UK parliament ditches TikTok account over China security concerns – politics live

Liz Truss has said she would “support and extend” the government’s Rwanda deportation policy “to more countries”.

Both Truss and her rival, Rishi Sunak, have previously committed to continuing the controversial policy if they become prime minister, but today the foreign secretary went further to say she would broaden it to other countries.

Asked about her plans to tackle the rising number of Channel crossings, Truss said:

We need to make sure that the appalling people traffickers don’t succeed in bringing small boats across the English Channel.

She added:

I would support and extend the Rwanda policy to more countries but also I would make sure in British law that we can’t be overruled by the ECHR (European court of human rights) so we are able to protect our borders.

Dan Milmo

Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Facebook’s parent company, is partly relocating to London as he joins senior colleagues in moving to the UK capital.

The former Liberal Democrat leader will divide his time between California, where he lives currently, and London. Clegg’s new executive role at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will require more travelling and it is understood that Clegg sees London as a suitable base for visiting Europe and Asia.

The Financial Times, which first reported the move, said Clegg wanted to spend more time in the UK and continental Europe for personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to his elderly parents.

Campaigners have called for an end to “unchecked political patronage” as polling found most people oppose plans for Boris Johnson to appoint new peers in the final weeks of his premiership.

Alarm was raised by the Electoral Reform Society over a proposal drawn up by CT Group – a political lobbying firm run by the Conservative adviser Lynton Crosby – for the prime minister to appoint up to 50 new Conservative lawmakers to ram contentious legislation through parliament.

The leaked document sparked condemnation from Gordon Brown, and led to accusations the Lords was already “bursting at the seams”, meaning more “meaningful checks and balances” on appointments were needed.

Polling from Opinium found 54% of people are against Johnson drawing up a “resignation honours” list that could ennoble key allies who stuck by him during the dying days of his administration and urged him to fight on. Just 13% backed the move, while 34% expressed no view.

Among voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019, 41% were against the plan while 21% were in favour. There were 2,000 adults surveyed at the end of July and their responses were weighted to be nationally representative.

Read the full article here.

Here’s more from that YouGov poll conducted for the Times, which found that Conservative party members still believe Boris Johnson would make a better prime minister than the two leadership contenders, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.

Asked who they thought would make the better prime minister, Truss leads Sunak by 58% to 29%. But throwing Boris Johnson into the ring shows him winning, with 40% saying he would make the best PM, to Truss’s 28% and Sunak’s 23%.

Those who intend to vote for Truss are divided, with 49% backing Johnson compared with 45% who think Truss will be an improvement. By contrast, few Sunak voters are deterred: 76% think the former chancellor would be the better PM, with only 18% switching their vote over to Johnson.

Only 39% of members believe that the Tories will win a majority at the next election under Liz Truss. Even fewer (19%) say so if Rishi Sunak is in charge.

Of those who intend to vote for Sunak, just 37% expect him to lead the Tories to a majority in 2024.

Mark Brown

A parliamentary aide and former partner of a Labour MP has won a claim against him for unfair dismissal with a tribunal also agreeing she was “isolated and marginalised” for a year before being sacked.

Elaina Cohen won two claims that she made against her former boss Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. But she lost other claims including that her dismissal was related to race, religion or belief.

Cohen had accused Mahmood of sacking her after she raised concerns with him under whistleblowing regulations about allegations of criminal behaviour by a fellow staffer.

Mahmood maintained that Cohen was dismissed for breaking protocols of parliamentary office and sending him “derogatory” and “offensive” emails, one of which described him as a “first-class idiot”, which was forwarded to the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

In his letter dismissing Cohen he accused her of repeatedly disrespecting him, calling him names and copying in additional people to intimidate him.

The tribunal heard, over a six-day hearing in May, that Cohen’s nickname for Mahmood in WhatsApp messages was “catfish”.

This week the tribunal published its findings, agreeing that Cohen was unfairly dismissed.

Read the full article here.

Parliament has taken down its newly created TikTok account after Conservative MPs sanctioned by China raised concerns about the social media platform’s data security.

Last week, senior MPs and members of the House of Lords, including Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith and Nus Ghani, criticised parliamentary authorities for setting up the account on TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance.

In a joint letter to the speakers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords and seen by Politico, the group of Conservative politicians said they were “surprised and disappointed” with the decision to set up the account.

They said:

The prospect of Xi Jinping’s government having access to personal data on our children’s phones ought to be a cause for major concern.

The letter urged parliamentary authorities to take down the account “until credible assurances can be given that no data whatsoever can be transferred to China”.

The TikTok account has now been locked and its content deleted, Politico’s Eleni Courea reports.

Ghani, a vice-chair of the party’s 1922 Committee, shared a letter from the speakers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords and thanked them for the decision.

The letter said:

We were not consulted on the plans for this pilot project, but over the last few days we have discussed the initiative with officials. The account was an attempt to engage with younger audiences – who are not always active on our existing social media platforms – regarding the work of Parliament.

However, in light of your feedback and concerns expressed to us, we have decided that the account should be closed with immediate effect.

Former Conservative party treasurer, Lord Cruddas, has called for the leadership contest to be suspended after the delivery of ballot papers to party members was delayed following security concerns.

Cruddas, who has led a campaign for Boris Johnson’s name to be on the ballot, suggested the PM’s resignation should be rejected and that he should stay in his role until any security issues are resolved.

In a letter to the party’s board seen on the Conservative Post website, Cruddas said:

The board should reject the resignation of the prime minister and ask him to stay on whilst the board fixes any cyber issues and the leadership campaign can be revisited in due course.

He called for the board to “immediately” suspend the leadership campaign and to allow party members to decide on a yes/no ballot to accept Johnson’s resignation.

He added:

If the members vote to keep Boris then there is no need for a leadership campaign and no more cyber security threats.