Culture secretary says revised online safety bill would still block content of kind seen by Molly Russell – UK politics live

From 2h ago

Donelan says revised online safety bill would still block harmful content of kind seen by Molly Russell

Here are some more lines from the Michelle Donelan interviews this morning on the changes being made to the online safety bill.

Donelan, the culture secretary, said she was removing the “legal but harmful” provisions from the bill (see 9.26am) because they created a “quasi-legal category”. She told Sky News:

It had [a] very, very concerning impact, potentially, on free speech. There were unintended consequences associated with it. It was really the anchor that was preventing this bill from getting off the ground.
It was a creation of a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal. That’s not what a government should be doing. It’s confusing. It would create a different kind of set of rules online to offline in the legal sphere.

She rejected Ian Russell’s criticism of the changes to the bill, and said that the content seen by his daughter Molly would still be removed under the new version. (See 9.26am.) She told the Today programme:

You mentioned young people and children – nothing is getting watered down or taken out when it comes to children.
We’re adding extra in, so there is no change to children. This is a very complicated bill and there’s lots of aspects to it, but I wouldn’t want any of your listeners to think for a minute that we are removing anything when it comes to children because we’re not.
I think it might be just misunderstanding what Ian [Russell] has said on this. I’ve spoken to him even this morning. So the legal but harmful aspect was pertaining to adults. Content that is harmful or could hurt children that is not illegal, so is legal, will still be removed under this version of the bill.
So the content that Molly Russell saw will not be allowed as a result of this bill. And there will no longer be cases like that coming forward because we’re preventing that from happening, and I want to be really clear on that.

She said the fines in the bill for social media company which do not enforce proper age verification would not necessarily apply for one-off cases. She said it would “depend on the circumstances” whether fines were imposed. Asked about what might trigger a fine, she told the Today programme:

If a child had tried to get around it … or if it was an individual isolated case, or if there were ramifications, just like any regulator works, they will look at the context of this, they’ll look at the systems and the processes that that company has put in place to try and prevent that from happening. So I can’t comment on individual, sort of hypothetical, cases that haven’t happened.

Michelle Donelan. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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The Green party has described the decision to go ahead with Sizewell C as a mistake. Adrian Ramsay, the Green party’s co-leader, said:

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This is an ideological decision driven by a misguided energy policy. It is clear there are cleaner, quicker and much less expensive options to meet our electricity needs. Investment in renewable energy and insulation at scale are what is needed to tackle both the climate emergency and cost of living crisis with the urgency needed.
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The design of Sizewell C will follow the much-criticised Hinkley Point C scheme in Somerset which has been delayed by years and beset by technical difficulties and mushrooming costs. It is clear that large nuclear reactors are far too slow to help solve our climate crisis and way too expensive to address sky-high energy bills.
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At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson gave journalists a briefing on Rishi Sunak’s innovation evangelism at cabinet. (See 12.10pm.) Here are the other main lines from what he said.

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No 10 refused to deny a report saying the Home Office wants to revive a “safe list” of countries to which asylum seekers could be returned speedily. This is broadly what David Davis and around 50 other Tory MPs were calling for yesterday, and in the Times Matt Dathan says Suella Braverman, the home secretary, wants this as policy. Dathan says:

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Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is looking to resurrect a list of designated “safe” countries, from whose citizens asylum claims are largely regarded as unfounded. Rejected claimants will have no right to appeal.
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The list would include Albania, the nationality which has accounted for the largest number of small boats across the Channel this year with more than 12,000 of the 43,000 arrivals.
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The Times understands that the Home Office is seeking to emulate a policy carried out by the New Labour government in the early 2000s in which it dealt with claims from asylum seekers from so-called “white-list” countries within ten days.
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Asked if this was correct, the spokesperson said he did not want to comment on speculation. But he went on:

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You will know that this is an area, in broad terms. where we are looking to do more. One of the prime minister’s priorities is getting a grip on the illegal immigration system. But I’m not going to get into sort of speculating on what further approaches may or may not be.
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Tuesday's Times: Social media firms told to protect young or pay price #TomorrowsPapersToday #TheTimes #Times pic.twitter.com/8jXcRnfaeV
— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) November 28, 2022

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The spokesperson confirmed that a sum is being paid to the Chinese nuclear agency because the UK is buying out their share of the Sizewell C project. But he would not give a figure for the amount paid, saying it was commercially sensitive. It has been reported that the payout was worth around £100m.

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The spokesperson refused to say whether Rishi Sunak backed the argument that Michael Gove made in 2017 proposing putting VAT on private school fees. Gove was a backbencher when he wrote his 2017 Times column, which has recently been circulating widely on social media in response to the Daily Mail splashing on stories critical of Labour’s plans to put VAT on private school fees for two day in a row.

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Tuesday's Mail: Keir's Class War Threat To 200 Private Schools #TomorrowsPapersToday #DailyMail #Mail pic.twitter.com/8gbbAKaA71
— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) November 28, 2022

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In his article Gove said:

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Private school fees are VAT-exempt. That tax advantage allows the wealthiest in this country, indeed the very wealthiest in the globe, to buy a prestige service that secures their children a permanent positional edge in society at an effective 20 per cent discount …
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The prime minister, quite rightly, wants to end burning injustices in our society. We could scarcely find a better way of doing that than ending tax advantages for the global super-rich and instead extending them to the vulnerable and voiceless. What better way to make next month’s budget a budget for social justice?
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The spokesperson claimed he had not seen those comments, but he said the government thought private schools had “an important role” to play. He said they offered targeted bursaries, and worked with local state schools.

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The spokesperson said that, under the revised online safety bill, it would be up to social media companies to decide how they enforce effective age verification.

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The spokesperson said Sunak would be supporting England in its world cup match against Wales.

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Grant Shapps, the business secretary, will be making a statement to MPs later about the plan to go ahead with the construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk. In the Commons, during departmental questions, he said the project would create 10,000 jobs in the immediate area, and “perhaps 20,000 across the country”.

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At cabinet Rishi Sunak delivered a lecture to his team on the importance of innovation, according to the PM’s spokesperson. In a readout from cabinet, the spokesperson said Sunak told his ministers that he wanted innovation to be “a defining focus for the government”. The spokesperson said:

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[Sunak] said innovation permeates every part of people’s lives and has the power to further transform our public services. He said innovation accounts for around half of the UK’s growth and should be driving practical ideas such as elective surgery hubs, which are speeding up the number of people receiving operations in the NHS.
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He said innovation was a competitive space with every major economy seeking to maximise its advantage. He said the UK would lead the way by pursuing four goals backed by £20bn in R&D spending. First, using government levers to harness science and technology to drive economic growth. Second, creating the conditions to pull capital investment into UK tech and R&D, embedding innovation in our public services and, finally, ensuring the UK has the skills it needs to be a leading tech nation.
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Grant Shapps, the business secretary, told colleagues the spaceport in Cornwall, which is close to staging launches, showed how the UK could lead the way in Europe in this area. Sunak also said artificial intelligence was another area where the UK could lead the way.

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In one of his first major sit-downs since being kicked out of the cabinet following the fall of Liz Truss’s government a month ago, Jacob Rees-Mogg has argued she and former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng should never have U-turned on their mini-budget.

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Instead, he argued the pair should have tried to shore up market confidence by bringing forward plans for spending cuts – including pushing ahead with the drive to cut 91,000 civil servants – and supply-side reforms, to prove the measures could be paid for.

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“U-turns made it all worse,” he told listeners of his fortnightly “Moggcast”, hosted by the ConservativeHome website.

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The former business secretary said once the mini-budget was announced, “it was important to bring forward the next stage – the spending cuts that were going to come and the supply side reforms – to try and build the package, rather than start unpicking stage one”.

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Such a move would have been a “diversion” rather than a U-turn, Rees-Mogg argued.

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He said the “point at which there was no return” for Truss was when chaos erupted over the pulling of a confidence vote – ordered by Downing Street against the whips’ wishes. He said:

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Randomly – for no obvious reason – the rug was pulled. Nobody told me and I’m not sure the chief whip knew either.
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When he went into the whips’ office to find out what was going on as the division bells started ringing, Rees-Mogg recalled how he was told: “The chief and deputy chief have resigned and nobody knows anything.”

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Asked what Truss’s legacy would be, Rees-Mogg said simply: “In seven weeks, the only thing of note is the brevity of it.”

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EST","blockLastUpdated":1669723342000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"07.02 EST","blockFirstPublished":1669722663000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"06.51 EST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"06.51","title":"Truss and Kwarteng should have pressed on with spending cuts instead of U-turning on mini-budget, says Rees-Mogg","contributors":[{"name":"Aubrey Allegretti","imageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/10/06/Aubrey_Allegretti.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=8cfb7f00c282ed586295767e64906abf","largeImageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/10/06/Aubrey_Allegretti.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=de20b7a81d7c1b5412ac7b376ce4d382"}],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 29 Nov 2022 08.14 EST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 29 Nov 2022 04.26 EST"},{"id":"6385ea158f08ec68b601424a","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"

Here are some more lines from the Michelle Donelan interviews this morning on the changes being made to the online safety bill.

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Donelan, the culture secretary, said she was removing the “legal but harmful” provisions from the bill (see 9.26am) because they created a “quasi-legal category”. She told Sky News:

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It had [a] very, very concerning impact, potentially, on free speech. There were unintended consequences associated with it. It was really the anchor that was preventing this bill from getting off the ground.
\n
It was a creation of a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal. That’s not what a government should be doing. It’s confusing. It would create a different kind of set of rules online to offline in the legal sphere.
\n

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She rejected Ian Russell’s criticism of the changes to the bill, and said that the content seen by his daughter Molly would still be removed under the new version. (See 9.26am.) She told the Today programme:

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You mentioned young people and children – nothing is getting watered down or taken out when it comes to children.
\n
We’re adding extra in, so there is no change to children. This is a very complicated bill and there’s lots of aspects to it, but I wouldn’t want any of your listeners to think for a minute that we are removing anything when it comes to children because we’re not.
\n
I think it might be just misunderstanding what Ian [Russell] has said on this. I’ve spoken to him even this morning. So the legal but harmful aspect was pertaining to adults. Content that is harmful or could hurt children that is not illegal, so is legal, will still be removed under this version of the bill.
\n
So the content that Molly Russell saw will not be allowed as a result of this bill. And there will no longer be cases like that coming forward because we’re preventing that from happening, and I want to be really clear on that.
\n

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She said the fines in the bill for social media company which do not enforce proper age verification would not necessarily apply for one-off cases. She said it would “depend on the circumstances” whether fines were imposed. Asked about what might trigger a fine, she told the Today programme:

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If a child had tried to get around it … or if it was an individual isolated case, or if there were ramifications, just like any regulator works, they will look at the context of this, they’ll look at the systems and the processes that that company has put in place to try and prevent that from happening. So I can’t comment on individual, sort of hypothetical, cases that haven’t happened.
\n

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She said the bill would become law before the end of the current parliamentary session. The session is due to end in spring 2023.

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Ministers will make an announcement on a ban on onshore windfarms in the coming days, including potential “tweaks” to the levelling up bill, in the face of a growing rebellion by Conservative MPs, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.

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Rishi Sunak seems to have beefed up his lord mayor’s banquet speech in the final hours before he delivered it last night. According to a briefing released on Sunday night, he was going to say that the UK could treat autocratic countries like China “not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism” (whatever that means). By the time he delivered the speech, as my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports, it contained a line saying the “so-called ‘golden era’ [in UK-China relations] is over, along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform”.

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But he does not seem to have gone far enough for the China hawks in his own party. In an article for today’s Daily Express, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, says:

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\n
China, even as I write this is committing genocide on the Uyghur, putting the men into slave labour camps, forcibly sterilising the women, and rounding up their children and placing them in re-education camps. It doesn’t stop there.
\n
They are arresting Christians, trashed the Sino-British Hong Kong agreement and arresting peaceful democracy campaigners and journalists, invaded, and militarising the South China Seas illegally, whilst stealing key technologies from us and our allies. And last but not least, they threaten to invade Taiwan on a regular basis …
\n
I wonder if robust pragmatism now sounds more and more like appeasement.
\n

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And in an interview with Times Radio this morning Bob Seely said the UK and other countries in the west should wean themselves off their economic dependency on China. He said China wanted to reincorporate Taiwan, and countries in the west did not realise how powerless they were to stop it. He explained:

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\n
What it will say to the west, and the rest of the world, is that if you put sanctions on us once we invade Taiwan, you will destroy your economies, you will destroy your living standards, because we can survive because we are self sufficient, where you are dependent on us.
\n
And that is the big strategic issue that we face, because we should be under no illusion, China uses trade for power in a way that we don’t and naively, we don’t really quite understand either.
\n

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England and Wales are now minority Christian countries, according to the 2021 census, which also shows that Leicester and Birmingham have become the first UK cities to have “minority majorities”, my colleagues Robert Booth, Pamela Duncan and Carmen Aguilar García report.

