“Rishi Sunak is set to introduce hard-hitting new laws this week to finally put a brake on the ‘human rights’ farce which allows migrants to resist deportation from the UK. The Prime Minister – who has made ending the tide of people crossing the Channel on small boats and then claiming asylum one of his top five policy priorities – tells The Mail on Sunday today: ‘Make no mistake, if you come here illegally, you will not to be able to stay.’ His clampdown follows months of wrangling within Whitehall over whether the UK was legally able to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides the ultimate legal authority for most deportation challenges. It is understood that Mr Sunak has concluded that the most contentious aspects of the convention can instead be circumvented.” – Mail on Sunday
>ToryDiary: Our survey. Eight in ten panellists expect a Labour government after the next election.
“Throughout the course of the pandemic, officials and ministers wrestled with how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions. One weapon in their arsenal was fear. “We frighten the pants off everyone,” Matt Hancock suggested during one WhatsApp message with his media adviser. The then health secretary was not alone in his desire to scare the public into compliance. The WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show how several members of Mr Hancock’s team engaged in a kind of “Project Fear”, in which they spoke of how to utilise “fear and guilt” to make people obey lockdown.” – Daily Telegraph
“One of the UK’s most senior civil servants has raised concerns Whitehall’s chief partygate investigator potentially broke impartiality rules by holding secret meetings with Sir Keir Starmer. In a Zoom call to officials reminding them of their duty to impartiality, Susan Acland-Hood, the permanent secretary at the Department of Education, told civil servants the appointment of Sue Gray as Sir Keir’s chief of staff “is a real challenge to acting in a way that deserves and retains the confidence of ministers”. Ms Gray, who resigned from the Civil Service on Thursday to take up a job in Keir Starmer’s office, has faced criticism from Tory MPs who have voiced concerns regarding her political impartiality.” – Sunday Telegraph
“Workers will be given annual health checks as part of government plans to stem the flow of people going on long-term sick leave and reduce the number of economically-inactive Britons. The Treasury is also expected to use this month’s budget to launch subsidies to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to introduce occupational health services and provide basic “health appraisals”. Ministers believe assessments, which could include tests for blood pressure and body mass index, will help reduce the number of people leaving the labour market by detecting health problems earlier.” – Sunday Times
“As Rishi Sunak hailed his Brexit deal that “takes back control” of Northern Ireland, the European Union’s chief negotiator told a private meeting in Brussels a vastly different story of who controls the province. Debriefing the European Parliament’s Brexit committees on the freshly-minted “Windsor Framework”, Maros Sefcovic said the Prime Minister’s pact was simply designed to avoid negative headlines in the British press, and would not hand back full sovereignty over the region.” – Sunday Telegraph
“Rishi Sunak has been holding private meetings with senior peers to discuss reforming the House of Lords and ward off Labour’s threat to abolish it. The prime minister has met two groups of peers in secret since entering Downing Street and is due to attend another meeting of Conservative lords in the coming days. He is understood to be talking to former cabinet ministers in the upper chamber about their proposals to shrink the size of the Lords.” – Sunday Times
“Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting in the streets of Bakhmut – but Russia does not control the eastern city, its deputy mayor has said. Oleksandr Marchenko also told the BBC the remaining 4,000 civilians are living in shelters without access to gas, electricity or water. Mr Marchenko said “not a single building” had remained untouched and that the city is “almost destroyed”. Bakhmut has seen months of fighting, as Russia tries to take charge.” – BBC
“The government is adamant that it won’t budge on corporation tax. But by the Treasury’s own logic, investment allowances offer far more bang for the taxpayer’s buck. Using the imminent budget to introduce a policy of “full expensing” — letting companies write off the full value of any new investments in plant and machinery — would have big economic benefits. Yes, it would have a high initial cost, as firms moved their tax savings forward. But the cost to the Treasury would shrink extremely rapidly. The government may still feel that markets could not bear even this short-term addition to government borrowing. It may argue that there is no room to cut, or even just delay, public spending to make space for these kind of incentives. But that is a counsel of despair.” – Robert Colvile, Sunday Times
“We happen to have heard of Sue Gray. But there are many such officials who are not household names. Believing themselves to be disinterested, they have taken to frustrating what they see as ideological ministerial demands. Their bias is institutional, and runs across every government department. The Treasury systematically underplays the secondary or dynamic effects of tax cuts – that is, the way in which a lower tax rate can encourage more economic activity and so end up generating higher revenues. The Home Office hates repatriating illegal immigrants: its civil servants, through their trade union, went so far as to challenge the Government’s deportation policy in court. The Education Department does not want a knowledge-based curriculum. The Department of International Trade dislikes cutting tariffs. The Business Department wants to keep Brussels-era regulations.” – Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph