Greater Manchester offers a model for Britain as to how public services should be delivered and improved, Andy Burnham has said.

In a speech today at the Institute for Government, Burnham said that his city showed why combined authority mayoralties were the best way of delivering services locally. At the heart of this was “a place-first approach”.

The push for elected mayors started when Tony Blair was prime minister, but the concept was extended under the coalition and Conservative governments, with mayors being elected to run combined authorities – not just a single town or city, but a wider area, incorporating several local authorities.

In 2017 Burnham was the first person to be elected Greater Manchester mayor and his combined authority, which covers 10 boroughs, is the most powerful outside London.

In his speech, Burnham paid tribute to George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, and Sir Howard Bernstein, the former Manchester city chief executive, for their work on the devolution deal that gave his authority its powers.

It had been a great success, he argued.

Since Greater Manchester and the UK government signed the first devolution deal a decade ago, our city-region has been the fastest-growing in the UK, with average annual growth of 3.1% over the last 10 years and the highest productivity growth.

The jury is in: the combined authority model of English devolution, pioneered by Greater Manchester, works. The scale of the achievement is all the more significant when you consider this was a decade of Brexit, Covid and all the shocks since …

The signature achievement is the successful introduction of a new, integrated public transport system, the Bee Network.

But just as significant, although less visible to the public, is the unique, highly-integrated model of public services built in close partnership with the private sector, our universities and the community and voluntary sector. I think we have the most integrated system of public services anywhere in the country.

The Labour government wants to extend the combined authority mayoral model and Burnham said this this approach was right.

In the mayoral combined authority model, the country has stumbled upon the game-changer that the British state has long needed.

It allows a coherent, whole-place approach and, if used properly, could provide the roadmap to a more streamlined and financially sustainable state, breaking down silos, joining the dots around people and places and, in the process, securing more value for public money. Particularly in an era when it is scarce.

And he said a “place-first approach” was at the crucial to making this work.

Combined authorities work best when they operate on the principle of place-first rather than party-first.

Unlike the divisions of party, place is a unifying force. However people vote, they are united by a desire to see the place where they live move forward.

These days, we are lacking things which unite us in common cause. If places have more agency, and a sense of forward direction, and those places are likely to be more cohesive and less divided.

A place-first approach also creates the right conditions for businesses to invest. It creates a long-term stability in direction that Westminster is simply not set up to provide.

Eleni Courea is a Guardian political correspondent.

Lord Hermer, the attorney general, has criticised MPs who make personal attacks on judges.

Giving evidence to the joint committee on human rights, Hermer said that it was “dangerous” to have a culture where judges are singled out for personal attack, not just on social media but in the House of Commons too.

Hermer seemed to be referring particularly to Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who yesterday in effect called for Lord Justice William Davis, an appeal court judge, to be sacked as chair of the Sentencing Council.

But Keir Starmer has also been criticised recently for condemning a judicial decision in the Commons.

Hermer told the committee:

We are entering a dangerous moment in which not simply on social media but indeed on the floor of the House of Commons, people are attacking judges on a personal basis. That is entirely unacceptable and creates a huge threat to the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

Jenrick, who led attacks on the Sentencing Council over guidelines that he described as amounting to “two-tier justice”, told MPs yesterday that he did not see how Davis could continue in office “given that he has brought [the council] into total disrepute”. Jenrick asked Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, if she would sack him.

During the exchanges yesterday, another Conservative, John Hayes, said that all members of the Sentencing Council should resign, and a third Tory, Desmond Swayne, said that Lady Sue Carr, the lady chief justice, should be “rebuked” for her “impertinence”.

He was referring to Carr writing a letter to the PM saying that Keir Starmer, and Kemi Badenoch, were wrong to criticise a decision in an immigration case (without naming the judge involved). Carr said that the government should respect the rule of law and, if it disagreed with a judicial decision, it should appeal it in the courts.

Under the last government ministers were given official legal advice encouraging them to approve policies that might have been unlawful, Lord Hermer, the attorney general, has said.

Hermer made the point in evidence to the joint committee on human rights this afternoon as he explained why he had revised the advice.

