Keir Starmer has spoken to the Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba today, No 10 said. In a readout of the call, a Downing Street spokesperson said:

On trade, the leaders agreed that a trade war does not benefit anyone, and that now is the time for a cool, calm and pragmatic approach.

They agreed on the importance of likeminded partners such as the UK and Japan to work closely together to lower trade barriers. Through trading blocs such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and working bilaterally, there are many options to accelerate growth.

The number of businesses reporting a cybersecurity breach or attack in the last 12 months has fallen slightly compared with the previous year, PA Media reports. PA says:

The annual Cyber Security Breaches Survey, published by the Home Office, found that 43% of businesses and 30% of charities had experienced a breach or attack in the last year, which for businesses was down from 50% last year.

The report said the decrease was down to fewer small businesses reporting attacks, but warned that the prevalence of breaches among medium and large businesses remained high.

According to the figures, it was estimated that the average cost of the most disruptive breach for each business in the last 12 months was £1,600 for businesses and £3,240 for charities.

Cyber attacks on businesses and infrastructure have become increasingly common, and the government has unveiled plans to introduce new legislation – the cyber security and resilience bill – designed to compel firms to beef up their cyber defences and better protect the UK from the growing threat.

Hospitals in England will receive unlimited “incentive payments” to remove people they decide do not need treatment from their waiting lists amid warnings that thousands of patients most in need are still facing unacceptable delays, Andrew Gregory reports.

Jessica Murray is the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent.

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, has urged striking bin workers in Birmingham to accept an “improved” deal, as she met volunteers clearing rubbish that has piled up on the city’s streets since workers commenced an all-out strike last month.

Rayner and the local government minister, Jim McMahon, visited Birmingham today to meet staff involved in clearing the backlog and volunteers clearing up their area. Rayner said:

The people of Birmingham are our first priority – this dispute is causing misery and disruption to residents and the backlog must be dealt with quickly to address public health risks.

She said the government was working with Birmingham city council to “accelerate clearing the backlog and rapidly improve the situation on the ground”, while neighbouring local authorities were providing additional vehicles and crews.

I have pressed both sides to negotiate at pace to urgently find a resolution. There is now a better offer on the table and I would urge Unite to suspend the action and accept the improved deal so we achieve fairness for both workers and residents of this city.

The Times has reported there are internal ructions within Unite, which is representing the striking workers, over the justification of the strikes, with one union source describing the action as “vexatious”. The council has stated just 17 workers will see their pay affected, which Unite has disputed.

More than 100 refuse collection vehicles, staffed by agency workers, have been placed on extended shifts each day as the council ramps up efforts to clear piles of rubbish in the city.

On Tuesday, the health secretary Wes Streeting said the situation was “not good for public health” and said he thought the “dispute had escalated way out of hand”.

The Green MP Siân Berry has said reopening Doncaster Sheffield airport does not make economic sense. In posts on social media, she said:

Reopening Doncaster airport makes no economic sense. It was deemed no longer financially viable in 2022 with airlines choosing to fly from the three airports that lie within 60 miles of Doncaster. How long before it closes again, and more jobs are lost?

This Govt should invest in improving transport links between Doncaster, the East Midlands, Manchester and Leeds, to generate sustainable jobs and a way to reach them with reliable, green public transport, as well as helping people access existing airports for existing flights.

Berry also posted a link to a Yorkshire Post leader article expressing doubts about the plan. It says:

The big question now will be whether the airport can be a financial success in the hands of the public sector.

DSA made losses in every financial year of its operation between 2005 and 2022 under private ownership, collectively adding up to almost £180m.

Council officials have said they believe they can attract up to five airlines to use DSA and quadruple its previous freight traffic figures. It now appears they will get the opportunity to turn that vision into a reality.

Keir Starmer has rejected a suggestion that President Trump is not taking his calls over tariffs.

