Christopher Hope from GB News says this policy is almost identical to a Reform UK one.

Hope asks Starmer if he is turning into Nigel Farage.

Starmer replies:

Nigel Farage didn’t even turn up to the debate in parliament today. Nigel Farage is fawning over Putin. That’s not patriotism. That is not what working people need.

Keir Starmer is making the opening statement at his press conference now.

It is similar to what he told the Commons earlier. He starts recalling the optimism people felt when the Berlin wall came down. And now he is talking about the threat posed by Vladimir Putin.

Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, has described the increase in defence spending announced by Keir Starmer as a “weak commitment”.

extra 0.2% of GDP by 2027 on Defence?? A staggering desertion of leadership. Tone deaf to dangers of the world and demands of the United States. Such a weak commitment to our security and Nation puts us all at risk

Clare Short, who was international development secretary when Tony Blair was PM, but who resigned from cabinet over the Iraq war, has said the cut to the aid budget announced by Keir Starmer shows this is not a Labour government.

Short told LabourList:

It splashes money on defence spending and Ukraine and is not focused on bringing peace to Ukraine – and disgracefully, it has still not abolished the two-child benefit cap.

I am afraid that, in many respects, this is simply not a Labour government …

The coalition of voters that have supported Labour since its foundation, low-income people, the morally concerned middle class, internationalists and supporters of the United Nations and international law, will splinter and the traditional Labour party will be destroyed.

Keir Starmer focused on the security case for increasing defence spending in his statement to MPs. But in the press notice about the announcement issued by Downing Street he also presents it as a jobs announcement. No 10 says:

The investment in defence will protect UK citizens from threats at home but will also create a secure and stable environment in which businesses can thrive, supporting the government’s number one mission to deliver economic growth.

The increased spending will sustain our globally competitive industry, supporting highly skilled jobs and apprenticeships across the whole of the UK. In 2023-24, defence spending by the UK government supported over 430,000 jobs across the UK, the equivalent to one in every 60.

68% of defence spending goes to businesses outside London and the South East, bolstering regional economies from Scotland to the North West …

Defence spending benefits every nation and region of the country - 68% of defence spend with UK businesses goes outside of London and the South East. In 2023-2024, the MOD spent the following across the UK:

£7.1bn in the South East

£6.9bn in the South West

£3.8bn in the North West

£2.1bn in Scotland

£2.1bn in London

£1.6bn in the West Midlands

£1.5bn in the East of England

£1.4bn in the East Midlands

£910m in Wales

£630m in Yorkshire and the Humber

£380m in the North East

£240m in Northern Ireland

This spending supported a breadth of industry specialisms across the country. Early work on the Defence Industrial Strategy suggests that the following UK sub-sectors have the highest growth potential: AI, autonomous systems, combat air, cyber, missiles, nuclear submarines, quantum, shipbuilding design and space.

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has welcomed the news that the UK is increasing defence spending. In a post on social media, he says John Healey, the defence secretary, told him about it in a call this afternoon.

Just got off the phone w/ @JohnHealey_MP — the UK Secretary of State for Defense — who confirmed they will increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP, and eventually much further.

A strong step from an enduring partner. 🇺🇸🇬🇧

Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s acting Ireland correspondent

The British and Irish governments are to examine whether a mini Good Friday Agreement process should be established to finally put an end to paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland 27 years after the original peace deal.

The decision comes amid warnings from a body established by Dublin and London to support long-term peace that paramilitary groups are moving into far-right and anti-immigration activities in Northern Ireland.

Monica McWilliams, one of the four commissioners on the Independent Reporting Commission, told reporters today there were more than 1,300 racist incidents in NI last year many of which had “paramilitary links”.

“That is something we are alarmed about,” said McWilliams, one of the architects of the 1998 peace agreement.

She said there had been some “horrendous incidents in the past year” in which “families had to move out and go and live elsewhere simply because of the colour of their skin”.

