Front Bench: As Parliament heads to recess, the Government begins its usual wave of releases

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Front Bench

Recess starts this afternoon, and, barring disaster, that means Theresa May should survive until the autumn. You may all exhale.

There are no plans to celebrate, and instead Ministers will engage in their now traditional effort to dump as many statements into the public eye as possible, with the most controversial ones saved for late in the day. There will be 21 written ministerial statements published today.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and her Cabinet are primed to follow Jeremy Hunt and disperse across Europe to sell their Brexit plan (next up is David Lidington, May’s effective deputy, who heads to Paris).

Yet, despite the all-encompassing behemoth that is leaving the EU, other things do sometimes happen in Government.

– Life beyond Brexit – ​

The timing of the Cabinet’s visit to Gateshead yesterday – to show that the Government has heard of a place called “the North” – turned out to be rather unfortunate (or perfect, depending on your view). First, in a rather self-inflicted blow to message discipline and right in the middle of the Cabinet’s excursion, it was announced that Newcastle-Gateshead had missed out on hosting a Channel 4 creative hub. More importantly, back in London, Parliamentary anger was piling up after our US Editor, Ben Riley-Smith revealed that the UK would assist the United States in prosecuting two British Isil terrorists, without seeking assurances that they would not face the death penalty.

– Trouble with terrorists – ​

Alexanda Kotey and Shafee El-Sheikh, two of the British jihadi “Beatles”, were captured in Syria earlier this year. They were stripped of their British citizenship, which makes it difficult to return them to the UK for trial – something the Government is reluctant to do anyway, especially as there may not be enough evidence to prosecute one of the two.

Nor, however, does the Government want to see them sent to Guantanamo Bay.

So instead, in a letter seen by Riley-Smith, Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary went against a long-standing British opposition to the death penalty and said the UK would not seek assurances that the two men would not face execution.

Today, we follow that up with the revelation that Boris Johnson, who was still Foreign Secretary when the UK response was debated, expressed reservations about a precedent being set but ultimately agreed that the “benefits outweigh the risks” of the two men escaping justice and being free to return to the UK.

– When is a precedent not a precedent? –

Lord Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, warned that ministers had surrendered the right to block extraditions on human rights grounds. Whitehall sources have briefed that this isn’t the case, as under the Coalition a similar decision was taken. All the while, though, Javid has been rather absent from view. The Cabinet road trip meant that it was the security minister, Ben Wallace, who responded to an urgent question in the Commons.

Clearly keen to avoid a repeat scenario, Wallace told MPs that the Government would introduce new offences to beef up counter-terrorism laws which currently hamper prosecutions. Those who visit “no-go” areas such as Syria will face automatic prosecution under the new laws.

That might also result in an increase in sentence lengths, which currently average just 5 years for former Isil fighters.

– You can't escape Brexit –

It’ll be back to Brexit later today, with Olly Robbins and Dominic Raab facing the Brexit Committee and another white paper to be published, but even in recess Government doesn’t stand still.

(A brief announcement: From next week, Front Bench will be switching to a weekly recess update, written by my colleague Verity Ryan. Every Thursday she’ll catch you up on the latest from Westminster. I’ll be back, with Parliament, in September)

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