Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has announced a reshuffle of his frontbench team.

And, for once, it does make sense to talk about the Liberal Democrats having a frontbench. Only 11 Lib Dem MPs were elected in 2019 (although numbers increased as they kept winning byelections), and so in the last parliament almost everyone had a spokesperson’s job.

Now, according to the list published this afternoon, there are 33 Lib Dems with a frontbench job. That is around half of the parliamentary party. The rest are backbenchers.

The changes include Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader, becoming Treasury spokesperson. The previous Treasury spokesperson, Sarah Olney, will now cover the Cabinet Office.

Cooper was previously health spokesperson. That job has now gone to Helen Morgan.

Summing up the other changes, the party says:

The Liberal Democrats will have a renewed focus on Scotland and Wales ahead of general elections there in 2026, with senior parliamentarian Christine Jardine as the party’s Scotland spokesperson, leading on taking the fight to the SNP from Westminster. Newly elected MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe David Chadwick will be Wales spokesperson.

A wave of new Liberal Democrat MPs have been appointed to the frontbench, including Lisa Smart as home affairs spokesperson and Calum Miller as foreign affairs Spokesperson.

The Liberal Democrats have also increased their influence in parliament with Layla Moran, Alistair Carmichael and Jamie Stone becoming select committee chairs and therefore stepping back from their former spokesperson roles.

Davey said:

My new frontbench will champion the people’s priorities, ensuring we hold the new government to account as a responsible opposition.

Another Tory leadership candidate, Tom Tugendhat, has also been on X today raising an issue that he thinks might help with his campaign. But, arguably, his tweet has backfired.

This morning he posted online a copy of a letter he is sending to to the attorney general urging him to review the decision not to jail Huw Edwards for viewing child abuse images. Tugendhat said the attorney, Richard Hermer, should use the unduly lenient sentences scheme to do this.

Huw Edwards won’t be going to jail for possession of indecent images of children.

I have written to the government to ask them to review this judgement.

Justice should be served in a manner that reflects the severity of the crime.

But there’s a problem. The unduly lenient sentencing scheme cannot be used to challenge magistrates court sentences, as Claire Waxman, the victims’ commissioner for London, pointed out.

For clarity, the Huw Edwards sentence cannot be reviewed under the Unduly Lenient Sentencing Scheme as its only applicable for certain Crown Court sentences. I have lobbied for years to make it more accessible. Important to understand the rights of victims

Tugendhat used to be a minister in the Home Office, and he is now shadow security minister. He is not a lawyer, but penal policy is relevant to his portfolio. He could be expected to know how the scheme operates.

But he was not alone in calling for a review of Edwards’ sentence. Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, released his own letter to the attorney general calling for a tougher sentence last night. Unlike Tugendhat, he did not reference the unduly lenient sentencing scheme; he just told Hermer to use his “legal powers” to get the sentence reviewed (without specifying what those powers were). The rightwing papers have also been full of calls for Edwards to be jailed.

In a post on social media, the barrister Matthew Scott has a withering assessment of Tugendhat’s letter.

Disingenuous grandstanding, or surprising ignorance.

1. The Attorney General has no power to refer a sentence passed in the Mags court.

2. Even if he had it, he wouldn’t refer this case because the sentence was consistent with the guidelines.

3. There’s only 1 “s” in “offences.”

In the Q&A with journalists after his speech today, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, was asked about today’s Guardian story about Keir Starmer accepting gifts and tickets worth more than £100,000 during his time as opposition leader.

In his reply, Streeting said: “The important thing is transparency and accountablity, and there are no conflicts of interest.” He said that was why the system for the declaration of interests was in place. “That’s a good thing, and long may it continue,” he added.

The Conservatives have pointed out that a Cabinet Office minister, Georgia Gould, has refused to say if Labour had increased the pay cap for special advisers in band 4, the top level, applied to the PM’s chief of staff post.

Under the Tories the band 4 cap for special advisers was £145,000, meaning that was the maximum Liam Booth-Smith, Rishi Sunak’s chief of staff, was paid. (Band 4 was between £140,000 and £145,000, so £140,000 would have been the minimum. The government discloses what the pay bands are for special advisers, but not what precise salary each individual earns.)

Asked in a parliamentary written question if the band 4 cap had gone up, Gould refused to say, but promised more information would be disclosed in the annual report on special advisers.

The Conservatives say a pay rise from £145,000 to £170,000 would amount to 17%.

It is not known what Gray was paid when she worked for Starmer in opposition, but when she was a civil servant before that, her pay was in the £150,000 to £155,000 range.

In a statement, the party has set out a series of question it says the government should anwer to establish whether or not Gray was involved in decisions relating to her salary.

As Rowena Mason reports in her story on this, the Cabinet Office has said political appointees like Gray don’t make the decisions on their pay bands, or their own pay.

Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, received a pay rise after the election which means she is now paid more than the PM, the BBC is reporting. In their story Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, and Henry Zeffman says:

The BBC has been told that Sue Gray asked for and was given a salary of £170,000 - £3,000 more than the PM and more than any cabinet minister – or her Conservative predecessor.

One source told the BBC: “It was suggested that she might want to go for a few thousand pounds less than the prime minister to avoid this very story. She declined.”

The decision has ignited a row within government over Ms Gray, whose report while a senior civil servant into parties in Downing Street during the pandemic contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson.

Her Conservative predecessor Liam, now Lord, Booth Smith, who did the job under Rishi Sunak, was paid at the upper end of the highest pay band for special advisers, between £140,000 and £145,000 a year.

Permanent secretaries, the most senior civil servants in Whitehall, are often paid more than the prime minister, and so it is not unprecedented for an official to be paid at this level. But political advisers are normally paid less. Gray herself was a civil servant, but not a permanent secretary, before she left to work for Starmer as a party political adviser before the election.

Since the election there have been multiple reports suggesting that Gray’s domineering management style has annoyed colleagues in government. Asked about this, Starmer himself said recently that most of these stories were “wildly wrong”. But the fact so many have appeared does suggest there is active briefing against his chief of staff.

The Cabinet Office did not deny the Gray was paid more than Starmer when approached by the BBC. But it said:

It is false to suggest that political appointees have made any decisions on their own pay bands or determining their own pay.

Any decision on special adviser pay is made by officials not political appointees. As set out publicly, special advisers cannot authorise expenditure of public funds or have responsibility for budgets.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, indicated today that he was willing to confront both the left in politics and the right to bring about NHS reform.

Speaking at a conference organised by the IPPR thintank, Streeting said the state of the NHS meant he was now forced “to take on both leftwing and rightwing orthodoxies”.

Much of his speech echoed what he and Keir Starmer said last week, when they set out the findings of the report from Lord Darzi, which described the NHS as being in a critical state.

But Streeting also mocked leftwing voices nervous about the government’s approach. Citing the Guardian as an example, he said the paper took the view that he was “absolutely right” on the need for more focus on prevention in health, but that it was “nervous” about the concept of reform, because “it sounds far too much like Alan Milburn”, who was “terrifying” to the paper “because he makes Wes Streeting look leftwing”.

Streeting said the left and the right both had to accept the case for reform.

Unless we do public health reform, the right will have to accept higher costs for healthcare, paid for by higher taxes. I don’t think that’s the price working people can afford to pay.

The left have to accept health service reform or there will be no health service, at least not as we currently recognise it.

Reform has always had opponents, often vocal and powerful opponents. But believe me when I say the prime minister and I will face down that position because it’s in the interest of patients, the health service and taxpayers in this country. It really is reform or die, and we choose reform.

Train drivers have voted to back a pay deal that will resolve the last remaining conflict between rail operators and unions after two years of strikes that have brought misery for passengers, Jack Simpson reports.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has said that Scotland is closer to independence than it was in 2014.

According to PA Media, Swinney made the claim at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the referendum, which saw voters rejected independence by 55% to 45%.

Swinney said the “challenge” for independence supporters was to now to convince more Scots that their priorities could be better addressed outside of the UK. According to PA, he said: “I think we are closer to achieving that than we were in 2014.”

