People caught in possession of laughing gas could face up to two years in jail under new Home Office plans – as it happened

• More than half of English schools that are so dilapidated they are at risk of partial closure were refused money under the government’s school rebuilding scheme, Department for Education (DfE) statistics show.

• The head of the National Audit Office, Gareth Davies, has accused the government of adopting a “sticking-plaster approach” to school building safety, when it should be investing properly in infrastructure. (See 9.32am.)

• Michael Gove has loosened restrictions on building onshore windfarms in England, meaning developments will no longer be quashed by one objection, but campaigners have said such schemes are still at a disadvantage. Responding to the announcement, Greenpeace said the impact would be marginal. Its UK policy director, Doug Parr, said:

These feeble tweaks are just more hot air from the government that’ll result in very little wind.

Developers will continue to face uncertainty over planning process and be beholden to quixotic decisions by local councils. Who will put their money into developing projects under those circumstances?

• The Home Office has said people could face up to two years in jail for possessing laughing gas, “nitrous oxide”, under its plans to ban it for recreational use. (See 3.30pm.)

• Birmingham city council, the largest local authority in the country, has in effect declared itself bankrupt after issuing a section 114 notice, signalling that it does not have the resources to balance its budget.

Keir Starmer has announced new appointments to the Labour frontbench, the party has announced.

A reader asks:

What happened to the economic, crime and corporate transparency bill in the House of Commons yesterday? It is really annoying when there are reports of such things, as there was yesterday, and then it is not followed up.

I think the reader may be referring to this article by Lucy Nash.

There were five votes in the Commons last night on amendments passed in the House of Lords that would have strengthened the bill. The government won all five votes easily, throwing out the Lords amendments. But some Conservative MPs did rebel and vote with the opposition. They were: Sir Julian Lewis, chair of the intelligence and security committee (who rebelled four times); Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary (who rebelled three times); and Sir Jeremy Wright, the former culture secretary and former attorney general (who rebelled twice).

Iain Porter, a senior policy adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has posted a good thread on X/Twitter about the proposed changes to the work capability assessment. (See 4.15pm.) It starts here.

And here are three of his points.

The stated aims behind today’s announcement – more support to help people into work where they want it – are positive. It’s not right that disabled people who want to work don’t currently get the level of support they should, and are essentially written off by DWP... BUT 6/10

BUT, improving support could be done without necessarily changing WCA assessment criteria. And these WCA changes need to be handled very carefully to avoid disabled people losing the financial safety net they need. 7/10

And unfortunately, given recent sounds that Treasury is looking for ways to cut spending, the suspicion is that the real aim of these WCA proposals is simply to cut projected expenditure at the next budget - not a good basis for genuine improvements for disabled people. 8/10

At least 11 secondary schools in England where Raac has been confirmed had refurbishment plans scrapped when the Conservatives came to power, Schools Week reports.

In her story Samantha Booth reports:

Former education secretary Michael Gove canned Labour’s major £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) in 2010. He said he did not want to “waste any more money” on the scheme, which would have rebuilt every secondary school by this year.

A total of 735 rebuilds in England were halted.

Schools Week analysis of public documents* suggests as many as 11 of these secondary schools now have had to close because they have reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac).

Six alone are in Essex – one of the areas hardest hit by the RAAC crisis.

Labour said the revelation showed why the government should accept responsibility for the current crisis. Stephen Morgan, the shadow schools minister, said:

Rather than asking for a pat on the back, ministers need to take responsibility for this crisis and be honest with parents about how 13 years of Conservative neglect for our school estate has caused this mess.

Charities representing disabled people have expressed concern about government plans to change the work capability assessment (WCA) – a test used to assess whether people qualify for extra benefits because they are unable to work for health reasons.

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, presented this as part of a plan to help more disabled people into employment when he announced the move to MPs.

But experts have said that a stricter test could lead to some claimaints losing signficant sums.

Stride told MPs:

The work capability assessment doesn’t reflect how someone with a disability or health condition might be able to work from home, yet we know many disabled people do just that.

Our plans include taking account of the fact that people with mobility problems or who suffer anxiety within the workplace have better access to employment opportunities from the rise in flexible and home working.

The government is consulting on changes to how the WCA is applied. It says the proportion of claimants getting the highest award has risen from 21% in 2011 to 65% in 2022.

In an analysis, the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank says the changes could have a significant impact on people who no longer qualify. “Not only will they lose out on the additional income (typically almost £400 per month) … claimants are entitled to, they will also be required either to prepare for work or to search for a job in order to keep receiving benefits,” it says.

