Investigations will be launched into seven organisations criticised in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, with the potential they could be banned from public contracts in future, PA Media reports.

Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, announced the move as she made a statement to MPs about the government’s response to the 58 recommendations in the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s final report. The government says it will act on them all.

Rayner told MPs:

The manufacturing companies including Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex, whose products were used to refurbish the tower, the report found that they acted with systemic dishonesty, and they mis-sold and they marketed them.

Their disgraceful mercenary behaviour put profit before people and exploited the regulatory regime to evade accountability with fatal consequences.

And to my disgust and their shame, some have shown little remorse and have refused to even help fix the building safety crisis that they did so much to create.

Rayner said that companies “must be held to account for their role in Grenfell” and that seven firms are being investigated under the Procurement Act 2023. This could lead to them being banned from public contracts on the grounds of supplier misconduct.

The firms are: Arconic Architectural Products SAS; Saint-Gobain Construction Products UK Limited which previously owned Celotex Limited; Exova (UK) Limited; Harley Facades Limited; Kingspan Insulation Limited; Rydon Maintenance Limited; and Studio E Architects Limited.

Rayner also announced a raft of changes to construction and fire safety laws. In a press notice summarising them, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says:

Reforms set out today include:

-A new single construction regulator to ensure those responsible for building safety are held to account.

-Tougher oversight of those responsible for testing and certifying, manufacturing and using construction products with serious consequences for those who break the rules.

-A legal duty of candour through a new Hillsborough Law, compelling public authorities to disclose the truth, ensuring transparency in major incidents, and holding those responsible for failures to account.

-Stronger, clearer, and enforceable legal rights for residents, making landlords responsible for acting on safety concerns.

-Empowering social housing residents to challenge landlords and demand safe, high-quality housing, by expanding the Four Million Homes training programme. Make it easier for tenants to report safety concerns and secure landlord action by taking forward the Make Things Right campaign.

-Ensuring lasting transparency and accountability by creating a publicly accessible record of all public inquiry recommendations.

The government’s full response to the inquiry recommendations is here.

For the second week in a row, Kemi Badenoch was flattened at PMQs. She has never been a strong performer in this arena but on current form she is getting worse. She is still not quite in Iain Duncan Smith territory (his PMQs performances were sometimes excruciating), but it is not hard to see why the Westminster commentariat is starting to think about who might be the next Tory leader.

Today Badenoch started with a perfectly good question about Ukraine, but then she made the usual mistake of asking about the wrong thing. Badenoch has a weakness for social media rabbit holes, and perhaps she made the mistake of believing her shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, who tweeted this morning about the “urgent” need for clarity because there are different figures coming from government about scale of the increase in defence spending. (See 10.04am.)

But there is no confusion. Keir Starmer used an inflated figure yesterday (£13.4bn), by ignoring budget increases that would have happened anyway, and John Healey focused on a more realistic figure (£6bn) this morning. You can criticise Starmer for hype and spin (the Institute for Fiscal Studies did yesterday – while saying this was just a “minor’” point), but you can’t claim there is any great mystery as to what is going on. Yet Badenoch tried – and she got clobbered.

Here is the exchange.

Badenoch asked:

Turning to the details of the plan he set out yesterday: Over the weekend, I suggested to the prime minister that he cut the aid budget, and I am pleased that he accepted my advice.

It’s the fastest response I’ve ever had from the prime minister. However, he announced £13.4bn in additional defence spending yesterday. This morning, his defence secretary said the uplift is only £6bn. Which is the correct figure?

And Starmer replied:

I’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all.

I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance.

But, if you take the numbers for this financial year and then the numbers for the financial year 27/28 that’s £13.4bn increase. That is the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, which will put us in a position to ensure the security and defence of our country and of Europe.

Sometimes at PMQs a put-down is so forceful that the recipient can never come back. Badenoch responded by telling Starmer that “being patronising is not a substitute for answering questions”, but he had answered the question, or at least sort of (in the PMQs arena, a ‘sort of’ answer is sometimes all you need) and Badenoch is hardly the best person to lecture anyone about being patronising.

As the exchanges continued, Badenoch asked about the Chagos Islands deal, and whether this would funded with defence money. She should have focused on this earlier, because Starmer is unwilling to say it will have no impact on defence spending at all. But, by this point, it was too late. Starmer was home and dry.

Yesterday’s announcement seems to have landed quite well and that may explain why Starmer sounded a bit more chipper than usual. This was apparent in the way he was marginally more confident about distancing himself from President Trump. For the last few weeks No 10, and government ministers, have been performing elaborate verbal gymnatistics to avoid saying Trump is wrong about anything. But today, on President Zelenskyy (see 12.24pm) and Canada (see 12.29pm), Starmer sounded a bit more like a normal human being, willing to state the obvious.

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent

While Reform continues to poll significantly lower in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, first minster John Swinney was full-throated in his warning this morning that “the threat of the far right is very real” north of the border. (See 11.52am.)

Speaking to media at Bute House, his official residence in Edinburgh, Swinney said that he wanted to work with other political parties to protect the “norms and values we hold dear” and which he believes are “under vigorous threat from the politics of Farage”.

Despite the SNP’s traditional opposition to increased defence spending and continuing opposition to Trident, Swinney said he “understood” Keir Starmer’s moves to increase that spend though criticised aid budget cuts as “short-sighted”.

He said:

There is a very life and active threat to our security from the aggression of Russia and I think Farage is an accomplice to the Russian agenda and an apologist for the Russian agenda.

To anybody in this country who thinks that Farage represents a means of protecting this country from external threats that we face I would say have a good close look at what Farage has been connected with and what his MPs are saying about the Russian threat, their trivialisation of it.

It’s also hard to overstate how delighted Swinney is with the symbolism of passing his minority government’s budget with cross-party support that also bridges Holyrood’s constitutional divide.

I asked him how that partnership might apply to the 2026 Holyrood campaign and potentially as a means to prevent Reform acting as kingmaker – polling suggests that Reform could win up to 15 seats, overtaking the Scottish Lib Dems.

Swinney said he didn’t favour electoral pacts but that parties that shared “the same underpinning civic values” could “work together to marginalise that far-right sentiment and address the issues that might fuel it”.

He said that “locking out Farage” was his basis for appealing to wider Scotland “to come together with me to say we are going to do things in a way that makes sure our country is protected from the bigotry that Farage represents”.

Simon Hoare (Con) says Canada is a much loved member of the Commonwealth. He says the “childish nonsense” from President Trump about it becoming the 51st state of the US should be called out.

Starmer replies:

I thank you for raising this issue. UK and Canada are close allies and have been for a very long time with a partnership based on a shared history and a shared set of values and a determination to be an active force for good in the world.

We work closely with them on issues of the Commonwealth, on Nato and of course, five eyes intelligence sharing, but we will work to strengthen that relationship.

Kieran Mullan (Con) asks Starmer to explicity rule out using money from the defence budget for the Chagos Islands deal.

Starmer says the money announced yesterday was for the UK’s defence capability. He says when the Chagos Islands deal is finalised, he will put the costings to MPs.

Neil Hudson (Con) says President Zelenskyy is a wartime leader who, like Winston Churchill, had to suspend elections. He urges Stamer to invoke the spirit of Churchil when he goes to the US.

Starmer welcomes the question. He says Zelenskyy is “a democratically elected leader, and suspending elections was precisely what we did in this country when we were fighting in the second world war”.

This is an implicit rebuke to President Trump, who recently claimed Zelenskyy was a dictator, and who has backed the Kremlin’s call for Ukraine to hold a presidential election despite the fighting.

Badenoch asks if the new money will have to fund the Chagos Islands deal.

Starmer replies:

The additional spend I announced yesterday is for our capability on defence and security in Europe. As I made absolutely clear yesterday, the Chagos deal is extremely important for our security.

The US are rightly looking at it when it’s finalised, I’ll put it before the house with the costings.

The figures being bandied around are absolutely wild at the mark. The deal is well over a century.

But the funding I announced yesterday is for our capability to put ourselves in a position to rise to a generational challenge. That is what that money is all about.

PMQs is about to start.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has announced that he wants “mainstream Scotland” to unite behind the values of “decency, democracy and respect” to counter the rise of Reform UK.

Describing Nigel Farage’s party as “far-right”, Swinney said that Farage’s views on immigration are “based on a fundamentally racist view of the world”. He also described him as an “accomplice” and “apologist” for Russian actions in Ukraine.

Speaking at a news conference in Edinburgh, Swinney said:

The threat from the far right is real, but that leaves me all the more convinced that working together is not only the right choice, but the only choice …

More unites us than divides us. Now is the moment to make that real by uniting behind shared values, shared standards of behaviour and shared political norms, and unite against the rise of the far right.

