Braverman tells MPs Belfast court ruling shows Sunak’s Windsor framework has ‘failed on first contact with reality’ – UK politics live

The Conservative MP Danny Kruger, co-chair of the New Conservatives, a group representing rightwing Tories, welcomed what Andrew Stephenson said in his opening statement about the WHO treaty. (See 2pm.) But, in a follow-up to his urgent question, he asked Stephenson to set out what the government’s red lines were. He said that the latest draft of the treaty was concerning, and that it would still give the WHO considerable powers to direct how national governments should respond to a pandemic.

In response, Stephenson, a health minister, said that the current draft of the treaty was not acceptable to the government.

Andrew Stephenson, a health minister, has urged MPs to dismiss “myths” being spread about a World Health Organisation pandemic preparedness treaty that the UK is considering supporting.

He was responding to an urgent question tabled by the Tory MP Danny Kruger. But the issue is one that has been highlighted aggressively by Nigel Farage, the Reform UK honorary president, on rightwing broadcasting channels. Yesterday Farage told Talk TV:

In two weeks’ time in Geneva, the World Health Organisation are meeting and they plan a pandemic treaty, and that’ll be binding on us, under international law.

It would give the World Health Organisation the ability, number one, to take away 20% of our PPE and vaccines to give to other parts of the world.

Number two, give them the power to dictate behaviour, such as mask mandates, such as not being able to travel without being jabbed goodness knows how many times and, the really big one, they would be able to say to us, this is now a global pandemic, you must lock down. Which of course, would take away from us the ability to do what Florida did, or to do what Sweden did, which we now learn a few years on, has led to far less long term harm in that country and that state.

In his opening statement, withour referring to Farage, Stephenson said he wanted to dispel “myths” about the proposed WHO treaty.

He said member states were negotiating the treaty, not the WHO. And he said that it was “simply not true” to claim it would require countries to give away 20% of their vaccines. Instead, there was talk about a voluntary mechanism that would involve firms agreeing to give away vaccines in return for information that would help them develop their products, he said.

He said the government would only sign up to a deal that respected UK national sovereignty and that there was no prospect of the UK allowing the WHO to mandate lockdowns.

Under no circumstances will we allow the WHO to have the power to mandate lockdowns, this would be unthinkable and has never been proposed. Protecting our sovereignty is a British red line.

Stephenson also stressed that, as yet, there is no treaty to sign up to.

The government will only accept the accord and targeted amendments to the international health regulations if they are firmly in the United Kingdom’s national interest, and no text has yet been agreed.

Christopher Chope (Con) told Pursglove his position was “manifestly absurd”. Echoing what the DUP’s Carla Lockhart said, he urged the government to legislate to exempt Northern Ireland from EU law.

Pursglove said the government was still taking legal advice.

Suella Braverman was home secretary when the Illegal Migration Act (the legislation covered by yesterday’s court judgment) was passed.

She told MPs that the court ruling yesterday showed that government claims that the Windsor framework (the updated version of the Northern Ireland protocol, negotiated by Rishi Sunak, meaning EU law in effect still applies in Northern Ireland) would not interfer with the Rwanda policy were wrong. She said:

In the decision the judge found that section 7A of the Withdrawal Agreement Act, as amended by the Windsor framework, must be read to mean that Northern Ireland is effectively to be treated as part of the European Union.

I believed the assurances made to me at the time.

But isn’t it now patently clear that the Windsor framework has operated in a way to undermine our sovereignty, to undermine Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, and I’m afraid it has fundamentally failed upon its first contact with reality.

Pursglove says there will be “no benefit” to asylum seekers who go to Northern Ireland in the hope of avoiding deportation. The policy is being operationalised on a UK basis, he says.

Tom Pursglove, the minister for legal migration, is responding to an urgent question in the Commons on the Belfast high court ruling yesterday saying parts of the Illegal Migration Act should not apply in Northern Ireland.

He says the government does not agree with the court’s interpretation of the Good Friday agreement. He claims the court is expanding the way rights under the GFA are interpreted beyond what was originally intended.

He says the government wants to impose the Rwanda deportation policy on a UK-wide basis.

And he says the ruling applies to the Illegal Migration Act, not the Safety of Rwanda Act. It will not stop the deportation policy being implemented, he says.

UPDATE: Pursglove said:

We’ve consistently made clear that the rights commitments in the Belfast/Good Friday agreement should be interpreted as they were always intended and not expanded to cover reserved issues like illegal migration.

We are also equally clear that immigration is a reserved matter, which has always been applied uniformly across the UK. We do not accept that the Good Friday agreement should be read so creatively as to extend to matters such as tackling illegal migration, which is a UK-wide issue and not in any way related to the original intention of the Good Friday agreement.

The proportion of people saying they trust the government has fallen by a quarter since the time of the last election, according to figures released today.

The report, published by the UK Statisics Authority, suggests that public trust in parliament has fallen even more sharply during the same period, which covers the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss premierships.

None of the other institutions covered by the survey have forfeited public trust so much.

The UK Statistics Authority commissioned the research to monitor how much trust people have in the Office for National Statistics. Some 87% of people said they trusted the ONS in 2023, down from 89% in 2021.

But trust in government fell from 42% to 31% during that time, the survey shows. And trust in parliament fell from 49% to 36%.

The research was carried out for the UK Statistics Authority by National Centre for Social Research. In its analysis it said:

Compared to 2021, there was a noticeable decrease in the level of trust respondents reported in a number of state-led institutions such as the UK parliament, the government, the civil service, the police, and the Bank of England. However, trust reported in ONS, the media, the courts and high street banks and financial institutions remained consistent with the answers from the previous survey year.

The analysis did not explain why trust in government and parliament fell so sharply between 2021 and 2023. But that period covers the Partygate scandal, which led to Boris Johnson resigning as PM and subsequently being found by the privileges committee to have repeatedly lied to MPs about the lockdown-busting No 10 drinks events.

And it also covers Truss’s premiership, which only lasted 49 days because her mini-budget triggered an economic crisis.