But the IFS also says that, because the change will not come into effect until 2025, and because the WCA is due to be replaced at the end of the decade anyway, the reform will “at most deliver a short-run saving before becoming irrelevant”.

Scope, the disability equality charity, said it was concerned about the plans. Its executive director of strategy, James Taylor, said:

We’re worried these proposals will end up forcing huge numbers of disabled people to look for work when they aren’t well enough, making them more ill. If they don’t meet strict conditions, they’ll have their benefits stopped. In the grips of a cost-of-living crisis this could be catastrophic.

And Sarah White, head of policy at the disability charity Sense, said the plans could “cause huge anxiety for disabled people up and down the country”. She said:

We’re seriously concerned that if the government does overhaul its assessment process without putting any additional support in place, then disabled people are just going to be put under more pressure to find work, without having the support they need to do so.

People could face up to two years in jail for possessing laughing gas “nitrous oxide” under plans to ban it for recreational use published by the Home Office today.

Rishi Sunak announced the plan to ban laughing gas (except for when it is being used for legitimate purposes, such as catering and medicine) earlier this year as part of a commitment to tackling antisocial behaviour.

Today, following a consultation, the Home Office says it is introducing secondary legislation. It says:

Secondary legislation has been brought forward today which will control nitrous oxide as a class C substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The new measures are expected to come into force by the end of the year.

Nitrous oxide is the third most used drug among 16 to 24-year-olds in England and police have reported links to antisocial behaviour – intimidating gatherings on high streets and in children’s parks, and empty canisters strewn across public spaces. Heavy regular use of nitrous oxide can also lead to a deficiency of vitamin B12, a form of anaemia and in more severe cases, nerve damage or paralysis.

Those found in unlawful possession of the drug could face up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine, and up to 14 years for supply or production. There will be exemptions for legitimate uses of nitrous oxide, for example in medical or catering industries.

Ministers have suggested they are banning the drug more because of the mess caused by discarded laughing gas canisters than because of the possible risk it poses to health. The independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs advised against the move, saying a ban would be disproportionate.

In the Commons MPs have just started the debate on the energy bill. Andrew Bowie, the energy minister, is leading for the government. Before he started, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, complained that just three hours were available for the report stage debate, even though the bill runs to 328 pages, and 145 amendments have been tabled.

Earlier Rees-Mogg told GB News he would be voting against the bill. He explained:

The government’s role is to make life easier for people to lift burdens off their shoulders. The bill should be reversing the ban on oil boilers set to affect 1.7m homes across the country. It should be reversing the boiler ban on all new builds in 2025, taking away one of the lowest costs of heating. It should be reversing the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel car cars, it should be making it easier to rent or sell homes to ease the housing crisis, not harder. The bill does the opposite.

For the right reason it ought to be scrapped or at least entirely de-fanged, which is what I was trying to do in my brief period as energy secretary. I obviously won’t be supporting this bill.

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has published details of the government’s plans to allow onshore windfarms to be built. The government first announced its willingness to get rid of the de facto ban on new onshore turbines last year (in a U-turn from the position Rishi Sunak set out when he was standing for Tory leader a few months earlier) and details are being published today to avert a defeat on the energy bill. (See 12.54pm.)

In a written ministerial statement, Gove says:

We are … adjusting the policy so that local authorities can more flexibly address the planning impact of onshore wind projects as identified by local communities, on which we intend to publish further guidance. We have heard accounts that current policy has been applied in such a way that a very limited number of objections, and even at times objections of single individuals, have been taken as showing a lack of community backing. This is not the policy intent, and as a result of today’s policy change it will now be important that local decision makers are able to take a more balanced approach, considering the views of communities as a whole. The government is also open to novel ways to demonstrate community consent, building on best practice and using new digital engagement techniques.

Gove also said that in future there would be “more agile and targeted routes” for deciding where windfarms would go. It would not have to be decided through local plans, he said. As a result, sites could be found more quickly, he said.

And he confirmed that the government wanted to ensure that communities that approve windfarms could benefit, for example through lower bills.

5 Sept 202315.43 CEST

Haroon Siddique

The chair of another statutory inquiry concerning the NHS has been announced today, with Kate Lampard named by Steve Barclay as the choice to lead the independent inquiry into the deaths of almost 2,000 mental health patients across NHS trusts in Essex.

