Badenoch says Tories should view Reform UK voters as ‘our people’ as Major warns against lurch to right – UK politics live | Politics

The government has agreed to just one of 33 recommendations made to prevent a repeat of the abuse experienced by migrants in the Brook House immigration centre scandal, the inquiry chairwoman has told the BBC. As PA Media reports, Kate Eves said the government was failing to listen to her proposals for “urgent change”, a year on from the public inquiry’s final report. PA says:

Eves concluded there had been 19 incidents of mistreatment against detainees at the detention centre near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex over a five-month period in 2017.

She told the BBC the Conservative government’s response was “inadequate and disappointing” and that Labour needed to show more commitment.

Recommendations made in September last year included issues such as use of force and staff training.

The introduction of a 28-day detention time limit was rejected by the government, alongside another proposal.

She said the one recommendation the government has agreed to is that the Home Office and private contractors make sure staff are aware of the ban on handcuffing people behind their backs while sitting down, which can result in asphyxiation.

Eves added there was “no information at all” about a further five recommendations being accepted, while it was not possible to be sure about another 23 directions.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The abuse that took place at Brook House in 2017 was unacceptable and we are committed to ensuring it will never happen again.”

The Conservative government published its response to the public inquiry on March 19 this year, summarising progress since 2017 and addressing all the ten areas of concern raised in the report.

It is understood the new government will set out its approach in due course.

Protection zones will be in force around abortion clinics in England and Wales from 31 October, the Home Office said today.

The law will ban campaigners from handing anti-abortion leaflets to people using the clinics. The so-called buffer zones will operate within a 150m radius of clinics.

Describing what the law would do, the Home Office said in a news release:

Safe access buffer zones will make it illegal for anyone to do anything that intentionally or recklessly influences someone’s decision to use abortion services, obstructs them, or causes harassment or distress to someone using or working at these premises …

Anyone found guilty of breaking the law will face an unlimited fine. The College of Policing and Crown Prosecution Service will publish guidance for police and prosecutors ahead of 31 October, to ensure there is clarity and consistency with the enforcement of the new offence.

Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said:

For too long abortion clinics have been without these vital protections, and this government is determined to do all we can do to make this country a safer place for women.

Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, has predicted that Scotland will become an independent country as part of a “wider shake-up” of the UK, Libby Brooks reports. Sturgeon was speaking in an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum. Here is Libby’s story in full.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum. John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, is speaking at an event in Edinburgh to mark this. Even though Yes, the pro-independence campaign he backed, lost by 55% to 45%, Swinney is saying the referendum left “an overwhelmingly positive legacy”.

According to extracts released in advance, he is saying:

As parliament returned [after the referendum] I spoke to many leading figures in the No campaign.
They were gracious, and they were understanding, that lifelong independence campaigners like me were truly hurting at that moment. But when I think about those days after of the referendum, I tell you what else I remember. It was how quickly people in the Yes campaign picked themselves up, dusted themselves down, and looked to the future with a renewed determination. Many of the grassroots campaign groups didn’t melt away. They stuck together, and they continued working in – and for – their communities. New friendships had been forged, and a new sense of possibility planted in the minds of thousands of people. That sense of empowerment resonates to this day. And that’s why, even though I was devastated by the result, I am in no doubt that Scotland’s independence referendum has left an overwhelmingly positive legacy on our country. And we – the Scottish National party – should be incredibly proud that, together, we made that happen.

For five other views on the legacy of the referendum, do read the verdict from our panel: Rory Scothorne, Nicola McEwen, Paul Sinclair, Nighet Riaz and Stephen Noon.

If you fancy reliving the referendum election night and all its drama, you can read the live blog covering it here.

Fair taxes on superyachts and private jets in the UK could have brought in £2bn last year to provide vital funds for communities suffering the worst effects of climate breakdown, environmental campaigners say. Sandra Laville has the story.

In his interview with the BBC, John Major, the former Conservative PM, says that it would be a mistake for his party to chase Reform UK voters and move to the right as it works out how to respond to its election defeat. (See 9.26am.) But Kemi Badenoch, the leadership candidate most popular with party members according to most surveys, is saying exactly the opposite. In an interview with GB News she said that Reform UK supporters were “our people”.