Separately Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn told the House of Commons an expert would be appointed by Dublin and London “whether there is merit in, and support for, a formal process of engagement to bring about paramilitary group transition to disbandment”.

The paramilitary tsar will be appointed within the coming weeks and report back within a year.

The IRC’s seventh annual report said that bombing incidents and casualties from paramilitary style shootings, intimidation “persist and remain a real concern”.

Among the groups active are republican organisations, the INLA and the new IRA, along with loyalist groups including the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Red Hand Commando.

Keir Starmer is to hold a press conference at 5pm about the defence spending announcement.

At one point there was speculation that Keir Starmer might appoint David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, as his ambassador to Washington. Peter Mandelson got the job instead, and Miliband stayed in his post as CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a major, US-based aid charity.

And in that capacity he has issued a statement today criticising Starmer for cutting the UK’s aid budget. He says:

The UK government’s decision to cut aid by 6 billion in order to fund defence spending is a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader. Today, an unprecedented 300 million people are in humanitarian need around the world. The global consequences of this decision will be far reaching and devastating for people who need more help not less.

We recognise the complex challenges facing the UK government in today’s unstable world. The UK aid budget is famed for its value for money, innovation and impact for those in the greatest need around the world. We don’t know where the aid cuts will fall, but we do know that current investments are meeting desperate needs. The danger is that without humanitarian help more people will flee their homes to seek security and global health will be severely compromised.

Helena Horton is a Guardian environment correspondent

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, has been at the NFU conference this afternoon. He was due to speak anyway, but he was able to comment on the PM’s announcement about defence spending and aid cuts. He said, with defence spending set to continuing going up, other departments could face cuts. He explained:

The prime minister announced at lunchtime today that we’re going to get to 2.5% of national income on defence by 2027. He’s paying for that by taking 0.2% from the aid budget, which was 0.7% of national income … then cut to 0.5%, and cut now to 0.3% which is a really remarkable change politically.

Continued increases in defence are going to cause a real problem for other parts of public service.

[Rachel] Reeves is probably going to have to go to her cabinet colleagues at the June spending review and say, ‘At best you’re getting nothing, and quite possibly you’re going to get cut.’ That’s going to be really hard.

Johnson also said that, with government borrowing “at least as high as last year, probably higher”, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, would probably have to announce cuts, or some tax rises, in the spring statement.

Although the timing of today’s announcement by Keir Starmer was clearly influenced by the fact that he will be meeting President Trump in Washington on Thursday, it would be a mistake to think that this was entirely about appeasing the US president. Defence experts have been saying for years that the “peace dividend” is over, and that countries like Britain will need to spend more money on defence. Trump’s election has made Nato more precarious, and its European members all accept they need to spend more. If Britan needs to make a long-term peacekeeping commitment to Ukraine, that will have to be funded for. Starmer is not just raising defence spending as a ploy to win over Trump; as the text of his statement suggests, he is doing it because he thinks it is inevitable and right.

Starmer was already committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP at some point, and an increase by the time of the next election, although not announced, was already priced in. Hitting 2.5% by 2027 was not nailed-on, but it is probably in the mid-range of what was expectated. It is enough of a surprise to cause a jolt (because ministers had been swearing blind until recently that no announcement was coming this week). But it is not a transformational uplift, and it won’t silence calls for defence spending go go higher. We heard quite a few of them in the Commons during the statement (eg, see 2.30pm).

Many MPs, though, were shocked to see that axe taken to the aid budget quite so drastically. By taking aid spending back down to 0.3% of GDP (or GNI, gross national income, to be more accurate – people tend to say GDP instead because it means something similar, and the acronym is better understood) Starmer will be taking British development policy back to the 1990s. The blue line in this chart (from a report from the Tony Blair Institute) illustrates the trend.

