Crispin Blunt apologises for offence caused by his questioning of sexual assault verdict – politics live

Responding to reports that a union has described the Border Force “catastrophically under-staffed”, Labour has claimed travellers are facing “travel chaos” because of the government’s ineptitude. Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, said:

Brits are facing travel chaos, and the government is missing in action.

Instead of casting around for someone else to blame, Conservative ministers should look in the mirror.

They were warned about staffing shortages, and yet the Tories have comprehensively failed to take action to tackle the security backlog hampering recruitment.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has launched a call for evidence today as he prepares a new 10-year mental health plan. Javid says:

While we continue to expand and transform our mental health services under the NHS long-term plan to meet rising demand, we know we need to go further.

Too many people, particularly our children and young people, do not have the tools and support they need to look after their wellbeing or prevent mental health problems from escalating.

Frances O’Grady has announced that she is standing down as general secretary of the TUC at the end of the year. By that point she will have been in the job for 10 years. A former deputy general secretary of the TUC, she has been the first woman to run the organisation, and her leadership has been widely praised, in the labour movement and beyond.

In a statement announcing her retirement she said:

Leading the TUC has been the greatest honour of my life. It has been a privilege to serve the trade union movement.

Unions are a force for good in British society. I am proud of what we achieved during the pandemic – from securing furlough, to keeping people safe at work, championing equality, and keeping vital services running.

And I’m proud of the work we do every day protecting workers’ jobs, pay, rights and working conditions.

The last decade has been turbulent – with three general elections, two anti-trade union bills, an EU referendum and a pandemic to contend with.

But on every occasion unions have risen to the challenge and fought for working people.

I want to place on record my huge thanks to all union reps and officers – you are the lifeblood of our movement.

I’m delighted to be stepping down at a time when the trade union movement is growing. There has never been a more important time to be a member of a trade union.

O’Grady’s successor will be elected at the TUC conference in September, and nominations for the job will close on 11 July.

Britain’s cost of living crisis moved into its fourth consecutive month in February despite a jump in wages and a fall in unemployment to just 3.8%, its lowest level since 1974, my colleague Phillip Inman reports. The Office for National Statistics said average earnings growth of 5.4%, including bonuses, failed to keep pace with a 6.2% rise in the consumer prices index in February, while for those who missed out on a bonus the situation was even worse after average wages increased by only 4%.

Phillip’s full story is here.

In an interview with the Guardian yesterday Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of “rank hypocrisy” on the grounds he is putting up taxes for Britons while his wife has been using non-dom status to reduce her own tax bill, to the benefit of the Sunak household.

In his Sky News interview James Heappey, the armed forces minister, said that he did not accept Starmer’s argument. He explained:

I don’t think it is hypocritical because I don’t think that anybody is saying that Rishi hasn’t paid the tax that he is supposed to, so I just don’t get where Keir Starmer is coming from with that comment.

Addressing another argument made by Starmer in his Guardian interview, Heappey also said it was “ridiculous” to suggest Sunak was “out of touch” with the concerns of ordinary people because of his family wealth.

Heappey said he was not familiar with all the details of Sunak holding a US green card when became chancellor, but he did not accept it was a problem. he said:

Even if he was holding a green card whilst deciding on tax in this country, no one’s ever suggested that he’s done anything but pay all the tax that he is required to in the UK.

And he said he felt some “unease” about the fact that Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, had had to change her tax arrangements just for the sake of her husband’s career. He said:

[Murty] paid all the tax that she needed to on the income she earned in the UK.

She had non-domiciled status because she is a foreign national and she hasn’t made herself resident in the UK for the purposes of tax and her business.

She’s changed that decision out of loyalty to her husband’s political career and there’s a sort of unease, if you don’t mind me saying, that in 2022 that is still something that she felt compelled to do, to support her husband.

But she never did anything wrong by being non-dom. She is an Indian national and she pays her tax elsewhere. She’s changed that out of loyalty to Rishi, I think that’s very admirable.

Here is the full text of Crispin Blunt’s apology.

