Johnson says government cannot ‘magic up’ solutions to help farming industry – politics live

Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, told a fringe meeting that Foreign Office negotiators are “too nice”, Adam Bienkov reports.

The government is to criminalise paid-for essay writing services aimed at students in England, the skills minister, Alex Burghart, has announced.

A clause is to be added to the skills and post-16 education bill going through parliament that would ban so-called essay mills, which offer to write essays or dissertations for hundreds or even thousands of pounds.

Burghart, the MP for Brentwood and Ongar, said:

Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.

The Department for Education said the government “intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education, including universities.”

While universities and colleges already take disciplinary action over plagiarism, including the use of essays written by others, the new law would be aimed at the providers. Many are based outside the UK, making enforcement difficult.

Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, has accused the Scottish government of “irresponsible nationalism” for failing to get involved with a review of transport links.

As PA Media reports, Sir Peter Hendy, the current chairman of Network Rail and former commissioner of Transport for London (TfL), will publish his Union Connectivity Review soon. He was tasked by Boris Johnson to examine transport infrastructure across the UK and consider where future spending could be targeted.

Jack told the Tory conference:

It’s an incredibly important document to be published shortly.

I’d say on a personal note I’m very dismayed the Scottish government has not engaged in the union connectivity review.

The transport secretary, Michael Matheson, told his civil servants not to give Sir Peter any data or to engage with him whatsoever, which to me is irresponsible nationalism.

It’s putting their desire for separation, and not to be part of the United Kingdom, ahead of people’s livelihoods, ahead of jobs.

© Provided by The Guardian
Alister Jack at the Conservative party conference. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

At the conference Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has just started his speech.

He says he has three priorities.

My priorities are simple:

Covid.

Recovery.

Reform.

Covid – getting us, and keeping us, out of the pandemic.

Recovery – tackling the huge backlog of appointments it has caused.

And reform of our health and social care systems for the long-term.

Here are the main points from Sajid Javid’s speech.

Do you know what the gap in healthy life expectancy is,

between Blackpool and Richmond upon Thames?

Almost 20 years.

It’s time to level up on health.

At a time like this, business as usual cannot be good enough.

I’ve worked with some of the largest organisations in the world…

and two factors stand out on whether they succeed:

Leadership, and innovation.

I want the NHS to embrace innovation and to build a truly modern, digitised system.

That’s the only way we can drive down that backlog,

and build a sustainable service for the future.

• He said that as a student he had worked as a volunteer in a care home. He said:

There are few higher callings than to care for another person.

Some of you know that I got up to some antics as a student…

…I got thrown out of party conference,

for campaigning against the ERM.

I was a cool kid.

What you might not know about my time as a student,

back in Exeter,

is that every Saturday I would visit a care home as a volunteer

to keep the residents company.

Especially a great lady called Margaret, who I became very fond of.

That experience left a real impression on me –

of the importance of dignity in our later years,

and of the dedication of care workers.

© Provided by The Guardian
Sajid Javid after giving his speech to the conference. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Two Windrush campaigners have said they felt humiliated and baffled after being refused access to the Conservative party conference in Manchester despite having been granted full accreditation at a cost of £225 each, my colleague Peter Walker reports.

Related: Windrush activists ‘disgusted’ after being turned away at Tory conference

Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, has said that levelling up will benefit rich areas in the south of England because it could reduce the “tax revenue pressure” they face.

Raab represents Esher and Walton, an affluent constituency in Surrey, in the London commuter belt. At a fringe meeting he admitted that it was hard to persuade his constituents that levelling up – a policy normally understood as being targeted at poorer areas, particularly in the north – would be in their interests.

But it would, he claimed. He explained:

Levelling up is trying to bridge the gap but without trying to attack the middle-class or those who have made money in this country fairly and through hard work.

For me the challenge is selling it down south, in London. As someone who has got a constituency which pays a huge amount of tax, provides a huge amount of revenue to the Exchequer, the question you get asked is ‘what’s in it for us?’

What’s in it for my constituents in London and the south-east is we will not be so heavily reliant on the central economic engine of London and the south-east, you will have poles of economic activity from the west – Bath, Bristol – Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and that corridor, the Midlands engine, the north and other parts of the UK.

That will take the tax revenue pressure off London and the south-east.

