Rishi Sunak reshuffle: ‘red wall’ MP Lee Anderson named deputy Tory chair – as it happened

• Rishi Sunak has promoted the trade minister, Greg Hands, to replace Nadhim Zahawi as Conservative party chair as he carried out a mini-reshuffle to try to reassert his grip over his divided party and reshape the government to reflect his priorities. To coincide with the reshuffle, No 10 has published a 15-page report explaining how the machinery of government changes will work.

• The lord chief justice, Lord Burnett, revealed at a briefing that Rishi Sunak told him at a recent meeting that he regarded respect for the rule of law as “absolutely non-negotiable”. This came as Sunak appointed Lee Anderson as Conservative party deputy chairman. Anderson recently suggested to Tory MPs in a WhatsApp exchange that officials opposing the government’s Rwanda deportation policy on human rights grounds might be guilty of “treason”.

• Richard Sharp, the BBC chair, has revealed he personally informed Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak that he wanted the job before he applied, as he underwent a sometimes brutal interrogation from MPs over alleged conflicts of interest.

• John Major has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit, saying his administration agreed to the Northern Ireland protocol despite knowing it was unworkable.

Peers have also voted to remove a clause from the public order bill that would allow the police treat “slow walking” as a form of “serious disruption”, which would make it easier for them to stop or arrest the protesters engaged in it.

The provision was voted down by 254 to 240 – a majority 14.

This measure was only introduced to the bill in the Lords and so cannot return during parliamentary ping-pong as it was not in the original legislation that went before the Commons.

7 Feb 202312.08 EST

Poll suggests half of Scots back UK government's decision to block Holyrood gender recognition bill

Libby Brooks

SNP supporters cautioned against over-interpreting the weekend’s YouGov polling that showed a dip in support for the party as evidence the ongoing trans prisoners row is cutting through to the Scottish public. (See 4.08pm.)

But another poll today from Ipsos finds that 50% of those surveyed support the UK government’s decision to block Holyrood’s gender recognition bill, a pretty significant result given the constitutional implications of the move by Westminster to stop the legislation going for royal assent.

The party breakdown is interesting too; despite Scottish Labour (and indeed all parties bar the Scottish Conservatives) supporting the bill to simplify how an individual changes gender, 65% of Scottish Labour voters believe the UK was right to block it.

Even amongst younger voters, who have been most supportive of the changes in previous polling, those aged 16-34 are split on this question – while 40% say the UK government should have blocked the bill, 38% say it should not have done so.

This poll suggests that Nicola Sturgeon - who continues to face a barrage of criticism over the accommodation of transgender offenders in Scottish prisons – has a lot of work to do persuading voters that challenging the UK government through the courts on this issue is the right thing to do and the best use of her government’s time and resources.

My colleague Peter Walker has a good profile of Lee Anderson, Rishi Sunak’s surprise choice for Conservative party deputy chairman. It’s here.

The government has lost another voted in the House of Lords on the public order bill. As PA Media reports, peers voted by 284 to 209 – a majority 75 – for a Labour amendement that will remove from the bill a measure that would allow police officers to search people without suspicion in a designated area to look for items that could be used in offences such as “locking on”.

Explaining why he was supporting the Labour amendment, Lord Paddick, a Lib Dem peer and former police officer, said:

These are a significant expansion of police powers at a time when confidence in the police is waning. There is potentially an endless list of objects that could be made, adapted or intended for use in the course of or in connection with protest offences.

Coupled with the power to stop and search without suspicion, this could result in many innocent people being stopped, searched and potentially arrested for being in possession of commonplace objects.

Today is the second day of the bill’s report stage in the Lords and further votes are due as the debate goes on.

The government was defeated several times on the bill last month during the first day of report stage.

Here are comments from two thinktanks, from the left and the right, welcoming Rishi Sunak’s decision to create a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

This is from Ryan Wain, director for politics at the Tony Blair Institute.

Creating a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is a step in the right direction for government. But we need a leap.

The transformative impact of technology cannot be overstated. Akin to the Industrial Revolution, it is fundamentally reshaping how we live our lives, the jobs we’ll do, the skills we need and how government should be run. Its potential to revolutionise public services and to underpin an industrial strategy remains untapped.

It is an enabler that has to run through every aspect of government, remaining accountable to the highest level. This should be supported by investment in research and development, and the UK should signal its intent to bring the best minds into the heart of government.

And this is from Sebastian Payne, director of Onward.

PA Media has some good statistics about today’s reshuffle. PA says:

Lucy Frazer is the 12th person to be appointed culture secretary in the past 13 years.