In doing this, Starmer is undoing one of the most signifcant achievements of the New Labour government. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were both strongly committed to raising aid spending to the 0.7% UN target, and David Cameron pushed ahead with that, despite leading a party that historically had felt more indifferent about overseas aid, partly because he was using that as a way of showing the Tories had modernised. The chart is from a report published in January 2021, when the 0.7% target had been hit. That’s why the blue line is flat from 2013. Blair’s achievement looked secure. But a few months after the report was out, Boris Johnson slashed aid spending to 0.5%, and now it is going down even more. In his Commons statement Starmer said “we will do everything we can to return to a world where that is not the case”, implying that the aid spending cut was only temporary. But you would have to be brave to put money on it getting back towards 0.7% any time in the foreseeable future.

Starmer would be raising defence spending at some point even if he were meeting President Harris in the White House on Thursday, not President Trump. But this announcement will help soothe relations with Trump. Starmer can say he has listened to his host on defence spending. And he could even claim that, in cutting aid spending, he is also following the lead of the Trump administration (which has closed down its aid department) – although he is unlikely to spell it out that bluntly, given how Labour MPs might react.

But there are Trump-style politics in this. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance, Trump’s vice-president, said that there was no hope for European democracy if politicians tell voters “their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered”. Vance was referring to immigration policy, but he could have been talking about aid spending too, because polls repeatedly show that people think it is too high. Rightwing voters are more likely to think this than leftwing voters, but even Labour and Lib Dem supporters think in these terms. Many Guardian readers will hate the idea of aid being cut, and the consequences will be real and drastic. (See 3.17pm.) But Starmer may find this the most popular policy he has announced to date.

Aid charities, understandably, are horrified by the cuts to development spending. Here are comments from three more charities that have issued statements condemnding Keir Starmer’s decision.

From Hannah Bond, CEO of ActionAid UK

We are profoundly shocked and disappointed that the government has made the reckless decision to raid the already diminished ODA [official development assistance] budget—reducing it to less than half of our legal obligation. That it has done so to increase military spending only adds insult to injury.

There is no justification for abandoning the world’s most marginalised time and time again to navigate geopolitical developments. This is a political choice—one with devastating consequences. At a time when USAID has been gutted and development initiatives abandoned by one of the world’s largest donors, the UK government appears to be following suit rather than standing against this dangerous trend.

Cuts to UK ODA will hit those who need it most, especially women and girls. Conflicts in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ukraine are already causing immense civilian suffering. At a time when humanitarian crises are at an all-time high, slashing ODA to a record low is indefensible.

From Rose Caldwell, chief executive of Plan International UK

This is a truly catastrophic blow to an aid budget that has already been cut to shreds. It also comes at the worst possible time: humanitarian needs are at unprecedented levels, record numbers are suffering without enough to eat, and cuts to USAID are having a devastating impact on communities around the world. The UK should be stepping up and showing its commitment to overseas aid. Instead, it is adding to the suffering.

Today’s cut will divert funding from some of the most devastating humanitarian crises in the world. It will mean less support for the vast numbers of people suffering in Gaza and Lebanon. It will mean less for the millions stricken by conflict and hunger in Sudan. And it will mean less for girls affected by poverty, violence, and crises around the world.

From Christine Allen, CEO of CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development

This decision by the British government to reduce ODA from 0.5% to 0.3% means that in some of the most vulnerable places on earth, more people will die and many more will lose their livelihoods.

Coming so soon after the USAID freeze, this is another lifeline being pulled away from those in desperate need, at a time when the world feels increasingly precarious.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank says that, if Keir Starmer wants to get defence spending to 3% of GDP, cuts to overseas aid won’t be enough. It has issued this statement from Ben Zaranko, an IFS associate director.

If the UK needs to spend more on defence on a structural and permanent basis, that is not something that can be sustainably borrowed for. The prime minister has recognised this, and has signalled that higher defence spending will be offset, at least in the short term, by lower spending on overseas aid. If defence spending needs to go higher than 2.5% of GDP, cuts to aid won’t be enough. Getting towards 3% of GDP will eventually mean more tough choices and sacrifices elsewhere - whether higher taxes, or cuts to other bits of government. The world has changed, and one question is whether the government’s pre-existing promises on tax and spend might need to change as well.