Raab also said he would defend Esher and Walton at the next election, rather than seek a safer alternative. His constituency used to be solidly Tory, but at the last election his majority over the Lib Dems was less than 3,000, and now Sir Ed Davey’s party views it as a key target.

© Provided by The Guardian
Dominic Raab at the Conservative conference today. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Boris Johnson has said that the BBC is a great national institution and that he expects it to be around for a long time. Normally a prime minister saying that would not count as news, but given that Nadine Dorries, who as culture secretary is in charge of government policy towards the BBC, told a fringe yesterday that she could not be sure it would survive another decade, Johnson’s comment is worth reporting.

Asked about the future of the corporation, Johnson told GB News:

The BBC has been around for a very long time, it’s a great national institution, I’ve no doubt that it will be around for a long time to come.

In a blog on Dominic Raab’s conference speech (see 10.39am), David Allen Green, the FT legal commentator, says Raab based his argument for overhauling the Human Rights Act on a case from 12 years ago that raised questions that were partially addressed by a change in the law in 2014.

He sees it as significant that Raab did not announce that the act would be repealed. He says:

A symbolic ‘overhaul’ will probably be all that can be managed – and may not even have a bill to itself.

Supporters of the Human Rights Act must always be vigilant – but the blast of the repeal trumpet today was not a loud one.

Shoaib Khan, a human rights lawyer, has tweeted more on the cases cited by Dominic Raab earlier (see 10.39am and 1.31pm) as justification for the government’s decision to overhaul the Human Rights Act.

The Free Movement website has published a response to Priti Patel’s speech. Here’s an extract.

The speech also contains a sustained attack on ‘the legal process. If an asylum claim is rejected, there is nearly always an automatic right to appeal. And no surprise that everybody appeals’. It is just as well that they do, given that almost 50% of asylum appeals succeed. Despite this rhetoric, Patel did not propose any additional attack on appeal rights beyond that already contained in the nationality and borders bill.

This is from Alistair Driver, who runs the National Pig Association’s website and edits Pig World, on Boris Johnson’s comments this morning about the crisis in the sector. (See 10.07am.)

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, says the Wayne Couzens inquiry (see 12.26pm) should be a statutory one. He said:

Labour has been calling for a full independent inquiry for days, yet the prime minister refused to support one. Now the home secretary has half-heartedly announced one, but not put it on a robust, statutory footing to ensure there are no barriers in the way to getting answers.

The Home Office says that the inquiry will start on a non-statutory basis, so that it can proceed quickly, but that it “can be converted to a statutory inquiry if required”.

PA Media has filed a report saying that the case cited by Dominic Raab as an example of why the Human Rights Act should be overhauled (see 10.39am) is more complex than Raab implied. PA reports:

In his speech, Raab cited the case of “a drug dealer convicted of beating his ex-partner, a man who hadn’t paid maintenance for his daughter, then successfully claimed the right to family life to avoid deportation”.

But the case, involving a Trinidadian man named Asim Parris and first reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2011, is not straightforward.

The Home Office originally ordered Parris’s deportation in 2008 after he had been jailed for 18 months for possession of cocaine with intent to supply. A year earlier, he had been convicted of battery against his partner and given a suspended sentence.

Parris appealed and in 2009 the immigration tribunal allowed him to stay, noting that he had spent 17 years in the country – at the time he was aged 21 – and had “close family in this country including his mother, sisters, brother, cousin, nieces and nephews, uncle and aunt”.

In the Telegraph article two years later, his former partner said Parris had “rarely” seen his daughter and had only started seeing her more often once the court case started.

But at the original appeal, she told the tribunal that while they were no longer in a relationship he was a “good and caring father” and the judges said she and Parris “appear[ed] to be on good terms”.

Further hearings followed. A month after the original ruling, the Home Office successfully appealed, claiming the tribunal had not followed the correct legal procedure and, nine months after that, a second tribunal upheld the deportation order.

Finally, in 2011, the court of appeal heard the case, finding that the original tribunal had made no legal error and so its decision should be allowed to stand as the second tribunal should not have taken place.

The three judges hearing the case at the court of appeal made no findings about the tribunal’s assessment of the facts, and only examined whether it had applied the correct law – a position that the Home Office’s own lawyer agreed with.