Since 2010, the post has also been held by Jeremy Hunt (2010-12), Maria Miller (2012-14), Sajid Javid (2014-15), John Whittingdale (2015-16), Karen Bradley (2016-17), Matt Hancock (2017-18), Jeremy Wright (2018-19), Nicky Morgan (2019-20), Oliver Dowden (2020-21), Nadine Dorries (2021-22) and Michelle Donelan (2022-23).

In the 13 years from 1997 to 2010, the UK had only five culture secretaries: Chris Smith (1997-2001), Tessa Jowell (2001-07), James Purnell (2007-08), Andy Burnham (2008-09) and Ben Bradshaw (2009-10).

Kemi Badenoch has become the ninth business secretary since 2010.

Six people have held the role in the past four years.

The full list for the past 13 years is: Vince Cable (2010-15), Sajid Javid (2015-16), Greg Clark (2016-19), Andrea Leadsom (2019-20), Alok Sharma (2020-21), Kwasi Kwarteng (2021-22), Jacob Rees-Mogg (2022), Grant Shapps (2022-23) and now Badenoch.

The UK has its third incarnation of a department for energy.

The first existed from 1974 to 1992 and was run by the secretary of state for energy.

Ministers who held the post included Labour’s Tony Benn (1975-79) and Conservative Nigel Lawson (1981-83).

The second version lasted from 2008 to 2016 and was headed by the secretary of state for Energy & Climate Change, who included Labour’s Ed Miliband (2008-10) and Liberal Democrat Ed Davey (2012-15).

The third, and latest, will be led by Grant Shapps as secretary of state for Energy Security & net zero.

Lucy Frazer’s appointment as culture secretary means there is a vacancy for housing minister.

Whoever replaces her will be the 15th person to hold the role in the past 13 years.

They will also be the fifth housing minister in the past 12 months.

This morning the Daily Telegraph splashed on a story about Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, claiming that Nicola Sturgeon’s “self-indulgent nonsense” on trans rights has set back the cause of Scottish independence by years. The report is based on what Salmond told a Burns supper in Dundee on Saturday.

Salmond has given interviews to the World at One and Times Radio today repeating the same point. In his Times Radio interview, which is being broadcast later this afternoon, he said Sturgeon should abandon plans for the Scottish government to challenge Westminster’s decision to block its gender recognition reform bill.

He also claimed that Sturgeon had been reduced to “stumbling incoherence” on this issue. Referring to what Sturgeon said at her press conference yesterday, where she seemed uncomfortable defending her decision to describe the trans woman rapist Isla Bryson as “her”, Salmond said:

When you’re in a hole, as the SNP are at the present moment, you stop digging, and therefore abandoned all thought of having a court battle over this because all it will do is prolong the publicity.

And the difficultly of the publicity is exemplified by Nicola Sturgeon’s own performance. I mean, Nicola’s one of the most gifted communicators in politics but on this issue, and trying to defend self identification, she has been reduced to stumbling incoherence.

And a nationalist leader in Scotland, you know, has many things said about them by Westminster, but you know, when you get to the stage that people are starting to laugh at you, then that is the stage of what you should realise you’re trying to defend the indefensible.

Salmond and Sturgeon were very close. He was her mentor and she was his deputy, but their relationship broke down after the allegations emerged that led to Salmond being tried (and acquitted) on various sexual assault charges.

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Sam Coates from Sky has received a message from a Tory MP who is not a Lee Anderson fan.

7 Feb 202310.16 EST

Scottish teachers announce further strike dates

Libby Brooks

Scotland’s teaching strikes are to escalate with the constituencies of the first minister, education secretary and others targeted by a further six days of action at the end of February and early March.

The constituencies of Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow Southside), her deputy John Swinney (Perthshire north), education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville (Dunfermline), Dumfries and Galloway councillor Katie Hagman, resources spokesperson for council umbrella body Cosla (Mid Galloway and Wigtown West), and Scottish Greens education spokesperson Ross Greer (East Dunbartonshire) will be affected.

A national strike is already scheduled to take place on 28 February and 1 March, with plans for 20 days of rolling strikes across all local authority areas from 13 March until 21 April.

Andrea Bradley, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Scotland’s largest teaching union, said that escalation had been forced by the Scottish government: ““The response from the Scottish government and Cosla has been, essentially, nil.”

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Rishi Sunak has dismissed claims that the appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC chairman was an example of “establishment cronyism”. Sunak used to work for Sharp when they were both at Goldman Sachs, and in an interview with ITV it was put to him that what came out at the select committee hearing this morning showed cronyism in action. Sunak said the appointment was made before his time, and that it was carried out properly. He said:

This is obviously about an appointment made by a previous prime minister before I took this job so it’s hard for me to comment on the details of it.