In an interview with ITV’s Carl Dinnen, who asked if Starmer had spoken to Trump since the president imposed 10% tariff on all British exports to the US, Starmer said his team was talking to Trump’s “every day”, discussing what could be done to reduce the tariffs.

When Dinnen put it to the PM that it sounded as though Trump was not taking his calls, Starmer replied:

No, not at all.

You have to understand that, for the UK and the US, our teams talk all of the time, whether that’s on defence, on security, on intelligence and on trade, on a deal. So that is constantly going on. That’s what you’d expect of two very close allies.

But, at the same time, I’m clear that this is a change which isn’t, in my view, temporary, and therefore we’ve got to do the hard yards of making sure we’re turbocharging our own economy … also talking to to other world leaders about what we can do to lower trade barriers.

ITV has posted the clip on social media.

Today Keir Starmer has been publicising two potentially popular government announcements.

First, the government is backing plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport.

According to the news release, the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government is supporting the decision by Oliver Coppard, the South Yorkshire mayor, “to invest £30m devolved funding in critical infrastructure to support the creation of a sustainable aviation hub, propelling regional prosperity and driving private investment into Yorkshire”. Starmer put it more bluntly on social media:

As part of our Plan for Change, Doncaster Sheffield Airport will re-open: turbocharging economic growth and putting money back in the pockets of working people across communities like Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley.

Doncaster is one of the six places in England where mayoral elections are taking place on 1 May. Labour won easily four years ago, but Reform UK is hoping to do well in this contest.

And, second, the Home Office has announced details of new rules to beef up neighbourhood policing. Starmer has been talking about those this afternoon. (See 3.19pm.)

You may wonder why this is allowed. Under so-called “purdah” rules, the government is supposed to hold off announcing anything party political during an election campaign. It is allowed to carry on governing, but it is not supposed to use government resources to announce things (like new airports) that might confer electoral advantage.

The dates are not fixed. A Commons library briefing note says:

For UK and devolved government departments the pre-election period for local elections is not fixed to any particular date. The general convention is that special care should be taken in the three weeks preceding the elections. For local elections in England in 2025 that is 10 April to 1 May.

The Doncaster Sheffield airport announcement, and the neighbourhood policing announcement, were both dated 9 April.

In a news release issued overnight the Home Office announced that “every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have dedicated teams who will spend their time on the beat with guaranteed police patrols in town centres and other hotspot areas at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights”.

On a visit to Cambridge, Keir Starmer has gone a bit further, saying that 3,000 of the 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs (police community support officers) that the government is pledged to recruit by the end of this parliaemnt will be in place by March next year.

Addressing police officers, Starmer said:

I want you to have the tools that you need to do the job that we ask you to do.

With our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we’ll deliver 13,000 new neighbourhood officers by 2029.

And today I can announce the first step, 3,000 new neighbourhood officers by the start of next year – all of them visible, on the beat and serving their communities, not stuck behind a desk, or taken away to plug shortages from elsewhere.

And from this July, so a few months time, every neighbourhood will have a named contactable officer.

They’ll have guaranteed police patrols in town centres and hot spots, particularly at peak times like Friday and Saturday nights.

People will be able to go online and measure how their local neighbourhood team is performing. There will be a range of ways for local residents and businesses to raise their concerns and to demand change from their neighbourhood policing team.

Nigel Farage has rebuffed a suggestion from Kemi Badenoch that Conservative and Reform UK councillors could form coalitions in town halls after the local elections, Eleni Courea reports. The Reform leader said his party had “no intention” of forming coalitions with the Tories at any level after 1 May.

The Conservatives have accused the government of doing a U-turn over grooming gang inquiries.

In a press notice headed “Conservative response to Labour’s grooming gangs U-turn”, prompted by Yvette Cooper’s comments this morning (see 12.17pm), Katie Lam, the shadow Home Office minister, said:

The government thought that they could quietly cancel these inquiries on the last day of parliament.

The public is rightly outraged and now ministers are panicking, making it up as they go along.