Boris Johnson has conducted another round of interviews with broadcasters. Here are the main points from what he said to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Sky’s Beth Rigby and ITV’s Robert Peston.

• Johnson said the government could not “magic up” changes overnight to address the problems faced by farmers due to labour shortages. Asked about the problems facing pig producers, he told the BBC:

What you can’t do is government can’t magic up changes to their systems overnight. People need to recognise that we can’t simply continue with models which have basically held this country back and held our economy back. That’s why we’re going for a different approach.

And he told ITV that the change he wanted to see – the move from a low skill, low wage, high immigration economy to a high skill, high wage, low immigration one – was “the best thing for this country”. He said:

If you listen to Morrisons, if you listen to some of the food companies, they are starting to see a way through and we will get there because this is, frankly, by far the best thing for this country.

• He repeated his claim that rape trials were being held up by defence lawyers demanding access to mobile phone evidence (see 10.07am) and he said the government would address this by changing disclosure rules. Describing the problem with rape cases, he told Sky:

The issues that we have are complex questions of evidence, and the defence being able to, under disclosure, access stuff from victims’ mobile phones which is incredibly distressing and which is causing a great deal of delay, and is causing a great deal of victim attrition.

Johnson said the government would address this.

We’ve got to have much simpler protocols so that not everything on a woman’s phone can be disclosed. We’ve got to simplify things and make sure that the perpetrators of these crimes, invariably men, get the punishment they need.

• He said that government has “not done well enough” in terms of dealing with rape and that he understood why women felt “fury … frustration [and] betrayal” over this.

• He refused to rule out an increase to the minimum wage. Asked about this by Sky, he said “you should wait and see what Rishi [Sunak] does”, implying there could be an announcement in the budget.

© Provided by The Guardian
Boris Johnson at the conference today. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Patel is now setting out the plans, announced overnight, to toughen the laws for dealing with protesters.

Freedom to protest is a fundamental right our party will forever fight to uphold.

But it must be within the law.

Measures already going through parliament will ensure these criminals can be brought to justice for the disruption they are causing.

But we are going further to close down the legal loopholes exploited by these offenders.

So today I can announce I will also increase the maximum penalties for disrupting a motorway; criminalise interference with key infrastructure such as roads, railways and our free press; and give the police and courts new powers to deal with the small minority of offenders intent on travelling around the country, causing disruption and misery across our communities.

As Priti Patel made her speech to conference pledging a crackdown on environmental protesters, police were apparently cracking down on one activist’s one-man protest against the plans.

Half an hour before the home secretary was due to address delegates, Liam Geary Baulch, 28, an artist, stood outside the venue in Manchester with a small placard saying “Priti fascist”.

He told the Guardian he was able to display the sign “for about 30 seconds before the sign was ripped away from me by police officers, who said it was offensive”.

“And then when I asked for my property back they told me it was a breach of the peace and bundled me against the wall and arrested me,” he said.

© Provided by The Guardian
Liam Geary Baulch with his sign near the Tory conference. Photograph: Supplied

Patel used her conference speech to outline plans to crack down on protesters who target critical national infrastructure, including roads, railways “and our free press”. Her police, crime, sentencing and courts bill has been widely criticised by civil liberties groups.

Video provided to the Guardian showed officers putting Geary Baulch, who has campaigned with Extinction Rebellion, in the back of a police van. He said they drove him to the edge of the city and de-arrested him.

“As Priti Patel laid out her crackdown on protest inside, I was in the back of a van for simply standing alone with a piece of cardboard,” he said. “If anything, I’m more convinced now that this sign is the truth.”

The Home Office has put out a press notice with more details of the Wayne Couzens inquiry announced by Priti Patel. (See 12.02pm.) It does not seem to be on the Home Office website yet, and so here is the key section.

The inquiry will be made up of two parts. The first part will examine Wayne Couzens’ previous behaviour and will establish a definitive account of his conduct leading up to his conviction, as well as any opportunities missed, drawing on the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s (IOPC) investigations, once concluded.

The second part will look at any specific issues raised by the first part of the inquiry, which could include wider issues across policing – including vetting practices, professional standards and discipline, and workplace behaviour.

