Andrew Sparrow 

DUP boycott of meetings with Irish government ministers unlawful, court rules – as it happened

DUP had stopped attending meetings of north-south ministerial council in protest at Northern Ireland protocol
  
  

Jeffrey Donaldson speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative conference in Manchester.
Jeffrey Donaldson speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative conference in Manchester. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Afternoon summary

  • The DUP has brushed aside a court ruling saying its decision to boycott meetings with Irish government ministers required under the Good Friday agreement is unlawful. (See 2.51pm and 4.01pm.) Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, announced the policy to intensify pressure for an overhaul of the Northern Ireland protocol. (See 3.12pm.) The judgment came ahead of a speech tomorrow by Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, which, on the basis of advance briefing, is expected to indicate that the UK government is moving closer to unilaterally suspending parts of the protocol, by triggering article 16. Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, said today the EU is increasingly frustrated by the UK’s tactics, and close to the point of giving up hope that the two sides can find a compromise solution.
  • Kwarteng has now formally asked the Treasury to help support energy-intensive industries. This is from ITV’s Anushka Asthana.
  • Labour has also urged Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, to support energy intensive industries. It has set out the request in a letter to the chancellor from Rachel Reeves, his Labour shadow. She said:

Our brilliant British industries are a crucial cornerstone of our economy, and we should be supporting them to boost our recovery.

The government should be protecting and supporting them through a crisis which has come about from their own lack of planning.

They have a duty to get an immediate grip on this situation, and businesses need reassurance that this is happening.

It’s crucial to also see the government out reassuring the public that they won’t be hit with more rising costs as millions are left with less money in their pockets. Not doing so is looking increasingly out of touch.

  • Downing Street has defended Boris Johnson’s right to be on holiday this week, saying he remains “in charge”. (See 1.07pm.)
  • The Chemical Industries Association has said some of its members were only weeks away from having to close plants because of rising energy costs. (See 10.31am.)

Updated

Paul Givan, Northern Ireland’s DUP first minister, was asked at question time in Stormont about the court ruling saying his party’s boycott of meeting with Irish government ministers is unlawful. (See 2.51pm.) He replied:

Obviously, we will read through the judgment that has been passed in the courts.

Whenever it comes to the working of the north-south institutions my party has made clear we do wish to see all of the parts of the Belfast agreement upheld, but they are interdependent, they are interlinked and the east-west dimension has been trashed as a result of the protocol.

Updated

DUP says its court defeat strengthens case for triggering article 16

The DUP says its defeat in the high court (see 2.51pm) strengthens the case for triggering article 16 – the move the government could make to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland protocol. There are suspicions that David Frost’s recent confrontational language about the protocol, and in particular about the inclusion of the ECJ in it (a feature that attracted little comment until recently), is a precursor to the government triggering article 16.

A DUP spokesman said:

The high court judgment is further proof that the conditions to trigger article 16 have been met. If an early resolution between the UK and EU cannot be achieved, we call upon the UK government to invoke the terms of article 16 to avoid a further deterioration in political and economic stability in Northern Ireland.

On this topic the constitutional lawyer George Peretz QC posted a good thread on Twitter yesterday arguing that concerns about the ECJ would not be enough to give the government a legal reason for triggering article 16. It starts here.

Updated

At a briefing at Stormont earlier Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said that he backed the UK government in objecting to the European court of justice having a role in oversight of the Northern Ireland protocol.

Asked why, in that case, he had not included this as one of the seven tests by which he would judge whether any overhaul of the Northern Ireland protocol was acceptable, Donaldson said the ECJ fell within the fourth test set out by the party: ‘give people in Northern Ireland a say in making the laws that govern them’. He went on:

Actually that is part of my test - that I want to know how the people of Northern Ireland are going to be dealt with in all of this.

It is not acceptable for Northern Ireland to have to accept laws and the jurisdiction of a court over which we have no control and in which we have no say. That is not the way forward.

This is from Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, on the court ruling earlier saying the DUP’s boycott of meetings with Irish government ministers is unlawful. (See 2.51pm.)

Darren Jones, the Labour chair of the Commons business committee, has urged the government to put in place a windfall tax on companies that are making big profits from the surge in gas prices. He told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:

One thing I want Rishi Sunak and the Treasury to be doing is looking at a windfall tax on the generators of gas, who are making enormous profits at the moment because of the global fluctuations in the price of gas.

Everyone is looking around for money to help consumers and businesses in these difficult times, and that has to come from somewhere.

The business secretary [Kwasi Kwarteng] said to me for my select [committee] a few weeks ago they were looking at the concept of a windfall tax, but it looks to me like the Treasury haven’t been bothered to do the maths and don’t want to get involved in this problem.

Kwarteng did tell the committee he could consider the windfall tax option. But he also later made it clear that he was not keen on the idea.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, announced that his party would no longer participate in meetings of the north-south ministerial council in a speech in early September setting out his objections to the Northern Ireland protocol.

He knew this would be provocative, because the NSMC meetings are part of the institutional framework set up by the Good Friday agreement. But Donaldson justified the move saying: “The threat to the political institutions is not from our withdrawal from strand two [of the Good Friday agreement], but from the protocol itself.”

In the same speech Donaldson said that DUP ministers would oppose the introduction of any further checks at on goods coming through the GB/NI border, that they would explore if there was any legal means of abandoning the checks already in force, and that they would refuse to pass regulations keeping Northern Ireland’s rules aligned with the EU single market, even though the protocol requires this. He said:

In order to maintain the adherence of Northern Ireland to EU law as it evolves, there is a requirement for Northern Ireland departments and the Northern Ireland assembly to pass regulations to reflect decisions at an EU level.

It has been said before, but it will be the policy of the DUP to seek to frustrate and prevent such alignment. We cannot and will not accept a situation where we are required to endorse and implement EU laws, whilst having no say in how those laws are formulated.

Two NMSC meetings have already been cancelled because of the DUP boycott.

Updated

DUP boycott of meetings with Irish government ministers unlawful, court rules

The DUP’s boycott of meetings with Irish government minister in protest at the Northern Ireland protocol is unlawful, a high court judge has ruled, PA Media reports, PA says:

Mr Justice Scoffield delivered the declaration at Belfast High Court after a Belfast man, Sean Napier, brought judicial review proceedings into the lawfulness of the DUP move.

The case centred around DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s announcement last month that his party would disengage with the north-south ministerial council (NSMC) meetings as part of their campaign of opposition to the protocol.

Mr Justice Scoffield said: “The respondents’ decision to withdraw from the north-south ministerial council was and is unlawful.

“It frustrates, is contrary to and is in breach of legal duties contained in part five of the Northern Ireland Act 1998.”

He said that wording of the declaration had been agreed by legal counsel for both the applicant and the respondents.

Mr Justice Scoffield said: “The statutory scheme, consistent with the Good Friday agreement, is set up to ensure that an appropriate minister must participate in the north-south ministerial council, or at least nominate some other minister to participate in their place.

“The evidence clearly suggested that individual DUP ministers had neither been attending nor nominating another designated unionist minister to attend in their place.

“A situation where north-south ministerial council meetings are unable to proceed because of the circumstances above is, in my view, plainly a result of unlawful behaviour.”

The judge continued: “Ministers of the Northern Ireland executive are required to affirm the pledge of office, set out as part of the Northern Ireland executive ministerial code.

“That includes a commitment to participate in the north-south ministerial council and the British-Irish council.

“It is difficult for the court to reach any other conclusion than that the respondents have consciously determined to act in contravention of the pledge of office and the ministerial code.”

Mr Justice Scoffield pointed out that the decision not to attend the north-south meetings was under direction from the DUP leader.

