Commons privileges committee suggests it won"t publish Johnson"s Partygate dossier until at least tomorrow The Commons privileges committee has implied that it will not publish the ‘case for the defence’ dossier it has received from Boris Johnson about its Partygate inquiry today. In a statement a spokesperson for the committee said: The committee of privileges can confirm it received written evidence from Boris Johnson MP at 2.32pm on Monday. The committee will need to review what has been submitted in the interests of making appropriate redactions to protect the identity of some witnesses. The committee intends to publish this as soon as is practicably possible. The material will be published on the committee website. As my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports, this makes publication today increasingly unlikely. A summary of today"s developments The Commons privileges committee has implied that it will not publish the ‘case for the defence’ dossier it has received from Boris Johnson about its Partygate inquiry today. In a statement a spokesperson for the committee said: “The committee of privileges can confirm it received written evidence from Boris Johnson MP at 2.32pm on Monday. “The committee will need to review what has been submitted in the interests of making appropriate redactions to protect the identity of some witnesses. “The committee intends to publish this as soon as is practicably possible. The material will be published on the committee website.” MPs investigating Boris Johnson over his Partygate denials are not expected to release their final report on whether he misled parliament until next month at the earliest, the Guardian has been told. The Conservatives could lose more than 1,000 seats in the English local elections in May, on the basis of current polling, according to psephologists. In an article for the Local Government Chronicle, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, two of Britain’s leading local election specialists, said the Tories will record losses on this scale even if the swing to Labour from the Conservatives is less in the local elections than current national polling suggests it might be.More than 8,000 seats across 230 councils in England are up for grabs on Thursday 4 May, making this the biggest set of election in the four-year local elections cycle. In a statement about the settlement with Network Rail, Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, stressed that the union’s dispute with the train operating companies was still on. But he said he hoped this could lead to the government allowing them to make a better offer. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has said that its eight MPs will vote against the deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol on Wednesday. But the party has been engaged in an extensive consultation on the proposal, and in his statement Donaldson said that voting against was indicative of the party’s “current” position. He said that the deal represented progress in some areas and that the DUP was still seeking “further clarification, reworking and change”. Nicola Sturgeon believes the SNP will emerge after its leadership contest in a “stronger position”. She added she does not normally agree with Tony Blair, but she thought he was right when he said recently that social media was a “plague” on democracy. She said social media forces people “to speak first and think later” and encourages polarisation. NHS strikes in Scotland have been averted after unions representing midwives and nurses voted to accept the Scottish government’s pay offer. MPs investigating Boris Johnson over his Partygate denials are not expected to release their final report on whether he misled parliament until next month at the earliest, the Guardian has been told. After the former prime minister submitted what was termed a “bombshell” 50-page dossier laying out his defence on Monday afternoon, sources suggested a verdict by the privileges committee would come after Easter. With the Commons in recess until 17 April and local elections several weeks later, which the committee would not want to be accused of influencing, sources indicated a ruling may not be made until May. When the final report is drawn up, Johnson will also be given two weeks to review it and respond. There are concerns that if the committee finds he did mislead parliament, then Johnson could use this period to build a campaign against it. Legal experts have cast doubt on the UK’s claims of “possible reforms” to European court of human rights procedures that stopped an asylum seeker from being deported to Rwanda last year. During a two-day visit to the country’s capital, Kigali, Suella Braverman told a selected group of government-friendly papers that she was “encouraged” by the government’s “constructive” talks with Strasbourg to reform court injunctions. An ECHR injunction last June prevented an Iraqi national from being deported from the UK to the east African country. But legal scholars have questioned whether the Strasbourg court would weaken a mechanism intended to protect people facing an “imminent risk of irreparable harm”, with one warning that an apparent plan to ignore ECHR injunctions would be a “significant and dark turning point in [the UK’s] history”. The government should offer free bus travel to all care leavers aged between 18 and 25, a Tory former education minister said. Tim Loughton told the Commons the Chancellor should invest in “our social worker workforce”, insisting social care workers are the “fourth emergency service and we need much better workforce planning as we do in the NHS to make sure not only do we recruit more, but we keep them there as well”. He added: “It’s a false economy not to be doing that.” Conservative former Cabinet minister David Davis suggested there could be a second budget later this year and called on the Chancellor to