Swinney said he would bring people together by convenining a meeting with leaders of Scotland’s parliamentary parties, as well as “representatives from civic society, from our churches, our trade unions, from our charities”. It will be held at the end of April, a year before the next Scottish election, he said.

I want us to work together to agree a common approach to asserting the values of our country, to bringing people together and creating a cohesive society where everyone feels at home …

It is time to come together, to draw a line in the sand, to set out who we are and what we believe in, because a politics of fear is a politics of despair …

It is a mobilisation of mainstream Scotland that delivered our parliament a quarter of a century ago, and I have no doubt it is by mobilising mainstream Scotland that we can protect those things that we care about the most.

Asked explicitly if he was referring to Reform UK when he talked about the far right in his opening statement, Swinney replied: “Yes, of course.” He went on:

I want to work with other political parties to set out clearly and boldly to the public what we can agree on as the norms and the values of our society and how we can protect those because I think they are under threat, I think they’re under very, very vigorous threat, from the politics of Farage.

Asked why he was describing Farage as far-right, Swinney replied:

Farage has been for years leading the argument which has been hostile to migration. And I think it’s based on a fundamentally racist view of the world. I reject that. I think migration is an advantage for Scotland.

And he also accused Farage of being too sympathetic to Russia.

There is a very live and active threat to our security from the aggression of Russia, and I think Farage is an accomplice to the Russian agenda and an apologist for the Russian agenda.

So to anybody in this country who thinks that Farage represents a means of protecting this country from the external threats that we face, I would say, have a good close look at what Farage has been connected with and what his MPs are saying about the Russian threat and their trivialisation of the Russian threat.

Asked if he was saying that anyone who voted for Reform UK, or who was considering voting for the party, was far-right, Swinney said that he understood why voters were angry. But turning to Farage was “the wrong choice”, he replied. He went on:

I’m simply making the point today that it’s important that those of us who are repulsed by the politics of Farage and the far right come together to … stress the importance of the values that we hold dear.

Reform UK denies being a far-right party. But some of the views expressed by Reform UK MPs do fit a description of far-right politics used by academics, and the party is closely aligned with Donald Trump, who is undoubtedly far-right.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has declined to say whether money to fund the Chagos Islands deal will come from the Ministry of Defence budget.

The government has agreed to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, on condition that the UK retains effective control over Diego Garcia, the site of a UK/US airbase, for at least 99 years. The UK will reportedly pay Mauritius £90m a year for the lease.

In an interview with Times Radio, asked if the extra money announced for defence included money for the Chagos Islands deal, Healey replied:

No. This is about our defence spending. It’s about our mainstream defence budget...As far as the Chagos Islands go, that’s a deal that’s in the pipeline. It’s not yet signed and not yet ratified in any treaty that will be necessary before parliament.

But, in an interview with LBC, asked what would happen when the deal is ratified, and whether at that point the Chagos Islands payments might have to come from the defence budget, Healey said he was “not going to get into hypotheticals”.

The Tories claim that abandoning the Chagos Islands deal would free up more money for defence. The government says, without a deal, there is a risk a binding international legal ruling could soon lead to the UK losing sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, which would make maintaining the Diego Garcia base much harder.

The Lords chief whip, Roy Kennedy, took part in one of the events at the centre of an apparent cash-for-access venture revealed by the Guardian. Henry Dyer and Rob Evans have the story, which is the latest in a long series of reports we are publishing about the outcome of an investigation into the business interests of peers.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has said that it was “wrong” for Keir Starmer to slash aid spending to fund a bigger defence budget.

Asked about yesterday’s announcement by the UK government, Swinney told reporters at his press conference.

I understand that the importance the prime minister attaches to increasing [defence] expenditure to ensure that we can deal with the threats that we face as a society. But I think the choices that have been made about slashing international aid are the wrong choices. They are shortsighted because … the principles of international aid are about trying to address some of the fundamental issues about inequality within our world, which, if we do not address them through international development aid, these issues will come back to be a challenge and a difficulty for us.

In an interview with Times Radio this morning, John Healey, the defence secretary, welcomed the news that the US and Ukraine are likely to sign a rare earth minerals deal on Friday.

Asked about the reports, Healey said:

In the end, that detail’s a matter for the two countries, and we’ll see the detail emerge, but peace is part of a process.

We’re at an early stage, and if this helps shape the long-term peace that’s required in Ukraine, then that’s a good thing.

Here is Andrew Roth’s story for the Guardian about the potential deal.

Yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies criticised Keir Starmer for saying that increase in defence spending would be worth £13.4bn a year from 2027. They pointed out that you can only get to this figure by assuming that defence spending would have been frozen in cash terms (instead of going up every year), which is unrealistic. It would be more accurate to describe the extra spending as worth about £6bn a year, the IFS said.

This morning, asked about the £13.4bn figure on BBC Breakfast, John Healey, the defence secretary, confirmed that £6bn was the “real terms” figure for the rise in defence spending.

Referring to the £13.4bn cited by the PM, Healey said:

Yes, that’s a cash number. If you did it in real terms, taking in inflation, it would be something over £6bn. Either way, this is a big boost for defence. It’s an increase in defence spending.

It will allow us to strengthen our armed forces, it will allow us to use defence as an engine for driving economic growth in this country so we can put a long-term industrial plan in place to boost British jobs, to boost British businesses and technology.

In response, James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said the government needed to produce “clarity”. He posted this on social media.

Yesterday the PM said defence spending was rising by £13.4bn. Today his Defence Secretary says £6bn. Which is it?

@KemiBadenoch was only given a redacted version of the PM’s statement before he spoke, missing all the figures. Transparency matters & we urgently need clarity.

In fact, we don’t “urgently need clarity”. We have clarity; £6bn is the more accurate figure.

Good morning. At Westminster MPs are still absorbing the implications of Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey have all the details in their overnight story.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and he has faced a lot of questions about whether this announcement was entirely about pleasing Donald Trump. “No, it’s not,” he told Sky News. Healey pointed out that raising defence spending by 2.5% of GDP was a Labour manifesto commitment. (That’s true, but the manifesto did not say it would happen by 2027 – or that aid spending would be cut to fund it.)

But Healey did not try to pretend that the timing of the announcement was unrelated to the fact that Starmer has his first meeting with Trump since the inauguration in the White House tomorrow. “President Trump, over the last two weeks, has been very direct in his challenge,” Healey said.

For Starmer, committing to higher defence spending ahead of the Washington visit is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the meeting to be a success.

But slashing aid spending is a hard ask for anyone in the Labour party, and particularly for David Lammy. As foreign secretary, he now controls the international aid budget (because Boris Johnson abolished DfID and made it part of the Foreign Office) and earlier this month Lammy told the Guardian that Trump’s decision to tear up the US aid budget was a “big strategic mistake”. (Lammy was talking to Pippa Crerar about three weeks ago; presumably he would not have said what he did if he knew what was coming in the UK, and so this fits with reports that No 10 only started working up the aid cuts plan about two weeks ago.) Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, posted this on social media yesterday about Lammy’s plight.

This is unfortunate. Lammy self evidently not been able to protect the foreign office budget since only weeks ago urged the US not to cut its aid budget saying it would be a big strategic mistake. By cutting to 0.3% of GDP, the UK, once an aid superpower, joins Italy in the G7 in being one of the least generous of industrialised countries. Fear of Reform, and Trump, drives No 10’s and Treasury choices.

But Lammy has written an article for the Guardian defending the move. It is not clear yet which aspects of the aid budget will be cut the most to fund the extra defence spending, but Lammy says projects in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan will be protected.

To make this [higher defence spending] commitment, and stick within our fiscal rules, we have had to make the extremely difficult decision to lower our spending on international development. As the prime minister said, we do not pretend any of this is easy. This is a hard choice that no government – let alone a Labour government – makes lightly. I am proud of our record on international development. It helps address global challenges from health to migration, contributes to prosperity, and supports the world’s most vulnerable people. It grows both our soft power and our geopolitical clout, while improving lives. For all of those reasons, this government remains committed to reverting spending on overseas aid to 0.7% of gross national income when the fiscal conditions allow.

But we are a government of pragmatists not ideologues – and we have had to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security.

As we reduce the overseas aid budget, we will protect the most vital programmes in the world’s worst conflict zones of Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. But there can be no hiding from the fact that many programmes doing vital work will have to be put on hold. The work of making further tough choices about programmes will proceed at pace over the weeks and months ahead, but our core priorities will remain the same. My vision for a reformed Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office fit for this more contested and dangerous world, in which diplomacy is more important than ever, remains paramount.

Here is the full article.

And here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Water company bosses give evidence to the Commons environment committee.

9.40am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, holds a press conference.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, makes a statement to MPs about the government’s response to the recommendations from the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire.

After 1.30pm: MPs begin a debate on a Conservative party motion criticising the impact of government tax policies on families busineses. Later there will be a debate on a second Tory motion on the Chagos Islands.

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