He added: “It is perhaps worth emphasising the each minister of the Northern Ireland executive bears personal responsibility to comply with the pledge of office and the ministerial code.

“The court expects the respondents to comply with their legal obligations.”

Mr Justice Scoffield said he would not take any further action at the moment, but said if there was no change to the situation the applicant could return to court.

“The court obviously possesses further powers. But, in my view, it would be a sorry spectacle for those powers to have to be invoked.”

Updated

Kwarteng announces deal to secure vital supplies of CO2 needed by food industry

Ministers have announced a deal to secure vital supplies of carbon dioxide needed by the food and drink industry.

Last month soaring gas prices forced CF Fertilisers to close two of its fertilser plants in Teesside and Cheshire. As a byproduct, these plants produce about 60% of the CO2 used commercially in the UK for food packaging, in beer and in fizzy drinks, and for animal slaughters. The closure of the two plants posed such a threat to the food industry that the government agreed a temporary bailout to keep them open.

Now the Department for Business has announced a longer term deal to keep the CF Fertilisers factories running. Essentially, it has persuaded CO2 customers to pay more for their supplies. The depatment says:

CO2 suppliers have agreed to pay CF Fertilisers a price for the CO2 it produces that will enable it to continue operating while global gas prices remain high, drawing on support from industry and delivering value for money for the taxpayer.

This price for CO2 reflects the vital importance of this material to everything from our nuclear industry to hospitals to the food and beverage industry.

The deal will run until January 2022.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, said:

The government acted quickly to provide CF Fertilisers with the support it needed to kickstart production, and give us enough breathing space to agree a longer-term, more sustainable solution.

I would like to thank all the parties involved in this agreement who have recognised the importance of avoiding supply disruptions and delivering for UK businesses and consumers.

In a further boost to the food industry, Ensus, which produces up to 40% of the commercial CO2 required in the UK, reopened its Wilton plant last week after a temporary closure.

Updated

But Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, told BBC Radio Ulster that the UK government was right to object to the role of the European court of justice in the Northern Ireland protocol. He said:

We do recognise that there are genuine issues around the governance of arrangements and I think that the UK government has a point when it says that is unfair that in arbitration on disputes between the UK and the EU it is the EU’s court that is the final arbiter.

I think in any dispute resolution process it’s very rare that you get one side having the final say on arbitration.

Surely what is needed is some form of independent arbitration process. I think that’s what the UK government are pressing for, so it’s important.

I understand the point the UK government are making here. I think it’s important that we don’t just get a short-term fix for these problems, but that we look at the long-term issues as well, so that we settle this matter once and for all.

Sinn Féin has said that the UK government’s decision to talk up its objections to the European court of justice having a role overseeing aspects of the Northern Ireland protocol (see 12.06pm and 1.07pm) may be a sign that it is preparing to walk away from the agreement. Declan Kearney, a Sinn Féin minister at Stormont, told BBC Radio Ulster:

The problem throughout, and particularly over the last nine to 10 months, is that as we have attempted to double down and deal with these issues, the goalposts continuously seem to change from the perspective of David Frost’s negotiation strategy and I think now that we’re seeing the goalposts shift once more.

I think it can be read potentially one of two ways.

This may well be a negotiation tactic. We’re now approaching the point where hopefully all of these issues can be successfully covered off and we can in fact see all the difficulties with the protocol eliminated and David Frost is simply trying to up the ante and bring some more heat into the talks process that will follow publication of the European Union proposals.

However, there is another scenario. And that is they are at this point in time, that is David Frost and the Tory government, finding that their bluff has finally been called and the European Union is indeed determined to bring forward substantive proposals on all of these areas - medicines, agri-food, customs, and governance - that will in fact bring certainty, simplicity and stability for our business sector here in the north and across the island economy and they’re running scared from that.