But, in his statement, Zaranko also says one of the figures quoted by the PM in his statement (see 1.45pm) is misleading. Zaranko explains:

As a minor note to what is a major announcement, the prime minister followed in the steps of the last government by announcing a misleadingly large figure for the “extra” defence spending this announcement entails. An extra 0.2% of GDP is around £6bn, and this is the size of the cut to the aid budget. Yet he trumpeted a £13bn increase in defence spending. It’s hard to be certain without more detail from the Treasury, but this figure only seems to make sense if one thinks the defence budget would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms. This is of course dwarfed by the significance of today’s announcement but is frustrating none the less.

The Labour MP Torcuil Crichton says higher defence spending implies conflict is getting closer. He has posted this on social media.

This is quite a grave moment in the Commons, people will understand an increase in defence spending is necessary but it also feels like another step closer to conflict.

Starmer, presumably, would argue that higher defence spending is needed to avoid conflict. (See 1.41pm.)

In the Commons Starmer has just restated this point. In response to a question from the SNP’s Dave Doogan, who said that women and children would suffer most as a result of the aid cuts, and that some of them might die as a result, Starmer says:

Wherever there are war and conflict, it is the poor and the poorest who are hit hardest. There is no easy way through this, but we have to ensure that we win peace through strength, because anything other than peace will hit the very people [Doogan’s] identified harder than anybody else on the planet.

Save the Children UK has issued a statement on social media criticising the aid spending cut. It is from its CEO, Moazzam Malik. Here is an extract.

We are stunned by this decision to cut the aid budget in order to increase military spending. It is a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable children and the UK’s national interest.

By jeopardising the UK’s partnership with countries across the world and international organisations, it signals a withdrawal from efforts to tackle climate change, global poverty and inequality, and conflict and humanitarian needs. It will damage efforts to tackle global health needs and pandemics. It will add to economic instability internationally. The impacts will have direct consequences for children and families in the UK as well as around the world.

Starmer says the government will fund this by cutting aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% from 2027.

He goes on:

I want to be clear to the house that is not an announcement I am happy to make. I am proud of our record on overseas development, and we will continue to play a key humanitarian role in Sudan, in Ukraine and in Gaza, tackling climate change, supporting multi-national efforts on global health and challenges like vaccination.

He says some aid spending has gone on hotels for asylum seekers, and as the asylum backlog is cleared, there is money that can be saved there.

But nonetheless, it remains a cut, and I will not pretend otherwise. We will do everything we can to return to a world where that is not the case and rebuild a capability on development.

But at times like this, the defence and security of the British people must always come first.

Starmer says his fourth point is “we must change our national security posture”.

That will involve difficult choices, he says.

He says the government will begin the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war.

The government will get defence spending up to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. That is earlier than expected.

And it will mean spending an extra £13.4bn on defence every year from 2027.

Taking into account spending on intelligence and the security services, defence spending will be at 2.6% of GDP from 2027.

And he says he has a “clear ambition” to get it to 3% in the next parliament.

Keir Starmer is about to make his statement now.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, says the advance copy of the statement given to the opposition had some parts redacated.

He says he is very unhappy about claims that this was given to the media.

Starmer says he can absolutely assure the speaker that this was not “given” to the media. He apologise to Kemi Badenoch and he says he will hold a leak inquiry

If Keir Starmer does announce cuts to aid spending to pay for a higher defence budget, Kemi Badenoch will be able to claim that he has lifted one of her ideas.

At the weekend she proposed this in an open letter to Starmer. And this morning she repeated the proposal in her speech, where she said:

2.5 per cent by 2030 is now no longer sufficient.

We must rebuild and go further and faster …

I will back the prime minister in taking difficult decisions to increase defence spending. For example, he should consider whether some of the 0.5 per cent currently spent on development aid should be repurposed – at least in the short term – towards defence and security.

