Authorities searching for to make ‘fewer places where you can smoke’ – UK politics reside

Nurseries must present choices to folks quite than cost for added provisions similar to meals or nappies throughout government-funded childcare hours, training minister Jacqui Smith has stated.

She informed Sky Information:

What we’ve been very clear about in our steerage is the place suppliers really feel that they should cost for meals, for instance, or for nappies throughout the government-funded childcare hours, that needs to be one thing that’s non-compulsory, so dad and mom want to have the ability to present their very own nappies or present the lunch themselves.

However I do take the purpose that there’s a actual problem for early years suppliers in delivering this massive ramping up of provision.

It’s a superb factor, it’s an excellent factor for youngsters, and it’s an excellent factor for folks by way of their work selections, however it’s one thing the place we have to proceed working very onerous alongside the suppliers, and we’ll do over the following yr to be sure that we’ve bought these 85,000 additional locations and the 40,000 additional employees that will likely be crucial so as to allow us to get no less than near that entitlement subsequent yr.”

The Labour minister Patrick Vallance, who helped spearhead the nation’s response to the Covid pandemic, has stated he wouldn’t have served as a minister in a Conservative authorities.

The previous UK authorities chief scientific adviser was made a peer and appointed science minister this yr after Keir Starmer’s get together swept to victory within the normal election. And he made clear on Thursday that, if he had been requested by Rishi Sunak to contemplate serving in a Tory authorities: “I wouldn’t have done, no”.

“As a civil servant, I’m very happy to serve under any government, and would do so because that’s the role of the civil service,” Lord Vallance added. “But as a minister, obviously, you then have [a] political angle to that as well, and that adds a layer of complexity. You can’t be a minister and not part of a political system, and that’s different.”

Final yr, Vallance’s personal diaries from the Covid pandemic made the headlines, revealing his frustration with the politicians on the coronary heart of presidency on the time. However he stated his essential concern was about science not being built-in within the system.

“I am not sure I was individually critical of what ministers were doing,” he stated. “What I said was I thought the government as a whole didn’t have a mechanism well enough developed to take science and technology into all the places it needs to be, because I can’t think of a single area of policy or operations where science technology or engineering wouldn’t make a difference,” he informed the Guardian.

His feedback got here alongside the announcement that the Division for Science, Innovation and Expertise (DSIT) has reopened recruitment for a brand new chief govt of UK Analysis and Innovation (UKRI).

You may learn the total piece right here:

Training minister Jacqui Smith has pledged that portraits of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher will stay in No 10, amid reviews Keir Starmer had one moved after discovering it “unsettling”.

Requested if she was ever unsettled by the portrait of the UK’s first feminine PM, Smith informed LBC:

There have been a number of instances I used to be unsettled in No 10 nevertheless it wasn’t often by the portraits, I’ve to say.

Keir Starmer, can’t win, can he? A couple of months in the past, individuals have been having a go at him as a result of he stated he thought he might study from the management of Margaret Thatcher.

Photos of Margaret Thatcher will stay in No 10. You may take that as a Jacqui pledge, however I believe in all probability Keir Starmer is extra involved about truly form of cracking on with the job of getting the nation to work correctly than the place the photographs are.”

Training minister Jacqui Smith has dismissed reviews of a companies being pressured to just accept workers’ calls for for a four-day week, saying the federal government’s plans for versatile working would allow fewer days to be labored via compressed hours.

She informed LBC radio:

We expect that versatile working is definitely good for productiveness. So the four-day week that I do know is on the entrance of various newspapers at this time, what we’re truly speaking about there’s the kind of versatile working that lets you use compressed hours.

So maybe as a substitute of working eight hours a day for 5 days, you’re employed 10 hours a day for 4 days.

So that you’re nonetheless doing the identical quantity of labor, however maybe you’re doing it in a method that permits you, for instance, to want much less childcare, to spend extra time with your loved ones, to do different issues, that encourages extra individuals into the office, which is a gigantic a part of that progress mission.”

Requested about jobs similar to lecturers who wouldn’t have the ability to do a four-day week utilizing compressed hours, Smith stated:

Effectively, no, and nor can a lot of different individuals, however that doesn’t imply that these individuals that may do it shouldn’t have the power to do it.”

