Sunak marks Brexit anniversary by claiming benefits will ‘continue to empower communities’ – UK politics live | Politics

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, was not exactly on message in his Sky News interview with Kay Burley this morning. As well as implying that he thought the bullying inquiry into Dominic Raab was a mistake (see 10.37am), he made at least three other comments that suggest Rishi Sunak does not have the enthusiastic support of all his backbenchers.

• Rees-Mogg said that Sunak was performing “perfectly competently” as PM. Asked how he was doing, Rees-Mogg replied: “I think he’s doing perfectly competently.” When Burley put it to him that that was not much of an endorsement, Rees-Mogg went on: “I made no bones about the fact I thought Boris Johnson was a better prime minister and I wanted him to remain.”

• Rees-Mogg criticised the government for stalling the Northern Ireland protocol bill. The bill, which is popular with hardline Brexiters but widely seen as contrary to international law, because it would allow the UK to unilaterally ignore some of the provisions in the protocol treaty, passed through the Commons when Boris Johnson was PM. But it is stuck in the Lords, where it has not been debated since October and where a date has not been set for its report stage. Sunak has shelved it because he wants to negotiate a compromise on the protocol with the EU, and passing the bill would make agreement much harder. But Rees-Mogg said the government should pass it. He said:

The government has just got to get on with it. There’s a bill that has been through the House of Commons that is waiting its report stage in the House of Lords and I don’t understand why the government hasn’t brought it forward.

On Sky News this morning he repeated the argument, saying the bill contained a “very wide Henry VIII power” and that this was “not good legislative practice”.

Rees-Mogg is right about this. This is what the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg said in a good blog about the bill.

The government doesn’t know what changes it will have to make once this bill is passed. Under clause 3, the secretary of state would be able to make regulations that “amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation passed before this act or later in the same session of parliament as this act”. This is a supercharged Henry VIII clause. Why should MPs or peers pay any attention to any related legislation that may be brought before them later in this session when they know that, unless they object, a secretary of state may simply amend, repeal or revoke it?

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, told Sky News this morning that people should not be too “snowfakey” about the claims that Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, bullied civil servants in three of his previous ministerial appointments. Those allegations are now the subject of an investigation that could lead to Raab losing his job.

Rees-Mogg said:

We have to be slightly careful around the bullying allegations but also we mustn’t be too snowflakey about it. People need to be able to say this job has not been done well enough and needs to be done better.

My colleague Jamie Grierson has the story here.

Rees-Mogg spoke at the Institute for Government thinktank published its annual Whitehall monitor, which monitors the performance of the civil service and suggests that it would be a mistake for ministers to get complacent about the morale of civil servants. Here are some of the key findings.

• Turnover in the civil service has reached its highest level for at least a decade, the report says. It says between March 2021 and March 2022 13.6% of civil servants either moved between departments or left the civil service entirely.

The civil service goes into 2023 with record levels of turnover, declining morale and disrupted by widespread industrial action. Much is to be done to repair the relationship between ministers and officials, still strained by unresolved disputes over pay and the workforce, hostile press briefings against civil servants and the reverberations of the ‘partygate’ scandal that erupted a year ago. Public trust in both ministers and civil servants continues to get worse.

• Fewer than half of civil servants say their organisation motivates them to help meet its objectives, the report says. In 2021 51% said they were motivated, but last year that figure went down to 41%.

Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, gave an interview to Good Morning Britain this morning. As my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, he claimed that he did not “primarily” go on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! for his £320,000 fee.

But the highlight of the interview came when Susanna Reid, the presenter, put it to him that the embrace with Gina Coladangelo (at the time his adviser, now his partner) in his office that led to his resignation was not just against Covid guidelines at the time, but against the law too. Hancock refused to accept this, but he floundered badly, and could not refute what Reid was saying. Here is the clip.

Adam Wagner, the barrister and expert in Covid lockdown law, says Reid was right.

In its statement about the Brexit anniversary released overnight, Downing Street says Brexit is “a huge opportunity to deliver on the prime minister’s priorities to the British public”. And it identifies five areas where it claims Brexit is contributing to the growth agenda. It says:

Freeports: From Plymouth to Teesside, eight freeports across England are now open for business, galvanising emerging sectors from manufacturing to renewable energy and delivering jobs and prosperity in areas that need it the most. Crucial to the ambitious levelling up agenda, two new green freeports will be established in Scotland – expected to bring £10.8 billion of public and private investment and creating over 75,000 high-skilled jobs – while we will announce plans for at least one freeport in Wales in the coming months.

Edinburgh Reforms: In addition to the financial services and markets bill and reforming Solvency II, the government is taking advantage of the UK’s position outside the EU and going further through the Edinburgh Reforms to ensure the UK’s financial services sector is dynamic, sustainable and globally competitive – supporting businesses and powering growth right across the country.

REUL [retained EU law]: Regulatory reform is a key area where the UK can develop a competitive advantage in order to grow the economy. That’s why the prime minister recently reaffirmed the government’s commitment to review, reform, repeal or replace all retained EU law – as part of a collective cabinet drive – to boost innovation, accelerate our economic recovery and deliver tangible benefits to businesses, whilst maintaining world-leading workers’ rights and environmental protections.

R&D: While the UK continues to push for association to the Horizon Europe, we are working hard on developing a domestic alternative to progress the UK’s key strategic priorities for science and technology and to enhance collaboration with science superpowers around the globe, such as Japan and Switzerland.

UK Subsidy Regime: A new system to regulate the award of subsidies to business came into force at the start of the month. This represents the most significant change in subsidy administration in over 40 years and gets rid of unnecessary EU bureaucracy.

Guy Hands, a leading financier and a former Tory donor, gave a very different take on Brexit to Rishi Sunak’s in an interview on the Today programme this morning. He said:

It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe. Europe has lost more [in financial services] but we’ve lost as well. And the reality of Brexit was, it was just was a bunch of complete and total lies.

The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen.

My colleague Julia Kollewe has the full story here.

Good morning. At 11pm the UK will mark the third anniversary of the moment that it left the European Union. Increasingly, by a margin of around 60% to 40%, Britons are saying that this was a mistake, but in the Conservative party conceding anything like this would amount to a thought crime, such is the grip the Brexiters have on the party, and instead ministers are marking the anniversary by talking up the supposed benefits.

Still, what the government is saying about Brexit is still considerably less upbeat than what Boris Johnson and his colleagues were saying, or promising, this time three years ago. This is what Rishi Sunak said about the anniversary in a statement released overnight.

In the three years since leaving the EU, we’ve made huge strides in harnessing the freedoms unlocked by Brexit to tackle generational challenges. Whether leading Europe’s fastest vaccine rollout, striking trade deals with over 70 countries or taking back control of our borders, we’ve forged a path as an independent nation with confidence.

And in my first 100 days as prime minister, that momentum hasn’t slowed – we’re cutting red tape for businesses, levelling up through our freeports, and designing our own, fairer farming system to protect the British countryside.

This is just the beginning of our plans to deliver on our five priorities, including growing the economy so we can create better paid jobs, and I’m determined to ensure the benefits of Brexit continue to empower communities and businesses right across the country.

But it is not a good day to be going on about growing the economy, with the IMF saying it expects the UK to be the only G7 country where the economy will shrink this year. My colleague Graeme Wearden has been covering the reaction to this on his business live blog.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Philippa Hird, chair of the NHS pay review body, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 12.30pm: MPs debate Labour motions, first on neighbourhood policing, and then on a binding demand for the government to publish whatever analysis it did before the autumn statement on the case for abolishing non-dom status.

2.30pm: Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, and other officials give evidence to the Commons justice committee on the work of the department.

4.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is due to speak to Tory MP at the 1922 Committee.

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