This line was not included in the text of the speech released by the SNP. But here are other points he made.

• Swinney said that promises made to people who voted No (ie to remain in the UK) had been broken. He said since 2014 the Scottish parliament had been given new powers, and that it had used these to pass progressive policies, like the Scottish child payment, a more progressive tax system, and votes at 16. He went on:

These are all positive legacies of Scotland’s referendum … The lesson is? I will tell you. Constitutional change delivers real change.

That’s Scotland’s legacy in the last ten years.

What is Westminster’s?

Well, we were promised that voting No would mean we stay in the EU.

Instead, we were forced to be a passenger on Boris’s Brexit bus.

We were promised that voting No would mean a partnership of equals.

But instead, our parliament has had its powers weakened and undermined.

We were promised that voting No would mean economic strength and stability.

Well, where do I even start with that one?

We may laugh, but it is no laughing matter.

Because our mortgages, our food prices and our energy bills – three specific costs that it was suggested would rise with Independence - are all more expensive as a result of Westminster decisions.

• He said Keir Starmer was disproving claims that Scotland needed, not independence, but just the removal of the Tory government at Westminster.

For 10 years – 10 long years – Labour told us we don’t need independence. All we need to do is get rid of the Tories.

Well, it’s taken Keir Starmer less than ten weeks to completely demolish that argument.

Labour promised no more austerity – but instead they’re going to intensify it.

Labour promised to protect pensioners - but instead they’ve robbed them of their winter fuel payment.

And they promised everyone they would cut their energy bills. Instead they are set to rise by an average of £150.

The problem for Scotland is not a just an incredibly damaging Westminster Tory government.

We now have an incredibly damaging Westminster Labour government.

• He said the referendum 10 years ago set a positive example to the world, because it showed a constitutional dispute being resolved peacefully and democratically.

The world was watching us [in 2014] – waiting to see if they were about to witness the birth of the world’s newest independent country.

But of course, no matter the outcome, we all knew that we were witnessing something hugely significant.

That’s because, in this corner of our planet, a debate about constitutional change was being conducted peacefully and democratically, with both sides committed to respecting the result.

In a world all-too-often scarred by acrimony and conflict – we must not lose sight of the positive example Scotland set for people across the globe.

Peter MacMahon from ITV Border has posted a picture of Swinney speaking on social media.

Rachel Reeves has said that, as the first female chancellor, she wants to use her time in office to “improve life for women”.

This evening she is hosting a reception for female business leaders at 11 Downing Street to mark international equal pay day. In remarks released in advance, she said:

It is a huge responsibility to sit in the Treasury as the first female chancellor of the exchequer and be able to use my position to improve life for women across the UK – one that I don’t take lightly.

That includes ending the gender pay gap, strengthening rights at work and investing in childcare. And by backing the Invest in Women Taskforce we can establish one of the world’s largest dedicated investment funding pools for female-powered businesses, helping grow our economy.

The Treasury says that, while women are more than half the population, “they represent only 21% of business owners, with less than 6% of active equity backed companies founded by women”. The Invest in Women taskforce is intended to address this.

A report from the Department for Business and Trade today says venture capital fund managers who have signed up to the Investing in Women Code are more likely to invest in female founders.

James Cleverly, the Tory leadership candidate and former home secretary, has posted a message on X saying the party needs to chase Lib Dem voters.

While he is not explicitly contradicting Kemi Badenoch (she told GB News [see 9.44am] the party should be making a pitch for Reform UK voters – Cleverly is implying he does not see it as an either/or), there is a clear difference of emphasis.

Cleverly also points out that he is the leadership candidate most popular with Lib Dem voters – a point that would appeal to someone like John Major (see 9.26am), but that won’t help much in a contest where the electorate vote Tory.

The government has agreed to just one of 33 recommendations made to prevent a repeat of the abuse experienced by migrants in the Brook House immigration centre scandal, the inquiry chairwoman has told the BBC. As PA Media reports, Kate Eves said the government was failing to listen to her proposals for “urgent change”, a year on from the public inquiry’s final report. PA says:

Eves concluded there had been 19 incidents of mistreatment against detainees at the detention centre near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex over a five-month period in 2017.

