Labour calls for “full-scale” investigation into ministers using private emails

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“Boris Johnson should sack him.” That was Labour’s take on Friday, after it emerged that Matt Hancock had been conducting an affair with an old friend who was hired as an adviser and then appointed as a director at his department last year. There was the issue of hiring processes for one, but also of Covid rules being broken by the Health Secretary who imposed them. The Prime Minister gave full backing to his minister, however, and No 10 told us that Johnson “considers the matter closed”. It was not closed, of course: with further scandals set to emerge in the Sunday papers, Hancock resigned on Saturday. He was swiftly replaced by Sajid Javid, avoiding the need for a wider reshuffle.

With The Sunday Times reporting that Hancock had used a private Gmail account for official government business, Labour has called for a “full-scale” investigation into whether other ministers have been doing the same. The party says it is concerned about the security risks as well as the potential for the practice to help ministers avoid scrutiny, “whether internally, by the public via freedom of information requests, or in any future public inquiry”. But this morning we got a classy defence from cabinet minister Robert Buckland, who when asked about standards in government claimed that critics just “can’t get over the fact that [the PM] is popular in the country”. Basically the Regina George ‘why are you so obsessed with me?’ defence.

Labour held its national women’s conference over the weekend. It was all online, which made it far more accessible than usual. The party’s left secured all six places up for grabs on the local party section of the new national women’s committee (NWC). As for policy, Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary Marsha de Cordova set out some of it in a piece for LabourList: the party is calling for the immediate reintroduction of gender pay gap reporting and the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting. It also wants: to give all workers rights to flexible working and switching off; to outlaw making a new mother redundant from notification of pregnancy until six months after their return to work; to be transparent about who gets jobs created by government schemes; and to review and overhaul the shared parental leave system.

I had to miss the women’s conference as I was visiting Batley and Spen ahead of the by-election this week. On Friday, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater was aggressively shouted at by men in the street. On Saturday, people were expecting Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to turn up, and an anti-racism counter-protest was organised as a result. Thankfully, the far right did not show. But on Sunday, the nastiness during the campaign escalated, as Labour activists were assaulted and the police were called. “I witnessed them being egged, pushed and forced to the ground and kicked in the head,” Tracy Brabin said. A fake leaflet, pretending to be supportive of Labour but actually aimed at whipping up racism, was also distributed in the seat. Read all about it here. My full write-up is coming soon.

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