Additionally, the home secretary will write to the independent police inspectorate HMICFRS [Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services] to commission a thematic inspection of vetting and counter-corruption procedures in policing across England and Wales – including forces’ ability to detect and deal with misogynistic and predatory behaviour. She has asked for initial findings by the end of 2021, and these will be used to inform the inquiry into Couzens.

The inquiry will also draw on the conclusions of current investigations by the IOPC into various allegations and incidents throughout Couzens’ career.

Given the need to provide assurance as swiftly as possible, this will be established as a non-statutory inquiry, but can be converted to a statutory inquiry if required.

© Provided by The Guardian
Priti Patel giving her conference speech. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who shares oversight of the Met police with the home secretary, has put out a statement welcoming the Wayne Couzens inquiry. (See 12.26pm.) He said:

Over recent days, I’ve been in detailed discussions with the home secretary about how we must urgently do everything necessary to rebuild trust and confidence in the police – in London and across the country. We agreed that the gravity of the situation required no less than a proper inquiry.

This inquiry must leave no stone unturned to ensure that the failures that led to a serving police officer killing Sarah Everard can never happen again. And while I know the vast majority of officers are decent and dedicated public servants, the inquiry must also address reports of widespread cultural issues. All police officers must adhere to the highest possible standards, we must stamp out misogyny, sexism, racism and homophobia, root out those who abuse their trusted position as officers, and ensure that tackling violence against women and girls is treated with the highest priority.

Patel says asylum seekers should not be coming to the UK from France.

France is a safe country, one not riven by war or conflict.

There is no reason why any asylum seeker should come to the United Kingdom directly from France.

We make no apology for securing our borders and exploring all possible options to save lives by ending these horrific journeys.

She confirms that the Border Force will use new tactics to try to turn back boats in the Channel.

Boris and I have worked intensively with every institution with a responsibility to protect our borders …

Border Force, the police, the National Crime Agency, maritime experts, and yes, the military …

To deliver operational solutions

Including new sea tactics, which we are working to implement, to turn back the boats.

Whilst this represents progress, this single measure alone cannot solve this problem.

Patel summarises her immigration plans.

For the first time, how somebody arrives in the United Kingdom will impact on how their asylum claim is processed.

Our new ‘one stop’ shop will tackle the multiple claims and appeals which frequently frustrate removal.

And our new laws will speed up the removal of those with no legal right to be in our country.

Patel turns to asylum. “What is happening in the Channel with small boats is unsafe, unfair, and unacceptable,” she says.

She says the government is targeting the people smugglers. But there are problems with the legal process too, she says.

If an asylum claim is rejected, there is nearly always an automatic right to appeal.

No surprise that nearly everybody appeals.

Even if the decision to refuse asylum is upheld, there can be yet another appeal.

Right up until the possibility of further appeals at the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.

If that fails, the claimant and their lawyers can start a fresh claim.

And then, even when seated on the plane, their lawyers can still block their removal.

Britain’s asylum system might have worked 20 years ago, but not now.

The system is collapsing under the pressures created by these parallel illegal routes to asylum, facilitated by criminal smuggling gangs.

Labour would have you believe the capacity of our asylum system is unlimited.

But the presence of economic migrants – through these illegal routes – is undermining our ability to support those in genuine need of protection.

To that I say, no. Our system must uphold our reputation as a country where criminality is not rewarded, but where playing by our rules is.

My new plan for immigration is already making its way through parliament.

Patel summarises some of the things the government has already done to tackle violence against women and girls.

Since I became home secretary, cross-government funding to tackle these abhorrent crimes has trebled in relation to any other two-year period.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill extends whole-life orders to child murderers and ends automatic halfway release for serious sexual and violent offenders.

And nearly a year ago, I launched the first ever survey of women and girls on tackling the crimes disproportionately affecting them.

In the wake of Sarah’s tragic murder, I reopened that survey.

One hundred and eighty thousand women and girls were brave enough to share their stories with me, some for the first time.

Their experiences informed my Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, which I launched earlier this year.

And here is Patel’s peroration.

Conference, I will never flinch from taking the difficult decisions needed to keep our country safe and secure.

Where criminals attempt to incite fear, harm and terror in our communities, I will act.

Where lights are being switched off on other people’s liberties, I will act.

Where our borders and our laws need strengthening, I will act.

Our party owes it to our country to continue confronting difficult issues, no matter how controversial, or complex.

There will be new challenges and new tests.

