House of Lords rejects government's EU withdrawal bill - as it happened
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Your support makes all the difference.The House of Lords has inflicted a further defeat on the government over its Brexit plans.
Peers voted in favour of an amendment to the EU Withdrawal that would give Parliament greater powers to block a no-deal Brexit, teeing up a Commons showdown when MPs vote on the bill on Wednesday.
Pro-EU Tory MPs have warned they are ready to vote down the government's plans for what should happen in the case of a no-deal Brexit. They want Parliament to be given more powers if no deal is agreed or if the agreement Theresa May makes with Brussels is deemed unacceptable by MPs.
Ministers, however, have insisted that Parliament should not be allowed to bind the government's hands.
Elsewhere, Theresa May delivered a major speech outlining plans to boost NHS funding. The prime minister confirmed over the weekend that spending will rise by £20bn a year by 2020 but faces questions over how this will be funded.
As it happened...
Theresa May says NHS staff are "rightly proud of what they do, but they worry that their current workloads are not sustainable".
She says patients, too, are proud of the NHS but "too often they can be frustrated by a complex, hard-to-navigate system".
Moving on to the issue of funding, she says: "It is clear that more money is needed to keep pace with the growing pressures on the NHS."
To meet these pressures, the NHS "needs to be able to plan for the future with ambition and confidence".
May says this requires "more than just a one-off injection of cash", and confirms that funding will increase by 3.7 per cent by 2023:
"This means the NHS will be growing faster than the economy as a whole, reflecting the fact that the NHS is this government's number one spending priority.
Taxpayers will be asked to pay "a bit more in a fair and balanced way", she adds, with the details to be set out "in due course".
May says the NHS will have to produce a 10-year plan that includes proposals for improving mental health care and cutting waste. She says:
“This must be a plan that ensures every penny is well spent. It must be a plan that tackles waste, reduces bureaucracy and eliminates unacceptable variation, with all these efficiency savings reinvested back into patient care.
“It must be a plan that makes better use of capital investment to modernise its buildings and invest in technology to drive productivity improvements. It must be a plan that enjoys the support of NHS staff across the country – not something dreamt up in Whitehall and centrally imposed. But NHS leaders at national and local level must then be held to account for their role in delivering this plan.”
May confirms the tier 2 visa cap that restricts the number doctors and nurses coming to the UK will be lifted but says, in the long-term, it "cannot be right" to rely on medical professionals from other parts of the world where they are desperately needed.
Theresa May says the NHS must harness cutting-edge technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. She says that, as a diabetic, she has personally benefitted from new technology that makes it easier to test blood sugar levels.
Another top priority is public health and prevention, she says - with issues such as obesity posing huge challenge for the health system.
May concludes by saying each generation has had to play its part in helping the NHS evolve. She says the founding principles of the health system remain but the actions needed to implement them have "changed beyond recognition".
The government's funding plan will ensure the NHS remains "there for everyone, free at the point of use, with high quality care based on clinical need - never the ability to pay", she says.
Answering questions from journalists, May insists the "Brexit dividend" is real, saying the "vast amount of money" we currently give to the EU will be "coming back". She says the government's priority for that money is the NHS.
Pushed further on how the NHS funding boost will be paid for, she says the Chancellor will set out "all the details in due course".
Theresa May is asked whether she thinks John Bercow should quit over allegations - strongly denied - that he bullied several members of House of Commons staff. She replies: "John Bercow's decisions are for John Bercow". Hardly a ringing endorsement...
That's May's speech over. There wasn't a great deal we didn't already know, with the headline announcement being a £20bn per year increase in NHS spending by 2023/24. That equates to 3.4 per cent rise, or £394m a week.
On the controversial issue of the "Brexit dividend", she said:
"Some of the extra funding I am promising today will come from using the money we will no longer spend on our annual membership subscription to the European Union after we have left.
But the commitment I am making goes beyond that Brexit dividend because the scale of our ambition for our NHS is greater still.
So, across the nation, taxpayers will have to contribute a bit more in a fair and balanced way to support the NHS we all use.
We will listen to views about how we do this and the Chancellor will set out the detail in due course.
We should be clear that we are only able to make this funding offer because we have managed the public finances responsibly.
It is because of our balanced approach: to reduce debt as a share of GDP, to keep taxes as low as possible – and to invest in our public services.
So we will stick to our fiscal rules, reduce our debt but prioritise our NHS within public spending."
Here's our full story on the news the government will introduce a bill next month to outlaw upskirting:
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