No 10 says Suella Braverman, not Rishi Sunak, signed off on extra £100m payment to Rwanda – UK politics live | Politics

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has said today’s court judgment saying the UK government was entitled to veto Scotland’s gender recognition (reform) bill shows the devolution settlement is “fundamentally flawed”. He gave his reaction in two posts on X.

Today’s judgment confirms beyond doubt that devolution is fundamentally flawed. The Court has confirmed that legislation passed by a majority in Holyrood can be struck down by Westminster. The only way to guarantee we get true self-government is through independence.

This is a dark day for devolution. Sovereignty should lie with the people of Scotland, not a Westminster Government we didn’t vote for with the ability to overrule our laws. We, of course, respect the Court’s judgment and will take time to consider its findings.

The full 65-page judgment is here.

Sharpe says payments made to Rwanda so far represent about 30 days of the amount being spent putting up asylum seekers in hotels in the UK.

He says if the plan succeeds, as he thinks it will, it will be good value for the taxpayers.

In the House of Lords Lord Sharpe, a Home Office minister, is answering a private notice question (the Lords equivalent of an urgent question) on payments to Rwanda.

He says no extra money was provided to Rwanda to go with the new treaty. And he says the precise costs for the deportation scheme will depend on how many people go to Rwanda.

He says sums payments under the economic partnership will be disclosed in the Home Office’s annual accounts.

Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, has said the government is “four-square” behind Israel in its efforts to remove the threat of Hamas.

Speaking alongside the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mervis, at a vigil in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, Dowden said:

I stand before you, not just as the deputy prime minister, nor as the member for Hertsmere, but also as a proud friend of Israel and a supporter of our Jewish community.

I want to say to you that the government stands four-square behind the central missions of Israel, of the Israel Defense Forces, of the Israeli government, namely, number one, to secure the release of every one of these hostages, and we will stand four-square until that is delivered.

But not only that, we must ensure that this cannot happen again, and that means, however difficult it is, we have to remove the threat of Hamas to stop it being able to do this to Israel again, and we stand four-square behind Israel in that mission as well.

In the House of Lords this morning peers have been debating Love Matters, a report on families and households by a commission set up by the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Opening the debate, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, warned that the new family visa rules announced this week would have a “negative impact” on married and family relationships.

He said:

The government is rightly concerned with bringing down the legal migration figures and I’m not, you’ll be relieved to know, going into the politics of that. But there is a cost to be paid in terms of the negative impact this will have on married and family relationships for those who live and work and contribute to our life together, particularly in social care …

The state is useful to the family, the family is indispensable to the state. A lack of strong families undermines our whole society. Government needs families to work. They must not set a series of hurdles for them to jump over.

He also called for the removal of the two-child cap on benefit payments. He said:

The End Child Poverty campaign estimates removing the two-child limit will lift a quarter of a million children out of poverty.

The moral case is beyond any question, yet the unfair penalty applied to additional children affects their educational outcomes, mental and physical health, their likelihood to require public support from public services later on.

It is not a good policy. Will the government and the opposition, should they become the government at some point, consider removing the two-child limit and addressing other systems and policy choices which keep family in poverty?

Here is Libby Brooks’ story about the court of sessions judgment saying the UK government’s veto of Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill was lawful.

Ministers will publish a “pack of evidence” about conditions in Rwanda on Tuesday to support its case that it is a safe country for asylum seekers, Downing Street said this morning.

At the lobby briefing, a No 10 spokesperson said there would be evidence that “underpins and explains the work that we’ve been doing with Rwanda” published to coincide with the second reading of the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill.

The main provision of the bill says that ministers, immigration officials and courts “must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country”.

Last night, during a press conference in Washington, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, said he had seen the evidence and found it persuasive. He said:

A bill has been published and will be introduced to the House of Commons and a pack of evidence about the true nature of what happens in Rwanda is being put together. I’ve seen that myself and I think it’s very convincing and will overcome the arguments put in the supreme court.

Downing Street has signalled that Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, was responsible for the decision to approve an extra £100m payment to Rwanda this year.

At the lobby briefing this morning, asked who “signed off” the money, a No 10 spokesperson told journalists:

The home secretary. It is an operational decision to release funding under the MoU (memorandum of undestanding).

And asked if the payment was “signed off” by Rishi Sunak, the spokesperson replied:

No. It’s part of the existing MoU (memorandum of undestanding). So it’s an operation decision for the home secretary to sign off. That’s the usual process.

The MoU with Rwanda was agreed in April 2022, when Priti Patel was the home secretary and the Rwanda partnership was first announced. No 10 said today that the original MoU made it clear that payments would go to Rwanda in addition to the original £140m. Last night, in his letter to two select committee chairs, Sir Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, said a further payment of £100m was made to Rwanda under the deal in April.

As the BBC’s Chris Mason revealed this morning, No 10 and the Suella Braverman camp have been engaged in a briefing war, in effect blaming each other for the payment. (See 9.21am.)

The No 10 spokesperson did not criticise Braverman over the payment, or even mention her by name. But Downing Street does not always answer government process questions with such clarity.

Sunak sacked Braverman last month, and since then she has launched a series of bitter attacks on his record over immigration. It is widely assumed she wants to replace him as party leader.