In the Commons Foreign Office ministers are taking questions, ahead of Keir Starmer’s statement at 12.30pm. Chris Law (SNP) asked about rumours that the government is going to cut aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.2% to fund increased defence spending.

Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, was responding. She did not confirm or deny that aid spending would be cut, and just made a general point about the value of aid.

The Guardian is publishing the results of an extensive inquiry into the business interests of members of the House of Lords. Today Henry Dyer and Rob Evans have a story about how a Labour peer, Lord David Evans of Watford, offered access to ministers during discussions about a commercial deal worth tens of thousands of pounds, an undercover investigation revealed.

(This is not the David Evans who was general secretary of the Labour party until last autumn. He is also a Labour peer, but he is Lord Evans of Sealand.)

Here is the news story.

And here is a profile of Evans.

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, has suggested that Keir Starmer will be hosting some sort of defence summit for European leaders in London on Sunday.

As Jakub Krupa reports on his Europe live blog, Tusk spoke about the meeting – which has not yet been announced by the British government – in Warsaw this morning, where he was speaking at a press conference alongside António Costa, the European Council president. Tusk said:

I hope that this greater [defence] mobilisation of Europe, of member states and Europe more broadly, will become a fact.

[Before meeting at the next European Council,] we will be in London on Sunday, together with our British friends and a group of leaders, to talk about these joint plans on defence.

Jakub has more coverage here on his blog.

Helena Horton is a Guardian environment correspondent

Environment secretary Steve Reed faced a protest by farmers at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster.

Farmers unfurled a banner featuring a plea to stop the family farm tax in front of the secretary of state as he attempted to make a speech.

Speaking from behind the banner, Reed said:

I understand the strength of feeling in the room. You can see an example of that here. Even if the conversation gets difficult, I will always show up to have it ,because I respect this union and I respect British farming.

They were protesting over new inheritance tax changes, which come in from April next year, when a 20% levy will be introduced on agricultural businesses upon the death of the owner.

Reed said: “I can’t give an answer I know many of you want on inheritance tax today.”

He also used his speech to lay out his plans to make farming more profitable including a bid to source half of all publicly procured food from British farms, and extending the seasonal workers scheme for five years.

Reed announced he would set up “a new farming profitability department within the department [Defra]” and he said he was starting workshops with the farming industry to shape a 25-year faming profitability roadmap from next week.

Speaking before Reed, NFU president Tom Bradshaw accused Labour of being “cruel” to the elderly, saying “the mental health pressures on our industry today are unbearable and unacceptable”.

He suggested elderly farmers were wishing for death as a result of the inheritance tax changes, saying:

As difficult as this is for me to say and you to hear, many older farmers are now facing that very real dilemma that unless they die before April 2026, their families will face a family farm tax bill they simply cannot afford.

Bradshaw hit out at Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, because she refuses to meet him to discuss the tax despite being asked to by Labour MPs. He said: “Perhaps if I offered to meet her in Davos, she would meet me”.

He has set out a “blueprint” for government to help farmers, which includes banning any imports of food which would be illegal to produce here, such as crops treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, and meat produced to lower animal welfare standards. He also said Labour should U-turn on its plan to end the badger cull.

Keir Starmer is to give a statement to MPs at 12.30pm on “defence and security”, the Commons authories have announced.

We have not been told what he will be announcing, but a ministerial statement by the prime minister is normally big news, and there is speculation that he might have something significant to say about defence spending ahead of his meeting with President Trump in the White House on Thursday.

The government has a theoretical commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but it has not said when this will happen, or even if it will be before the next election. Until recently ministers have been saying that the decision will be announced when the strategic defence review is published in the spring.

But Starmer is going to want to arrive in Washington with some news that will impress Trump, and the one thing the US president gets most praise from in Europe is being right about the need for Nato countries to spend more on defence. Starmer may be addressing that today.

Q: We know know the BBC spent £400,000 on the documentary from Gaza that was narrated by the son of a Hamas minister. You have asked if any of this money ended up with Hamas. Do you think the Met police should now investigate, because funding a terrorist organisation is an offence?