The Telford inquiry alone cost £8m. How exactly are they going to hold “more than five” proper independent inquiries for only £5m?

And how many more than five? Why not fifty? Why shouldn’t all victims get the justice that they deserve?

Will local councils — many of which stand accused of covering up these vile crimes — still be able to choose whether they are investigated?

We need a national inquiry. And any local inquiries must be genuinely independent and properly funded. Until the government can commit to that, these announcements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

The claim that there has been a U-turn is based on the gap between Cooper’s comments today (she said “we’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action”, and claimed there could be more than five inquires) and Jess Phillips’ comments on Tuesday (when she did not cancel the local inquiries, but did suggest the whole process was being slowed or watered down).

An alternative theory (likely to appeal to Danny Shaw – see 1.27pm) would be that, having overstated the significance of what Phillips said on Tuesday, the Tories have now backed away from saying the local rape gang inquiries have been cancelled.

In Brussels John Healey, the defence secretary, has opened a meeting of defence minister from the 30 countries that are part of the UK/France-led “coalition of the willing” making military plans to help guarantee the security of Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.

In remarks that were broadcast live, Healey said:

Our plans are well developed, and we have clear objectives for Ukraine.

First, to secure safe skies.

Second, to secure safe seas.

Third, to support a peace on the land.

And fourth, to support the Ukrainian armed forces to become their own strongest possible deterrent.

Our reassurance force for Ukraine would be a committed and credible security arrangement to ensure that any negotiated peace does bring what President Trump has pledged – a lasting peace for Ukraine.

Healey said the ministers would be briefed by the British and French defence chiefs. They would focus on “how operational planning of the coalition could work, and how we make sure that we’re fully prepared for the moment a peace agreement is reached”.

But the war is continuing, he said. Support for Ukraine must continue. And he said many of those attending today would be at tomorrow’s meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, when they would pledge more military support to bolster Ukraine on the battlefield.

Healey ended:

There are 30 countries here today, 30 countries bound by a simple belief – that peace is possible and we must be ready for when that peace comes.

That’s why the work of this coalition is so vital. We’re stepping up. We’re serious.

Jakub Krupa is covering the meeting in more detail on his Europe live blog.

The Cabinet Office will shrink in size by about a third, with about 1,200 jobs to go and another 900 transferred to other departments, Rowena Mason reports.

The number of migrants applying for key visa routes to the UK has dropped by more than third in a year, PA Media reports. PA says:

Applications covering a total of 772,200 people were submitted across the main visa categories in the year to March 2025, down 37% from nearly 1.24 million in the previous 12 months, Home Office data shows.

The decline is likely to reflect changes in legal migration rules introduced early in 2024 by the previous Conservative government, including a ban on overseas care workers and students bringing family dependents, and a steep rise in the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.

The figures have been published by the Home Office and cover the main worker, study and family visa categories.

The drop has been driven by a sharp fall in applications by foreign health and care workers and their family members, which decreased by 78% from 359,300 in 2023/24 to 80,700 in 2024/25.

There was an even steeper fall in applications by family members of those wanting to come to the UK on a sponsored study visa, down 83%, though the number of main applicants for this visa dropped by just 11%.

The previous government introduced a change in January 2024 that stopped students bringing family members apart from those studying postgraduate research courses or those with government-funded scholarships.

Researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Dr Ben Brindle, said: “The tightening of immigration rules under the previous government has led to a sharp decline in visa applications over the past year.

“This was driven primarily by a fall in applications from health and care workers and students’ family members – most of whom now cannot come to the UK.

“Main applications from health and care workers also fell, possibly reflecting fewer vacancies and government focus on exploitation in the sector.

But Dr Brindle said that applications from migrants recruited for jobs outside health and care had fallen less than expected, and that with the increase in salary thresholds “it appears that many employers are simply paying workers more”.

And here are three graphs from the Home Office report illustrating the figures.

Keir Starmer has said the government will not just “sit back and hope” in response to President Trump’s tariff policies.

