Boris Johnson escalates criticism of Rishi Sunak over NI protocol – as it happened

• Boris Johnson has escalated his criticism of Rishi Sunak’s approach to the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that the “best way forward” would be to carry on with the legislation drafted under his leadership that would allow the government to just ignore the protocol. (See 5.38pm.)

Boris Johnson has escalated his criticism of Rishi Sunak’s approach to the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that the “best way forward” would be to carry on with the legislation drafted under his leadership that would allow the government to just ignore the protocol.

In an interview with Sky News, the former PM refused to commit to definitely backing Rishi Sunak’s renegotiation of the protocol, saying that he wanted to see the deal first.

But he described the Northern Ireland protocol bill as “the best way forward”. The bill would allow the UK government to ignore parts of the protocol disliked by traders with Northern Ireland, but critics say this would breach international law and that, if the UK government ever tried to use it, the EU could retaliate by imposing tariffs on imports from Britain.

The bill is stuck in the House of Lords because, since Sunak became PM, no further debates on it have been scheduled. Sunak says his preference is for a negotiated solution to the protocol problem, and he has not denied that, if a deal is struck with the EU, the bill will be abandoned for good.

Asked if he would support any deal Sunak struck on the protocol, Johnson replied:

I think that it’s important that we wait to see what there may be.

But I think the best way forward, as I said when I was running the government, is the Northern Ireland bill, which cleared the Commons very comfortably, I think unamended, when I was in office only a few months ago. So I think that’s the best way forward.

Asked a second time if he could guarantee to support any deal that Sunak negotiated, Johnson replied:

I think the best thing is to continue with the Northern Ireland bill that we agreed. It’s a very good bill. It fixes all the problems. It solves the problems that we have in the Irish Sea, it solves the problems of paperwork, VAT and so on. It’s an excellent bill and doesn’t set up any other problems in the economy of the whole island of Ireland. I’d go with that one.

When it was put to him that many people did not think it was an excellent bill, Johnson said it passed the Commons unamended.

A “source close to” Johnson told journalists at the weekend that Johnson did not want Sunak to drop the Northern Ireland protocol bill.

The source suggested this was because Johnson thought the government needed it on the statute book to provide leverage over the EU in case Sunak’s deal turns out to be flawed.

But in his interview today Johnson implied he did not favour renegotiating the protocol in the first place, and that he wants the government to press ahead with unilateral action.

In other words, Johnson is no longer just arguing for the bill as a plan B insurance policy. He seems to be arguing for it as plan A.

Public services are not likely to improve noticeably before the next election, a report from the Institute for Government thinktank says. In its latest peformance tracker for 2022-23, the IfG says funding increases announced in the autumn statement will not be enough to return public service performance to pre-pandemic levels before the next election.

Health is a particular problem, it says, but it argues that there are problems across the board. The report says:

Public concern about healthcare is particularly high at the moment and [Rishi] Sunak identified tackling NHS waiting lists as one of his top five priorities in a speech in January 2023. The analysis in this report outlines the scale of the challenge in nine public services – general practice, hospitals, adult social care, children’s social care, neighbourhood services, schools, police, criminal courts and prisons. To date, the new government’s decisions have done little to shift the dial and it will need to do much better if it wishes to campaign on its public services track record.

Nick Davies, the programme director at the IfG, said:

Public services, and particularly the NHS, have had a very difficult winter, but public discontent about performance is likely to last years. Despite additional funding in the autumn statement, progress in tackling backlogs and waiting times will continue to be painfully slow. Covid recovery has been hampered by the government’s counterproductive strikes strategy, with substantially below inflation pay offers exacerbating the serous workforce problems.

Humza Yousaf, the Scottish health secretary and favourite in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, has hinted he would give Kate Forbes a cabinet position in any future administration he leads.

Speaking to journalists at Holyrood, he praised Forbes, the finance secretary, despite the fact that has stressed that he disagrees with her opposition, for faith reasons, to same-sex marriage. He said:

I think Kate’s extremely talented, extremely able, I think anybody would want to see her at the heart of Scottish politics.

