Government loses two House of Lords votes on EU withdrawal bill – as it happened

Lord Kerr is opening the debate.

He says his amendment (see 3.38pm) is a call to the government to “explore” a customs union.

Business wants a customs union, he says.

He says, over time, leaving the customs union could cost the country 1% of GDP.

Peers are now starting a debate on the EU withdrawal bill, the flagship legislation that will transfer EU law into UK law ahead of Brexit so that there is legal continuity at the point the UK leaves the EU. (Later the laws will diverge, but not on day one.)

There is nothing in itself new about that. Peers have already spend 13 days debating it this year, at second reading and committee stage, with minimal interest from the media. But now they are onto the report stage, the bit where they start voting, and it is going to get newsy.

You can read all the amendments here (pdf). This afternoon peers will be debating the customs union and retained EU law and, with the government lacking a majority, the government is expected to be defeated on both issues.

Customs union

The key amendment has been tabled by Lord Kerr, the crossbencher and former head of the Foreign Office credited with drafting article 50, Lord Patten, the former Conservative chairman and European commissioner, Lady Hayter, a shadow Brexit minister, and Lady Ludford, a Lib Dem Brexit spokeswoman.

It would require the government, as part of the Brexit process, to make a statement to parliament “outlining the steps taken in negotiations under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union to negotiate, as part of the framework for the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the European Union, an arrangement which enables the United Kingdom to continue participating in a customs union with the European Union.”

Retained EU law

This is a Labour amendment also signed by a Lib Dem peer, Lady Smith of Newnham, and a Conservative, Lord Kirkhope. It says that, after Brexit, ministers should not be allowed to amend retained EU law in certain areas except by primary legislation, or subordinate legislation subject to certain beefed-up scrutiny requirements.

The areas affected are: (a) employment entitlements, rights and protection, (b) equality entitlements, rights and protection, (c) health and safety entitlements, rights and protection, (d) consumer standards, or (e) environmental standards and protection,

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is being investigated by Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, her office has confirmed. The allegation is that he failed to declare his interest in a property company. PoliticsHome broke the story. We knew that a complaint had been submitted to the commissioner, but that does not automatically trigger an investigation because some complaints get dismissed as without merit. This one, though, is serious enough to merit a proper inquiry.

This is from PoliticsHome’s Emilio Casalicchio.

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Various people (including George Eaton in his New Statesman PMQs review) have been making the point that, after being ambushed by Theresa May’s Windrush landing cards reply at PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn should have made the point that, even if the decision to destroy the cards was taken in 2009, it was policy decisions taken by May that made the loss of the cards so calamitous.

Now the Labour party is saying that too. It has just put out this statement from a spokesperson.

The government’s story is shifting by the hour.

First Downing Street claimed the decision to destroy the Windrush-era landing cards was made by the Home Office in 2010 for data protection reasons. Then the Home Office passed the buck to a 2010 decision by the UK Border Agency.

At PMQs, the prime minister tried to shift the blame onto the last Labour government but was undermined by her own spokesperson minutes later, who then stated it was an operational decision, which Labour ministers would not have been aware of. Her spokesperson couldn’t even say when the cards were destroyed.

In the confusion, one thing is already clear: The change in the law in 2014 that meant members of the Windrush generation faced deportation and the loss of their rights, including to healthcare, was made in full view of the fact that the vital information had been destroyed.

The home secretary at the time must be held to account for the disastrous impact her “hostile environment” policies have had on the lives of British citizens.

UPDATE: The Labour press statement does not point out that the Labour party did not oppose the 2014 Immigration Act that has exacerbated the problems of the Windrush-generation immigrants. But, as William Richardson at Evolve Politics reports, six Labour MPs did vote against it. One of them was Jeremy Corybn.

18 Apr 201809.34 EDT

Ofcom says 'audience tweets' on Alex Salmond's RT show were not genuine

Severin Carrell

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom has disclosed it believes that messages broadcast as “audience tweets” during Alex Salmond’s controversial chatshow on the Kremlin-funded channel RT were fake.