And we will meet them, strengthened by our belief in this country.

That is my promise to you, that is my service to the people of Britain.

Patel confirms her plans to extend testing offenders for drugs on their arrest. (See 11.34am.)

Patel says virginity testing is being outlawed.

I am outlawing the sickening practice of virginity testing.

A barbaric, medieval, and invasive practice exclusively performed on women.

Often to control them. Often without their consent.

Well not under this home secretary.

Patel announces an inquiry into how Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, was able to serve as a police officer.

This government will always back the brave men and women of our police.

And it is because of our strong relationship with the police, that I can ask the difficult questions and support them to do better.

Recent tragic events have exposed unimaginable failures in policing.

It is abhorrent that a serving police officer was able to abuse his position of power, authority and trust to commit such a horrific crime.

The public have a right to know what systematic failures enabled his continued employment as a police officer.

We need answers as to why this was allowed to happen.

I can confirm today, there will be an inquiry, to give the independent oversight needed, to ensure something like this can never happen again.

Patel says the Sarah Everard case has made her redouble efforts to keep women and girls safe.

All our thoughts remain with Sarah Everard’s family and friends.

Her murderer, whose name I will not repeat, was a monster.

His explicit intention was to instil fear and terror in women and girls.

I say this as home secretary, but also as a woman.

Such unconscionable crimes and acts of violence against women and girls have no place in our society.

And that is why I have redoubled my efforts to ensure women and girls feel safer.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, is taking the stage now to start her conference speech. She gets a big cheer.

Tory activists are famously always keen on a hardline home secretary, and they don’t come much more authoritarian than Patel.

Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, has been speaking at a fringe event. Here are some of the best lines, from the Spectator’s James Forsyth and from my colleague Aubrey Allegretti.

• Raab said it could take 12 months to clear the backlog in cases waiting to go to court that built up during the Covid crisis.

• He suggested the police were “nervous” about appearing heavy-handed with protesters.

• He said there was a case for letting asylum seekers work while their claims are being processed.

• He suggested he wants to keep costs down in his department.

This is from David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, responding to Dominic Raab’s speech this morning. (See 10.39am.)

After eleven years of Tory government, court backlogs have reached record levels, violence and self-harm in prisons have soared, rape convictions have plummeted, and many women have lost confidence in the criminal justice system.

Yet instead of addressing any of these problems, the new justice secretary chose to focus on vague threats to take away ordinary people’s rights.

The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has said Boris Johnson was mistaken when he explained how visas for foreign tanker drivers were issued in an interview this morning. (See 10.39am.) Johnson said the haulage industry had provided names of drivers wanting to come to the UK. But Rod McKenzie, the RHA’s managing director of policy and public affairs, said that was not the case.

He explained:

There isn’t a database of lorry drivers with names attached to them and want to work in Britain that British lorry firms can tap into and say, ‘we’ll have that one, that one, that one or that one’. It doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t exist.

The only way it works is the government advertises that short-term visas are available, Europeans think about it, decide whether they want to or don’t want to, and act accordingly. And, clearly, only 127 to date have acted accordingly.

Ahead of Priti Patel’s speech, the Conservatives have said she will announce plans to spend £15m expanding the testing of offenders for drug use upon arrest. In a briefing note the party says:

The Home Office will provide financial support for drug testing on arrest to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, this will help identify a greater number of drug users, reinforce the consequences for drug use and ultimately help to cut crime.

Testing on arrest will see officers testing suspects in custody for the presence of heroin or cocaine. The powers are predominantly used to test individuals who have been arrested for so called ‘trigger offences’ such as shoplifting, burglary and robbery. Police also routinely test suspects in fraud offences and certain drug-related crimes, including possession and intent to supply.

More than £15m will be invested over the next four years to expand the programme …

Individuals who test positive for opiates or cocaine will be referred to a range of follow-up measures – including treatment and drug awareness courses – to tackle the problem at its root and reduce the prevalence of drug misuse across society.

In the first main speech in the conference hall this morning Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy first minister, confirmed that the government plans to “overhaul” the Human Rights Act.

As well as confirming the plans briefed overnight to fit some offenders with “sobriety tags”, he said:

And there’s one other big change the public want to see.

Too often they see dangerous criminals abusing human rights laws.

