Shabana Mahmood tells MPs asylum system is ‘out of control and unfair’ amid Labour backlash over proposals – UK politics live

Labour MP calls government’s asylum plans ‘dystopian’ as home secretary announces measures in Commons

Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has also denounced the government’s asylum plans. In a statement it says:

The home secretary’s new immigration plans are divisive and xenophobic.

Scapegoating migrants will not fix our public services or end austerity.

Draconian, unworkable and potentially illegal anti-asylum policies only feed Reform’s support.

The government has learnt nothing from the period since the general election.

Some of the legal changes being proposed are truly frightening:

Abolishing the right to a family life would ultimately affect many more people than asylum-seekers.

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MPs lodge parliamentary motion to strip Prince Andrew of dukedom

Ministers face growing pressure to act amid fresh allegations over prince’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

MPs have moved to lodge a parliamentary motion to strip Prince Andrew of his dukedom, in a rarely permitted move in the Commons.

The government is facing mounting pressure over the prince’s residence in the 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor, where it was revealed that he has not paid rent for more than two decades.

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SNP backs Swinney’s ‘clear’ strategy for new independence referendum

Members overwhelmingly endorse leadership motion that majority at next Holyrood election is only route to second vote

SNP members have overwhelmingly backed leader John Swinney’s “clear and unambiguous” independence strategy that a majority election win is the only route to another referendum.

On the first day of the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen, the vast majority of members backed the leadership’s motion that next May’s Holyrood elections should be fought on a “clear platform of national independence” and that winning a majority in the Scottish parliament – by securing 65 seats or more – would be “the only uncontested way to deliver a new vote on Scotland’s future”.

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Scottish minister Jamie Hepburn quits after Douglas Ross assault accusation

Former Scottish Tory leader alleges Hepburn grabbed him amid row over SNP’s apparent failure to tackle gull attacks

A Scottish minister has resigned after a row over aggressive gulls spilled over into an angry altercation with the former Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross.

Jamie Hepburn, the Scottish government’s minister for parliamentary business, tendered his resignation after Ross accused him of assault outside the parliament chamber on Wednesday.

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No 10 says Starmer found Mandelson’s emails to Epstein ‘reprehensible’ – UK politics live

Despite being repeatedly asked, No 10 declines to say the PM was ‘misled’ by Mandelson

Stephen Doughty, a Foreign Office minister, is responding to the UQ about Peter Mandelson.

He starts by making the point that it is the anniversary of the “despicable” 9/11 terrorism attacks.

Keir Starmer must sack Peter Mandelson without further delay - and come clean about what he knew when, and whether he sanctioned blocking the publication of damaging material.

UK government documents shouldn’t be hidden from the public just because they are damaging to the Labour party - and by backing Peter Mandelson to the hilt, the prime minister’s own reputation is now on the line.

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Home secretary suspends refugee family reunion applications until new, tighter rules are put in place – as it happened

Yvette Cooper says rules were designed years ago to help families separated by war but are being used in a different way now

And while we are talking about Blair-era Labour aides, Peter Hyman, who wrote speeches for Tony Blair and later worked for Keir Starmer in the run-up to the general election, has launched a new Substack blog. It is called Changing the Story, which tells you quite a lot about what he thinks is going wrong with No 10. Here is an extract from his first post.

Starmer is an ‘opportunity’ prime minister forced to become a ‘security’ one. And that’s why the government’s narrative is seen by some to be elusive.

Let me explain.

I remember well Tim Allan’s leaving drinks at Number 10 in the earlyish Blair era. In his fulsome farewell speech Tony Blair noted only half jokingly “Tim’s even more right wing than me..”

The same Tim Allan who as head of Portland had a contract to polish Vladimir Putin’s reputation?

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Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly taps into SNP discontent over party’s future

Her critics have reacted with fury but some in party feel nostalgia and ‘sense of loss for independence movement’

Nicola Sturgeon’s month-long promotional tour for her memoir Frankly comes to an end this Friday at the Southbank Centre in London, the city, according to one of many carefully placed publication interviews, where she is considering moving to escape the “goldfish bowl scrutiny” of Scotland.

The former first minister’s political memoir has generated a blizzard of headlines since its launch on 12 August. Some were diverting but ultimately inconsequential, like her choice of future base, others rubbed salt in raw wounds, reprising two of the most divisive episodes in the SNP’s recent history – the Scottish government’s investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made against her predecessor Alex Salmond, and her flagship gender recognition law changes.