Hence, the dead cat of the European court of justice being thrown onto the table.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing, when it was put to him that briefings about what Lord Frost will say in his speech on the protocol tomorrow imply that he is creating a pretext that would justify the government abandoning the protocol, the PM’s spokesman just insisted that governance of the protocol was “a central point” for the UK.

Greenpeace activists staged a protest in Downing Street earlier today against the proposed Cambo oil field development of Shetland.

In a Guardian article published today, the actor and campaigner Peter Capaldi says Boris Johnson should block the development.

The UK has now uploaded more than 1m Sars-CoV-2 genome sequences uploaded to the international Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (Gisaid) database, the Department of Health and Social Care has announced. That amounts to almost a quarter of all samples uploaded during the pandemic, it says.

Updated

Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, have written an open letter to parents urging them to give consent for their children to get the Covid jab amid mounting concern about low vaccination and high infection rates in schools in England.

The letter, which also stresses the importance of regular testing for pupils, signals growing concern in government about the situation in schools, where more than 200,000 children were absent because of Covid according to figures published last week.

The ministerial letter says vaccines remain “our best defence” against Covid and addresses concerns about the safety of the jab for young people, urging parents to rely on trusted sources of information rather than fake stories on social media. It says:

We know that students have missed a lot of time in school and college since the pandemic started, and that there is no substitute for face-to-face learning. Keeping students in the classroom in the coming months is therefore a government priority, both for their immediate and longer-term wellbeing.

The letter follows reports in the Guardian last week raising concerns about the vaccination roll-out for 12 -15-year-olds, which has been described as “haphazard” and “unbelievably slow” by critics.

There are also reports of low take-up in some schools with consent levels as low as 25%, while according to the Office for National Statistics one in 14 secondary school pupils had coronavirus in the week ending 2 October.

Updated

No 10 defends PM's right to holiday, saying he remains 'in charge'

And here are all the key points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

  • Downing Street defended Boris Johnson’s right to take a holiday, insisting that he remained in charge of the government. The spokesperson said:

The prime minister continues to be in charge as is always the case. The prime minister has taken calls with leaders already and there will be others to follow.

The prime minister has been kept regularly updated on the ongoing work to address the current issues around fuel and supply chains.

He is in regular contact with with ministers and No 10. He is also continuing to take calls particularly in the run-up to Cop26.

  • But the spokesperson refused to confirm reports that Johnson is staying at the home of Zac Goldsmith, the environment minister. And he would not say whether the PM was paying for the holiday. Asked about this, the spokesperson said:

Any declarations that need to be made will be made in the normal way, but I don’t have anything to add to that. I wouldn’t get into anything on location for security reasons.

  • The spokesperson in effect sided with Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, in his dispute with the Treasury over what Kwarteng said in a TV interview yesterday. (See 12.39pm.)
  • The spokesperson in effect confirmed that, in his speech on the Northern Ireland protocol tomorrow, David Frost, the Brexit minister, will make removing European court of justice oversight a red line. The spokesperson said:

I wouldn’t use that exact term [red line] but it is a central issue. It is core to what we think needs to be addressed if the protocol is to be put on a long-term footing.

Asked why the government agreed to giving the ECJ a role when it signed the protocol in the first place, the spokesperson said that the government acted “in good faith at the time” and that the protocol was “formed in the spirit of compromise in challenging circumstances”. He went on:

Since then we’ve seen how the EU is inclined to operate the governance arrangements; for example, launching infraction proceedings against the UK at the first sign of disagreement. These arrangements aren’t sustainable. We need to find a new way of resolving issues that arise between us, using mechanisms normal in all other international treaties.

Asked why Frost was making an issue of the ECJ and governance now, when until the summer these had barely been mentioned as contentious issues, the spokesperson said these were central issues, as set out in the command paper earlier this year.

  • The spokesperson refused to deny reports saying the government thinks Russia stole the formula for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. (See 11.37am.) He said he would not comment on intelligence matters.
  • The spokesperson said there were no plans to set targets for the numbers of civil servants expected to return to working in the office. A report in the Times (paywall) says ministers are considering using targets to get workers to return.

