Caroline Lucas says Sunak energy policies more ‘dangerous’ than Just Stop Oil protests as she says she is to stand down – live | UK news

The North Sea oil and fuel trade is in decline, the shadow enterprise minister Seema Malhotra mentioned, as she defended plans to dam new drilling licences from 2050, a transfer criticised by commerce unions. Aubrey Allegretti has the story right here.

MPs will maintain a debate on Monday on proposals to ban members from the parliamentary property if they’re being investigated for a legal offence and are deemed to pose a danger to different individuals.

The plans have been drawn up following considerations that MPs accused of great sexual offences, together with rape, have been allowed to proceed working in parliament.

However, as Eleni Courea writes in her Politico London Playbook briefing, the proposals are controversial. She says:

Final evening the federal government was debating whether or not to carry a vote on Monday on proposals to ban MPs accused of violent or sexual offences from the property — after backlash from some Tory backbenchers. One senior Tory MP informed Playbook they opposed the plan as a result of it will overturn “widespread apply that you’re harmless till confirmed responsible”.

In her assertion on subsequent week’s Commons enterprise, Penny Mordaunt, the chief of the Commons, mentioned there could be “a common debate on risk-based exclusion of members of parliament” on Monday subsequent week, after debates on the retained EU legislation (revocation and reform) invoice and on some Public Order Act laws.

However Mordaunt didn’t say that MPs could be requested to vote on the proposed adjustments to the foundations subsequent week. Ministers might favour holding a common debate first, and not using a vote to implement new procedures, to ascertain how a lot help they’ve.

Important reform of England’s beleaguered grownup social care sector might be ushered in by the subsequent Labour authorities below plans that embrace boosting pay for care employees, increasing the scope of free help, and a £50 weekly contribution in the direction of prices for many who want it. Pippa Crerar has the story right here.

The Electoral Fee has renewed its name for the legislation round political donations to be tightened following the publication of figures exhibiting greater than £20m was donated to events within the first quarter of this 12 months.

That compares to nearly £13m donated within the first quarter of 2022.

In an announcement issued alongside the brand new figures, Louise Edwards, the fee’s director of regulation and digital transformation, mentioned:

We publish particulars of those donations in order that voters perceive how political events are funded. We all know transparency of social gathering and campaigner finance is necessary for individuals, however our analysis tells us that solely 24 per cent of individuals imagine social gathering funding is clear.

It’s clear that publishing this info just isn’t sufficient. We proceed to advocate to the UK authorities that it reforms the system, to assist shield events from those that search to evade the legislation, and provides voters extra confidence.

The figures present that the Conservatives obtained £12.1m within the first three months of this 12 months, Labour £4.4m (together with £2m from Lord Sainsbury), the Liberal Democrats £1.3m in donations and the SNP simply £4,000.

Earlier this 12 months the federal government rejected opposition makes an attempt to amend the nationwide safety invoice to require political events to provide statements saying what they’re doing to make sure they don’t seem to be taking cash from international powers.

Below present legislation, events aren’t allowed to take cash from international firms or international authorities. However there have been requires the legislation to be tightened as a result of firms based mostly within the UK that donate to political events should not have to point out that that cash was generated within the UK.

Sir Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of parliament’s intelligence and safety committee, was one of many MPs who backed the modification to the nationwide safety invoice. However the authorities rejected it, arguing it was pointless.

UPDATE: See 12.22pm for extra particulars of the social gathering funding reforms the fee is proposing.

NHS England has launched new ready time figures. PA Media has the details.

An estimated 7.4 million individuals had been ready to start out therapy on the finish of April, up from 7.3 million in March, NHS England mentioned.

It’s the highest quantity since data started in August 2007.

Rishi Sunak has made slicing ready lists certainly one of his priorities for 2023, pledging in January that “lists will fall and folks will get the care they want extra rapidly”.

• Some 11,477 persons are estimated to have been ready greater than 18 months to start out routine hospital therapy on the finish of April, NHS England mentioned. PA says:

That is up from 10,737 on the finish of March.

The federal government and NHS England set the ambition of eliminating all waits of greater than 18 months by April of this 12 months, excluding exceptionally advanced instances or sufferers who select to attend longer.

That is up from 359,798 on the finish of March.

The federal government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of greater than a 12 months by March 2025.

• Some 218,060 pressing most cancers referrals had been made by GPs in England in April, down month-on-month (by 16% in contrast with March 2023) however up year-on-year (by 2% in contrast with April 2022). PA says:

The proportion of most cancers sufferers who noticed a specialist inside two weeks of being referred urgently by their GP fell from 83.9% in March to 77.7% in April, remaining beneath the 93% goal and the bottom determine since September 2022.

The 93% goal was final hit in Could 2020, through the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

And listed below are the very best extracts from Caroline Lucas’s interview on the In the present day programme:

The factor that basically motivates me, what actually drives me, is motion across the local weather and nature emergencies.

Over the course of my lifetime alone, populations and a few of our most necessary wildlife have plummeted by over half. The local weather disaster is accelerating, warnings we are going to crash by that 1.5C local weather threshold throughout the subsequent 5 years. So these are actually huge points.

And since I’ve to be the frontbench spokesperson on every thing for my social gathering, I’m pulling so many instructions, from advantages to Brexit, and it simply implies that I can’t give the time that I personally need to these huge points round local weather and nature.

I believe there’s a position for bodily direct motion and as you say – I at all times have achieved and I’ve achieved it myself.

And when Nick Robinson put it to her that teams like Simply Cease Oil had been doing extra to “energise” younger individuals over the local weather disaster than Inexperienced social gathering politicians, Lucas replied:

I believe it’s a mixture of each, to be trustworthy.

I believe people who find themselves taking peaceable, direct motion, whether or not or not I agree with each single tactic, they’ve definitely accelerated the give attention to this concern, mobilised large numbers of individuals.

However I believe you additionally want individuals solely on the within of politics too. I simply bear in mind these phrases from António Guterres, the UN secretary common, the place he mentioned the really harmful radicals aren’t people who find themselves protesting within the streets, it’s governments who aren’t dealing with as much as the scale of the emergency that we face and are nonetheless, for instance within the case of our personal authorities, licensing extra oil and fuel. That’s what is actually harmful and radical, not people who find themselves fairly understandably pushed to take motion on the streets as a result of they’re seeing that we’re careering in the direction of a cliff edge.

• She mentioned Rishi Sunak’s authorities was extra “harmful and radical” than the Simply Cease Oil protesters due to its vitality insurance policies. (See quote within the paragraph above.) Yesterday, Sunak described Simply Cease Oil activists as “eco-zealots” who had been “primarily main us into an vitality give up”.

• She mentioned she wished to assist the Inexperienced social gathering get extra individuals elected. Its efficiency within the native elections was its greatest ever, she mentioned, and she or he mentioned the Greens are actually the biggest social gathering on 10 councils, and in administration in additional than 30.

Good morning. Tony Benn famously mentioned, when he stood down as an MP, that he was leaving the Home of Commons in order that he would have “extra time to commit to politics”. This morning Caroline Lucas, Britain’s first Inexperienced social gathering MP, has in impact introduced she is doing the identical. Greater than 50 MPs have mentioned they’re standing down on the subsequent election, however Lucas is among the most vital figures on the record. Lucas’s election, as MP for Brighton Pavilion, was a significant enhance to the Inexperienced social gathering (which she has twice led) and to the environmental trigger typically.

In an open letter to her constituents, she highlights among the progress made on inexperienced, and different, points over the previous 13 years. Explaining her choice to face down, she says:

The depth of those constituency commitments, along with the actual tasks of being my social gathering’s sole MP, imply that, mockingly, I’ve not been capable of focus as a lot as I would love on the existential challenges that drive me – the character and local weather emergencies. I’ve at all times been a special form of politician – as those that witnessed my arrest, courtroom case and acquittal over peaceable protest on the fracking web site in Balcombe practically ten years in the past will recall. And the reality is, as these threats to our treasured planet change into ever extra pressing, I’ve struggled to spend the time I would like on these accelerating crises. I’ve due to this fact determined to not stand once more as your MP on the subsequent election.

The explanation I got here into politics was to alter issues. 13 years in the past it’s inconceivable that parliament would have declared a local weather emergency. And I’ve put points like a common primary revenue and a authorized proper to entry nature on the political agenda; secured the primary parliamentary debate in a technology on drug legislation reform; and due to my work in parliament, a pure historical past GCSE will quickly be on the syllabus. I’ve mentioned the beforehand unsayable, solely to see it change into a part of the mainstream, on coal, on the parable that countless financial progress makes us happier, on a inexperienced new deal.

My willpower to attempting to make change is stronger than ever. I sit up for having the time to discover ever extra imaginative and artistic methods of serving to to make a habitable future a actuality. Watch this house!

Right here is Matthew Weaver’s story about Lucas’s announcement.

Lucas has simply been on the In the present day programme, the place Nick Robinson additionally prompt she was appearing like Tony Benn and Lucas mentioned she was “very completely happy” with the comparability. I’ll submit some highlights from the interview shortly.

Right here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for local weather change and web zero, go to British Metal in North Lincolnshire.

11.30am: Downing Avenue holds a foyer briefing.

12.40pm (UK time): Rishi Sunak is because of communicate to broadcasters earlier than he attends a enterprise roundtable with US CEOs in Washington. At 4pm he meets Joe Biden within the White Home, and at 6.45pm they’re because of maintain a press convention.

Afternoon: Friends debate Commons amendments to the strikes (minimal service ranges) invoice.

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