Kemi Badenoch dismisses idea of trialling menopause leave because it was proposed ‘from a leftwing perspective’ – as it happened

• Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, has dismissed a call for the government to pilot menopause leave for women, complaining it was being proposed from “a leftwing perspective”. (See 5.45pm.)

• Helen Whately, the care minister, has dismissed claims that Matt Hancock ignored scientific advice over Covid tests for care homes.

• Heather Hallett, the Covid-19 public inquiry’s chair has insisted the investigation will not be a “whitewash”, after the journalist Isabel Oakeshott claimed that concern over the inquiry’s integrity prompted her to publish private messages shared with her by Matt Hancock.

• Keir Starmer has urged Rishi Sunak to give the Covid inquiry the resources it needs to be able to publish its findings by the end of the year. (See 12.12pm.) Replying to Starmer at PMQs, Sunak said the inquiry had the powers it needed and should be left to get on with its job.

• David Frost, Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator, has fired a shot at Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal, admitting it would “help” but would not remove EU law from Northern Ireland.

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Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, has dismissed suggestions that the government should pilot menopause leave for women, complaining it was being proposed from “a leftwing perspective”.

She made the comment during bad-tempered exchanges when she was giving evidence to the Commons women and equalities committee, where Labour’s Carolyn Harris asked about a recommendation in a report the committee published last year.

The committee urged the government to trial “specific menopause leave so that women are not forced out of work by insensitive and rigid sickness policies”.

Badenoch said anyone could carry out a pilot; it did not have not have to be the government. She went on:

We spend so much time creating new work for government to do, we spread our attention so thinly, that we miss things.

Harris said the government had accepted the committee’s call in the same report for a menopause ambassador to be appointed. She asked why, if a menopause ambassador was not a waste of time, piloting menopause leave was.

Badenoch replied:

That is something which would require far more resources than encouraging employees in terms of changing their work culture.

Arguing that it was a matter of philosophical perspective, she told Harris:

You’re speaking from a leftwing perspective on creating something. I’m speaking from centre-right perspective. I think that influences the approach that you take. I do not think that creating another pilot on more leave is what is going to help women who have the menopause.

Badenoch, who clashed with Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the committee as well during the hearing, also dismissed the idea that the menopause should be given protected status under equality law. She said:

We have so many things that people ask for protected characteristics – carers, single people, having ginger hair, being short, all sorts of things that people ask for as protected characteristics.

Creating a new special characteristic for the menopause is a complete misunderstanding of what protected characteristics are, they are immutable characteristics, we have nine of them that cover everyone.

The menopause can be dealt with, alongside three existing ones: age, sex, and disability, because it is a health condition and many disabilities are health conditions.

This is from the Scotsman’s Alexander Brown.

Isabel Oakeshott justified her decision to release Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages partly on the grounds that she thinks the official public inquiry into the pandemic will “drag on forever”. (See 10.34am.) She also claimed the inquiry could end up “a colossal whitewash”.

The inquiry is already holding preliminary hearings, with lawyers, not witnesses, covering procedural matters, and at the start of a hearing this morning Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, made a statement specifically rejecting the Oakeshott allegation. She said:

This inquiry will not drag on for decades, I have been determined from the outset that the inquiry must reach conclusions, and make recommendations, as soon as possible if we are to achieve our aim of learning lessons, and reducing suffering in any future pandemic.

That is why I sought the express agreement of the then prime minister to issue interim reports, and I have given instructions to the module teams that that is what I wish to do whenever possible.

However, if we are going to conduct a thorough and effective investigation it will take some time, despite the inquiry team working flat out …

I know of no other inquiry of its kind in the world, ie one in public, with statutory powers to obtain evidence, with core participants playing important roles, and with extraordinarily broad terms of reference.

So with respect to certain commentators, comparisons to other countries are unhelpful.

Furthermore, I wish to emphasise there will be no whitewash.

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My colleague Jim Waterson has written an excellent profile of Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who has turned over Matt Hancock. Here is an extract.

As Robert Colvile, the director of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies thinktank and co-author of the 2019 Tory manifesto, said: “The main lesson I’ve learned from this is not to hire someone who absolutely hates your signature policy as your ghostwriter.”

One political journalist said: “The man needs his head testing to have gone near Oakeshott with a flaming trebuchet, let alone a bargepole.”

Extraordinarily Oakeshott handed the entire archive of Hancock’s messages to the Daily Telegraph despite being paid a rumoured six-figure salary by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK to be a pundit on its struggling TalkTV channel.

Staff at the Sun and the Times have been left fuming that they are now trying to follow up a story given to a rival newspaper by one of their own employees – while TalkTV has missed out on a scoop that could have helped it in its ratings battle with GB News.

And here is the full article.

The Daily Telegraph has published more extracts from what it calls its “lockdown files” (ie, Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp collection). It says that Boris Johnson proposed giving over-65s a choice over whether they could shield, and that Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, both highlighted the disadvantages with shielding. The Telegraph reports:

The government’s most senior scientific advisers told the prime minister that the implementation of shielding measures was not “very effective” – but ministers still asked 2.2 million people to follow them for months, The Telegraph can disclose.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, said in a WhatsApp message in Aug 2020 that shielding implementation – which required people who were clinically “extremely vulnerable” to isolate – had not been “easy or very effective”.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, added that he would personally “think twice” about following shielding guidelines himself, unless it was to protect the NHS – which was not their principal aim.