Updated

No 10 backs Kwasi Kwarteng in dispute with Treasury

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson in effect backed Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, in his dispute with the Treasury over what he said in a TV interview yesterday.

After Kwarteng said he was engaging with the Treasury over help for industries affected by the spike in energy prices, a Treasury source told the media Kwarteng was making it up.

But this morning the PM’s spokesperson said:

As you would expect, ministers from BEIS [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy] are working across government, including with the Treasury, on this important issue, the challenges currently facing industry in light of global gas prices, and that will continue.

The spokesperson also said that he did not accept that the Treasury and the Department for Business had fallen out. They were continuing to work closely together, he claimed.

When it was put to him it was not just Treasury “sources” disparaging Kwarteng, because a Treasury spokesperson subsequently released an on-the-record statement saying the Treasury had “not been engaged in talks on this”, the No 10 spokesperson said he could not speak for the Treasury, but that he thought that comment referred to just specific talks on a finance package. But officials across government were engaged on the issue generally, he said.

I will post more from the briefing shortly.

Updated

Eric Mamer, the European Commission’s chief spokesperson, has said at his regular briefing that there is nothing new about the EU’s continuing to insist that the European court of justice should continue to have a role in oversight of the Northern Ireland protocol, as the text of the protocol sets out. This is from the Irish Times’ Naomi O’Leary.

EU ‘close to the end of the road’ over Northern Ireland protocol

The EU is close to the end of the road with the UK over the Northern Ireland protocol, accusing David Frost, the Brexit minister, of trying to undermine serious attempts to solve the problem, Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, has said. My colleague Lisa O’Carroll has the story here.

It is not all holiday for Boris Johnson in Spain today. Downing Street has said that he had a call this morning with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister. In its read-out of the call, No 10 said Johnson used it to urge Modi to adopt a “more ambitious” nationally determined contribution (NDC) – its plan for cutting carbon emissions in line with the Paris agreement targets. No 10 said:

[Johnson] noted that India already lead the world in renewable technology and expressed his hope that they will commit to a more ambitious nationally determined contribution and to achieving net zero emissions.

The two leaders also spoke about the UK-India relationship generally, defence, Covid and Afghanistan, No 10 said.

Updated

The Conservative MP Dehenna Davison has said she was “overwhelmed” by support after saying in an interview that she is bisexual, my colleague Peter Walker reports. It is believed to be the first time a female Tory MP has come out as bisexual.

Security minister refuses to deny reports Russia stole blueprint for Oxford/AZ vaccine

And here are some more lines from Damian Hinds’ interviews this morning. He was doing the broadcast round on behalf of the government

We live in world, I am afraid, where there is state activity seeking to engage in industrial espionage and economic espionage, there are cyber attacks that happen and so on.

I won’t comment on the specific case that you mention because that wouldn’t be right to do in detail, but it would be fair to say, correct to say, that we face threats of this type that are different, they are more sophisticated, they are more extensive than they ever have been before.

The face of espionage, the face of spying, is very different from when you and I were growing up and we need to constantly upgrade our capability. These are very serious matters.

Yes of course it is a shocking figure and it is important that there is process to go through in those cases, and an accusation must be followed by looking into it properly and in some cases there will be full procedures.

Pat McFadden, a shadow Treasury minister, has been giving interviews on behalf of Labour this morning. He said that the government should be helping businesses with energy costs and that one option might be a business version of the price cap for domestic consumers. That “could be considered”, he said. But he told Sky News “it might not be the only thing you have to do here”. He said:

You could look at some of the other costs that the industry has and maybe try and abate those during this current crisis.

There’s more than one way to do this. The important thing is to talk to the industry and try to give them the help they need to get through this, because there are thousands of jobs at stake now, and the long-term costs of letting these industries go to the wall could outweigh the short-term costs of helping them in the here and now.

