Dublin not expecting EU objections to new trade rules for Northern Ireland – UK politics live | Politics

Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister and tánaiste (deputy PM), has said that he does not expect the European Commission to object to the proposals in the Safeguarding the Union document setting out terms of the No 10/DUP deal to revise the Windsor framework.

Speaking after meeting the political parties in Belfast, he said:

I think the EU commission will look at this, I think that’s the whole purpose of the joint committee and, indeed, the various mechanisms that are in the Windsor framework is to go through issues as they arise, but I do not anticipate any particular difficulties in respect of the EU side.

Asked what would protecting the EU single market if goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland were not checked, he said:

For goods that are going from the UK into Northern Ireland that are staying in Northern Ireland, we’ve always been of the view that the more streamlined and seamless one can make that, the better all round because we want any of the frameworks we put in place to work for industry, business and jobs in Northern Ireland.

Dominic Raab acted unlawfully by ignoring advice on raising legal aid fees, high court finds

Haroon Siddique

The lord chancellor acted unlawfully and irrationally when taking the decision not to increase criminal legal aid fees for solicitors in England and Wales by 15%, which was the minimum recommendation of an independent review it commissioned, the high court has found.

The Law Society for England and Wales brought a judicial review against the decision, which came amid a 15% increase for barristers and an exodus of solicitors from criminal legal aid work.

In a judgment published on Wednesday, Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Jay found in favour of the solicitors’ representative body on two of its four argued grounds and ordered that the decision should be retaken.

They said that Alex Chalk’s predecessor as lord chancellor, Dominic Raab, acted irrationally by not asking whether increasing fees by less than 15% could still achieve the aims and objectives of the independent review into criminal legal aid and by not undertaking any modelling to see whether they could be met “in particular ensuring the sustainability of criminal legal aid”.

The judges said that they had been presented with an “impressive, compelling, body of evidence” which showed “the system is slowly coming apart at the seams”. They said:

Unless there are significant injections of funding in the relatively near future, any prediction along the lines that the system will arrive in due course at a point of collapse is not overly pessimistic.

The Law Society president, Nick Emmerson, expressed delight at the decision but said it was imperative the government implemented the 15% increase as soon as possible. He said:

We may have won the court battle but it’s the public who will lose out in custody suites and courtrooms across the country unless the government takes immediate action to stop the exodus of duty solicitors from the profession.

1,400 duty solicitors have left since 2017 because the work is not financially viable.

We are already seeing that there simply aren’t enough solicitors to represent suspects at police stations and magistrates’ courts day and night across the country. This situation will only get worse with potentially dangerous consequences for society.

The imbalance between the defence and the prosecution will continue to grow and public trust in the criminal justice system will continue to fail.

Government’s trans guidance for schools in England ‘will erase decades of progress’, campaigners claim

Richard Adams

A coalition of charities and human rights groups say they “strongly oppose” the government’s draft guidance on how schools in England should treat transgender students, and are calling for it to be redrawn.

The group including Stonewall, Liberty, Amnesty International UK and Mermaids, a charity supporting trans young people, say the guidance “seeks to deny the existence of transgender pupils” and could lead to them being forcibly outed.

In a joint statement they say:

This approach will erase decades of progress in making schools places that value difference and reject discrimination. It hampers teachers’ ability to tackle bullying and ultimately risks causing more harm and exclusion of trans young people.

Schools desperately need guidance that offers practical advice on creating school environments that support trans pupils to thrive.

We are calling on the government to listen to LGBT+ youth and inclusive educators, withdraw the guidance and rethink their approach.

Just Like Us, an LBGT+ charity that works with schools, is also advising schools not to use the guidance in its current form. “The draft guidance is unclear, impractical and many questions have been raised over its legal standing,” the charity said.

The draft guidance, published late last year, advised schools that they had no “general duty” to let students change their preferred names or uniforms – known as social transitioning – and stressed that parents should be involved where possible.

Wales’s journey towards independence speeding up, Plaid Cymru leader claims

Steven Morris

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said that the “journey” towards independence is “speeding up” after a commission concluded that breaking away from the union was a viable option for the country.