She told the BBC the Conservative government’s response was “inadequate and disappointing” and that Labour needed to show more commitment.

Recommendations made in September last year included issues such as use of force and staff training.

The introduction of a 28-day detention time limit was rejected by the government, alongside another proposal.

She said the one recommendation the government has agreed to is that the Home Office and private contractors make sure staff are aware of the ban on handcuffing people behind their backs while sitting down, which can result in asphyxiation.

Eves added there was “no information at all” about a further five recommendations being accepted, while it was not possible to be sure about another 23 directions.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The abuse that took place at Brook House in 2017 was unacceptable and we are committed to ensuring it will never happen again.”

The Conservative government published its response to the public inquiry on March 19 this year, summarising progress since 2017 and addressing all the ten areas of concern raised in the report.

It is understood the new government will set out its approach in due course.

Protection zones will be in force around abortion clinics in England and Wales from 31 October, the Home Office said today.

The law will ban campaigners from handing anti-abortion leaflets to people using the clinics. The so-called buffer zones will operate within a 150m radius of clinics.

Describing what the law would do, the Home Office said in a news release:

Safe access buffer zones will make it illegal for anyone to do anything that intentionally or recklessly influences someone’s decision to use abortion services, obstructs them, or causes harassment or distress to someone using or working at these premises …

Anyone found guilty of breaking the law will face an unlimited fine. The College of Policing and Crown Prosecution Service will publish guidance for police and prosecutors ahead of 31 October, to ensure there is clarity and consistency with the enforcement of the new offence.

Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, said:

For too long abortion clinics have been without these vital protections, and this government is determined to do all we can do to make this country a safer place for women.

Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, has predicted that Scotland will become an independent country as part of a “wider shake-up” of the UK, Libby Brooks reports. Sturgeon was speaking in an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum. Here is Libby’s story in full.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum. John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, is speaking at an event in Edinburgh to mark this. Even though Yes, the pro-independence campaign he backed, lost by 55% to 45%, Swinney is saying the referendum left “an overwhelmingly positive legacy”.

According to extracts released in advance, he is saying:

As parliament returned [after the referendum] I spoke to many leading figures in the No campaign.

They were gracious, and they were understanding, that lifelong independence campaigners like me were truly hurting at that moment.

But when I think about those days after of the referendum, I tell you what else I remember.

It was how quickly people in the Yes campaign picked themselves up, dusted themselves down, and looked to the future with a renewed determination.

Many of the grassroots campaign groups didn’t melt away. They stuck together, and they continued working in - and for - their communities.

New friendships had been forged, and a new sense of possibility planted in the minds of thousands of people

That sense of empowerment resonates to this day.

And that’s why, even though I was devastated by the result, I am in no doubt that Scotland’s independence referendum has left an overwhelmingly positive legacy on our country.

And we – the Scottish National party – should be incredibly proud that, together, we made that happen.

For five other views on the legacy of the referendum, do read the verdict from our panel: Rory Scothorne, Nicola McEwen, Paul Sinclair, Nighet Riaz and Stephen Noon.

If you fancy reliving the referendum election night and all its drama, you can read the live blog covering it here.

Fair taxes on superyachts and private jets in the UK could have brought in £2bn last year to provide vital funds for communities suffering the worst effects of climate breakdown, environmental campaigners say. Sandra Laville has the story.

In his interview with the BBC, John Major, the former Conservative PM, says that it would be a mistake for his party to chase Reform UK voters and move to the right as it works out how to respond to its election defeat. (See 9.26am.) But Kemi Badenoch, the leadership candidate most popular with party members according to most surveys, is saying exactly the opposite. In an interview with GB News she said that Reform UK supporters were “our people”.

She explained:

I think one of the mistakes we made was making Reform voters think that they were not our people. They are our people. Many of the people who voted Reform were lifelong Tory voters.