In his first public remarks since President Trump abruptly U-turned on his tariffs policy last night, Starmer said the government would “rise to the moment”.

Starmer did not criticise directly Trump over his policies, and he did not give any fresh detail as to how the government would respond. Over the last week or so he has repeatedly said that the world is entering a new economic era and that, in response, the government must redouble efforts to protect UK industry, boost growth and strengthen trade links with like-minded, free trade economies.

Speaking to reporters at an event in Doncaster, Starmer said:

This government is ambitious for Britain.

I’m not going to stand here and pretend that tariffs are good news. That is not true, and you wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but just as we’ve seen recently on defence and security across Europe, and with Ukraine, they do make one thing very clear, and that is that the world is changing, and we as a country must change with it.

In other words, we’ve got to rise to the moment here, recognise where our future lies, renew Britain and deliver security for working people.

Starmer also said his Labour administration was “not a government that’s just going to sit back and hope” but would deliver “fundamental change”.

Ian Duncan, a Conservative peer, helped to secure a meeting with a minister for a Canadian company he was advising while it was seeking government funding worth millions of pounds, Rob Evans and Henry Dyer report.

During her BBC Breakfast interview Kemi Badenoch claimed that the government has dropped the plans for five local inquiries into grooming gang, or child rape scandals, that were announced in January. As she was trying to fend of the questions about Adolescence, she said:

One of the things that I’m more bothered by is the fact that just yesterday, we had Labour telling us that they’re not going to be investigating the rape gang scandal, something which had happened all across the country. That’s real. That’s happening right now. We’re not talking about that.

And, in a subsequent interview with Sky News, she suggested that some sort of cover up was going on. She said:

I am absolutely astonished that Labour has dropped what it said it would do in January. And, as I said to Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions, if he did not have a full national inquiry, people will start to think that there is a cover-up.

They are clearly uncomfortable with having inquiries that are looking into this issue.

They said that they will have a pot of money for councils to bid in. But why would a council bid for money to investigate itself?

(Badenoch may have forgotten that the grooming gang inquiry story only became a big media controversy in January after GB News reported that the government had rejected a request from Oldham council for a public inquiry into the grooming gang scandal in the town in the past.)

Other Tories have also claimed Starmer is engaged in a cover-up. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, posed this on social media last night.

As a rule I believe in mess ups rather than conspiracy.

But if true that Labour have shelved even the most limited public enquiries into grooming gangs, it does suggest that powerful Labour politicians have something to hide.

Why not seek the truth?

The Conservatives have been claiming that the five local rape gang inquiries have been dropped on the basis of what Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, told MPs in a statement on Tuesday. Phillips did not say the inquiries were being dropped. But she could not report any progress being made towards setting them up, and she set out what sounded like a lengthy process that might lead to inquiries turning into victims’ panels. She said:

We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We will publish the details next month.

Alongside that, we will set out the process through which local authorities can access the £5m national fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs. Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases.

Today, in an interview with LBC, Yvette Cooper rejected claims that plans for the local inquiries were being watered down. She said:

There’s a huge information about this. This is completely wrong. We’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action being taken on this.

Child sexual exploitation, grooming gangs – these are some of the most vile crimes, things like rape or exploitation, coercion. We’re increasing the action against that.

So we’ve already set out one local inquiry – that will be in Oldham. We’re drawing up the framework at the moment for the further local inquiries. We’ve got the Louise Casey audit that’s underway at the moment.

Asked if the five local inquiries promised in January would go ahead, she replied: “Yes, there may be more.”

Even though some of the worst grooming gangs scandals were happening up to 20 years ago, and even thought there have been multiple prosecutions and inquiries into these crimes over the past decade or more, the Conservatives and Reform UK are picking up significant public and media support with their argument that the full truth is being withheld and further inquiries are needed.

According to Sky News, Phillips plans to hold a briefing for Labour MPs worried about this issue at 5pm this afternoon.