He said he had not changed the substance of what the advice said. But he had changed the tone, to prevent ministers being misled, he said. As PA Media reports, he explained:

There is nothing substantively new in the revised guidance that I put out.

The reason I brought it in as a revised guidance, without changing the substance but changing to some degree the tone, is because I had a very real concern on entering government as attorney that a practice had developed in which lawyers were being asked to advise ministers as to whether there was a ‘respectable legal argument’ to support the policy or piece of legislation they wanted to introduce.

Hermer said “respectable legal argument” means something is highly likely to be unlawful but not “so bad you’d be struck off”. He went on:

My fear is that it was the default position and ministers were thinking it was respectable without realising it was highly likely to be unlawful.

Hermer said he changed the rules to give ministers an “unvarnished assessment” of the legal risk. He said the threshold “remains exactly the same” but he replaced the word “respectable” with “tenable” to reflect a “change in tone”.

There have been reports claiming some ministers blame Hermer for stopping them introducing bold policies by issuing over-cautious legal advice. But Hermer told the committee he did not accept this.

I don’t think in any sense that is blocking or slowing up a government that wants to abide by the rule of law and ministers who want to abide by the ministerial code.

When Suella Braverman was attorney general, she reportedly changed the guidance to government lawyers to make it easier for ministers to put forward policies which were at risk of being found unlawful by the courts.

In his evidence Hermer also defended the government’s decision to review the way the courts apply article 8 of ECHR when deciding whether migrants should have the right to remain in the UK. I have beefed up the post on this at 3.15pm to include quotes from him about how he thinks article 8 cases are frequently misreported.

Reeves says the government will respond to the Trump tariffs in a calm way. She says he met big exporters this morning, and they support this approach too.

She says “the prize on offer is an economic agreement” and businesses do not want the government to do anything that would put this at risk.

John Glen (Con) goes next.

Q: At our last hearing you said you would make strong representations to the US government about the importance of free trade. How successful have those been?

Reeves says she has spoken to her opposite number, Scott Bessent, and Jonathan Reynolds has had meeting with his counterparts.

Talks on a trade deal are underway, she says.

Q: But it’s fair to say the consequences of what has already been announced are signficiant. The OBR forecast does not take into account any of the tariffs already imposed. Your headroom is very modest. And yesterday the OBR told us that further tariffs, in line with the car ones, will knock out your headroom. Are you still ruling out further taxes?

Reeves says she said the last budget was a once-in-a-generation tax increase.

Q: So you are ruling out further tax rises?

Reeves says she will not write future budgets in advance. She goes on:

I can assure the committee I will not need to repeat a budget on that scale because we have now wiped the slate clean and put our public finances on a firm footing.

The 2024 budget raised taxes by about £25bn.

At the weekend Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said she was reviewing how the courts apply article 8 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), the right to private and family life, when deciding whether migrants should have the right to remain in the UK.

In evidence to the joint committee on human rights this afternoon, Lord Hermer, the attorney general, said it was “entirely right” to conduct a review like this.

Hermer said there has been a number of decisions at immigration tribunals on the basis of article 8 that are “capable of suggesting that it is not being applied properly or appropriately”. He went on

I want to make clear in all my comments about decisions of any court that I am categorically not criticising judges.

I think there is real merit in checking that article 8 is being properly understood and applied, because, as I’ve said, you can have a very, very robust but fair process in asylum and immigration context that is entirely compatible with article 8.

We need to just check that there’s a right calibration on casework decisions.

We may also need to check … that government is being robust in appealing decisions that we don’t like, that there’s a litigation strategy that meets that aim.

UPDATE: Hermer said that some of the reporting about article 8 was inaccurate. He said:

There is clearly a lot of information, misinformation, that is being whipped up in the context of asylum and immigration in particular, article 8.

Many of you will have heard banded around the idea that the courts have allowed a foreign national offender to stay here because his child will miss chicken McNuggets.

That is doing the rounds. What is not doing the rounds is that that case went to the upper tribunal, who categorically rejected that as an article 8 argument. They rejected the claim.

Courts are always going to make mistakes. That’s why we have appeal courts, and that’s what’s happened here.

