Health News at Your Fingertips

And these are from ITV’s Paul Brand on the Met announcement.

This is from the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar.

The foreign affairs committee has just started taking evidence from Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, about the latest claims from a whisteblower about No 10 being involved in the decision to approve the evacuation of the Nowzad animal charity staff from Kabul last summer. (See 11.36am.)

Tom Tugendhat, the committee chair, set the tone with his first question, asking Barton if he felt he had a duty to give full and accurate answers to questions from parliamentarians.

Barton said he did.

A reader BTL (below the line) has asked what No 10 had to say at the morning lobby briefing about Boris Johnson’s Ukraine/Brexit comparision. (See 9.30am.) They took the Rishi Sunak line. The PM’s spokesperson said:

As the prime minister’s speech made clear, there was not a direct comparison made between fighting in Ukraine.

As the chancellor said, they are not directly analogous. He was making observations about people’s desire for freedom.

It is worth noting that the Ukrainian ambassador was in the audience at the time and gave a standing ovation at the end of the speech, and he tweeted his thanks to the prime minister.

Keir Starmer has called on other areas of the UK to follow Wales in banning the smacking of children.

The Labour government in Wales passed a ban on smacking two years ago, and it has become law today. Speaking during a visit to Stevenage, Starmer said the move was “welcome”. He went on:

What it does is give children the protection that adults already have, and that is the right thing.

I would like to see the rest of the UK step into line here, because I think Welsh Labour have taken a lead here and they’re absolutely right to protect children in the way that they now have.

A similar ban is already in force in Scotland.

Boris Johnson has reaffirmed his commitment to speeding up the construction of new nuclear power plants in the UK. After his roundtable meeting with nuclear industry leaders, No 10 released a readout of the event saying:

The prime minister made clear the vision for nuclear to be a major part of the UK’s future energy system as a clean, reliable and safe energy source. He set out this government’s commitment to supporting the industry to develop a thriving pipeline of future nuclear projects in the UK in a cost-effective way.

Industry representatives set out the various technologies and projects they are developing, from larger nuclear power plants to small modular reactors, capitalising on both British and international expertise.

The prime minister invited views on how the UK can accelerate rapid progress on securing new nuclear capacity. They discussed the benefits of scaling up investment and removing barriers facing development, agreeing to work together to help projects become operational more quickly and cheaply.

Downing Street also said that Johnson would publish the government’s energy security strategy before the end of this month. Last week Johnson said it would be published this week, but it has been reported that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, said more time was needed to assess the potential costs of the push for nuclear.

The Russian state was responsible for hoax calls to Ben Wallace and Priti Patel, pretending to be the Ukrainian prime minister, Downing Street has said. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.

Here is my colleague Aubrey Allegretti’s story about the new allegations about the Nowzad animal charity being prioritised for evacuation from Afghanistan last summer.

An earlier post, at 11.36am, said that a Foreign Office whistleblower has published evidence claiming that officials lied about Boris Johnson’s role in authorising the evacuation of animals from the Nowzad charity from Kabul last summer. In fact, the new evidence refers to Johnson approving the decision to authorise the evacuation of the Nowzad staff, not their animals. I am sorry for the error and have corrected the original post.

This is from Patrick Dunleavy, an emeritus professor of politics, saying that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was right to identify high ministerial turnover (see 2.15pm) as one of the problems bedevilling British politics.

For most of the last six years Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has, thanks to the campaigning efforts of her husband, been a public figure in the UK. Yet almost no one had heard her voice, and everything we knew about her – which was relatively little, in terms of her manner and character – came from what we were told about her by other people. Normally the main point of a press conference is find out what someone has to say but today was probably just as much about learning what Zaghari-Ratcliffe is actually like.

As some of the snap reaction on Twitter shows (see 1.16pm), the answer is clear; she was hugely impressive – dignified, moving, honest. She seemed commendably free of bitterness. And she came across as steely too. She was very firm about not wanting to answer questions that would force her to relive her ordeal, and there was a candid moment when she admitted that she was not willing to thank the government as generously as her husband. (See 12.21pm.) Mostly she avoided being overtly political, but she managed to deliver a clear political rebuke; the government should have done more to free her, she indicated.

Here are the main points.

• Zaghari-Ratcliffe suggested ministers should have done more to secure her release from Iran. Pointing out that there have been five foreign secretaries since she was detained in 2016, she said:

I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?

What’s happened now should have happened six years ago.

Her husband, Richard, has thanked Liz Truss, the current foreign secretary, for her work on the case, but Zaghari-Ratcfliffe indicated that she was more sceptical, saying she did not agree with his positive comments about the government. She said:

[The turnover in the number of foreign secretaries has been] unprecedented given the politics of the UK. I love you, Richard, respect whatever you believe, but I was told many, many times that ‘oh, we’re going to get you home’. That never happened.

The foreign secretaries have been, in order: Philip Hammond, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab and Truss.

I believe that the meaning of freedom is never going to be complete as to such time that all of us who are unjustly detained in Iran are reunited with our families.

To begin with Morad [Tahbaz], but also the other dual nationals, members of religious groups, or prisoners of conscience who are … I mean, we do realise that if I have been in prison for six years there are so many other people we don’t know their names who have been suffering in prison in Iran.

• Tulip Siddiq, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, said she had written to the foreign affairs committee asking for an inquiry into the case. In particular, she said it was important to find out why it took so long for the UK to settle the £400m debt it owed Iran and why it took so long for Zaghari-Ratcliffe to be freed. She also suggested an incident in 2013, when Iranian officials coming to the UK to negotiate the debt repayment were detained, may have led to Zaghari-Ratcliffe being taken as effectively a hostage. (See 2.11pm.)

• Zaghari-Ratcliffe said that, although she felt she had a “black hole” in her heart when she was detained, she was determined not to hold a grudge about her experience. (See 12.29pm.)

• Richard Ratcliffe said that he was now retiring as a campaigner and he asked for his family to be given privacy as they recovered from their ordeal. “We will disappear off and heal a bit,” he said.

Here is some reaction to the press conference from journalists.

From Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee

From the ITV broadcaster Julie Etchingham

From the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar

From the broadcaster Matthew Stadlen

From the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman

And here’s an extract from Hardman’s piece.

It was a moving session and there were moments where Nazanin declined to answer questions, including what it was like to be held in solitary confinement. She had, the room was reminded, endured nearly six years of significant trauma, and was extraordinarily dignified and restrained as she spoke. The Ratcliffe family has said that now this press conference is over, they want privacy while they rebuild their own lives and get to know one another again.

From the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard

This is from David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s press conference.

Tulip Siddiq asks the panel if they have any final comments.

Richard Ratcliffe says he wants to thank again their legal team.

Siddiq ends by asking the media not to bother Richard and Nazanin and Gabriella on their way out, and to respect their privacy.

And that’s it. I’ll post a summary shortly.