Asked about Boris Johnson being on holiday, McFadden said that what was important was for someone to get a grip. He said:

I honestly don’t care where [Johnson] is. What I want is grip from the government.

Whether he’s in Spain, whether he is in the UK, it seems just as chaotic when the prime minister is here.

So, frankly, I’m not concerned whether he’s on holiday or not. What I want is grip from the government, and we haven’t got that at the moment.

In Wales people wanting to attend a big event or a nightclub need to show an NHS Covid pass. In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning Mark Drakeford, the first minister, said the rule would help nightclubs stay open during the winter. He explained:

If we see rising numbers of coronavirus in Wales – and we have high numbers already in the community – then the first places that will have to close will be the highest risk venues.

Having the Covid pass there will help them stay open during the autumn and winter – that is the purpose of it, not to be an extra burden on them or to single them out, but to protect them so they can go on operating successfully as we go into what is going to be a challenging time of year.

At one point Boris Johnson planned to introduce an even tougher scheme for England that would have required proof of double vaccination for access to nightclubs; a negative test result, which is acceptable in Wales as an alternative, would not have been enough. But last month the government abandoned the plan.

Updated

Some chemical plants could be weeks away from closing due to gas price hike, industry says

Chemicals are one of the so-called energy intensive industries, the manufacturing sectors particularly reliant on energy, and this morning Steve Elliott, the chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association, told Victoria Derbyshire on BBC News that some of his members could start closing plants within weeks because of the energy crisis.

Here are the main points from his interview.

  • Elliott said some of his members were only weeks away from having to close plants because of rising energy costs. He said that in January gas was about 40p per therm (40p/th). Three weeks ago they were around £1.60/th. On Tuesday last week it was £4/th, he said. He said the price had eased off a bit since then, but it was neverthless a 900% increase since the start of the year. He went on:

I’m not saying our members are teetering on the brink. But what I am saying, and I said this on Friday to Kwasi Kwarteng [the business secretary], is if I leave this another three weeks, I can’t guarantee that chemical businesses will not be pausing or shutting production temporarily.

Those closures could lead to staff being laid off, he said. Later in the interview he said:

As I sit here no, honestly there are no chemical businesses, beyond the fertiliser plant that we’ve already referrenced, that are pausing or shutting production. But, as I said on Friday, I cannot guarantee that that will remain the case over the coming week or so.

  • He said that a 900% increase in energy prices was “clearly unsustainable for a longer period of time” and that he did could not see any reason why the prices would start to fall soon.
  • He said that after a meeting with energy intensive industries on Friday the Department for Business talked about taking action “within days”.
  • He said the sector was asking for help in two areas. He said it wanted green levy decarbonisation costs, which fall on industry, reduced. And it wanted energy network transmission costs reduced for the sector.
  • He stressed that many of the jobs in his sector were in the north of England, “M62 and above”. There were important chemicals producers in The Humber, Teesside, north-west, and Grangemouth in Scotland, he said.
  • He declined to criticised Kwarteng for his comments about the Treasury yesterday. Kwarteng understood the problems the sector was facing, Elliott said.
  • Elliott also suggested he was not concerned about Boris Johnson being on holiday. Asked about this, he said everyone needed a holiday at times, and he went on:

I’m not particularly interested in when and where the prime minister takes a holiday. The important thing is that action is taken here. I think, if necessarily it requires a prime ministerial intervention in any of this, I’m sure that can be done from Marbella or Westminster.

Updated

Labour criticises ministers for 'appalling refusal to understand what country facing' over energy crisis

Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, has released a statement this morning accusing the government of showing “an appalling refusal to understand what our country is facing”. He says:

Yet again we see that in the face of their failed energy policy, the government has nothing to offer businesses or consumers to help them with the crisis they are facing. For firms and families waiting to hear how the business secretary might help, there is a total absence of a plan and no extra help.