What I do know is that his appointment process was conducted rigorously and transparently; it was approved by a panel of experts and indeed a cross-party select committee in parliament.

But it is right that people have confidence in the process and that’s why the independent commissioner on public appointments is relooking at the process to make sure that everything was done correctly.

Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s story about Sharp’s appearance before the culture committee this morning.

Here is some comment from journalists on the appointment of Lee Anderson as the Conservative party’s deputy chair. (See 2.19pm.)

From my colleague Pippa Crerar

This is a reference to Anderson claiming last year that people could make meals for 30p a day. He was arguing that people were resorting to food banks because they could not cook properly.

From Josiah Mortimer from Byline Times

From my colleage Richard Partington

From Prospect’s Sam Freedman

From Charlotte Gill from GB News

This is a reference to how Anderson recently posted on Twitter a picture of a woman who works for him, saying she earns less than £30,000, lives in central London and does not need to use food banks. He was defending another Tory MP who said nurses should not need to use food banks.

From the Spectator’s James Heale

From my colleague Rafael Behr

This may turn out to be the most interesting appointment of the reshuffle. It is certainly the most surprising. Lee Anderson has been appointed deputy chair of the Conservative party.

The Conservative party normally has plenty of vice-chairs, and those positions are not deemed significant. But the deputy chairmanship is a considered a proper job.

His appointment is surprising because Anderson is best known as a controversialist with a talent for saying things that offend liberal opinion and get him positive coverage in tabloid papers. Despite being a former Labour councillor, he is very rightwing on topics such as welfare and immigration, and firmly pro-Brexit. He won Ashfield from Labour in 2019 and is the archetypal “red wall” Tory.

Anderson is not a Sunak loyalist, and only last month it was reported that he told a private WhatsApp group for Tory MPs that the government was like the “band on the Titanic”. (He was complaining about the small boats policy, which he thought was insufficiently draconian.) But Sunak has not really got any authentic “red wall” voices in cabinet, and so Anderson will fill a gap.

His appointment will also mean that there is someone at CCHQ capable of enthusing grassroots Tory rightwingers. Greg Hands, the new chairman, is seen as a competent administrator, rather than a partisan Labour-basher, he is relatively centrist (in Tory terms) and he voted remain. He also speaks German, among various other languages, which to someone like Anderson would not necessarily be seen as a virtue.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and Rachel Reeves, his Labour shadow, clashed at Treasury questions over the announcement today from BP that its annual profits more than doubled to $28bn (£23bn) in 2022.

Reeves said this showed why the scope of the windfall tax should be extended. She said:

Last week Shell announced profits of £32bn, the highest in their 115-year history. Today BP announced profits £23bn, the highest in their history. Meanwhile in April energy bills for households are going to go up by £500.

The cost-of-living crisis is far from over, so will the government follow our lead and have a proper windfall tax to keep people’s energy bills down?

In response, Hunt said the government’s current windfall was raising more money than what Labour was proposing in the autumn.

Reeves than accused Hunt of protecting the oil companies. She said:

There we go again the government shielding the energy companies and asking ordinary families and businesses to pay more. Shell has spent more on share buybacks than they’ve invested in renewables.

Last year BP’s dividends and share buybacks were 14 times higher than investment in low carbon energy, so the government are allowing energy companies to make profits that are the windfalls of war whilst ordinary families and business pay the price. Isn’t it the case that Tories can’t solve the cost-of-living crisis because they are the cost-of-living crisis?

Hunt replied:

No and the total tax take from that sector is £80bn over five years which is more than the entire cost of funding the police force.

Now she can play politics but we will be responsible because we want lower bills, more investment in transition and more money for public services like the police.

7 Feb 202307.59 EST

Damian Carrington

Nick Turton, external affairs director at the Energy Institute, was part of the team that set up the previous Department of Energy and Climate Change in 2008. He says the new version will have to show that it has real clout around the cabinet table to be effective. He says:

Energy security and net zero is the right mandate for our times. The big question is whether this is simply moving deckchairs around or putting real clout where it’s needed.

At its inception, DECC was insurgent and, under its various Secretaries of State [including LibDem ministers during the 2010-2015 coalition], managed to use its political capital to challenge colleagues around the cabinet table.

Success for the new department in terms of energy security and the transition to net zero will be heavily dependent on decisions taken elsewhere in Whitehall. It needs to wield influence over Treasury spending, planning and building policy, farming and land use – and of course back into trade and industry policy.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said he did not “recognise” the Lib Dem claim that the Whitehall reorganisation would cost at least £60m. (See 11.43am.) The spokesperson said:

It’s worth stressing obviously the teams are already in place.

This is about bringing together teams under the priorities of the prime minister. So we wouldn’t expect there to be significant additional costs to this.