Dominic Raab news – live: Sunak to hire independent investigator to probe bullying claims

Dominic Raab is facing fresh questions over his conduct towards junior colleagues as he prepares to stand in for Rishi Sunak at Prime Minister’s Questions.

The deputy prime minister and justice minister is already facing a series of allegations he bullied officials and deployed rude and demeaning behaviour.

Top Ministry of Justice officials have now reportedly ruled there must be a senior civil servant in the room at all meetings involving Mr Raab due to the recent allegations about his conduct, according to The Guardian.

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The No 10 spokesperson said that US president Joe Biden and prime minister Rishi Sunak in their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit “stressed the importance of like-minded allies providing a counterpoint to authoritarian regimes, including ensuring developing countries can grow in a sustainable way.”

“The prime minister and President Biden both agreed on the importance of sustained engagement in the Indo-Pacific region and pointed to the Aukus pact as an example of that. The Prime Minister outlined the UK’s Indo-Pacific priorities, including joining the CPTPP trade bloc.

“The leaders looked forward to working together to take forward cooperation between the UK and the US on areas including trade, defence and upholding the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.”

Cuts to public spending by Westminster could have “severe knock-on impacts on the Scottish budget”, deputy first minister John Swinney warned, as he called on the UK government to find additional cash for Holyrood.

Mr Swinney is calling for the Scottish government’s budget for 2022-23 to be increased in line with inflation - saying this will help fund both public services and pay rises for those providing them.

With chancellor Jeremy Hunt due to unveil his autumn statement tomorrow, the Scottish deputy first minister warned politicians south of the border that they must not “repeat the mistakes of the past” by introducing austerity measures.

Read the details here:

Staff working for Dominic Raab were “scared” to enter his office a former top civil servant has said, as Rishi Sunak called on anyone with concerns about bullying by the deputy prime minister to report them.

Lord McDonald described Mr Raab as “abrasive and controlling” and said that he had raised his behaviour within government at the time.

With questions growing over the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mr Raab to his cabinet, Mr Sunak said it was “hard” for allegations to be investigated unless people came forward.

Read more on the bullying allegations in this report:

Prime minister Rishi Sunak and US president Joe Biden highlighted in a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “directly responsible for precipitating global economic issues”, Downing Street said.

After the meeting, a No 10 spokesperson said: “The leaders agreed on the national and international importance of the strong UK-US relationship, particularly given the challenging economic times the world is currently facing.

“The prime minister and President Biden underscored that the actions of President Putin and his regime are directly responsible for precipitating global economic issues including rising inflation. Maintaining international pressure to ensure Putin fails in Ukraine is in everyone’s interest.

Scotland has become the first country in the world to publish a special code that governs the use of DNA and other biometric data in a criminal justice setting.

Biometrics are a way to measure a person’s physical, biological, physiological or behavioural characteristics to establish or verify their identity.

The Code of Practice, which came into force on today, gives guidance to the police on how this sort of data and related forensic technologies can be used.

More about the new code here:

The government is not prioritising the threat of animal diseases which could be devastating to farmers, rural communities and society, MPs have warned.

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee warned the UK’s main animal disease facility, the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s (Apha) site near Weybridge in Surrey, has been “left to deteriorate to an alarming extent”.

That is despite the devastating consequences of diseases, such as foot and mouth disease and the recent avian influenza, for farming communities, while Covid-19 has shown the extent of the impact when an animal-sourced virus jumps the species barrier into humans.

Currently, the UK faces threats from on-going diseases including bovine tuberculosis, new potential viruses such as African swine fever and diseases that affect pets such as rabies, a report from the committee said.

Apha’s Weybridge site is the UK’s primary science facility for managing threats from animal disease but the Environment Department (Defra) has “comprehensively failed in its historical management” of the complex.

Inadequate management and under-investment at Weybridge has left it vulnerable to a major breakdown, highlighted by a generator failure which led to a loss of power to some of the high containment buildings, which could hamper efforts to deal with an animal disease outbreak, the MPs said.

The committee found the site had “over 1,000 single points of failure that would cause major disruption” to operations.

Health campaigners have called for a clampdown on misleading nutrition claims on baby and toddler pouches after finding they contain up to four teaspoons of sugar.

Action on Sugar analysed almost 100 baby and toddler breakfast products, finding that Ella’s Kitchen Banana, Apple & Blueberry Baby Rice contained 14.5g of sugar per pouch, the equivalent of four teaspoons.

This was followed by Ella’s Kitchen Banana Baby Brekkie, containing 13.6g of sugar per serving, and Ella’s Kitchen Bananas, Apricots and Baby Rice, with 13.5g.

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Nurses will be hit by a real term pay cut of over £1,500 if public sector wage increases are pegged to two per cent in the next financial year, according to a new report.

The TUC said its analysis suggested that millions of workers will suffer more “pay misery” in 2023/24 after more than a decade of below inflation increases.

The union organisation calculated the loss to NHS staff if the Government confirms reports of a two per cent limit on pay rises, including £1,000 for hospital porters, £1,200 for maternity care assistants, £1,900 for paramedics and midwives, and £1,500 for nurses.

Read more in this report:

Rishi Sunak made a bid to resurrect plans for a trade deal with India, by giving the go-ahead for 3,000 visas for young professionals from the country to work in the UK each year.

The move represents an olive branch to Delhi, after an outraged Indian government put plans for an agreement on ice in response to home secretary Suella Braverman’s comments about Indian migrants.

And Mr Sunak, who is set to meet Indian PM Narendra Modi on the margins of the G20 summit in Indonesia todayy, said it formed part of a “new tilt” towards the Indo-Pacific region which will become a greater priority in UK foreign policy under his premiership.

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock reports from Bali: