UK politics: Sturgeon says it is ‘incredibly difficult’ after husband charged – as it happened

• Humza Yousaf has said he is shocked by the embezzlement charges levelled against Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National party. Police Scotland announced on Thursday evening that Murrell, who is married to Yousaf’s mentor and predecessor as first minister Nicola Sturgeon, had been rearrested and charged with embezzlement of SNP funds. Sturgeon said the situation has been “incredibly difficult”

• Rishi Sunak has faced criticism from healthcare professionals and been accused by Labour of trying to score “cheap headlines” after the prime minister outlined a plan he said would end “sicknote culture” in the UK. Speaking in London, Sunak said “We don’t just need to change the sicknote, we need to change the sicknote culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t”. He outlined five reforms he said the Conservative government would undertake in the next parliament. Keir Starmer suggested Sunak should focus on his pledge to reduce NHS waiting lists rather than producing a “reheated version” of something the government announced years ago. The British Medical Association (BMA) described the prime minister as “pushing a hostile rhetoric”.

• The prime minister also said his patience has “run thin” on his failure to get his Rwanda deportation plans through parliament, and has pledged that the Commons will “sit there and vote until it’s done” on Monday.

• Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, has been accused of being involved in “suppression, obstruction and cover up” by Ed Henry KC, who is representing victims at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. Chair Wyn Williams told Rodric Williams that “those two things don’t sit very easily together, do they?” when he was confronted with evidence that the Post Office was maintaining that the 2010 conviction of Seema Misra was safe in 2014 when it had been advised in 2013 that an expert Fujitsu witness was unreliable.

• Carers have described suffering an “avalanche of utter stress” due to the government’s “abhorrent” approach to clawing back benefits, as official figures revealed the widespread ill health of those caring for loved ones

• Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner campaigned together in Derby to highlight Labour’s plans to release some green belt land in areas without enough brownfield sites as part of its housing policy if it wins the next election.

• Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has claimed his party could outperform opinion polls on general election voting intention and gain coucil seats in what he called “blue wall” constitunecies.

• Disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson has breached UK government rules by being “evasive” about his relationship with a company that set up a meeting between him and Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, the business appointments watchdog has said. It has written to Johnson and deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden warning of the breach

• The delivery of the CalMac ferry MV Glen Sannox has been delayed again for another two months

Thank you for reading, and all your comments today. I am off to listen to the new Taylor Swift album. I will see you somewhere on the Guardian website soon.

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has finished for the day. It will resume on Tuesday with Susan Crichton, the former company secretary and general counsel of the Post Office as the witness. Her name has cropped up a lot in the evidence so far and it should prove to be fascinating.

BBC business correspondent Emma Simpson has noted that one of the key bits of evidence to be laid bare today, as Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, was giving evidence, was the discrepancy in what the Post Office was saying in public about potential remote access to the Horizon IT system by Fujitsu compared to what it appeared to know. Simpson wrote:

Subpostmasters were repeatedly told that no one else but could access their branch accounts. Prosecutions hinged on this crucial point.

Rodric Williams commissioned the Deloitte Report on Horizon in 2014. It finds remote access was possible, without postmasters knowing about it, but it would have to be a deliberate act.

Yet at the same time Second Sight [independent investigators hired by the Post Office] and BBC Panorama were being told it wasn’t possible.

Williams said he’d “missed”’ these key details of the Deloitte report, despite being the point man on it. He didn’t recall anything being done to correct the statement to the BBC.

What the Post Office was saying publicly was very different to the emails flying behind the scenes.

Crucially, once the Post Office had this information, they also didn’t appear to take any action to disclose this to the legal teams of subpostmasters who had been convicted prior to that date.

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Josh Halliday and Patrick Butler have this latest report on tens of thousands of unpaid carers being forced to pay back huge sums by the DWP:

Carers have described suffering an “avalanche of utter stress” due to the government’s “abhorrent” approach to clawing back benefits, as official figures revealed the widespread ill health of those caring for loved ones.

Dozens of people who provide care for frail, sick or elderly relatives have described the “devastating” effect of the DWP’s approach, with some saying it had led them to consider killing themselves.

One woman said her mother had become “severely depressed, suicidal and self-harming” after being ordered to repay two years’ worth of carer’s allowance for mistakenly breaching the earnings allowance, currently £151-a-week, while caring for her father when he suffered a major stroke.

Another carer, forced to repay £2,100 in carer’s allowance, said she was “made to feel like a fraudster”. She added: “I couldn’t eat or sleep. I lost weight. I was on antidepressants. I was terrified I’d go to prison. I’m still traumatised, years later. It’s a terrible system. It feels like a trap.”

Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer, an associate professor in adult social care at the University of Birmingham, described the government’s approach as “abhorrent”

Read more from Josh Halliday and Patrick Butler here: ‘Avalanche of utter stress’: carers’ health suffering as DWP claws back benefits

Our Scotland editor Severin Carrell has this report rounding up the latest developments of embezzlement charges against Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National party.

Back in Scotland for a moment, the BBC is reporting that the delivery of the CalMac ferry MV Glen Sannox has been delayed again for another two months.

The first liquefied natural gas powered ferry constructed in the UK is now expected to be handed over at the end of July.

Scottish Conservative transport spokesperson Graham Simpson said it was a “huge blow to Scotland’s betrayed island communities” and that another summer season would go past without the ferry being in service.

The vessel was originally due to be delivered in 2018.

Simon Jenkins is arguing that Rishi Sunak’s proposed smoking sales ban is government meddling at its worst and most pointless, noting that “just because Liz Truss and Boris Johnson hold a belief does not make it wrong.”

Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf has said the news that former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell has been charged in connection with embezzlement of funds is a “really serious matter indeed”.

PA Media reports Yousaf said he first became aware late on Thursday evening.

The party leader added:

Many people in the SNP, right across Scottish politics will be shocked by the news and this is an ongoing investigation.

Police, the Crown have a job to do, just as I have a job to do as first minister, that job of course is ensuring that I support business, that I help households throughout the cost-of-living crisis, that I help to cut waiting times in the NHS, that I advance the cause of independence, so that’s the job that you can imagine I’m focused on.

As per the police statement it is a very serious development, as per the police statement it’s an allegation of embezzlement from the party, embezzlement of funds from the party. That’s really serious indeed.

With apologies for being London-centric and pandering to my own interests as a transport nerd for a moment, but Sadiq Khan has criticised mayoral election rival Susan Hall for her plan to ban noisy tube passengers, saying the policy would be “very difficult” to implement.

Hall has said that if she became mayor she would implement a ban on taking calls on speakerphone or playing music or videos out loud on the transport network.

The Telegraph quotes her saying “under Sadiq Khan, the London Underground is less safe and less civil than it used to be”.

Khan dismissed the plan, saying:

With millions of journeys every day on London’s transport network, we should all be considerate of other passengers around us, including the noise coming from our personal devices.

Implementing formal restrictions would likely be very difficult, requiring bus and Tube staff to police how passengers operated their individual phones. It would require huge extra spending on enforcement and put impossible pressures on hard-working transport staff.

It is already against TfL conditions for children under the age of 16 using a concession Oyster card to listen to music without earphones on the network, which I suspect will come as a surprise to most London underground and bus users.

Boris Johnson has breached UK government rules by being “evasive” about his relationship with a company that set up a meeting between him and Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, the business appointments watchdog has said.

PA Media reports Lord Pickles, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), has written to both Johnson and deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden warning of the breach.

It comes after the former Conservative prime minister failed to clarify his relationship with a company called Merlyn Advisors, a hedge fund. Johnson is reported to have met Maduro alongside Merlyn Advisors co-founder Maarten Petermann in February.

Johnson stood down as a Conservative MP in June 2023 after an investigation into the Partygate scandal found the former prime minister misled parliament and recommended he serve a lengthy suspension from the House of Commons.

Pickles wrote in his letter to Dowden:

Johnson has repeatedly been asked by Acoba to clarify his relationship with Merlyn Advisors. He has not done so, nor has he denied the reports in the media that he has been working with Merlyn Advisors on a non-contractual basis.

Government rules state former ministers must not take up new jobs or appointments for two years after leaving public office without advice from Acoba first.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, a Labour shadow Cabinet Office minister, said:

Boris Johnson has once again demonstrated a complete disdain for the rules, while Rishi Sunak is too weak to do anything about it. This now creates serious and urgent questions for the government to answer.

The rules in place to stop this revolving door are wholly inadequate – and completely toothless, they expose repeated broken government promises to reform the system.

PA Media reports that a spokesperson for Johnson did not wish to comment.

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is back under way after lunch. Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, is giving evidence for a second day. In the last session he was accused of “suppression, obstruction and cover up” by Ed Henry KC who was acting for subpostmasters who had been victims of the scandal.

If you aren’t overly familiar with the format, usually someone acting as a counsel to the inquiry – today it was Jason Beer KC – will take the witness through their statement and show them relevant documents. This process is often about gently teasing out inconsistencies and where documents contradict what the witness is recalling, effectively inviting the inquiry to then draw its own conclusions.

Witnesses can then also be questioned by lawyers acting for other “core participants”, including victims, and these passages tend to be much more adversorial. Henry earlier outright accused Williams of lying at points in his testimony.

At the end of the morning session, Williams had a chance to express regret about the scandal, saying “I take no pride having worked for an employer that was engaged in conducting the greatest miscarriage of justice that we’ve seen as it’s been described. I’m truly sorry that I’ve been associated with this.”

Henry round on him, saying “Associated with it, Mr Williams? You were in the middle of the web. And you were part of it.”

Chair Wyn Williams doesn’t often interject, but when he does it is usually with an acute or damning observation. At the conclusion of the morning session, he said to Rodric Williams:

I think the point Mr Williams, is that at a moment in time, namely 2014, when any sensible reading of Mr Clark’s advice from July 2013 was that there was a problem about Mr Jenkins’ evidence, the Post Office and you personally appeared still to be asserting to the world that the conviction [of Seema Misra in 2010 using Jenkins’ evidence] was safe, amongst other things because expert evidence had been called and the jury by inference must have accepted it. And those two things don’t sit very easily together, do they?

You can watch it here …

Outside her Glasgow home, former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon briefly addressed the situation with her husband, Peter Murrell, who has been charged in connection with embezzlement after being arrested for a second time by police.

Sturgeon told reporters outside her Glasgow home that it has been “incredibly difficult”.

“I can’t say any more,” she said. She asked for peace for her neighbours before leaving by car.

The Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has also been out campaigning today ahead of May’s local elections in England.

Speaking to the PA news agency in Esher, he claimed his party could outperform opinion polls on general election voting intention and gain coucil seats in what he called “blue wall” constitunecies.

He told them:

We’re very excited about our opportunities on 2 May. In many, what I call, “blue Wall seats like here in Elmbridge, it’s a clear fight between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

And it looks like we could make gains from the Conservatives in places like Tunbridge Wells, here in Elmbridge, in Wokingham, a number of other places.

And I think that will set us up both for running local councils better, but also for our prospects in the general election.

We think we can take it this time, because lifelong Conservatives, people who have always voted Conservative, are saying no, we’re not going to do it this time.

In the last two sets of local elections, we’ve added over 600 new Liberal Democrat councillors across the whole of UK. That’s a fantastic record and I think it belies the polls. I think we’re going to do really well.

In the Guardian poll tracker, which does not include people intending to vote for the SNP*, the Liberal Democrats are polling fourth on 9.2%, behind Reform UK on 13% as well as behind the Conservatives and Labour party.

[*The reason given for excluding the SNP from the nationwide polling tracker is that the SNP vote sits between 2% and 4% of national vote share. But its geographical concentration in Scotland means it will win many more seats than other small parties with a similar national vote share, so targeted Scotland-only polls give a much better indication of how well it will do in the next election than nationwide polls.]

Ed Henry KC has been questioning Post Office lawyer Rodric Williams for the last 45 minutes at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, and it has been pretty intense. Williams has at times argued he can’t follow the line of questioning, and they have had terse exchanges about which documents they are referring to. Henry is acting on behalf of subpostmaster victims of the scandal and has been very combative, accusing Williams at times of lying, and saying he was personally part of a cover-up. Williams keeps saying that he is “not a criminal lawyer” and using that as a way to deflect having to answer specific. They are just about to break for lunch, and will resume at around 2pm, when Williams will be questioned further.

Keir Starmer has been out campaigning alongside Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner today at a housing development in the Nightingale Quarter of Derby.

Inevitably he has been asked by reporters there about the ongoing attempt by the Conservative party and some quarters of the media to continue to pursue Rayner over accusations to do with her living arrangements a decade ago.

Starmer said:

I have said I am absolutely pleased to be out with Angela today, and that is the focus that she has, that is the focus that I have had. We have both answered no end of questions.

But we are actually out here, positive, on the front foot, putting our housing offer to people here in Derby, talking to residents about how they feel about what we are saying about housing, being well-received, that is really good.

The party was aiming to promote its housing policy, unveiling five “golden rules” for building on green belt land in an effort to boost housebuilding.

Labour has pledged to build 1.5m homes over the course of the next parliament, and while the party has committed to a “brownfield-first approach”, its plans also include releasing some green belt land in areas without enough brownfield sites and where that land is of poor quality.

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Earlier today, after his speech about welfare reform, prime minister Rishi Sunak was asked by a Daily Mail reporter whether Rayner should step aside while a police investigation was ongoing, in the same way that she had called for the then-prime minister Boris Johnson to stand down while police were investigating ‘partygate’ allegations. To that, Sunak said:

The question is for Keir Starmer as to why he is refusing to himself read the advice that seems to exist, why it’s not been published, and make a decision on this and I think that actually just displays a lack of leadership and weakness on his part.

There clearly are questions to answer. That’s clear for everyone to see. And he, you know, rather than hiding behind his team, just actually read the advice himself, publish the advice and clear this up.

Obviously, I’m not going to comment on an ongoing police investigation. But that’s what I said on Wednesday, and that’s what I think the right thing to do is.

During the same session of media questions, Sunak said he could not comment “on our ongoing investigation” into Fylde MP Mark Menzies amid allegations he misused campaign funds.

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Keir Starmer has reacted to Rishi Sunak’s speech on welfare reform this morning, suggesting the prime minister should focus on his pledge to reduce NHS waiting lists rather than producing a “reheated version” of something the government announced years ago.

PA Media reports the Labour leader told broadcasters:

Labour has for a long time been urging measures to be taken to deal with the problem of people getting back into work because it is inhibiting their ability to work, it is also restraining us in terms of what we can do with the economy.

That is why we have had a laser focus on how we get waiting lists down, because the biggest problem here frankly is that the government has broken the NHS, and waiting lists are up at 7.6 million.

That is where the focus needs to be. This announcement morning from the government is a reheated version of something they announced seven years ago. It is no good talking about the problem, what we need is action to make the issues actually be dealt with.

Here is how the Conservatives have boiled down Rishi Sunak’s welfare reform speech for social media consumption.

Adding to that criticism of Rishi Sunak’s welfare reform speech this morning is Dr Sarah Hughes, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, who said:

We are deeply disappointed that the prime minister’s speech today continues a trend in recent rhetoric which conjures up the image of a ‘mental health culture’ that has ‘gone too far’. This is harmful, inaccurate and contrary to the reality for people up and down the country.

The truth is that mental health services are at breaking point following years of under investment with many people getting increasingly unwell while they wait to receive support. To imply that it is easy both to be signed-off work and then to access benefits is deeply damaging.

It is insulting to the 1.9 million people on a waiting list to get mental health support, and to the GPs whose expert judgment is being called into question.

There is a full transcript of Sunak’s speech as it was delivered here. In it he said “we should see it as a sign of progress that people can talk openly about mental health conditions,” and described it as a “moral mission” to get people back into work. He said there was a “risk of over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life.”

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry continues today. Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, is giving evidence for a second day. Much of the testimony today has been looking through documents and trying to probe why nobody in the business appeared to be understanding that there was remote access into the Horizon system from Fujitsu. Jason Beer KC is questioning and it would be fair to say it has been quite testy. You can watch it here …

Rishi Sunak has faced criticism from healthcare professionals and been accused by Labour of trying to score “cheap headlines” after the prime minister outlined a plan he said would end “sicknote culture” in the UK.

Speaking in London, Sunak said “We don’t just need to change the sicknote, we need to change the sicknote culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t”. He outlines five reforms he said the COnservative government would undertake in the next parliament.

The British Medical Association (BMA) described the prime minister as “pushing a hostile rhetoric”, with a spokesperson saying that “Fit notes are carefully considered before they are written, and a GP will sign their patient off work only if they are not well enough to undertake their duties.

“With a waiting list of 7.5 million – not including for mental health problems – delays to diagnostics, and resulting pressures on GP practices, patients cannot get the treatment they need to be able to return to work.”

Earlier, on BBC Breakfast, Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride said that he thought GPs were signing people off work unnecessarily, telling viewers “We have 2.8 million people on long term sickness benefits. Part of the journey on to those benefits almost certainly involve visiting a GP and being signed off. We have 11 million fit notes that are signed off every year. And in the case of 94% of those fit notes that are signed off, a box is ticked that says that the person is not capable of any work whatsoever.”

Labour’s shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook, noting that chanceller Jeremy Hunt had made similar proposals when health secretary, said “This is a policy paper that’s been dusted off from 2017 to get a cheap headline and it won’t tackle the fundamental causes of the problem.”

Pennycook said “There has been a long term rise for many, many years under this government in people who are on long term sickness benefits, either because they can’t get the treatment they need through the NHS, which is on its knees after 14 years of Conservative government, or they are not getting the proper support to get back into work.”

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey described it as “a desperate speech from a prime minister mired in sleaze and scandal”.

Disability equality charity Scope said Sunak’s proposals on changes to personal independence payment (Pips) felt like “a full-on assault on disabled people.”

Sunak said that the current spending on long-term sickness and disability benefits was unsustainable at £69bn, and spending on Pip was forecast to rise by 50% in the next four years.