In one case, a drug dealer convicted of beating his ex-partner,

A man who hadn’t paid maintenance for his daughter,

Then successfully claimed the right to family life to avoid deportation.

Conference, it is absolutely perverse that someone guilty of domestic abuse …

Could claim the right to family life to trump the public’s interest in deporting him from this country.

We’ve got to bring this nonsense to an end.

So, today I can tell you that, under this prime minister and before the next election,

We will overhaul the Human Rights Act.

To end this kind of abuse … and restore some common sense to our justice system.

“Overhaul” could mean anything from limited amendment to a far-reaching rewrite, but it is a slightly stronger version of what appeared in the Conservatives 2019 manifesto, which said the party would “update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government”.

Raab is more hostile to the Human Rights Act than his predecessor, Robert Buckland. As a backbench MP Raab said he was opposed to it in principle

© Provided by The Guardian
Dominic Raab addressing the Conservative conference. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

In his BBC Breakfast interview Boris Johnson did not back calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime. He said there was already adequate legislation on the statute book to protect women, and what was important was for the existing laws to be enforced. He said:

I think that what we should do is prosecute people for the crimes we have on the statute book.

That is what I am focused on. To be perfectly honest, if you widen the scope of what you ask the police to do, you will just increase the problem.

What you need to do is get the police to focus on the very real crimes, the very real feeling of injustice and betrayal that many people feel.

Here are the main points from Boris Johnson’s morning interviews. On the supply chain crisis, his message was the one he set out on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, when instead of trying to play down the significance of the HGV driver shortage, he embraced it as evidence of the case for his supposed high wage, low immigration economic model instead of Labour’s, which he claimed was the opposite. (See here for an analysis.) But there was new language on that, as well new lines on many other issues.

• Johnson said that only 127 foreign tanker drivers have applied to come to the UK under the emergency scheme opened by the government. He was responding to a Times story (paywall) that claimed the number was 27. Some 300 visas are available for tanker drivers, and the figure suggests the government will struggle to fill the 5,000 slots it has made available for foreign HGV drivers. But Johnson argued that this was evidence that the government was right to say that the driver shortage was a global one, not a UK-specific one. He said:

It’s a fascinating illustration of the problem of the shortage. What we said to the road haulage industry was ‘fine, give us the names of the drivers that you want to bring in and we will sort out the visas, you’ve got another 5,000 visas’. They only produced 127 names so far. What that shows is the global shortage.

• He said the situation at petrol stations, where many people have been unable to fill up because of shortages, was “improving markedly”, according to the Petrol Retailers Association.

• He said the situation at Christmas would “very considerably better than last year”.

• He argued that HGV driver shortages were evidence of economic success, not economic failure. He told BBC Breakfast:

The supply chain problem is caused very largely by the strength of the economic recovery.

And he told the Today programme:

It’s primarily a shortage of labour, which is, after all, a sign of economic robustness that the market is demanding and labour in the way that it is.

• He said the country faced a turning point. He explained:

This country is at a turning point and we can’t go on.

If you look at the productivity of the UK, we have undershot all our major competitors for two decades or more, and that is because we have a low-wage, low-cost approach where business does not invest in skills, does not invest in capital or facilities.

• He dismissed claims that raising taxes for businesses would eventually lead to consumers having to pay more. (See 8.19am.)

• He suggested there was no need for misogyny to be made a hate crime, saying what women need is for the existing laws protecting them to be better enforced.

• He blamed the conduct of defence lawyers for the low level of rape convictions. He told BBC Breakfast:

People are not being convicted of rape in the way that they should be convicted of rape, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is that we’ve got these immense complications with evidence from mobile phones, and the defence is too often able to produce a spurious or otherwise reason why the defendant might have thought consent was given.

In another interview he suggested the same factor was a reason for rape cases taking so long to get to court. This has infuriated some lawyers.

This is from the Secret Barrister, a barrister who has published books anonymously about the law.

This is from Jonathan Black, a former president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association.

And this is from Stephen Davies, a criminal solicitor.

• Johnson claimed the Tories are not thinking about calling an early election. Prime ministers normally duck questions about the timing of elections, but the Times’ Steven Swinford says he thinks Johnson was being honest.

