Inside Politics: Cop26 success ‘touch and go’ and Sunak rebuked over pre-Budget briefings

PM admits he’s ‘very worried’ about crucial summit and Commons speaker hits out at Sunak over pre-Budget leaks, saying at one time ministers would have done the right thing and ‘walked’, writes Matt Mathers

(PA)

The chances of world leaders agreeing on new commitments to tackle climate change at Cop26 look increasingly slim after Boris Johnson admitted he is “very worried” about the talks, adding it is “touch and go” whether progress will be made. Elsewhere, Rishi Sunak has been rebuked by the Commons speaker for pre-Budget briefings to journalists and a Facebook whistleblower has told MPs that events such as the 6 January US Capitol riot and genocides in Myanmar and Ethiopia are just the “opening chapters” of further atrocities if action is not taken against the tech giant.

Inside the bubble

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for today:

The House of Commons sits from 11.30am, starting with questions to Liz Truss, the foreign secretary. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, will make a statement on Covid-19 at 2pm. Ben Wallace, defence secretary, and Nick Carter, chief of the general staff, will give evidence to the defence committee on the exit from Afghanistan. David Frost, the Brexit minister, will update the European Scrutiny committee on EU negotiations.

Coming up:

– Business minister Paul Scully on LBC at 7.50am

– Shadow Treasury minister James Murray on Sky News at 8.05am

Daily Briefing

UP IN SMOKE? With the US struggling to pass domestic legislation to reduce emissions – and presidents Xi of China and Putin of Russia set to be absent – has the Cop26 climate summit gone up in smoke before it’s even started? There’s just a few days to go until the talks in Glasgow get underway and Boris Johnson appears to be cutting an increasingly downbeat figure. “It will be very, very tough, this summit, and I’m very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need,” he said at a press briefing for children in Downing Street yesterday. The PM’s comments, which add to a sense that the summit is on the brink, came as damning new reports revealed that the level of harmful gases in the atmosphere reached a record high last year despite Covid lockdowns, while a long-promised $100bn climate crisis fund for poor nations will be three years late. Was the PM attempting to manage expectations before world leaders travel to Scotland? Labour reckons so and has accused Johnson and the government of being “bystanders” ahead of the crunch talks, where leaders will look to build on the commitments set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

NAUGHTY RISHI: On top of announcing new funding for the NHS, Rishi Sunak confirmed reports that the national minimum wage will rise to £9.50 per hour from April next year and that the freeze on public sector pay will be scrapped. There has been a blitz of announcements made by the Treasury in recent days, with spending plans on transport, health, research, housing, business, families and skills, although the details remain vague and not all of the money is new. Does Sunak have anything left to announce come Budget day? Some commentators believe there may be one last rabbit to come out of the hat on Wednesday in the form of a VAT cut on household energy bills to help struggling families through the winter, although Treasury sources told the Mail last night it is not going to happen. No 11’s machine gun of releases has earned Sunak a rebuke from an angry Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, who said it was unacceptable for the government to “try to run roughshod” over parliament ahead of the Budget. Sir Lindsay, who has repeatedly and as recently as last week urged the government to make important announcements first in the chamber, said: “At one time ministers did the right thing if they briefed before a Budget: they walked.” Don’t expect the chancellor’s resignation letter anytime soon.

CAUSING A STINK: A row over raw sewage being dumped in Britain’s rivers is deepening. A proposal from the Lords to the Environment Bill that would have placed legal duties on the companies to reduce discharges was defeated by 265 MPs’ votes to 202 last week. Several Tory MPs who voted against are defending their decision. Robert Courts, MP for Witney and West Oxfordshire, wrote on his website: “Section 141A sought to place a new duty on sewerage undertakers in England and Wales to demonstrate progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage. This all sounds admirable, and indeed is something I support in principle. But the trouble is that the Duke’s amendment came with no plan as to how this can be delivered and no impact assessment whatsoever.” Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage has condemned the vote, saying it puts swimmers along the south coast at risk from pollution.

BREXIT WARS LATEST: A “go-slow” strategy for customs checks coming in and out of the UK before Christmas is reportedly being prepared by France as the row over fishing rights after Brexit escalates. France will finalise a set of potential sanctions on Tuesday which could be rolled out if its fishermen are not given greater access to UK waters. Fury was sparked after the government in London announced last month that it had approved just 12 of the 47 applications it had received from French small boats. Paris called the move “unacceptable”. Fishing industry representatives in France have since threatened to block the port of Calais and stop exports to the UK in the run-up to Christmas if they are not granted more permits to fish off Britain’s coast.

FACEBOOK WARNING: Giving evidence to MPs in the Commons, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen warned that events such as the 6 January US Capitol riot and genocides in Myanmar and Ethiopia are just the “opening chapters” of worse events if action is not taken against the social media company. Haugen was speaking to MPs ahead of the government’s drawing up of an Online Harms Bill. “Engagement-based ranking prioritises and amplifies divisive, polarising content”, Ms Haugen said, adding that the company could make non-content-based choices that would sliver off half-percentage points of growth but “Facebook is unwilling to give up those slivers for our safety”.The “opening chapters” of this “novel”, Ms Haugen said, will be “horrific” to read in both the global south and in western societies. Her evidence comes as a number of files were shared with a variety of media publications about internal research Facebook conducted.

On the record

“It will be very, very tough, this summit, and I’m very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need.”

At a press conference with children at No 10, PM admits chances of Cop26 summit success are on a knife edge.

From the Twitterati

“This press conference with children has taken a turn. The PM just suggested ‘we could feed some of the people [in the world] to the animals’ to rebalance nature. Which I’m fairly sure wasn’t in his ‘lines to take’ book…”

Sky News political correspondent Kate McCann picks up on other comments made by Johnson at the event.

Essential reading

• Alf Dubs, The Independent: The UK is still ignoring the reality of the situation in Calais
• Tom Peck, The Independent: Nick Clegg’s defence of Facebook is enough to drive anyone to extremes
• David Davis, The Guardian: Be warned – this government is robbing you of your right to challenge the state
• Katy Balls, The Spectator: Will education be the big Budget loser?

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