She explained:

I think one of the mistakes we made was making Reform voters think that they were not our people. They are our people. Many of the people who voted Reform were lifelong Tory voters.

One of the moments that really created that impression was when we removed the whip from Lee Anderson. I think that was a mistake.

I told the chief whip, do not do this. This is a bad, bad decision.

That was a huge mistake and that lit the touchpaper. Basically we are saying ‘we don’t want these kind of people’, to get them out.

Anderson lost the Tory whip in February after making comments about Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, that were widely regarded as Islamophobic.

But Major and Badenoch did agree (sort of) on not wanting Nigel Farage allowed to rejoin the party. (He was a member before he helped launch Ukip in the 1990s.)

Asked about Farage joining, Major said:

I don’t think he’s a Conservative, and he’s spent most of his time in the last few years telling people how much he dislikes the Conservative Party and would like to destroy it. I don’t think that’s a terribly good background for bringing someone into the party.

Badenoch was asked on GB News if she thought Farage was a Tory. She replied:

I think that he is a disruptor. But he has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party, so I think that’s probably a no.

The “but” in that answer implies she sees being a disruptor as a bonus, not a handicap.

Good morning. Judged by the amount of time he spent as prime minister, John Major was one of the most successful Conservative prime ministers of the post-war period. Only Margaret Thatcher and Harold Macmillan outlasted him in No 10. But he has not been aligned with mainstream thinking in his party since he resigned after losing the election in 1997, and in an interview being broadcast tonight he has unleashed a fresh attack on the policies of the party he used to lead. While his views are not 100% surprising to anyone who has been listening to him in recent years, they are a stark reminder of how much the political landscape has shifted in the last 30 years.

The interview, with Amol Rajan from the BBC, is being broadcast tonight. Here are the key lines.

I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people.

We used to transport people, nearly three hundred years ago, from our country. Felons, who at least have had a trial, and been found guilty of something, albeit that the trial might have been cursory. I don’t think transportation, for that is what it is, is a policy suitable for the 21st century.

This does not just go further than anything anyone in frontline Tory politics would say now. Labour has abandoned the Rwanda policy, but people like Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper always criticised it (at least in public) on the grounds of practicality, not morality. They said it would not work. They did not use terms like “un-British”, “un-Christian” and ‘“unconscionable” to describe it.

• Major implied the last government deserved to lose the election. He said he did not give many interviews before the election because “there’s not been a great deal I could say, I would wish to say, in favour of what the previous government were doing.” And, talking about the election result, he said:

There’s a time of when democracy needs a change in government. I could see that in 1997, we had been in government for 18 years and it was perfectly true to say, that we were tired and that we were running out of fresh people to make ministers and reinject the government with vigour. And of course the same thing applies [with the recent election results], although it was only 14 years.

The only party that can legitimately appeal to the centre right is the Conservative party. And that is what we have to do, we have to decide where our natural support really lies and appeal to them. People may have made a misjudgement about the last election. We lost five votes to Reform UK and people are jumping up and down, and some, rather reckless people are saying, well we must merge with them.

Well, that will be fatal. We lost 50 to the Liberals, and we lost a huge amount to Labour. We lost the vote on the left, more than on the right. And we have to focus on that centre right position, and we’re not an ideological party, I do think traditionally we have been a commonsense party.

Major said he had not decided yet who to support in the Tory leadership contest. But the two favourites, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, are both proposing to take the party to the right.

I’ve opened a blog with a politician from the past because the ones from the present aren’t making a lot of news this morning. But here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Prof Charlotte McArdle, the former chief nursing officer for Northern Ireland, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry in its module looking at the impact of the pandemic on healthcare. Prof Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, gives evidence in the afternoon.

10.25am: John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, speaks at a rally in Edinburgh to mark the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum.

Noon: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at an event organised by the IPPR thinktank to mark the publication of its report on NHS reform. Lord Darzi, who wrote the report for the government published last week about the state of the NHS, is also speaking.

And David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is in Norway, meeting his Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide.

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