Both stories are interesting, but don’t fundamentally shift our understanding of what was happening within government as it grappled with government.

What is much more engrossing, though, is the opportunity to read the WhatsApp threads exchanged by ministers at the time. It is like being able to eavesdrop on a private conversation, and WhatsApp messages can reveal more about character than what gets said in public. The Telegraph is embedding the threads in their news stories.

For example, here is one from Boris Johnson, after he read a figure in the Financial Times that made him think official fatality rate figures for Covid were wrong.

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This was sent to what seems to be a small group of Johnson’s top advisers who then proceeded to explain to him what the official figures said. Vallance worked out the problem, which was that the FT figure was misleading.

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Boris Johnson clutching at straws to validate his anti-lockdown instincts, Vallance and Whitty explaining the facts patiently and deferentially, Dominic Cummings whacking the media – it’s all there.

Kate Forbes, the Scottish government’s finance secretary, has rejected suggestions that she would abandon the SNP’s “progresssive agenda” if she were to become party leader and next first minister.

Yesterday Humza Yousaf, the health secretary, said “the SNP has managed to gain support to dizzying heights because of the progressive agenda that we have”. This was taken as a jibe at Forbes, whose campaign has been badly damaged by her declaration that she is personally opposed to equal marriage, and the gender recognition bill, for faith reasons.

Asked about the comment at a campaign event today, Forbes said she agreed with Yousaf and that her plans did not involve a shift away from progressive ideas. She said:

I think it is very progressive to believe in the inherent dignity and humanity of every human being in Scotland and to ensure that when they need care, and when they need medical assistance, they can access that free at the point of need.

If we’re serious about eradicating poverty, which I am, if we’re serious about reinvesting in our public services, which I am, then we need a growing an prosperous economy.

You cannot eradicate poverty and reinvest in our public services at the level that we need to if we don’t have a growing and prosperous economy.

This is about profits with purpose. It’s about a growing economy with a view to reducing poverty in Scotland and reinvesting in our public services.

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Sinn Féin has said there is “no time to waste” in implementing the PM’s deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. At a press conference at Stormont with Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin president, where they both encouraged the DUP to resume power sharing, Michelle O’Neill, the party’s leader in Northern Ireland and first minister designate, said:

I rarely find myself agreeing with the British prime minister, but I do think that the opportunity we now have of access to both markets has to be grabbed on to with both hands, and there is no time to waste because we’re about to attend in Washington DC a number of events that will be to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, but as you all know, that’s about encouraging investment here, that’s about the economic potential of here.

We have in quick succession a deal being done on the protocol, we go to the States next week to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, very quickly in the aftermath of that comes the anniversary of the Good Friday agreement.

The economic potential for us here is enormous and this is a moment not to be missed.

Power sharing has been suspended for more than a year because the DUP started a boycott until the protocol was reformed. The party is deciding whether or not to back the new version negotiated by Sunak, and it says it won’t be rushed as it makes up its mind. (See 11.56am.)

To implement the protocol deal, the UK-EU joint committee has to approve the changes, and then the UK and the EU need to make legislative changes.

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Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, used a statement in the Commons to announce that the government will “legislate as soon as possible to introduce an independent public advocate to put victims and the bereaved at the heart of our response to large-scale public disasters”.

This is something that has been promised by the government for years, in response to complaints from victims and their relatives that at public inquiries into events like the Hillsborough disaster they did not get proper representation equivalent to the support available to bodies facing criticism, like the police.

The advocate’s office will support victims “right from the immediate aftermath of a tragedy until all inquiries and inquests have concluded”, the Ministry of Justice said.

Raab said:

The independent public advocate goes some way to making good on this government’s longstanding promise to ensure that pain, that suffering of the Hillsborough victims and other victims is never repeated again.

I can tell the house it will be passed into law, it will be made up of a panel of experts to guide survivors and the bereaved in the aftermath of a major disaster.

Here is the MoJ news release.

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing the PM’s press secretary said that Rishi Sunak has had “a good discussion” with Boris Johnson about the deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol. She did not give details.

But she did say Sunak thought Tory MPs should be given time to consider the merits of the deal.

The PM believes that it’s right that colleagues across the house have the time to reflect and go through the details of the agreement.

It is thought that Johnson still resents the part Sunak played in forcing his resignation, by resigning as chancellor, and there was speculation that Johnson would lead a Tory revolt against the deal. Last week Johnson said that a better strategy would have been for the government to just carry on with the Northern Ireland protocol bill. But Johnson has not said a word in public about the deal since it was published on Monday and, with Tory opposition to the plan appearing to evaporate, Johnson has been left with the problem that he cannot spearhead a rebellion that does not exist.

At the Downing Street post-PMQs lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson defended the use of WhatsApp by ministers for government business. He said:

The rules set out that ministers are able to discuss government businesses over text messages or WhatsApp, that’s entirely within the rules, understandably part and parcel of modern government.

The requirement is that substantive decisions are communicated to the Cabinet Office.