Badenoch replies:

We know that it is illegal to give money to terrorist organizations. Hamas is a terrorist organization … I think that the BBC certainly needs to investigate and get the evidence for what has or what hasn’t happened, and then the police can make a decision on that.

The final question comes from someone from Policy Exchange, the rightwing thinktank hosting the speech. He asks if Badenoch agrees the BBC is pro-Hamas and anti-Israel.

She replies:

I have always said that it was shocking that the BBC, for a long time, just would not even call Hamas a terrorist organization. We need our primary British news institution to be able to tell the truth. Everything starts from truth, not shying away from it, not hiding from that.

That’s why it’s one of the reasons why I’m calling for an investigation and a review by the BBC, because this latest documentary is just the most recent in a long series of concerns we’ve had about its reporting.

But she also says she is not attacking the BBC as an insititution and she is not saying it is “a terrible organisation”. She says she is just asking for accountability.

Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] Will you start making plans now for leaving the ECHR?

Badenoch says she was setting out principles today in her speech, not policy.

On leaving the ECHR, she says: “Let’s start doing the work to see what can be done.” She says a policy commission she will set up will look at this.

Badenoch says the US is acting in its national interests. The UK needs to do that too.

Asked about the ECHR, Badenoch says:

I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country and what is right in our national interest, and if it continues to do so, at some point, we will probably have to leave.

What I have not agreed with is deciding that we should leave without having a plan for what that looks like and how to do so in a way that makes sense.

Amanda Pritchard has posted a copy of her letter to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, resigning as NHS England chief executive on social media. She says she is going because she accepts it needs “new leadership”.

Kemi Badenoch will be giving a speech shortly on foreign policy. CCHQ released a chunk of extracts overnight, and here are the key points.

• Badenoch will says she is a “conservative realist” on foreign policy. She will say:

Twenty years ago, Irving Kristol talked of a conservative being a liberal mugged by reality. And, on foreign policy, that is exactly what I am: a conservative. Not a cosmopolitan internationalist. Not a supra-nationalist. Not a neo-con. But a conservative realist.

• She will say that the framework for the government’s foreign policy is out of date. She will say:

The United Kingdom must accept reality. No one owes us a living. No process is an end in itself. We can no longer hide behind vapid statements that were, at best, ambitious twenty years ago and are now outright irrelevant.

It is time to speak the truth: the world has changed. And we are not ready.

So, we must change too.

• She will say defence must be the top priority.

The first thing we must define is what we want, and what we must do. A nation state’s primary purpose is to defend its borders, its values and its people. Our national interest is first and foremost to protect our country, to strengthen our country, and to look after ourselves. That means a strong military and a strong economy. That is not a selfish objective. It is realism – because you cannot help others if you cannot help yourself. Strengthening Britain must be the principal objective at the heart of everything we do.

• She will downplay the role of international law, saying that on its own it cannot “keep the peace”.

We must stop being naive about international affairs. We’ve let ourselves be fooled into believing that international law alone can keep the peace. But when faced with a regime with no respect for the law, we need to be realistic.

• She will argue that the UK might have to withdraw from some international bodies “taken over” by activists or autocrats.

We can no longer simply put our trust in international partnerships or supranational institutions as ends in themselves. Where these work for us and deliver in our national interest we will embrace them. Nato remains vital for European defence. We should always prioritise closer trading relationships with open economies, and as a trading nation we need to protect the rules that underpin global commerce.

Where international discussions achieve results, like with the AUKUS Partnership or the CPTPP trade deal, we must support them. But “international law” should not become a tool for NGOs and other critics to seek to advance an activist political agenda through international bodies and our domestic courts. And if international bodies are taken over by activists, or by autocratic regimes like China or Russia, we must use our influence to stop them. And if that fails, we will need to disengage.

• She will say government spending on debt is too high.

And there will be painful decisions on government spending. Any country that spends more interest on its debt than on defence, as the UK does today, is destined for weakness.