Kemi Badenoch is often quite a tetchy interviewee, and on BBC Breakfast this morning things got a bit awkward when the presenters, Naga Munchetty and Charlie Steyt, asked her if she had watched the Netflix TV drama Adolescence yet.

In a previous interview earlier this month, asked about the series, Badenoch got into trouble because she ended up spouting a conspiracy theory. She did not do that today, but she did say she still has not watched the show, adding: “I probably won’t.”

When Munchetty suggested she should, because “everyone is talking about it” and it was prompting conversations about masculinity, smartphone use and misogyny, Badenoch replied:

I think that those are all important issues, and those were issues that I’ve been talking about for a long time.

But in the same way that I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on. It’s a fictional series. It is not a documentary.

Munchetty and Steyt persisted, suggesting that Badenoch should watch the story, and for some reason Steyt was particularly bothered by her comparing Adolescence to Casualty. Did she really mean that? Badenoch replied:

I’m saying very clearly that my job is not to watch lots of TV. My job is to get out there and make sure that I’m talking about the issues that are happening in the country right now.

Other journalists are more sympathetic. This is what Duncan Robinson, political editor of the Economist, said about this on social media.

Badenoch in the right. Stop basing public policy on telly

The Liberal Democrats have claimed that the Tories and Reform UK have “merged in all but name” with Kemi Badenoch as Conservative leader. In a statement responding to Badenoch’s BBC Breakfast interview (see 9.34am), Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, said:

Badenoch may have ruled out at a pact with Farage but the reality is the Conservatives and Reform have merged in all but name under her leadership.

You couldn’t put a cigarette paper between Badenoch and Farage when it comes to their policies. It’s clear the Conservatives have totally abandoned the centre ground.

The NHS England news release on today’s monthly performanc figures focuses on the fact that 3.1m “additional appointments” have taken place since the general election. It says:

The NHS has delivered more than 3.1 million additional appointments since July 2024 and hit the ambitious faster diagnosis standard for cancer, new figures show today.

Monthly performance data shows that there were more than 3.1 million additional appointments delivered in the seven months from July 2024 (3,106,424 elective operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests up until January 2025) meaning that the overall waiting list fell for the sixth month in a row in February.

The backlog dropped to 7.4 million with a reduction of 26,000 compared to the previous month. The estimated number of patients waiting in February stands at 6.24 million.

Thanks to the efforts of NHS staff, more than four fifths (80.2%) of people received the all clear or a definitive cancer diagnosis within four weeks – the highest proportion on record.

And it quotes Wes Streeting, the health secretary, saying:

We made a promise to the British public that we would create 2 million more appointments for patients in our first year – today we’ve already dwarfed this target and have reached 3.1 million additional appointments in the first 6 months.

Today’s data also shows we have cut the waiting list for the sixth month in a row, by a total 219,000 since July, with fewer patients waiting over 18 weeks which can have significant benefits on their health outcomes.

The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen for the sixth month in a row, PA Media reports. PA says:

An estimated 7.40 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of February, relating to 6.24 million patients – down from 7.43 million treatments and 6.25 million patients at the end of January, NHS England says.

The list hit a record high in September 2023, with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.

This chart from today’s NHS England release shows how the waiting list has grown over the past decade.

Navigating England’s “complex” health and care system is “extremely difficult” and carers and patients are experiencing burnout, distress and harm as a result, a damning report says. Andrew Gregory has the story.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, was the government voice on the morning news shows. As Rajeev Syal, Mimi Ibrahim and Vikram Dodd report, she is announcing that police officers on foot will patrol every busy neighbourhood in England and Wales at peak times.

But, inevitably, she was asked about the government’s reaction to President Trump’s tariffs U-turn last night. In line with standard No 10 policy, she did not criticise the president. “We are not keeping a running commentary on different trade negotiations, on the different approaches that other governments are taking,” she said. But she did argue that the U-turn (my term, not hers) vindicated Keir Starmer’s decision to respond in a calm and considered way to what Trump has been doing. She told the Today programme:

I think it just actually reinforces the strategy and the approach that we’re taking, which is to be pragmatic, to take this steady course rather than to get buffeted around from day to day or getting into the sort of running commentaries and reactions.