One of the moments that really created that impression was when we removed the whip from Lee Anderson. I think that was a mistake.

I told the chief whip, do not do this. This is a bad, bad decision.

That was a huge mistake and that lit the touchpaper. Basically we are saying ‘we don’t want these kind of people’, to get them out.

Anderson lost the Tory whip in February after making comments about Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, that were widely regarded as Islamophobic.

But Major and Badenoch did agree (sort of) on not wanting Nigel Farage allowed to rejoin the party. (He was a member before he helped launch Ukip in the 1990s.)

Asked about Farage joining, Major said:

I don’t think he’s a Conservative, and he’s spent most of his time in the last few years telling people how much he dislikes the Conservative Party and would like to destroy it. I don’t think that’s a terribly good background for bringing someone into the party.

Badenoch was asked on GB News if she thought Farage was a Tory. She replied:

I think that he is a disruptor. But he has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party, so I think that’s probably a no.

The “but” in that answer implies she sees being a disruptor as a bonus, not a handicap.

Good morning. Judged by the amount of time he spent as prime minister, John Major was one of the most successful Conservative prime ministers of the post-war period. Only Margaret Thatcher and Harold Macmillan outlasted him in No 10. But he has not been aligned with mainstream thinking in his party since he resigned after losing the election in 1997, and in an interview being broadcast tonight he has unleashed a fresh attack on the policies of the party he used to lead. While his views are not 100% surprising to anyone who has been listening to him in recent years, they are a stark reminder of how much the political landscape has shifted in the last 30 years.

The interview, with Amol Rajan from the BBC, is being broadcast tonight. Here are the key lines.

• Major strongly condemned the Rwanda deportation plan proposed by the last government (and defended by all four candidates still in the Tory leadership contest). He said:

I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people.

We used to transport people, nearly three hundred years ago, from our country. Felons, who at least have had a trial, and been found guilty of something, albeit that the trial might have been cursory. I don’t think transportation, for that is what it is, is a policy suitable for the 21st century.

This does not just go further than anything anyone in frontline Tory politics would say now. Labour has abandoned the Rwanda policy, but people like Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper always criticised it (at least in public) on the grounds of practicality, not morality. They said it would not work. They did not use terms like “un-British”, “un-Christian” and ‘“unconscionable” to describe it.

• Major implied the last government deserved to lose the election. He said he did not give many interviews before the election because “there’s not been a great deal I could say, I would wish to say, in favour of what the previous government were doing.” And, talking about the election result, he said:

There’s a time of when democracy needs a change in government. I could see that in 1997, we had been in government for 18 years and it was perfectly true to say, that we were tired and that we were running out of fresh people to make ministers and reinject the government with vigour. And of course the same thing applies [with the recent election results], although it was only 14 years.

• He said it would be a mistake for the party to shift further to the right. He said:

The only party that can legitimately appeal to the centre right is the Conservative party. And that is what we have to do, we have to decide where our natural support really lies and appeal to them. People may have made a misjudgement about the last election. We lost five votes to Reform UK and people are jumping up and down, and some, rather reckless people are saying, well we must merge with them.

Well, that will be fatal. We lost 50 to the Liberals, and we lost a huge amount to Labour. We lost the vote on the left, more than on the right. And we have to focus on that centre right position, and we’re not an ideological party, I do think traditionally we have been a commonsense party.

Major said he had not decided yet who to support in the Tory leadership contest. But the two favourites, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, are both proposing to take the party to the right.

I’ve opened a blog with a politician from the past because the ones from the present aren’t making a lot of news this morning. But here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Prof Charlotte McArdle, the former chief nursing officer for Northern Ireland, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry in its module looking at the impact of the pandemic on healthcare. Prof Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, gives evidence in the afternoon.

10.25am: John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, speaks at a rally in Edinburgh to mark the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum.

Noon: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at an event organised by the IPPR thinktank to mark the publication of its report on NHS reform. Lord Darzi, who wrote the report for the government published last week about the state of the NHS, is also speaking.

And David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is in Norway, meeting his Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide.

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