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Vance says UK and US have ‘disagreements’ over Gaza, as he confirms Trump does not back Palestinian state recognition – as it happened

David Lammy is hosting the US vice-president at Chevening, his grace-and-favour residence in Kent, where they will discuss the Middle East

The SNP is calling for the recall of parliament so that MPs can approve sanctions against Benjamin Netanyahu in the light of his decision to extend the occupation of Gaza. In a statement Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said:

A genocide is happening before our eyes in Gaza. Words of condemnation aren’t anywhere near enough - if we have any hope of stopping this genocide strong actions are desperately needed, now.

That means Keir Starmer needs to recall Westminster and take concrete steps to sanction the Israeli government.

Those sanctions must include ending all arms sales to the Israeli military, stopping all training, logistical and military support to the IDF, directly and personally sanctioning Netanyahu and his ministers and finally and immediately recognising the state of Palestine before it is brutally wiped off the map.

If the international community fails to act - we are consciously and complicitly standing idly by - allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to plan, implement and inflict an ongoing genocide in Gaza.

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UK politics live: Farage announces defection of Leicestershire’s police and crime commissioner from Tories to Reform UK

Rupert Matthews, elected to post as Conservative in 2021, claims police are ‘fighting crime with one hand tied behind their back’

George Finch, the Reform UK leader of Warwickshire county council, goes next. (Aged 19, he is the youngest council leader in the country.)

He claims the police have opposed his attempts to expose the immigration status of someone arrested in connection with an alleged crime.

It was dirty, run down and had major drug issues. My attitude to the task was assertive and no nonsense. That’s the approach that I will take for my role within Reform UK [advising on crime].

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MPs back bill to end criminal penalties for abortion in key vote – as it happened

Parliament votes on biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in 60 years

Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.

But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.

I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.

And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.

I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.

Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.

When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.

So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.

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Yvette Cooper quizzed over immigration and prisons crisis – UK politics live

Home secretary appears to accept early release proposals will put more pressure on police as she is questioned at select committee

Defence sources believe that Britain will be forced to sign up to a target of lifting defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 at this month’s Nato summit after a campaign by the alliance’s secretary general to keep Donald Trump onboard, Dan Sabbagh reports.

Later today the data (use and access) bill will return to the Commons from the Lords in the third round of “ping pong” between the two houses. It is not unusual for “ping pong” to go on for a round or two, as bills which are almost ready for royal assent shuttle between the elected and unelected chamber while they try to resolve matters of dispute. But, in this case, the Lords are digging in a bit more than usual.

The government has been accused of “supporting thieves”, as it suffered a further heavy defeat at the hands of peers pressing their demand for steps to safeguard the creative industries against artificial intelligence.

The fourth and latest setback for the Labour frontbench over the issue in the House of Lords was inflicted despite pleas by a minister for the upper chamber to end its prolonged stand-off over the data (use and access) bill.

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Swinney demands Meta remove ‘racist’ Reform UK ad attacking Labour’s Sarwar

Scotland’s first minister criticises byelection campaign video that claims his rival ‘will prioritise Pakistani community’

The SNP leader John Swinney has demanded that the owner of Facebook act on Reform UK’s “racist” byelection advert that attacks the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar.

The Facebook video, which incorrectly claims Sarwar has promised to prioritise Pakistani communities, is now subject to formal complaints from Scotland’s two main political parties. Scottish Labour contacted Meta, Facebook’s parent company, about the video two weeks ago and has yet to receive a reply.

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Chemical castration can lead to 60% fewer crimes by sex offenders, says justice secretary – UK politics live

Shabana Mahmood is making a statement to MPs now about the findings of the sentencing review

The Conservatives are taking the credit for the near-50% fall in net migration. They say it is the changes to visa rules that they introduced that brought the numbers down.

This is from Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.

Net migration has halved - dropped by 430,000 - in 2024 compared to 2023

This is thanks to measures put in place by the last Conservative Government

This drop is because of the visa rule changes that I put in place.

Labour will try to claim credit for these figures but they criticised me at the time, and have failed to fully implement the changes.

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UK politics: Reform UK on course to win in two mayoral contests – as it happened

Polling predicts victory for party in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull/East Yorkshire with the Greens possibly taking West of England

There are six mayoral elections next week. Two of them are for single-authority mayors (Doncaster and North Tyneside), but the others are for combined-authority mayors (or regional mayors – like metro mayors, but not just covering city regions). Today YouGov has released polling covering all four of these contests and it suggests Reform UK is on course to win two of them easily. And the Green party is narrowly ahead in a third, the poll suggests.