Amanda Pritchard is standing down as chief executive of NHS England, in a development that will shock the health service, Denis Campbell reports.

Labour is losing support fastest among voters who feel economically insecure, according to a report urging Keir Starmer to focus on boosting living standards, rather than on culture wars and immigration. Richard Partington has the story.

The Conservatives are accusing Labour of introducing a “copy and paste crime bill”. Explaining the term on Sky News this morning, Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, said:

Of the 35 specific measures in [the crime and policing bill], 21 of them either appeared in our previous criminal justice bill just before the election or we have announced, so of course we will support those measures.

Indeed, the very measure you have just described, the removing the need for a search warrant, we announced that, so I’m delighted that Labour is cutting and pasting from our ideas in order to bring this legislation before parliament, but we will be scrutinising other aspects of the bill.

The crime and policing bill creates 18 new offences, and includes three measures that could lead to people getting longer sentencing for existing offenders. In her interview on the Today programme, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, was asked how this was consistent with the Ministry of Justice’s attempts to limit the use of custodial sentences, because the jails are full.

Cooper said that, although the bill will increase sentencing powers in some areas, like child grooming, other measures in it could reduce the jail population. She said:

There are some of the measures that we think also by taking early prevention action actually can help prevent crimes escalating and can prevent prison sentences.

Asked if the bill would lead to an overall increase in the prison population, Cooper sidestepped the question.

Good morning. Today the government is publishing its crime and policing bill. As the home affairs commentator Danny Shaw explains in a helpful social media summary, it is a “huge and unwieldy” bill, tackling various Labour law and order priorities, as well as a raft of ones that the last Conservative government was planning to legislate for before the election got in the way.

Most of what is in the bill has already been well trailed. As Peter Walker reports, overnight the Home Office has been highlighting the provisions that will allow the police to search properties for stolen phones or other electronically geotagged items without a warrant.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been giving interviews this morning, and on the Today programme she had an uncomfortable moment when asked about crime-related loophole not being tackled by the bill. It has emerged that, even thought the MP Mike Amesbury was yesterday sentenced to 10 weeks in jail for assault, he is still being paid his Commons salary. That is because the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is in charge of paying MPs and it has to keep giving them their money unless they have been suspended or removed from post.

If the Commons standards committee were to consider Amesbury’s case, he almost certainly would be suspended. But the Commons disciplinary process has not kicked in because the criminal justice process has taken precedence, and Amesbury was only sentenced yesterday. He says he will appeal.

Asked how she felt about Amesbury continuing to receive his salary, Cooper argued that he should resign as an MP. She said:

I think the Runcorn constituents deserve better, and we wanted to see a new MP in place as swiftly as possible. We look forward to Runcorn constituents getting the representation that they deserve from a newly elected Labour MP.

When asked specifically if an MP should continue to get paid while in prison, Cooper replied:

I think everything that’s happened is unacceptable here.

When the presenter, Emma Barnett, asked her again whether she was happy about this, Cooper replied:

You’re asking me about parliamentary rules and procedures, which obviously are separate from those that the government runs. They’re separately ones for parliament.

This is a slightly misleading answer. Disciplinary rules for MPs are a matter for parliament. But a government with a large majority can change those rules quite easily. The fact that this has not happened before is a reflection of the fact that in the past MPs sent to jail have tended to resign immediately, avoiding the situation Amesbury is now in.

I will post more from the Cooper interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

10.15am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, speaks at the NFU conference in London. As Helena Horton reports, he will announce a five-year extension of the seasonal farm worker scheme.

10.30am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on foreign policy.

11am: The House of Keys, the Isle of Man’s equivalent of the House of Commons, is due to vote on assisted dying legislation.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Lunchtime: The crime and policing bill is due to be published.

2.30pm: Sir Chris Wormald, the new cabinet secretary, gives evidence to the public administration and constitutional affairs committee.

2.30pm: Senior police officers give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about last year’s summer riots.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.

If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.

I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.