The Guardian

MPs vote to give smoking ban bill second reading – UK politics live



Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation. Continue reading…



Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/apr/16/gradual-smoking-ban-tory-splits-rishi-sunak-labour-uk-politics-live

Author : Nadeem Badshah (now); and Andrew Sparrow (earlier)

Publish date : 2024-04-16 20:42:32

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