Here are the polling figures.

In theory the Tories should be winning in Lincolnshire as they hold most of the parliamentary seats in the area and have dominated local politics forever. But it’s also the most Reform-friendly part of the country. It contains Richard Tice’s constituency and numerous seats in which they came second. Plus their candidate is a former Tory MP – Andrea Jenkyns, famous for her Boris Johnson obsession and making a middle finger gesture at a crowd outside Downing Street. She is, by all accounts, quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic but, nevertheless, is strong favourite to win. Large chunks of local Conservative parties, including several councillors, have already defected.

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House of Lords proceedings disrupted by protesters – UK politics live

Campaigners in gallery shout ‘Lords out, people in’ and drop leaflets into the chamber

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has defended politicians who get involved in entertainment TV.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he hit back at Kemi Badenoch, who used an interview with the paper earlier this week to dismiss Farage as just a reality TV phenomenon.

Having appeal doesn’t mean that people want you running their lives. That’s one of the things that we need to make sure that we remind people.

This isn’t I’m A Celebrity or Strictly Come Dancing. You don’t vote for the person that you’re enjoying watching and then switch off when the show’s over.

Anyway, it’s not as though I’m the first politician to have been prominent in the media. Ronald Reagan combined his early political activities with a film and TV career for 20 years, until the 1960s. When he announced in the 1970s that he wanted to become the US President, everybody said he was a B-Movie actor who stood no chance. These days, American conservatives look back on this two-term leader with a slight sense of awe in terms of his achievements.

And what about Donald Trump? He was a well-known New York property developer from the 1970s onwards but it was his massive success with the reality to show The Apprentice from 2004 that put him in a position where he could win the nomination for the Republican Party.

Kemi Badenoch has a problem. Most members of the public have no opinion of her. Even fewer know what she stands for. I have an idea for her. She could appear on a reality TV show herself. A spell in the I’m a Celebrity… jungle would be perfect. I’ll gladly give her some tips if she wants to sign up for the next series.

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Minister refuses to say disability benefits for people unable to work won’t be cut – UK politics live

Stephen Timms, social security and disability minister, says government is ‘fully supporting’ people who would always be unable to work

The Reform UK press conference is about to start. There is a live feed here.

Nigel Farage is going to announce that 29 councillors have defected to his party, according to the Guido Fawkes website.

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Reeves’s growth plans ‘exactly what economy needs’ say UK business groups – as it happened

This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

Reeves says the supply side of the economy has been held back.

Politicians have lacked the courage to confront the factors holding back growth.

They have accepted the status quo. They have been the barrier, not the enablers, of change.

Without economic growth, we cannot improve the living standards of ordinary working people, because growth isn’t simply about lines on a graph. It’s about the pounds in people’s pockets, the vibrancy of our high streets and the thriving businesses that create wealth, jobs and new opportunities for us, for our children and grandchildren.

We will have succeeded in our mission when working people are better off.

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Swinney to warn opposition of fuelling populism if Scottish budget not passed

Scottish Labour, Greens and Lib Dem MSPs accuse first minister of ‘creating false narrative’

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, will warn opposition parties that they will fuel populist forces if they prevent his budget from being passed this month.

In a keynote speech in Edinburgh on Monday to mark the new year, Swinney will say Scottish voters would be astonished and public services damaged if MSPs fail to allow the budget to go through.

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We can hit UK’s big carbon cut without disruption to people’s lives, says Starmer – UK politics live

PM confirms target of 81% emissions cut at Cop climate summit but says ‘I’m not going to tell people how to live their lives’

Leadbeater introduces the next speaker, Nat Dye, who has terminal cancer. She says she thinks his views are the most important for people to hear at this press conference.

He says he has known “positive” experiences of death. His fiance and his mother both had relatively peaceful deaths. He says palliative care can work for some people.

Imagine I am dying and palliative care hasn’t improved. Well, I have no choice whatsoever: I die in pain or I die in pain.

I see this as a chance just to act with kindness and a choice for people at their darkest hour.

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Tory leadership election live: Kemi Badenoch elected new Conservative leader

Badenoch says Tories need ‘a clear plan to change this country by changing the way that government works’

Here are the results from previous Conservative leadership contests, and from the final MPs’ ballot of this contest, that will help put today’s results in context.

2024 contest

The choice is between two people who each played their part in 14 years of Conservative chaos and decline, and who have refused to apologise it.

Whoever wins, they have learnt nothing.

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