Liaison Committee: Boris Johnson encircled on Brexit and testing crises

It has been an especially bruising day for the Prime Minister. After facing yet another tough PMQs, this time against Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner, Boris Johnson received a grilling at the Commons liaison committee. Questions focused on the government’s two most vulnerable policy areas: coronavirus testing and the Internal Market Bill.  

On the day it was revealed that the proportion of people getting coronavirus test results in England within 24 hours has slumped from 63% to 8%, Johnson struggled to set out a coherent testing plan. He emphasised that the government will increase capacity to 500,000 tests per day by the end of October, but conceded that this would not be enough to deal with the surge in flu-like symptoms which occurs every winter. 

“Scientists on SAGE have said that half a million people a day will have symptoms consistent with Covid in a normal winter without Covid being present,” noted Science and Technology Committee Chair Greg Clark. “So if the target is half a million by October, all that will do is to deal with the people who have symptoms – coughs and colds – that they get anyway.

“It won’t be enough to deal with the additional risk of people with Covid symptoms.” Johnson responded that this was an “entirely legitimate point”. 

This would be the first in a series of concessions as holes emerged in the government’s strategy. Johnson even seemed to forget the target set last week for 10 million “pregnancy-style” tests in a “coronavirus Moonshot”. When asked about the target by Meg Hillier MP, he responded: “I don’t recognise the figure that you have given.” Then, once reminded of his own announcement, he proceeded to distance himself from it, saying: “I’m going to be cautious and say that I can’t sit here today and say that we have such a pregnancy-style test.” 

There was a pervasive sense that the government is acutely vulnerable on this matter. Testing will only increase in importance as more and more people start to get ordinary winter cold and flu, yet the Prime Minister was flustered by basic questions about capacity. Painfully aware of the incoming storm, Johnson admitted that the Test and Trace system has “huge problems”. 

The topic then moved on to Brexit, but the muddled answers didn’t abate. In justifying the Internal Market Bill, Johnson claimed the EU was not negotiating in good faith, directly contradicting Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis who a few hours before said the government believed the EU was negotiating in good faith. This was just the latest example of the lack of an agreed position on the Internal Market Bill within the Cabinet. 

Since Monday, the Home Secretary, the Justice Secretary, the Northern Ireland Secretary and the Prime Minister have delivered separate characterisations of the Bill’s legality. Such is the confusion that Scottish Advocate General Lord Keen offered his resignation today following accusations of misleading the House of Lords, after he had defended the bill on the basis that it is consistent with international law. He is now said to “find it difficult to reconcile plans to override the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement with the law.” 

Keen’s attempted resignation increases the already high likelihood that the House of Lords will pull every lever to disrupt the Bill’s passage to the statute book. Downing Street today claimed that the Bill falls under the Salisbury Convention, which stops the Lords from blocking finance bills or those which derive from manifesto promises. Yet this reasoning has provoked backlash even from natural allies of Johnson’s government. Former Brexit Secretary David Davis tweeted: “I am afraid this demonstrates just how little the Number 10 team understands Parliament.” 

Downing Street will also have difficulty replacing Keen, given that the role requires a senior Scottish lawyer currently sitting in the House of Lords. There are very few, if any, people who fit that description willing to join Johnson’s government. 

If the position remains unfilled, there may even be calls to scrap the post altogether, as the Scottish government already appoints its own Lord Advocate. It is perhaps for this reason that Downing Street desperately attempted to persuade Keen to retract his resignation letter. Asked about the situation in the liaison committee, Johnson responded that talks were “continuing”. Those conversations clearly failed to produce the Prime Minister’s desired outcome. 

One saving grace for Johnson is that a deal has been reached with Conservative rebels in the Commons. With the government agreeing to an extra layer of parliamentary oversight for the Internal Market Bill, two rebel leaders, Bob Neill and Damian Green, have agreed to vote for it next week. 

The overwhelming lesson from today, however, is that Number 10 is encircled on several seemingly impenetrable policy crises. If Johnson’s answers at today’s committee hearing are anything to go by, the government may not be ready for what is to come this Winter.