look at “more growth” in future. He told the Commons: “We are in a period of extraordinary global financial instability. “Now I am a low tax Tory. I would have loved the Chancellor to have had a lower tax strategy. “But I have to say, that the events of the last week (in the banking sector) have demonstrated that a very small-c conservative strategy is actually wise under these circumstances. The more the confidence of the markets in the Government, the better our prospects for the future. “That being said, I would be completely unsurprised if we have to have another budget in the autumn because of the nature of the transitions, the changes that are now happening.” NHS strikes in Scotland have been averted after unions representing midwives and nurses voted to accept the Scottish government’s pay offer. Just over half of Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members voted in the ballot, with 53.4% of those voting to accept the offer equating to an average 6.5% increase in 2023/24. Around half (49%) of members of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) voted in the ballot, with 69% voting to accept the deal. Last week, Unison and the GMB unions also voted to accept the pay offer. The RCN said while the vote ends an immediate threat of strike action, a significant minority of members voted to reject the offer, demonstrating their “continued frustration and concern” about the ongoing staffing crisis in the NHS. It called for the Scottish government to “live up” to its promise to reform the Agenda for Change and make nursing a career of choice once again. Mark Harper told MPs: “They have made significant improvement, enough to justify an extension until October. Is there more to do, there absolutely is.” He said: “The most recent cancellation rate is down to 4.2% which is the lowest level in 12 months, which is quite a clear improvement and I have said that needs to be sustained, which is why they have only got an extension until October.” Harper added: “I have been very clear with them that they need to deliver improvement in the next six-month period. So, the figures do speak for themselves and they demonstrate an operator which is turning things around but still has more to do.”He said Avanti’s performance last summer and autumn was “terrible”, but added: “They have made significant improvements. They need to continue those improvements.” On Avanti’s punctuality, he said: “Although they were back in the pack with the other train operating companies, they were at the bottom of the pack and they still had more work to do.” Claims that Avanti West Coast has done enough to merit a rail contract extension were met with cross-party scepticism in the Commons. Transport secretary Mark Harper has offered a further six-month contract extension to the operator, following the imposition of an improvement plan that he insists is working to improve the service. But his remarks in the Commons of “significant improvement” were met by some MPs with tales of poor services and, in the case of one Labour MP, claims of being served mouldy food. Conservative former minister David Jones (Clwyd West) said: “I was disappointed to hear from (the Transport Secretary) that he has decided to extend Avanti’s contract by six months. “Avanti have been letting down the people of north Wales for far too long. And I had rather hoped that he would be coming here to say that he was terminating that contract.” Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie is the Conservative MP for Ynys Mon said she was “concerned” by the extension, Labour MP Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) said: “Avanti have failed. They have failed spectacularly.” Labour MP Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) said: “During the period of Avanti’s improvement plan, the operator had the highest proportion of trains running more than 15 minutes late on record.” She added: “Why is the Government rewarding this gross incompetence with yet another six-month extension?” Britain is “still miles behind where we need to be in exploiting the potential of the UK as a science and tech superpower”, shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell has warned. On regulation, she told MPs: “It’s not just about investment, the UK should be at the forefront of regulation around new technologies. Making sure we’re the first to set the rules of the game, helping to attract businesses looking for certainty and a supportive regulatory framework. “So that it’s our values shaping how new technology develops, rather than these choices being made in China or elsewhere. The mess over TikTok was just the latest example of the Government dragging its feet. “We saw the same thing with Huawei where the Government failed to invest in our sovereign capabilities and then failed to predict the security concerns resulting in a chaotic and expensive unpicking of Huawei’s role in our national infrastructure. “We have a chance to now get ahead of the curve in technologies and help secure our national resilience, so where is the regulation of digital markets that’s been promised for years? Where is the semi conductors strategy?” At the weekend the Sunday Telegraph claimed Boris Johnson was about to unveil “bombshell” evidence would exonerate him over Partygate. ITV’s Paul Brand, who broke some of the most important Partygate stories, is sceptical. That is all from me for tonight. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is now taking over. Back to Boris Johnson, and Jason Groves from the Daily Mail says his allies have suggested the Commons privileges committee is not publishing his dossier today because it wants to hold back something that might support his case. But Sam Blewett from PA Media points out that the committee first asked Johnson for evidence last summer. Here is the full text of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the RSA earlier.