Prison crowding emergency measures could be triggered several times over next few weeks, No 10 says – UK politics live | Politics

There is a need to work on maximising the pro-Union vote in future elections, the DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, has said while paying tribute to outgoing UUP leader Doug Beattie.

In a statement reported by PA Media, Robinson said: “I called Doug earlier to give him my best wishes. As leaders within unionism, we had many shared interests. Whilst we differed over tactics, there is no doubt that Doug is a committed Unionist who wants to see Northern Ireland remain firmly within the United Kingdom.

“Divisions within unionism have handed seats to non-unionists at council level, in the NI Assembly and most recently in the Westminster elections.

“The election of a new UUP Leader is a matter for UUP members but top of my priorities for the new leader will be discussions about how we maximise the pro-Union vote in future elections.”

Authorities could trigger and deactivate emergency plans to ease prison overcrowding in northern England several times over the next few weeks.

A Downing Street spokesperson said she expects the area will “move in and out of” Operation Early Dawn during “short periods of significant pressure”.

She said: “It is a pre-existing contingency measure that is used for short periods – a matter of days or weeks to manage immediate, localised pressures on the prison estate.”

The spokesperson added No 10 understood the last time Operation Early Dawn was used was for “around seven or eight days, and it’s possible, to manage immediate pressures, we’ll move in and out of this operation over the next few weeks, exactly to manage what are short periods of significant pressure, but we’ll keep that under constant review and activate or deactivate for those kinds of short periods as is necessary”.

She added: “The purpose of it is to support very localised coordination between police stations, the prison services and the courts.

“It’s actually to ensure that nobody is taken to court unless there’s a guaranteed space for them should they be remanded, and it enables individuals to be held in a police station until they are summoned for court. So it’s about managing very local issues.”

• Ministers have activated emergency measures to ease prison overcrowding as more rioters are sentenced for their role in the recent unrest. The longstanding measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison beds become available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice. The system was activated on Monday morning and means some defendants across the north of England waiting for a court appearance will be kept in police cells until prison space is available.

• The vice-president of the Prison Governors’ Association has said he is “not sure” how much Operation Early Dawn will help the prisons crisis. Mark Icke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m not sure it does help, today, tomorrow, the next day, because, as was just suggested, we have been lurching from crisis to crisis for some time. Running a prison is an incredibly complex business and so we don’t know which way to turn at the moment.”

• Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie has announced he is standing down from the role, citing “irreconcilable differences” with party officers among his reasons. Beattie had been in the role since May 2021.

• In a statement, Beattie said it has been a “huge honour” to lead the Ulster Unionist Party but added: “It has not been easy and at times it has been both lonely and isolating. I am no stranger to leadership and that is how it often feels in taking a toll both physically and mentally. It also strains friendships and political relationships,” Beattie said.

• Sinn Féin’s vice-president Michelle O’Neill has said the party will take a “constructive approach” with the new leader of the UUP, as Beattie steps down. In a statement, O’Neill said: “I want to wish Doug Beattie and his family well as he announces today that he will step down as leader of the UUP. We have worked constructively since he became leader of his party, including during the restoration of the Executive and institutions at the beginning of this year.”

• Suella Braverman is the latest senior Tory to be cashing in on the international speaking circuit, as it was revealed she was paid nearly £60,000 for making speeches around the world, the highest of any current MP. The former home secretary received £25,000 to speak in South Korea in May, according to the first register of MPs’ financial interests of this parliament, and she received £20,000 for another speaking engagement in India in March.

• Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has warned child strip-searches should only take place if a life is at risk. Dame Rachel told BBC Breakfast: “My argument is, they should only be done if it’s a life-threatening situation. Let me just remind viewers, this is pre-arrest, this is a child that’s just a suspicion, they’re taken – there’s meant to be an appropriate adult there: in 45% of cases there are not. And their clothes are removed, and their most intimate parts are looked at and moved if necessary.”

• SNP MSP John Mason said he had not foreseen losing the whip over his social media post about Israel, saying: “I’m not someone who foresees the future exactly, but sometimes you have to do the right thing and just take the consequences.” He had written on X that the country’s actions in Gaza did not amount to “genocide”.

• Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he is “very strongly” considering standing at the next general election after losing his seat to Labour. The former Tory cabinet minister told an audience at the Edinburgh fringe festival that the Conservatives had “deserved” to lose the recent election, and that he was not shocked after losing his North East Somerset and Hanham seat to the mayor of the West of England Dan Norris by more than 5,000 votes. Rees-Mogg had won it from Norris in 2010.

• A Foreign Office official has resigned over the UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel because of alleged breaches of international law. Mark Smith, a counter-terrorism official based at the British embassy in Dublin, said he had resigned after making numerous internal complaints, including through an official whistleblowing mechanism, but receiving nothing but pro-forma responses.

