Keir Starmer averts row with union leaders as Labour reiterates its full commitment to new deal for working people | Politics

Downing Street has said the civil service rainbow lanyard crackdown, announced by the so-called “common sense minister” Esther McVey yesterday, won’t actually involve a ban.

In a speech yesterday, McVey, a minister in the Cabinet Office, declared:

I want a very simple but visible change to occur too – the lanyards worn to carry security passes shouldn’t be a random pick and mix, they should be a standard design reflecting that we are all members of the government delivering for the citizens of the UK. Working in the civil service is all about leaving your political views at the building entrance.

Yesterday officials said more details would be set out in guidance coming today. But at the Downing Street lobby briefing this afternoon the PM’s spokesperson said the guidance (which is still not out) was “not going to be proscriptive”. It is not going to include to ban civil servants from wearing certain types of lanyard.

The spokesperson said that, when McVey talked about rainbow lanyards being unacceptable, she was giving an “illustrative example” to make a point about impartiality, and not setting out specific policy.

Asked if the minister went too far in her speech, the spokesperson said: “No, I think the speech was bringing to life the issues she has been working on.”

This morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, told broadcasters he did not care whether or not his officials were wearing rainbow lanyards. (See 9.34am.)

Keir Starmer appears to have averted a row with union leaders over claims that Labour new deal for working people, its plan to beef up employment rights, was being watered down.

Some unions were set to raise concerns at a meeting this afternoon billed as a showdown.

But, as Jessica Elgot reports on X, both sides have agreed a statement expressing full commitment “to the new deal for working people as agreed in July”.

🚨Labour and the trade unions have agreed a joint statement on the workers rights proposals – coming shortly

Statement from Labour and all unions

“Together we have reiterated Labour’s full commitment to the New Deal for Working People as agreed in July.

“We will continue to work together at pace on how a Labour Government would implement it in legislation.”

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has said Natalie Elphicke would not be welcome in the Scottish Labour party.

Elphicke, a rightwing Conservative until her surprise defection last week, is now a member of the Labour party and sits on the Labour benches at Westminster.

But, as the National reports, Sarwar told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme today that he regarded some of the things she has said in the past as unacceptable. Asked about her defection, he said:

Look, I don’t know Natalie Elphicke, I’ve never met Natalie Elphicke. Looking at some of the comments that have been attributed to her or that she has said, I find them completely unacceptable, I don’t agree with them.

Asked if she would have been allowed to join Scottish Labour, he replied:

Well, look, she certainly wouldn’t be a Scottish Labour candidate, I can be really clear about that.

Asked if he thought it was right for her to be a Labour MP, Sarwar said that she would only be a Labour MP for “a matter of weeks” because the election was coming soon.

Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, was accused of being “hypocritcal” at the Covid inquiry hearing today because she criticised Boris Johnson for breaking lockdown rules while she seemed to ignore them herself when she attended an IRA funeral.

Near the start today’s hearing O’Neill said she was “truly sorry” for attending the outdoors event in June 2020, where an estimated 1,800 people gathered at a time when funerals were only supposed to be attended by 30 people. (See 10.52pm.)

Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, put it to O’Neill that it was hypocritical for her to criticise Boris Johnson for breaking lockdown rules when she had done the same herself.

O’Neill replied:

I don’t think so because they are two very different things in terms of the Boris Johnson approach of partying the whole way through the pandemic and drinking their way through it, to be quite blunt.

Hallett tried again.

We didn’t find out about the partying until after the pandemic, what you did was to do something the normal bereaved couldn’t do because you wanted to go to a friend’s funeral. Isn’t saying that what Boris Johnson’s government did was wrong sort of hypocritical?

O’Neill replied:

No, I don’t think so because what I did I did under the understanding of the regulations at that time. But I do accept wholeheartedly that I in some way damaged our executive relations with colleagues who had been working very hard with me the whole way through.

I also accept wholeheartedly that I damaged the public health messaging, and I had work to do to regain that. But I did that, I worked hard to regain that trust and confidence and to lead us for the next year and a half through the pandemic.

Hallett said she was pressing the point because “the point of principle is that those who set the rules should obey the rules, both in spirit and in the letter”.

O’Neill said she should have “anticipated the outworking of what I did”. But she said the attended the funeral with a personal invitation, as part of a cortege of 30 people.

That’s the basis on which I attended but I am sorry, I am sorry. I should have anticipated what would happen in the aftermath and that is why I worked hard to try to regain that confidence and trust.

Equally and more importantly, I think it’s about all the families of bereaved and people who went through horrific circumstance and the experience that they’ve had. It’s just horrendous and I would never set out to try to compound that or in any way make it more difficult for them to deal with their grief.

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.

UPDATE: Kruger said:

We know from the drafts that have been submitted in recent months what the real agenda of the WHO is. They want to have binding powers over national governments to introduce all sorts of restrictive measures on our citizens …

Will the government oppose any texts that abides this or a future government in how it responds to health threats? And finally, crucially, will the government comply with CRaG [Constitutional Reform and Governance Act], the requirements to put the treaty to a ratification vote in parliament?

And Stephenson replied:

The current text is not acceptable to us, therefore unless the current text is changed and refined we will not be signing up.

The UK treaty-making process means the accord is, of course, negotiated and agreed by the government. Parliament plays an important part in scrutinising treaties under the CRaG process and determining how international obligations should be reflected domestically.

It’s important to remember that because the exact form of the board has not yet been agreed, the parliamentary and the adoption process will depend on which article of the WHO constitution the accord is adopted under.

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.