As long as we agree – and I think we do collectively – that collective responsibility is important for any government to function, and Kate has shown she is willing, and has been in her time in government, to abide by collective responsibility, I think that’s going to be an important question for all the candidates – myself included.

He also said Forbes had “a lot to give to Scottish public life, including in government”.

Nominations for the SNP leadership close tomorrow. Yousaf, Forbes and Ash Regan are all expected to have enough support to progress to the members’ vote.

The new SNP leader will be announced on 27 March.

Lawyers advising Eurosceptics in the Conservative party have submitted fresh proposals to Rishi Sunak to end the rule of EU law in Northern Ireland, one of the major sticking points in the UK-EU negotiations over the protocol, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.

Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, has said the NHS should consider charging people who miss appointments.

Speaking during a general debate on the future of the NHS, Hancock said Rishi Sunak was right to float the idea of charging for missed GP appointments during the Tory leadership contest in the summer. He told MPs:

I thought that the prime minister was right to float in the summer the idea that if you miss too many appointments without a good reason then you should be charged for them.

One of the other problems of efficiency is that many, many appointments are missed, and this wastes the time of clinicians too.

I think it was right to float it, it’s right to consider it, but I would be totally against having to pay for the very first.

Hancock says charging people who abused the system would not undermine the principle of the NHS being free at the point of delivery. He said:

Of course people miss appointments for good reasons, but often, too often, don’t have a reason, and we should be thoughtful about how we address that.

Labour’s Margaret Greenwood told Hancock she completely disagreed with the idea, which might discriminate against the 7 million adults in the country who are functionally illiterate. “It would be much better to put resources into understanding why people don’t come to appointments,” she said.

In the summer Sunak proposed charging patients £10 for second and subsequent missed GP appointments. For the first missed appointment, they would receive the benefit of the doubt.

But after Sunak became PM, Downing Street said he would not be implementing the idea because “now is not the right time to take this policy forward”.

Kate Forbes has apologised for hurt caused and promised to protect the rights of everybody in Scotland, “particularly minorities”, as she endeavours to reset her campaign for the leadership of the SNP, my colleague Libby Brooks reports.

In an interview with LBC yesterday Johnny Mercer, the veterans’ minister, implied that Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, was overstating the funding problems he faces at the Ministry of Defence. Asked about recent comments by Wallace complaining about the MoD being “hollowed out and underfunded”, Mercer said:

He’s advocating for his department, when a spend is coming up.

But this prime minister, this chancellor, only 18 months ago gave the biggest defence settlement to defence since the end of the cold war. So it’s then not credible to go forward and say that we haven’t put money into defence.

This morning, Wallace was on LBC himself, and he retaliated. Asked about what Mercer said, Wallace replied:

Johnny is a junior minister. And Johnny luckily doesn’t have to run the budget.

Asked if he thought Mercer was being naive, Wallace went on:

No. I just think his experience is … he’s not the secretary of state. He hasn’t run … I run a department of 224,000 people, I think it is, or something like that … He’s got 12 people in the office.

In the past, veterans’ ministers have been based in the MoD. But Mercer is based in the Cabinet Office which, given relations with Wallace, is probably just as well.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the asylum figures out today (see 1.51pm) showed “shameful levels of incompetence” from the government. She said:

Despite all Rishi Sunak’s grand promises, fewer than 1% of last year’s small boat cases have been decided. These are truly shameful levels of incompetence from a government that has completely lost any grip.

After 13 years of failure, today’s figures underline the shocking mess the Conservatives have made of the asylum system. The Home Office is still taking a third fewer decisions each year than it was seven years ago and they have let the backlog rise by another 60% to a record-breaking high of 160,000, with the taxpayer fronting the cost through ​spending on hotels.

Cooper said Labour has a five-point plan to tackle the problem: “1) Crack down on the criminal gangs through the [National Crime Agency] and in partnership with France, Belgium and Europol; 2) Speed up asylum decisions; 3) Reform resettlement schemes to better target those most at risk of exploitation by trafficking and smuggler gangs; 4) Replace the Dublin agreement; and 5) Work internationally to address crises leading people to flee their homes.”