Reeves says it is important to have just one major fiscal event a year. In the last parliament there were many, and that created uncertaintly.

Q: Is it is important to you to have two forecasts every year? Because obviously that constrains you.

Reeves says she does not feel that. She says she chose to update her plans in the light of the OBR forecast. But she goes on:

We could have chosen to say we would address issues of the headroom the budget, but I did think it was important to show how important we take fiscal sustainability, fiscal stability, and so that’s why we made the decisions we did.

This is interesting. In his column in the Observer on Sunday Andrew Rawnsley said Keir Starmer now agrees with the many commentators who think having the OBR revise its forecasts every six months is distorting policy making. Rawnsley wrote:

[The OBR] also made life difficult for the chancellor in the short-term by telling her that she’d bust her rules unless she made additional spending reductions. The complaint is that policymaking has become too subservient to satisfying OBR guesstimates about what growth and debt might be in five years. I have it on exceedingly good authority that the prime minister himself has come to the view that it is unhelpful, to the point of being barmy, that the government has to live in dread of an OBR report card every six months, rather than face an annual verdict at budget time.

(I have no idea who Rawnsely’s source was, but “on exceedingly good authority” is the sort of thing columnists write when they have recently had a private chat with the PM.)

The Rawnsley column suggests Starmer would like to change the rules so that the OBR only updates its forecasts once a year. Reeves’ reply just now implies she is happy with the status quo.

Hillier asks if Reeves about reappointing Richard Hughes as chair of the OBR. His five-year term is coming up this year, but Hughes told the committee yesterday he had written to Reeves saying he would like to serve a second term. He said he had not had a reply yet.

Reeves says she will respond in due course. She does not give any indication as to whether or not she wants Hughes to stay, but she thanks Hughes and his team for his work.

Stephen Doughty, the Foreign Office minister, has confirmed that the UK is now finalising its deal transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but refused to say when it will be concluded.

Speaking in the Commons in response on an urgent question from the Conservatives, Doughty said:

We are now working with Mauritius to finalise the agreement, and while it is in everybody’s interest to progress the deal quickly, we have never put an exact date on it and we do not intend to do so now.

The government will bring forward a bill to enable implementation of the treaty and parliament will, of course, also have the opportunity to scrutinise the treaty in the usual way before ratification.

Under the deal, although sovereignty will be transferred, the UK will continue to control Diego Garcia, the main Chagos island which is home to a US/UK airbase, for at least 99 years. It has been reported that the UK will pay £90m a year for the lease, but this has not been officially confirmed.

In response to a question from the Tory MP Andrew Murrison about how much the US would pay towards the cost of the deal, given that the airbase is a key American military asset, Doughty ducked the question. He replied:

We welcome the fact that the United States recognises the strength of this deal, and that’s because it is rooted in a rational and hard-headed determination to protect our security, that of the United States, our presence in the Indo-Pacific.

In response to questions from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, about how the deal would keep the military base secure, and about threats to the base from Iran, Doughty replied:

Security provisions to protect the base … will include full UK control over Diego Garcia, including control over the electromagnetic spectrum and unrestricted access to and the use of the base.

It will include a buffer zone around Diego Garcia in which nothing can be built or put in place without our consent. There will be a robust mechanism and review process to ensure no activity in the outer islands can impinge upon base operations. And indeed, there will be a prohibition on the presence of foreign security forces on the outer islands, either civilian or military.

On concerns of threats from Iran, he said: “For operational reasons and as a matter of policy, we do not offer comments or information relating to foreign nation’s military aircraft movements or operations.”

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Starmer has shown commendable leadership over Ukraine, with his plan for a military coalition of the willing. Will he now lead an economic coalition of the willing standing up to the US? (See 9.26am.)

Starmer says Davey is always trying to make him take a false choice between the US and Europe.

I think that’s the wrong choice on defence, on security intelligence, for reasons that we’ve rehearsed across this chamber. I also think it’s wrong on trade and the economy.

We have a balanced trade relationship with the US, and I believe that our interests are best served by calmly trying to secure a deal which is in our national interest, whilst at the same time preparing and leaving all options on the table.