• Johnson joked about the fact that pig farmers say they are going to have to incinerate their stock because of the shortage of butchers and slaughterers. When Andrew Marr asked about this crisis on Sunday, Johnson referred to the “great hecatomb of pigs” and said pigs raised for eating were slaughtered anyway. He did not acknowledge that, if they cannot be processed for meats, the farmers lose income, and normal welfare standards might not be maintained. When the subject was raised again by Times Radio, Johnson talked about his “unhappy duty” having to tell Marr what happened to pigs, and he started asking about bacon sandwiches. He did not engage with the concerns of the pig farmers.

• He described the Insulate Britain protesters as “irresponsible crusties”. He said:

There are some people who call those individuals legitimate protesters.

They are not. I think they are irresponsible crusties who are basically trying to stop people going about their day’s work and doing considerable damage to the economy.

That is why we have taken the powers and why Priti Patel is doing the right thing to bring in powers so they can get six months or an unlimited fine.

• He said he wanted to see more people back in the office. He said:

For young people in particular, it is really essential … if you are going to learn on the job, you can’t just do it on Zoom.

You have got to be able to come in, you have got to know what everyone else is talking about – otherwise you are going to be gossiped about and you are going to lose out.

But he admitted that not all his own staff are back working from the office.

© Provided by The Guardian
Boris Johnson being interviewed by LBC this morning. Photograph: Jon Super/AP

Today the Times is reporting that “only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis”.

In his BBC Breakfast interview Boris Johnson said the number was actually 127. He says the government asked the road haulage industry to provide the names of foreign drivers who would want to come to the UK, and that only 127 names have been produced so far.

He said this proved what the government has been saying about the HGV driver shortage in the UK being part of a global problem. “It’s a fascinating illustration of the problem of the shortage,” he said.

It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.

Q: You have daughters. Do you worry about them walking home at night.

Johnson says he wants streets to be safe, and people to be confident.

There was a big announcement about street lighting yesterday, he says. He says he is seriously concerned about the amount of time it takes for rape cases to be dealt with. Women are infuriated and feel betrayed, he says.

Q: ConservativeHome has you sixth from bottom in its ranking of cabinet ministers. Was it more fun being outside government?

Johnson suggests it odd to be criticised for the fact there has not been a populist uprising on the conference fringe. “It is all going horribly right,” he says.

And that’s it. The PM’s interview round is over.

I’ll hoover up the best lines shortly.

Q: Are you going to raise the minimum wage?

Johnson says the minimum wage commission has to report. The government will look at what it says, he says.

Q: You could raise it unilaterally.

Johnson dodges the question, and says he raised the living wage as mayor of London.

Q: You have managed to unite pig farmers with the Socialist Workers party. They are all outside the conference shouting at you?

Johnson says he did an interview on Sunday with a “guy” [Andrew Marr] who asked about pigs being slaughtered. He says he had to point out that that is what happened to them.

Q: But this is about them culled.

Johnson says anyone who has had a bacon sandwich has been eating a dead pig.

Johnson says he wants to see pay grow.

And, on the cost of living, he says he wants to bring it down in the long term. He says the government is investing in transport and energy. Energy prices are going up because the UK is reliant on foreign gas, he says.

Q: Will you go for a full term, and not hold an election in 2023?

Johnson says he is focusing on the job in hand. He says the government is not talking about that option.

Q: How will the red wall be able to judge levelling up?

Johnson says he does not like these terms. He says levelling up is for the whole country.

He says gigabit broadband is being extend. That will help Times Radio, he says. It has gone from 7% coverage to 65% in just two years.

Johnson suggests there will be quite a lot about Northern Powerhouse rail in his speech tomorrow.

Tom Newton Dunn is interviewing Boris Johnson for Times Radio.

Q: How is the speech coming along?

Johnson says we will have to wait until tomorrow.

Q: When are we going to get a levelling up policy. Give us an example?

Johnson cites his tutoring programme for pupils.

And he asks which group is seeing the highest growth in wages. It is people on low pay. That is levelling up. He says he does not object to people on high incomes, like Newton Dunn.

Q: Ben Houchen said recently you need to set out a plan for levelling up.

Johnson says you can see an “incredibly levelling up agenda” in the north-east. He cites the Treasury going to Darlington, and the free port on Teesside.

Johnson claims people do know what levelling up means. Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not, he says.

Johnson dismisses the motorway protesters as “irresponsible crusties”.