Ap Iorwerth described the report from the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales as “groundbreaking” and called on Welsh people to be “curious, bold and brave” about the possibility of independence.

The Plaid leader, who is making a keynote speech on the issue in Cardiff this evening, told the Guardian:

I absolutely understand people who see the UK as being some sort of comfort blanket. But it takes a bit of boldness and more curiosity to turn that question on its head and ask, well, how much better could things be if we switch from dependency to taking our fate into our own hands. Staying where we are isn’t risk-free – look at the poverty within many of our communities.

He said he did not want Wales to be isolated but perhaps to be part of a new union of the British Isles or the Celtic nations. He went on:

To me, redesigning Britain is what it’s about. This is a hugely exciting time and I want more people to come with us on the journey.

Also, there’s the reality that if Scotland becomes independent and if Northern Ireland and the Republic reunify, you are left with England and Wales, with Wales being a very, very small partner in that rump of the UK. I think it will dawn on people quickly that that could be bad for Wales. Things could change because of decisions not made by us. We need to prepare for all outcomes. We have to be alive to the possibility that the timescale might not be entirely of our own making.

MPs broadly backed the No 10/DUP deal to reform the way the Windsor framework operates, set out in a lengthy and complicated command paper when Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, presented it in a statement to the House of Commons. If Downing Street was fearing a major backlash, it has not happened, and the restoration of power sharing at Stormont is still all set to happen very soon.

But there were concerns raised about the deal, by two groups of MPs.

At a meeting on Monday night Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, secured backing for the deal from the party’s executive.

But he does not have unanimous support and in the Commons at least two of his eight MPs expressed concerns that the deal would not stop Northern Ireland being bound by EU law.

The most outspoken (as usual) was Sammy Wilson, who said:

When the Northern Ireland assembly sits, ministers and assembly members will be expected by law to adhere to and implement laws which are made in Brussels, which they had no say over and no ability to amend, and no ability to stop. This is a result of this spineless, weak-kneed, Brexit-betraying government, refusing to take on the EU and its interference in Northern Ireland.

And Carla Lockhart suggested there was more work to be done because Northern Ireland remained bound by EU single market rules, and the customs code still applied.

Several Tory Brexiters, such as Priti Patel and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, raised a question also raised by Wilson: what will happen if, in future, the UK government does want to pass legislation diverging from EU law that might necessitate the reimposition of checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland?

This is the key issue, and one that Boris Johnson was tweeting about earlier (see 11.33am), because for Brexiters it is an article of faith that the UK should diverge in this way.

Heaton-Harris replied several times using the same formula. He told

I can tell him absolutely that this agreed package of measures will not change the freedoms and powers we have secured through Brexit or through the Windsor framework. It will not reduce our ability to diverge nor our commitment to do so should it be in the interest of the United Kingdom.

This partially satisfied the Brexiters, although it sounded like a fudge, and Heaton-Harris never fully explained what would happen – under the procedure highlighted by Rees-Mogg (see 1.59am) – if the government did want to diverge in this way.

If the Conservatives were expecting to be in power for another five years, with the government diverging away merrily, this would be a problem, because the Brexiters would not be happy with the answer they got today.

But they don’t, and as a consequence – judging, at least, by what they were saying in the Commons – they don’t have the appetite for a big fight.

Richard Drax, a Tory Brexiter, says “whispering” from Sinn Féin about reunification has been unhelpful. Can the government say that will never happen?

Heaton-Harris says he has to be careful, because as secretary of state he is the person who would authorise a border poll. But he says that he expects Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK for the rest of his lifetime.

He says the Good Friday agreement says reunification would only happen with the consent of both communities.

Heaton-Harris is 56.

Sammy Wilson (DUP) asked if the UK government would still have the power to diverge from EU laws, and implement laws that would not apply to Northern Ireland.

Heaton-Harris says this package of laws will not reduce the UK’s ability to diverge, or the government’s “commitment to do so should it be in the interests of the United Kingdom”.

He says, if there is a possibility of a measure having a diverse impact on GB/NI trade, the government would have to publish a ministerial statement justifying this.