Badenoch says Starmer claims to be bringing stability, but he is bringing fragility. She says the jobs tax will cost families £3,500.

Starmer says this is a “fantasy figure”.

And at Badenoch’s press conference she could not say if she would reverse Labour’s decisions, he says.

He says Badench wants the extra NHS investment paid for by the taxes in the budget, but she opposes those tax rises at the same time.

Keir Starmer starts by saying he spoke to President Zelenskyy on Monday, and Zelenskyy asked Starmer to thank Hoyle for attending.

On tariffs, Starmer says:

A trade war is in nobody’s interest and the country deserves, and we will take, a calm, pragmatic approach.

That is why constructive talks are progressing to agree a wider economic prosperity deal with the US. That is why we are working with all industries and sectors likely to be impacted.

Our decisions will always be guided by our national interests, and that’s why we have prepared for all eventualities, and we will rule nothing out.

Ahead of the Green party’s UQ on Gaza (see 11.43am), the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Ellie Chowns, has put out this statement.

The Green party condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli government’s brutal decision to expand its military operations in Gaza. Seizing large areas of territory and forcibly displacing countless Gazans to create so-called “security zones” would be a further violation of international law against a population already devastated by 18 months of conflict.

This is not security; it is domination and erasure. It would constitute ethnic cleansing and further collective punishment on a mass scale, and it would only deepen the unimaginable suffering already endured by the people of Gaza.

PMQs is starting at noon.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Patrick Harvie, arguably the longest serving party leader in UK politics, has announced he is standing down as co-convenor of the Scottish Greens after nearly 17 years in the role.

A Scottish Greens MSP since 2003, Harvie had recently taken a leave of absence from Holyrood for an operation and recuperation. He announced today he will not contest this summer’s party leadership election.

As well as serving as party co-convenor since 2008, Harvie also brokered the power sharing deal with the Scottish National party government under Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 which saw Greens getting ministerial roles for the first time in the UK.

In a statement, he said:

At the start of devolution, few people regarded the Greens as a serious political force. But as we have grown, learned and developed we have become the most significant, sustained new movement in Scottish politics for generations. Given the growing urgency of the climate emergency, that movement is greatly needed.

Green solutions are more necessary than ever, and we have been the only party clearly making the case for the action needed to tackle growing inequality and the climate and nature emergency. Others are happy to set targets, but then actively resist the action needed to meet them.

Harvie introduced a rent freeze while a minister, and co-wrote the Bute House agreement in 2021 which committed the Scottish government to more ambitious public transport, climate and housing policies, including free bus travel for under-21s and a pilot project to abolish peak rail fares, which has since been discontinued.

That agreement collapsed in acrimony after Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor as SNP leader and first minister, decided many Green policies were damaging the SNP’s popularity, and unilaterally ended the power-sharing agreement.

Under this leadership the Scottish Greens also shifted to become an avowedly pro-independence party, with Harvie a leading spokesman for the Yes Scotland campaign during the 2014 referendum campaign. He also vigorously championed trans rights, adopting a stance which saw a few senior Green figures quit the party.

Plaid Cymru says Britain should respond to President Trump’s tariffs by rejoining the EU’s single market and customs union. Llinos Medi, the party’s business spokesperson, said:

With new US tariffs coming, Welsh businesses face even more uncertainty.

The UK must make a strategic decision: with 58.6% of Welsh exports going to the EU, we must provide stable access to European markets by rejoining the single market and customs union, allowing us to stand up to Trump’s reckless moves.

Heathrow Airport was warned about its power supply in the days before it closed because of an outage, PA Media says. In its story from the opening of this morning’s transport committee hearing in the Commons PA reports:

Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said there were a “couple of incidents” which made him concerned.

The airport was closed to all flights on until about 6pm on Friday 21 March, after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation which started late the previous night.

This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.

Wicking told the transport select committee he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on 15 March about his concerns, and the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on 19 March.

He said: “It was following a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply that, on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time.

“That obviously made me concerned and, as such, I raised the point I wanted to understand better the overall resilience of the airport.”

Wicking said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during the outage would have been “disastrous”.

He told the committee: “It became quite clear we could not operate the airport safely quite early in this process, and that is why we closed the airport.