Johnson says his decision to lift Covid restrictions has been vindicated. And he claims if “Captain Hindsight” had been in charge, the UK would still be in lockdown.

And that’s it. The Today interview is over.

Times Radio is next.

Q: Do you have a plan to make women and girls more safe?

Yes, says Johnson. They are making streets safer, hiring more police and investing in more street lighting.

But he says he also wants to speed up the criminal justice process.

Q: But the government has cut courts funding. Will you put more money into it?

Johnson says the government is putting money into all services.

Q: The budget has been cut by a quarter in the past decade.

Johnson says more money is being put in. He says more prosecutors are being hired. But problems like the amount of mobile phone evidence that needs to be examined is causing problems.

He says he also wants to increase sentences for rape and violent sexual offences.

Q: Shouldn’t you have a separate women’s minister, instead of expecting the foreign secretary to do it?

Johnson says Liz Truss does an outstanding job.

Q: Do you really have a plan for levelling up? You sacked your education secretary, and your education recovery commissioner resigned. What will you do to level up in schools?

Johnson says there is a £3bn catch-up fund, and the government is recruiting teachers in disadvantaged areas to help turn schools round.

Some families get tutors for their children. But not all families can afford this. So the government is offering pupils tuition they would not otherwise get. There are six million courses being provided.

Johnson acknowledges that people are having problems with the cost of living.

But he says it would be wrong to take more money from taxation and use it to subsidise lower pay.

He says he wants to see business and industry pay people more to help them, and that is what is happening.

Q: Who will pay for the biggest rise in business tax for a generation?

Johnson says corporations will eventually pay it.

He says the government is giving businesses a super-deduction, to allow them to invest.

Q: Isn’t it always the consumer who ends up paying? This will add to the cost of living crisis.

Johnson rejects this. Look at the balance sheets, he says. They have the ability to do this.

Johnson says he will not “pull the lever marked uncontrolled immigration”.

Robinson says that is not what anyone is saying.

Johnson says that is what Wolfson wants. It’s not, Robinson replies.

Johnson says the road haulage industry has not been putting money into truck stops, conditions and pay.

Robinson interrupts Johnson, and says he must answer questions.

Boris Johnson is now being interviewed by Nick Robinson on the Today programme.

He says the current problems in the UK are linked to the global economy recovering after the Covid crisis.

The UK is “world leading in logistics”, he says. He says producers will start to fix it.

Q: Lord Wolfson from Next, a leading Brexit supporter, says this could produce an inflationary spiral. Have you a plan to deal with that?

Johnson says he has read what Wolfson said.

Immigration is often raised, he says. He says there is a shortage of labour, which is often a sign of “economic robustness”.

Q: Wolfson says he needs more foreign labour.

Johnson says in the past business could mainline low-cost foreign labour.

The people who came did a great job.

But he says that held down wages.

Asked if he knows the price of a litre of diesel, Johnson says he does not use diesel. He says promoting diesel was a “European Union plot”.

Johnson tells LBC that he wants people to return to the office.

He says people benefit from being in the office.

Nick Ferrari is now interviewing Boris Johnson on LBC.

Q: How will we know when we have levelled up?

Johnson says it is already happening with infrastructure.

He says gigabit broadband is being extended. He jokes about how it now covers the croft in Scotland where Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, has a home.

Good morning. Boris Johnson is doing a morning interview round today, and he has told BBC Breakfast that the country is at a “turning point”. He said Britain is now at a point where it has a chance to pivot towards a high wage, high skills economy. He said:

[What] I don’t think would be a good idea would be to go backwards to the kind of low wage, low investment, low skill approach that they’ve had before. So it’s really a big turning point for the UK, an opportunity for us to go in a different direction.

I will post more from his interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.50am: Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, gives a speech.

10.40am: Alistair Jack, the Scottish secretary, takes part in a panel discussion.

Morning: Raab and Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor, are among the Tories taking part in fringe events.

11.20am: George Eustice, the environment secretary, is interviewed on the stage.

11.50am: Priti Patel, the home secretary, gives a speech.

Afternoon: Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, David Frost, the Brexit secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international development secretary, and Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, are among the Tories taking part in fringe events.

4pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, gives a speech.

4.50pm: Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, is interviewed on stage.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at [email protected]