• Rachel Reeves has been warned by Britain’s biggest manufacturers that her autumn budget must address a decade of decline in national infrastructure that is damaging economic growth. More than half of manufacturers surveyed by the industry group Make UK said that the country’s national road infrastructure had deteriorated in the last 10 years, making it slower and more expensive to build and export British products.

• The number of asylum seekers who have died in the care of the Home Office has more than doubled in the last year, according to data shared with the Guardian, a development that has been described as “deeply troubling”. While some deaths were a result of illness or old age, others are thought to have happened as a result of suicide. Charities fear that the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK has adversely affected the health of an already vulnerable group of people.

Aletha Adu

Suella Braverman is the latest senior Tory to be cashing in on the international speaking circuit, as it was revealed she was paid nearly £60,000 for making speeches around the world, the highest of any current MP.

The former home secretary received £25,000 to speak in South Korea in May, according to the first register of MPs’ financial interests of this parliament, and she received £20,000 for another speaking engagement in India in March.

Braverman also declared that she received £14,000 for articles she wrote for the Telegraph, and she also had an all-expenses trip to Israel worth £27,800 paid for by the National Jewish Assembly.

Last month Braverman declared she received £11,800 for a five-hour talk to a financial intelligence and risk control firm in London, and she also made a speech in Washington during which she was paid £6,500 in expenses for the trip by the Edmund Burke Foundation.

England prison overcrowding emergency measures come into force

Rajeev Syal

Ministers have activated emergency measures to ease prison overcrowding as more rioters are sentenced for their role in the recent unrest.

The longstanding measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison beds become available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice.

The system was activated on Monday morning and means some defendants across the north of England waiting for a court appearance will be kept in police cells until prison space is available.

The government said that its action to “tackle violent thuggery on our streets” had “exacerbated longstanding capacity issues in our prisons”.

James Timpson, the prisons minister, said: “We inherited a justice system in crisis and exposed to shocks. As a result, we have been forced into making difficult but necessary decisions to keep it operating.”

He said the emergency measures would help “manage the pressure felt in some parts of the country”. He added that anyone who posed a risk to the public “will not be bailed” and police’s ability to arrest criminals woud not be affected.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie has announced he is standing down from the role, citing “irreconcilable differences” with party officers among his reasons.

Beattie had been in the role since May 2021.

More to follow as we get it.

Good morning and welcome to our UK politics blog. We start with news that ministers have activated emergency measures to ease prison overcrowding as more rioters are sentenced for their role in the recent unrest.

The longstanding measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison beds became available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice.

Labour have already said that the previous Conservative administration failed to deal with prison overcrowding and on Monday the prisons and probation minister Lord Timpson said:

We inherited a justice system in crisis and exposed to shocks. As a result, we have been forced into making difficult but necessary decisions to keep it operating.

The national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association also blamed the Tories. Mark Fairhurst told BBC Breakfast:

It has been an extremely pressured situation for several months now because we are so full, and that’s down to the previous government, let’s be honest now.

They closed 20 public sector prisons, they didn’t build enough new prisons, they didn’t create enough prison space and people are serving longer sentences.

More on the prison crisis later. In other developments:

• SNP MSP John Mason said he had not foreseen losing the whip over his social media post about Israel, saying: “I’m not someone who foresees the future exactly, but sometimes you have to do the right thing and just take the consequences.” He had written on X that the country’s actions in Gaza did not amount to “genocide”.

• Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he is “very strongly” considering standing at the next general election after losing his seat to Labour. The former Tory cabinet minister told an audience at the Edinburgh fringe festival that the Conservatives had “deserved” to lose the recent election, and that he was not shocked after losing his North East Somerset and Hanham seat to the mayor of the West of England Dan Norris by more than 5,000 votes. Rees-Mogg had won it from Norris in 2010.

• A Foreign Office official has resigned over the UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel because of alleged breaches of international law. Mark Smith, a counter-terrorism official based at the British embassy in Dublin, said he had resigned after making numerous internal complaints, including through an official whistleblowing mechanism, but receiving nothing but pro-forma responses.

• Rachel Reeves has been warned by Britain’s biggest manufacturers that her autumn budget must address a decade of decline in national infrastructure that is damaging economic growth. More than half of manufacturers surveyed by the industry group Make UK said that the country’s national road infrastructure had deteriorated in the last 10 years, making it slower and more expensive to build and export British products.

• The number of asylum seekers who have died in the care of the Home Office has more than doubled in the last year, according to data shared with the Guardian, a development that has been described as “deeply troubling”. While some deaths were a result of illness or old age, others are thought to have happened as a result of suicide. Charities fear that the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK has adversely affected the health of an already vulnerable group of people.