Gordon Brown has called for an “economic coalition of the willing” to respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs with coordinated economic policies, including a reduction of interest rates, Jessica Elgot reports. Here is her news story.

Here is Brown’s Guardian article making this argument.

And here is an extract.

On Monday, Keir Starmer warned that the world will never be the same again, and reminded us that “attempting to manage crises without fundamental change just leads to managed decline”. He is right. As I learned in the financial crisis of 2008, global problems require globally coordinated solutions. We need a bold, international response that measures up to the scale of the emergency. In the same way that, to his great credit, the prime minister has been building a coalition in defence of Ukraine, we need an economic coalition of the willing: like-minded global leaders who believe that, in an interdependent world, we have to coordinate economic policies across continents if we are to safeguard jobs and living standards.

The immediate challenge is to mitigate the supply-side shocks caused by the Trump tariff wall. As Rachel Reeves is proposing, we need to keep world trade moving. No two crises are ever the same, but offering extended credit to exporting and importing firms was central to the global response as trade collapsed in 2009. We also have to remind China that if it is to present itself as a champion of free trade, it is in its interests to focus more on expanding domestic consumption than flooding the world’s markets with cut-price goods it cannot now sell in the US.

Good morning. There are three weeks until the local elections in England and, with parliament in recess, the party leaders have time for campaigning out of London. While the main conversation is still dominated by President Trump and his erratic global tariffs policy – Graeme Wearden has the latest developments on his business live blog – there are other things to talk about, and Kemi Badenoch has just given an interview to BBC Breakfast where she condoned Tory councillors doing deals with Reform UK to control local authorities if they do not win a majority.

Asked if she would rule out any deals, at national or local level, between the Conservative party and Reform UK, Badenoch replied:

I have said categorically that I’m not doing deals with Reform. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party. When someone says they want to destroy you, don’t invite them into your house and ask to do a deal.

At local level, we end up with various coalitions. I’ve seen Conservatives go into coalition with Labour, with Liberal Democrats, with independents. You don’t get to have a rerun of an election at local level.

So what I’m telling local leaders across the country is they have to do what is right for the people in their area, and they must stick to conservative principles, make sure that they’re not compromising on our values and on the things that we believe in – sound money, for example, not excessive government intervention.

So local leaders are voted by the people in a particular community. They will have to make the choice about what is right for their councils.

But at national level, no, I was not made leader of the Conservative party to give it away to Reform.

In one respect this is just a statement of normal practice. At local authority level it is not unusual for parties without an overall majority to govern in alliance with other parties – sometimes via a formal coalition, or sometimes via some form of “confidence and supply” deal that involves not voting down the budget.

But national party leaders are normally a bit coy when it comes to approving these arrangements, and under Keir Starmer Labour HQ has sometimes vetoed council pacts with other parties. Badenoch’s comments will give credibility to the Labour claim that Badenoch’s party and Nigel Farage’s are closely aligned. Labour has revealed that 60 Reform UK council candidates are defectors from the Conservative party. And last week Labour ran an online advert saying:

Reform and the Tories are closer than you think. No plans, no solutions, just more chaos.

Labour is bringing change to Britain. Vote Labour on Thursday 1 May.

It was accompanied by this image.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.

9.30am: The Home Office is publishing its annual report on cyber breaches.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, are on a visit to promote plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is doing visits in the north of England.

11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is on a campaign visit in Derbyshire. In the afternoon he will be in Staffordshire.

Early afternoon: Starmer is on a visit in Cambridgeshire with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to promote the government’s plans for more foot patrols by police at busy times.

2pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu chair a meeting in Brussels of defence ministers from the 30-odd “coalition of the willing” countries offering to help guarantee Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal.

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