It comes the day after Barclay announced that Lady Justice Thirlwall would head the public inquiry into the murders by Lucy Letby.

Like the Letby inquiry, the Essex mental health inquiry was only granted legal powers after protests, including by its outgoing chair, Dr Geraldine Strathdee, who is standing down for personal reasons, that it would be toothless without them.

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has just published his programme for government for 2023-24.

Addressing MSPs, Yousaf said that his plans were “unashamedly anti-poverty and pro-growth”.

Referring to his grandfather, Muhammad Yousaf, who was a small business owner, the first minister said his grandfather could not have achieved what he did without the support of society. “There is no doubt in my mind that economic growth goes hand in hand with tackling poverty, as it did for my grandfather all those decades ago,” he said.

Yousaf went on:

This programme is an opportunity to be explicit about the driving mission of this government.

So let me make it abundantly clear, we are a government who will maximise every lever at our disposal to tackle the scourge of poverty in our country.

We have adopted progressive tax and spending policies to face those challenges, and I will never shy away from the belief that those who earn the most should pay the most.

But let me be equally clear, without any equivocation, we also need to support economic growth. Not for its own sake but so we can tackle poverty and improve our public services.

Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, was responding to Jenrick. He dismissed the claim that the government was succeeding in reducing small boat crossings. He said they reached a record high at the weekend, and he said poor weather explained why numbers were down in July and August. “A strategy that depends on the wather is probably not a very sustainable strategy at all,” he said.

Jenrick says the government has achieved its aim of hiring more decision makers to process asylum claims. He says there were 2,500 in place by 1 September, an increase of 174% on the same point last year.

That means the government is on track to clear the legacy backlog of applications by the end of the year, he says.

He says provisional figures for July showed the overall backlog down.

He says the number of people crossing the Channel on small boats is 20% below what it was at the same point last year.

And in August crossings were down by a third, he says.

He says the government should be judged against the worst case scenario for small boat arrivals in 2023, which was 85,000. That estimate was produced by the Home Office last year.

Interestingly, Jenrick says this was the scenario given to the government “when taking office last year”. In fact, the government has been in office, in one form or another, since 2010, but for obvious reasons Rishi Sunak is keen to argue the clock only started in 2022.

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is making a statement to MPs about illegal migration.

He says the government is doing whatever it takes to stop the small boats.

To tackle the problem upstream, the government has agreed a partnership with Turkey. And he says he has visited Egypt, too.

In the UK, Jenrick says the government is clamping down on landlords and employers who house or hire illegal migrants. He says inspections are up by 50%. And more penalties are being issued, he says.

He says enforcement action against lawyers who coach migrants to cheat the system is being increased.

Here is the exchange from Gillian Keegan’s interview with Jeremy Vine where she said her outburst yesterday was not aimed at Rishi Sunak.

Vine said:

We also heard yesterday from a guy called Jonathan Slater who used to be the civil servant of the Department for Education, who said we knew between 2019 and 2022 that between 300 and 400 schools needed rebuilding. And in the end, the chancellor refused the money but he cut the budget for rebuilding. And the chancellor was Rishi Sunak. So I’m guessing here, if I may, minister, that the person who you said is sitting on his bum is the prime minister.

And Keegan replied:

Absolutely not. The prime minister when he was chancellor announced the school rebuilding programme in 2020 to rebuild 500 schools. So I don’t know what Jonathan’s talking about …

What they do, the Treasury – first of all, people always put in bids [for money] which are high.

And what they do is they look in the round and they look at your track record. If you look at the track record – and I’ve gone through this now and looked at every year in terms of school building – every year apart [from] one we’ve built 50 schools.

Q: The government has a track record of not valuing state education, and not funding it properly. The Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report yesterday saying funding was well down.

Keegan says school spending is higher than it was in 2010.

But she accepts, that if you compare capital spending to one particular year in the past, it has gone down. But capital spending goes up and down, and sometimes there are bumper years, she says.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

Q: Are you trying to make a splash to be ready for a leadership contest?

No, says Keegan. And she says she would not try to do it that way.

Vine reads a question from a listener suggesting a teacher who swore would be sacked.

Keegan says she apologised. But she says she does not think people should be sacked for swearing.

Q: Do you have the full list of schools affected by Raac?

No, says Keegan. She says some that were assessed as non-critical have been moved to critical.

There are others were Raac is suspected. They are being surveyed.

And she says 5% of organisations that were meant to respond to a survey about Raac in buildings have not yet responded. She says she has written to them again, and asked them to respond by the end of the week.