Nicola Sturgeon says it would be ‘outrage’ for UK government to block Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill – UK politics live | Politics

Government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda will be considered by the court of appeal after high court judges gave the go-ahead for their ruling that the policy is lawful to be challenged, PA Media reports.

Here is a summary of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

This is an appalling case and the prime minister’s thoughts are with all of his victims. We have been clear, there is no place in our police forces for officers who fall so seriously short of the acceptable standards of behaviour and are not fit to wear the uniform.

Police forces must root out these officers to restore the public’s trust, which has been shattered by high-profile events such as this.

The Home Office is pushing for improvement and has recently announced a review of police dismissals to ensure the system is fair and effective at removing officers who are not fit to serve, following a range of concerns including those set out in the publication of Baroness Casey’s interim report into the culture and standards at the Metropolitan police.

• Downing Street rejected Keir Starmer’s criticism of the way GP services are delivered. Starmer has called for GPs over time to be employed directly by the NHS, instead of being self-employed, and said that patients should be able to self-refer to specialists in some cases, instead of having to go through a GP. But the spokesperson said a government review in 2019 concluded that the GP partnership model should stay and that abolishing it would “carry significant costs”. And he said self-referral “already happens in number of low-risk cases”. NHS England was considering if this could be expanded, he said. But he said it would not be appropropriate to remodel primary care provision wholesale.

We would continue to call on teachers not to strike given we know what substantial damage was caused to children’s education during the pandemic and it’s certainly not something we want to see repeated.

We would hope they would continue to discuss with us their concerns rather than withdraw education from children.

We have seen very clearly that the Ukrainian armed forces have been very effective with the equipment that we have provided to them. I think there is a plethora of evidence for that and we are confident they will do so again.

Ministers have been criticised by a government regulation watchdog for not publishing an impact assessment about the anti-strikes bill.

The bill, which is officially known as the strikes (minimum service levels) bill), is getting its second reading debate – the main parliamentary debate in the Commons – this afternoon. Normally an impact assessment should be available before MPs vote on the bill, but the IA for this bill has not yet appeared.

In a statement, the regulatory policy committee (RPC), an independent body set up by government to advise ministers about regulations, said:

The RPC notes that the strikes (minimum service levels) bill was introduced into parliament on 10 January 2023. Second reading is scheduled for today (16 January). Government departments are expected to submit IAs to the RPC before the relevant bill is laid before parliament and in time for the RPC to issue an opinion alongside the publication of the IA. An IA for this bill has not yet been submitted for RPC scrutiny; nor has one been published despite the bill being currently considered by parliament.

The government may be sensitive about publishing an IA because an IA published last year into a similar bill (which has been replaced by the current one) concluded that making minimum service levels mandatory could lead to more rail strikes not fewer, increased disruption short of strike action and exacerbated staff shortages.

Chris Skidmore, the government’s net zero tsar, has criticised Rishi Sunak’s decision to open a new coal mine in Cumbria.

Launching his new net zero review at King’s College London this morning, the Tory MP said: “If the recommendations from my review were put into practice, the coal mine would never have taken place.”

This is because the review recommends that, for infrastructure, net zero is taken into account during the planning process and that clear cost-benefit analysis takes place. He believes the coal mine would have failed all these tests.

Speaking in front of the energy minister Graham Stuart, who endorsed the coal mine decision, Skidmore said: “I personally think the coal mine is a mistake.”

He also said he thought the coal mine would “never take place” because “it is going through the courts at the moment” and a judgment would probably be made against it.

Skidmore said the country was running out of time to meet net zero carbon emissions, and that there was “a real danger to the UK economy” if the investment opportunities were not seized and other countries secured them instead.

Stuart told the audience the government would publish its response to the review as soon as possible. Skidmore said he expects a government response by the end of March.

At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson played down speculation that the UK-EU talks on the Northern Ireland protocol are about to go into the “tunnel” – dipomatic-speak for the moment when the negotiators shut down all briefing to the media, because talks are intensifying and an agreement is close. Asked how the discussions were going, the spokesperson said:

As we’ve said on a number of occasions, there are still gaps in our position that need to be resolved in order to address the full range of problems created by the protocol.

Asked if the government was optimistic about a breakthrough, he said:

I’m not going to get into characterising in that way whilst we are still having these important discussions. I think the public will understand that for sensitive issues like this since right negotiations are able to take place in private.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said that the government has not yet taken a decision on whether or not to block Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill. He said Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, was “the ultimate decision maker” on this and that a decision would be taken before Wednesday (the deadline for intervention using a section 35 order).