In two footnotes to its statement today that it has launched seven new investigations into RT’s coverage after the Salisbury nerve agent attack, Ofcom says it had already started other inquiries into the Russian broadcaster’s output.

It said one dated to December 2017, when it announced it would look into suspicious tweets screened on Salmond’s show on 16 November, which included interviews with the ousted Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, the Tory MP Crispin Blunt and the Labour peer Helena Kennedy.

Ofcom states:

We already had one open investigation relating to ‘audience tweets’ in the Alex Salmond Show, which we have provisionally found were not from audience members.

One of the suspicious tweets appeared to be from the series director of Salmond’s programme producers, Luisa St John.

Ben Nimmo, an expert in Russian propaganda with the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic research lab and a former Nato press officer, said the number of new cases was very significant, although it remained to be seen whether all seven would be proven. He said:

Ofcom has found 10 RT programmes guilty of violating accuracy and impartiality standards over the past four years. Now, in one go, it says it’s seen seven programmes which ‘warrant investigation’ since March 4. Even by RT’s standards, that’s a major increase.

The mention of the Alex Salmond Show adds to RT’s problems. Ofcom confirmed that they’ve provisionally found that so-called ‘audience tweets’ presented by the show were not sent by audience members. That investigation was launched in December, so it’s not related to Salisbury, but it doesn’t do anything to enhance RT’s reputation.

Jacqui Smith, the Labour home secretary until June 2009, thinks she deserves an apology from Theresa May. At PMQs May implied that either Smith or Alan Johnson, home secretary for the rest of 2009, was to blame for the decision to destroy the Windrush landing cards.

Downing Street says the decision to destroy the landing cards was an operational one taken by the Border Force, not one taken by the home secretary. (See 1.12pm.) Some readers have been in touch to argue this shows May was lying.

But May did not actually say that Smith or Johnson took the decision. She implied it, but she did not say it. Her actual words were:

[Corbyn] asked me if the decision to destroy the landing cards - the decision to destroy the landing cards - had been taken in my time as home secretary. The decision to destroy the landing cards was taken in 2009 and as I seem to recall in 2009 it was a Labour Home Secretary who was in office.

This is misleading, because MPs were left with the impression that the decision was taken by the home secretary. But, in the annals of political dishonesty, this is very much at the vanilla end of things. Ministers are ultimately responsible for what their officials do, even if they do not take the decisions themselves. And nowhere is this more true than in the Home Office. The former home secretary Jack Straw once summed it up like this.

One of my predecessors, who was in one of the Thatcher cabinets, said to me, ‘What you have to understand about being home secretary, Jack, is that at any one time there’ll be 50 sets of officials working on projects which will undermine the government and destroy your political career. And the worst is, not only do you not know who they are, they don’t know either.

CORRECTION: Earlier, in the PMQs write-up at 12.44pm, I said the Conservative MP Steve Double spoke about the Labour candidate in the Gower spreading lies about Byron Davies, the Tory MP defeated in the 2017 election. But Double actually referred to a Labour activist being responsible - not the Labour party candidate. I’ve corrected the post. I am sorry for the mistake. There are more details about the case here.

Here is a Guardian video from last month featuring Albert Thompson explaining how he had been told that he was facing a £54,000 bill for cancer treatment.

2:55

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about PMQs.

Generally, it is seen as a decisive win for Theresa May.

From Sky’s Beth Rigby

From the Daily Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff

From the Financial Times’ Sebastian Payne

From the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman

From ITV’s Daniel Hewitt

From the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush

From the Times’ Matt Chorley

From the Yorkshire Post’s Arj Singh

From the Times’ Patrick Kidd

From PoliticsHome’s Kevin Schofield

From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges

From the Evening Standard editor (and former Tory chancellor) George Osborne

More on the landing cards issue.

This is from HuffPost’s Paul Waugh, who was at the post-PMQs No 10 briefing.

And this is from Sky’s Faisal Islam.