On reflection I have decided to retract my statement defending Imran Ahmad Khan. I am sorry that my defenc of him has been a cause of significant upset and concer not least to victims of sexual offences. It was not my intention to do this.

To be clear I do not condone any form of abuse and I strongly believe in the independence and integrity of the justice system.

It is a particularly difficult time for LGBT+ rights across the world and my statement risks distracting the APPG for Global LGBT+ Rights from its important purpose. I have today offered the officers my resignation so a new chair can be found to continue the work of the group with full force.

Crispin Blunt, the Tory former justice minister, has now issued an apology for the offence caused by his statement yesterday casting doubt on the conviction of his Tory colleague Imran Ahmad Khan for sexual assault.

Blunt has also resigned as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for global LGBTQ+ rights.

James Heappey, the armed forces minister, was on the morning interview round on behalf of the government earlier and he said “all options” would be on the table if reports that Russia has used chemical weapons in Mariupol are verified. He told Sky News:

It’s important to recognise that there are all sorts of ways in which these things [chemical weapons] could be used, from the use of teargas, which is effectively a riot-control measure, all the way through to utterly devastating lethal chemical weapons systems, so I don’t think it’s helpful to be too binary about the situation because these are highly nuanced.

But he went on:

There are some things that are beyond the pale and the use of chemical weapons will get a response, and all options are on the table for what that response could be.

This is what Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said about this on Twitter last night.

As mentioned earlier, it is crime week in the Labour elections campaign grid and last night the party announced that – as it put it in its own press release – it was “calling for immediate nationwide injunctions to block Just Stop Oil protests as demonstrations continue to cause misery for motorists across Britain”.

Keir Starmer tweeted about this last night.

And Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the Commons, who has been giving interviews this morning, told the Today programme a few minutes ago why Labour was calling for these injunctions. She said:

Up and down the country, people are struggling to get fuel to put in their cars to get to work to put food on the table, pay rent or mortgage and it’s a very basic thing. People are struggling under the cost of living crisis already with stratospheric energy bills. Life is tough enough. And we want people who need their cars to get to work to be able to.

The proposal has infuriated people on Labour’s left. This is from James Schneider, who was one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most senior communications advisers.

And this is from Momentum, the group set up to promote the Corbyn agenda.

Asked about this criticism, Debbonaire said under Starmer Labour has defended the right to protest by voting against the many measures that would restrict it in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill.

Good morning. Labour is campaigning on crime for the local elections this week and the Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, a former justice minister, played into their hands yesterday when he released a statement criticising the court proceedings that led to his Tory colleague Imran Ahmad Khan being found guilty of sexual assault. Blunt claimed that his friend was the victim of “a dreadful miscarriage of justice” but, in the statement issued on his website, he offered no evidence to justify this inflammatory allegation.

As Peter Walker and Jenn Selby report in their overnight story, Blunt’s comments were strongly criticised – not least by his own party.

Blunt has been under pressure to offer a retraction and, as my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, he has this morning removed the statement issued yesterday from his website and deleted his tweet about the case. Whether or not he will go further, and say that he was wrong to speak out in the first place, remains to be seen.

The row has coincided with the publication of a report from the Commons home affairs committee about rape cases saying “charging, prosecution and conviction levels remain shamefully low”. It says:

Public confidence in the ability of the criminal justice system to respond to reports of rape, to support victims and survivors, and, ultimately, to bring perpetrators to justice, is at what could be its lowest point. Police forces in England and Wales recently recorded the highest ever number of rapes within a 12-month period, yet only 1.3% of the recorded rape offences that have been assigned an outcome resulted in a charge or summons. According to Crown Prosecution Service figures, the volume of completed rape prosecutions dropped from 5,190 in 2016/17 to 1,557 in 2020/21.

Parliament is not sitting this week, Boris Johnson is taking a mini-holiday at Chequers, and there is not much in the diary. But Keir Starmer is campaigning in Scotland, and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will be presenting on LBC, standing in for James O’Brien.

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