The government is squabbling amongst itself, with the Treasury even denying they are talking to BEIS about providing help for large, energy intensive industries.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the government that got us into this mess because of a decade of inaction is now paralysed by the scale of the crisis and cannot get us out of it. All the while, it is businesses and families who are paying the price of government denial, failure and an appalling refusal to understand what our country is facing.

Boris Johnson criticised for being on holiday as energy crisis leads to warnings factories might close

Good morning. There is never a good time for a prime minister to take a holiday, but some moments are worse than others, and Boris Johnson is in Marbella in southern Spain at a moment when the energy crisis is still raging, and one of his ministers has been on the airwaves denying plans for a move to a four-day week. (Younger readers may not get the reference, but in the 1970s the Heath government briefly ordered factories to operate for just three days a week because there was a national energy shortage.)

Last month the focus was on what rising gas prices would mean for domestic heating bills, but now the government is worried about the impact on industry because sectors that consume large amounts of energy in the production process, like steel, are warning that they might have to close factories soon because their operating costs are rising too high. These producers have been asking the government for help, but so far nothing has been forthcoming and yesterday Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secrtary, was rebuked by the Treasury when he claimed that he was already in talks with the chancellor about some sort of bailout.

Further talks between the sector and the government are taking place today.

This morning Gareth Stace, the director general of UK Steel, the trade body for steel producers, said that Johnson should not have chosen to be on holiday now. He told LBC:

I’m sure [Johnson] can get on the phone and get talking to them but to my mind, now is not the time for a prime minister to be on holiday, from the steel sector point of view ...

This is a critical time. The business secretary has also said it’s a critical situation, and therefore why is government just sitting on its hands and doing absolutely nothing at the moment?

From my point of view, today, with the reported government infighting between the Treasury and BEIS [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy], the prime minister now needs to bang ministerial heads together, take control and remember that if he does nothing, then his levelling-up ambition will be left in tatters.

Stace argued that levelling up was at risk because many of the energy intensive industries sustain a lot of well-paid jobs in the north of England.

Here are some of the other lines around this morning on this story.

  • Damian Hinds, the security minister, defended the PM’s right to take a holiday. He told Sky News:

I wouldn’t want to overstate the amount of unwinding and relaxing you get to do as prime minister because as I say you are constantly in touch, you are constantly being briefed and you remain in charge of the government ...

What is important for the rest of us actually, for the whole country, is that the prime minister does get to have some family time, does get to have a break.

  • Hinds said the government would not institute a four-day week. He told Sky:

We live in a country where the government doesn’t set the pattern of the working week. Thank God we don’t live in the 1970s.

  • Stace urged the government to follow the example of Italy, where the Italian government has reduced some of the extra costs added to the energy bills of industrial consumers. He said:

We’re asking very much the same because when government says ‘We’re not going to do any bailouts’, that’s not what we’re asking for.

What we’re asking for is, ‘hey government, we’ve been telling you for a decade that your policies add something like £55m that we pay in the UK, as the steel sector, that our competitors in, say, Germany don’t pay.’ Historically that puts us at a competitive disadvantage.

  • The Chemical Industries Association has warned that some of its members may have to close factories soon unless they get help with energy bills.
  • Mark Harper, a former Tory chief whip, has said that he would be opposed to a wide-ranging bailout for producers heavily reliant on energy. On the BBC’s Westminster Hour last night he explained:

My judgement looking at the energy market is the high level of gas prices looks like it’s going to continue for a considerable period of time. So you’re not talking about helping these businesses for a few weeks. This is potentially the taxpayer, that’s people listening to this programme, being on the hook for very significant amounts of money potentially all the way through next year. You’ve got to be very careful before you make those financial commitments on behalf of taxpayers.

Normally the Commons would be back on the Monday after party conference season but this week it’s on recess (a happy coincidence for the prime minister), and so the diary looks relatively light. But we will be getting a Downing Street lobby briefing at 11.30am.

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 andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated

 

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