“If we had not done that, we would have had thousands of passengers stranded at the airport at high risk to personal injury, gridlocked roads around the airport, because don’t forget 65,000 houses and other institutions were powered down.

“Traffic lights didn’t work, just to give you an example, many things didn’t work. Parts of the civil infrastructure didn’t work.

“So the risk of having literally tens of thousands of people stranded at the airport, where we have would have nowhere to put them, we could not process them, would have been a disastrous scenario.”

The conventional wisdom in Westminster political circles is that, while picking a fight with the US might make an inspiring scene in a Richard Curtis drama, in practice it is never a good idea.

But yesterday YouGov published polling showing that in Britain, and in other major European countries, there is strong public support for the sort of retaliatory tariffs being proposed by the Liberal Democrats. (See 9.26am.) YouGov says 71% of Britons would support retaliatory tariffs, and only 11% would be opposed.

Alexandra Topping has a story with more on what Bridget Phillipson said in her morning interview round. Phillipson said the UK would not engage in a “kneejerk” response to any tariffs imposed by President Trump – which is also what Keir Starmer was saying yesterday.

Public satisfaction with the NHS is at a record low and dissatisfaction is at its highest, with the deepest discontent about A&E, GP and dental care, Denis Campbell and Tobi Thomas report.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is taking his last PMQs before the Easter recess at noon, but the big event today will come at 9pm tonight (UK time) when President Trump announces sweeping global tariffs, upending the free trade consensus seen as the basis for a century or more of western prosperity. Here is our latest global story on this, and here is our overnight UK story, by Pippa Crerar, Heather Stewart and Richard Partington.

Bridget Phillipson was doing interview duty on behalf of the government this morning. As education secretary, she is not involved in trade policy and her message was much the same as Jonathan Reynolds’ when he was in the same broadcast studios yesterday. She said that the UK was “well-placed as a nation” to reach an economic deal with the US (which might lead to tariffs on the UK being reduced) and that talks were still underway.

Keir Starmer’s stragegy – which can be crudely but accurately described as sucking up to President Trump in the hope getting the best possible outcome for Britain – is supported by Labour MPs, and also by the Conservative party. At a press conference yesterday Kemi Badenoch said that the UK should definitely rule out retaliatory tariffs, instead of holding the option open, but otherwise she is backing Starmer on this issue. And the difference is slight because Starmer does not sound at all likely to deploy retaliatory tariffs anyway.

But others are urging Starmer to take a different approach. The Liberal Democrats have been urging the government to be much more robust with the US president, and today they are escalating that, saying Starmer should be forming a united front with the EU and Canada to fight Trump with retaliatory tariffs and other measures. In an overnight statement Calum Miller, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said:

Despite weeks of refusing to criticise Donald Trump’s damaging behaviour, it’s now increasingly apparent that the government will not secure a carve out for the UK ahead of Trump’s global tariff war.

Trump has shown himself to be an unreliable partner on the economy. No one, not even the US’s oldest allies, are safe from the economic harm reaped by this White House.

We need to end this trade war as quickly as possible. That means working with our Canadian and European allies in a united front against Trump, including retaliatory tariffs where necessary – as well as negotiating a bespoke new customs union agreement with the EU to better protect British businesses.

Intriguingly, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, and a journalist with extensive establisment contacts, says there are a lot of people in business and politics who agree with the Liberal Democrats on this. He explained why in a long post on social media last night. Here’s an extract.

Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer – or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation – to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs.

The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics – tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be.

This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia.

Will this idea get any traction? Maybe not today, but at some point in the future it could take off. There is some evidence that No 10 is nervous about being seen as too accommodating to Trump. Yesterday, in a briefing so implausible no one took it seriously, Downing Street in effect sought to blame the king for Trump getting a state visit!

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Kim Leadbeater holds a press conference about her assisted dying bill, which has finished its committee stage and is back in the Commons chamber later this month.

9.15am: Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye gives evidence to the Commons transport committee about the electricity substation fire that closed the airport for a day.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

2.15pm; Lord Hermer, the attorney general, gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights.

2.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.

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