Ed Davey warns NHS will be privatised and gun laws rolled back by ‘hypocrite’ Farage in Lib Dem conference speech – UK politics live

Liberal Democrat leader issues appeal for Tory voters to join his party and takes aim at Reform and far right in UK

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, criticised Donald Trump for “the cruelty and stupidity” of his approach to medical research in comments distributed yesterday before Trump made bogus claims about autism in the Oval Office. (See 8.41am.) Now Davey has described the president’s latest comments as “dangerous nonsense”.

First Trump slashed funding for vaccines research now he’s peddling dangerous nonsense about paracetamol.

The UK should take on Trump’s anti-science agenda and open our doors to US researchers.

The US government is ignoring science and deliberately spreading misinformation. It will get people killed. And we have a Reform party that seems quite keen to import their health advice from these people.

Boldest of the lot are the proposals on migration, which, if taken up even in part, would represent the biggest paradigm shift of all. Reform UK has set the agenda with proposals to deny benefits to even legal migrants. By the standards of the centre-left, Labour Together’s suggestion is just as radical.

Rather than leave Isak, an Eritrean with post-traumatic stress disorder, languishing in an asylum hotel, their paper proposes he be granted time-limited refugee status for six months. He signs a contract that obliges him to learn English, find work and private accommodation; his access to any income support via universal credit is strictly conditional on him fulfilling its terms. Of all the changes suggested, this one – given that asylum seekers cannot currently work legally – would have the most profound consequences for British politics and the economy.

Why an asylum-seeker is drawn to Britain over, say, France is not obvious. A 2016 report from Warwick University, based on findings from 29 separate studies into asylum-seeker motives, concluded that social networks and shared languages were crucial. The report could not find a single study showing a significant correlation between work rights and destination choice. If asylum-seekers in Calais were motivated by working rights those who had yet to apply would stay in France, where they could work sooner. Continue reading...