The spokesperson said:

No decision has been taken at this point by the UK government. It’s the secretary of state for Scotland who is the ultimate decision-maker and you can expect to hear from him before the deadline on Wednesday.

At her news conference, asked about Keir Starmer’s claim that the SNP and the Tories are both exploiting the gender recognition bill for partisan advantage (see 10.22am), Nicola Sturgeon said that this had only become a constitutional issue because Westminster was refusing to accept the right of the Scottish parliament to legislate on a matter within its own competence. She went on: “So, if anybody is trying to use it politically, it’s those Westminster politicians.”

She pointed out that most Labour MSPs voted for the bill. And she said the Scottish government accepted an amendment, from Labour, saying the bill would not affect the Equality Act. So Starmer needed to understand this was not just an SNP bill, she said; it was legislation backed by a large number of MSPs.

Sturgeon also said that she found Starmer’s comments on the NHS in his interview with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday “pretty dispiriting”.

She claimed that some of what he was saying was “quite dangerous”, because he implied people with serious conditions should not consult their GP, or should bypass their GP. She said Starmer may have intended to say something different.

And she said Starmer should be committing to invest more in the NHS, and to reverse Brexit, to address the staffing problem in the health service. She went on:

Keir Stamer needs to stop trying to be a pale imitation of the Tory government he’s seeking to replace, and actually start offering some positive alternative.

At her news conference Nicola Sturgeon said Westminster would have no grounds to block the gender recognition bill. As the National reports, she said:

It doesn’t affect the operation of the Equality Act, and it was passed by an overwhelming majority of the Scottish parliament after very lengthy and very intense scrutiny by MSPs of all parties represented in the parliament.

So if there is a decision to challenge, then in my view, it will be quite simply a political decision.

And I think using trans people, already one of the most vulnerable stigmatised groups in our society, as a political weapon will be unconscionable and indefensible and really quite disgraceful.

Nicola Sturgeon told the press conference in Edinburgh that it would be an “outrage” if the UK government blocked the Scottish gender recognition reform bill, and that that would show “complete contempt” for the Scottish parliament. This is from the Mirror’s Ashley Cowburn.

At her news conference in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said that there had been a slight easing in the pressure on the NHS in Scotland over the last week. This is from the BBC’s James Cook.

But one of the first questions was about the SNP’s decision to get its members to choose at a special conference in March between two options for turning an election into a de facto independence referendum.

As the National reports, one option is to treat the next general election as a de facto independence referendum. The alternative is for the next Scottish parliamentary elections, in 2026, to be used as the de facto independence referendum.

Asked which option she preferred, Sturgeon said she favoured the plan she set out last year (for the general election to be the de facto referendum).

The motion to be debated at the special conference, with the two options, is here.

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, has written an open letter to the Bishop of Portsmouth urging him to back reform proposals that would allow vicars to conduct same-sex marriages in Church of England churches. She says the Church of England is increasingly out of step with its counterparts in Scotland and Wales, where the clergy are allowed to take these services.

Judging by the letter, Mordaunt has written in her capacity as a constituency MP, not as a cabinet minister.

This rather undermines a claim in a Mail on Sunday story yesterday saying that Rishi Sunak is concerned about bishops being too leftwing.

And this is what Keir Starmer told LBC about wanting to see gun ownership laws tightened. He was speaking in response to a question about the Euston shooting at the weekend. He said:

We’ve had these incidents from time to time with guns.

And every time there is, there’s evidence, which I am concerned about, that people have access to guns that they shouldn’t have access to.

Now, if it’s illegal access, obviously, that’s a pure matter of the criminal law.

But other people, where better checks should be taken over circulation of guns. So I think that we need to look again as to whether those laws are strong enough …

There are many illegally owned guns out there and there are legally owned guns, which I don’t think should be in the hands of the people who are legally owning them.

Asked for evidence to justify this, Starmer cited the outcome of a review carried out after the mass shooting in Plymouth, where five people were killed in 2021 by a man using a legally owned gun.

Asked if he wanted gun ownership laws “made even tougher”, Starmer replied yes.

But he stressed that he did not want to see gun ownership outlawed completely. Farmers needed guns, he said, and he was not opposed to gun clubs. But gun ownership should be “subject to tighter control”.