Starmer faces pushback from pubs over ‘bonkers’ out of doors smoking curb plans

Peter Walker

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality business and political opponents after signalling plans for main curbs on out of doors smoking.

The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would doubtlessly prohibit tobacco use exterior pubs and eating places, together with on pavements. The restrictions would come on high of present plans to step by step outlaw smoking yr by yr.

Whereas the latter proposal was devised beneath Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives argued restrictions on out of doors smoking have been about “social control”, with Priti Patel – amongst these standing to interchange Sunak as Tory chief – calling them “beyond stupid”.

The plans have been met with despair by the pub business, which claimed restrictions on out of doors smoking might hurt a fragile sector nonetheless recovering from Covid. Nonetheless, well being specialists backed the thought, whereas polling confirmed it had majority assist amongst each demographic and voting group other than Reform UK supporters.

The plan, first revealed by way of paperwork leaked to the Solar, would prohibit out of doors smoking exterior pubs and eating places, in addition to golf equipment, and at universities, youngsters’s play areas and small parks, and doubtlessly shisha bars. It was unclear whether or not this might additionally cowl vaping.

The measures can be included in an already-announced tobacco and vapes invoice, which intends to step by step make all smoking unlawful by prohibiting the sale of tobacco to individuals born on or after January 2009. When this was introduced in July’s king’s speech, it didn’t point out modifications to out of doors smoking.

As public well being is devolved, the measures would apply to solely England, with the opposite UK nations deciding in the event that they wished to comply with go well with.

You may learn the total piece by Peter Walker, Sarah Butler and Caroline Davies right here:

Good morning, and welcome to at this time’s weblog, bringing you the most recent information throughout the UK’s political scene.

The federal government’s out of doors smoking ban will goal to make “fewer places where you actually can smoke”, training minister Jacqui Smith has stated.

Responding to calls from business that an outside smoking ban can be one other “nail in the coffin” for hospitality, Smith informed Sky Information:

The most important nail within the coffin of most individuals on this nation is smoking – 80,000 individuals die yearly from smoking associated ailments.”

She added:

We are going to take into consideration all types of various methods, because the final time I used to be in authorities, we launched the smoking ban, the primary smoking ban, there was numerous concern at that time about the way it was truly going to work.

I believe most individuals now, together with within the hospitality business, would say our pubs, our eating places, are a lot better locations as a result of they’re not stuffed with smoke.”

Smith additional said:

What we’re attempting to do is to make, each via lifting the age at which you can begin smoking, by offering methods during which you may get out of smoking, and by making fewer locations the place you truly can smoke, we need to make it more likely that people who find themselves direct lively people who smoke will truly need to surrender smoking, and by doing that, safeguard their very own well being and safeguard the NHS and the pressures that smoking brings on to it.”

Extra on that in a second. In different developments:

• James Cleverly has been accused of growing the asylum backlog within the spring of this yr by “dithering” over key choices. Ministers beneath the then dwelling secretary refused to offer caseworkers permission to deal with excellent instances coated by the Unlawful Migration Act, departmental sources and the UK’s greatest civil service union have informed the Guardian.

• The Conservative MP Esther McVey has been urged to “get a grip” after she posted a poem concerning the Holocaust to criticise authorities plans to introduce out of doors smoking bans. McVey, the MP for Tatton and a former cupboard minister, posted on X the phrases of Martin Niemöller’s 1946 poem First They Got here, about inaction from inside Germany towards the Nazis.

• Keir Starmer has been warned towards caving in to strain to water down a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, after contemporary proof displaying the monetary hit for thousands and thousands in insecure work. Bosses have informed the prime minister he dangers inflicting “real damage” for the economic system if the federal government’s proposals for the largest overhaul in staff’ rights for a technology are pushed via too rapidly.

• Labour dangers a critical rift within the UK’s particular relationship with the US if it goes forward with a ban on arms gross sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s final nationwide safety adviser has warned. Robert O’Brien, nonetheless one of many key safety voices within the Trump circle, stated the UK was endangering its future position within the F-35 challenge in addition to dealing with the chance of US congressional counter-embargos.

• Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher faraway from No 10 Downing Avenue, in accordance with his biographer. The choice to take down the portray, first reported by the Herald, has been criticised by some within the Conservative get together.