourceful journalist will provide one, regardless of whether or not the Johnson camp are cooperating.)

If Johnson is trying to influence Lady Hallett, the inquiry chair, he is bound to fail; you can’t spin a judge. But if his team has been engaged in a pre-briefing operation, as seems likely, their target will be public opinion, not the inquiry team.

Boris Johnson will next week admit that he “unquestionably made mistakes” over Covid but insist that the decisions he took ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

In his evidence to the Covid public inquiry the former prime minister is expected to issue an unreserved apology and say that he and his government were initially far too complacent and vastly underestimated the risks posed by the virus.

Johnson has spent, aides say, almost a year preparing for his appearance in front of Baroness Hallett and her panel. He will make the case that many of the explosive WhatsApp exchanges that have left his government looking like it was in the middle of a civil war were simply conversations around the issues, or “dark humour” — but that the key decisions were made in formal meetings based on this official advice. One minister from the Johnson government who has read his written evidence said: “I think he gives a good account of himself, actually.”

An ally of the ex-PM told The Sun on Sunday: “The only trolley involved were the trolleys full of vaccines Boris helped deliver for the UK. Boris only changed his views when the scientific advice changed. The experts kept changing their tune on issues.”

Boris Johnson will claim that he delayed implementing the first lockdown on the advice of Sir Chris Whitty amid concerns that people would tire of the restrictions and flout the rules.

The former prime minister’s statement to the Covid inquiry is expected to say that given the “massive disbenefits” of lockdown it was “obviously right” to ensure that it was not implemented too soon.

Asked how the former prime minister would respond to [criticism about the timing of the first lockdown] an ally of Mr Johnson told The Telegraph that he would point to shifting scientific advice.

The source said: “The scientific advice was right up until the last minute that lockdowns were the wrong policy and herd immunity was the right policy. People might get lockdown fatigue so you had to do it at the right time.”

What a coward. When the pandemic came he couldn’t be arsed to get from his bed in Chequers to Cobra meetings. But when there is a risk of being confronted by the consequences of his inactions he sneaks in as early as he can. Contemptible