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The story is based on ONS census data available here.

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On Thursday last week Mark Harper, the transport secretary, held what both sides described as a positive meeting with Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary. They were talking about the rail strikes and afterwards Lynch told journalists that it was not clear to his union who had the authority to negotiate a pay settlement. The individual rail companies, and the Rail Delivery Group (which represents them), were both saying they could not engage in collective bargaining, he said.

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Lynch said Harper had offered to send him a letter clarifying who exactly did have the authority to negotiate a settlement.

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Harper has now released the text of his letter to Lynch. It is short and it does not really address Lynch’s questions at all, but Harper is promising a further meeting, as well as “better information sharing”. He says:

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My role is to facilitate and support – not negotiate. Negotiations will continue between trade unions and employers, but I can see scope for agreement.
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Let me set out how I think we can help support that. Better information sharing between the rail minister, trade unions and those leading the negotiations on behalf of the employers can speed up this process. We will soon convene a further meeting to help advance, with the good faith of all parties, settlement discussions and progress in this dispute.
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Good morning. The Rishi Sunak cabinet may be stuffed with faces from the David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss administrations, but it is not all continuity and in some ways Sunak is revising policies pursued by his predecessors. We’ve got an example today, with changes to the online safety bill.

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The bill, which has been years in the planning and which was published by Nadine Dorries when she was culture secretary, would extend significant new controls over social media companies. It goes further than what has been tried in most other western democracies. The bill completed almost all its Commons stages in the spring, but it was shelved as Johnson had to resign, amid concerns that it restricted freedom of speech too much and in the knowledge that a new PM might prefer a different approach.

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He does, and this morning Michelle Donelan, the culture secretary, has announced significant changes. Here is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s summary. And here is my colleague Dan Milmo’s overnight story.

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The original bill focused heavily on a category of content deemed “legal but harmful” (posts about suicide, for example). The bill did not ban this content, but it imposed strict restrictions on how social media companies would have to handle it (the full details are in a briefing here), and that led to claims that this would amount to a de facto ban, because the social media companies would choose not to take any risks and remove the content anyway.

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The “legal but harmful” provisions have now been removed, and replaced with plans that are intended to achieve a similar effect while looking less like censorship. Ian Russell, who has been a campaigner for stricter controls since his daughter Molly killed herself after viewing large amounts of content related to suicide and depression on social media, said he was glad the government was finally bringing the bill back to parliament.

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But he said the removal of the “legal but harmful” clauses meant the bill was being watered down. He told the Today programme:

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There are two emotions this morning and one is some relief, not just on my part but on the part of many parents who sadly find themselves in similar circumstances, that at last this is moving forward.
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There’s been a growing sense of frustration amongst that community of bereaved parents and families that not enough is being done, so that’s the good news.
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But, as ever with these things, the devil will be in the detail and so it’s very hard to understand that something that was important as recently as July, when the bill would have had a third reading in the Commons – and was included in the bill, this legal but harmful content – it’s very hard to understand why that suddenly can’t be there …
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I don’t see how you can see the removal of a whole clause as anything other than a watering down.
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But Donelan claims the bill has been made “stronger”. And, interviews this morning, she said the protections for children in the bill were not being watered down. She told the Today programme:

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Let’s be absolutely clear. So you mentioned young people and children – nothing is getting watered down or taken out when it comes to children. We’re adding extra in, so there is no change to children.
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And she has posted this on Twitter.

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The Online Safety Bill is back and I’ve made some changes.
It now includes stronger protections to keep children safe, and new duties to support free speech and give more power to users. pic.twitter.com/jpcc9obIEG
— Michelle Donelan MP (@michelledonelan) November 29, 2022

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I promised I would make some common-sense tweaks and I have.
This is a stronger, better bill for it. It is focused where it needs to be: on protecting children and on stamping out illegality online.
Now it is time to pass it.
— Michelle Donelan MP (@michelledonelan) November 29, 2022

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Here is the agenda for the day.

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Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

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10am: Martin Lewis, the consumer champion and founder of the MoneySavingExpert website, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee at 10am on misinformation.

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11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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3pm: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee.

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Afternoon: Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, gives a speech to MPs and peers in parliament.

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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.

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If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

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Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

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Key events

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