Badenoch declines to criticise Jenrick over Reform coalition comments – as it happened

Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch pictured together following her election as Tory leader last year. Photograph: Mina Kim/Reuters

5.45pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Keir Starmer has urged MPs to “lower the temperature” in debating last week’s supreme court ruling on gender, as he was challenged repeatedly on the subject by Kemi Badenoch during prime minister’s questions.

• Robert Jenrick has told a private meeting he will try to ensure that the Tories and Reform do not compete against each other at the next election, saying to do so would hand a second term to Keir Starmer.

• Ministerial-level Ukraine peace talks that were due to take place in London today have been postponed at the last minute amid speculation that Russia is willing to change its position and after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he could not attend.

• Ed Miliband will ban the UK’s national energy company from investing in projects that use solar panels linked to Chinese slave labour after bowing to pressure from Labour and Conservative MPs.

• The government has announced amendments to the planning bill that it says could cut the time needed to build major infrastructure projects by at least year. In a news release explaining the moves, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says:

Burdensome statutory consultation requirements unique to major infrastructure projects will be scrapped, through amendments to the pro-growth planning and infrastructure bill, cutting down the average two-year statutory pre-consultation period by half and paving the way for new roads, railways, and windfarms that will bolster the country’s connectivity and energy security.

5.28pm BST

Socialist party announces death of former Militant Tendency leader Peter Taaffe

Peter Taaffe, a leader of Militant Tendency and for many years general secretary of the Socialist party, has died. He was 83.

Militant were accused of plotting a hard-left takeover of the Labour party in the 1980s, and Taaffe was one of the Militant figures who was expelled from the party, at the start of a long and bitter process that saw Neil Kinnock marginalise the left and commence Labour modernsation.

In a tribute, the Socialist party said:

[Taaffe] will be remembered by many socialists and trade unionists as a determined defender of the exploited and oppressed, a Marxist and Trotskyist leader and theoretician of the working-class movement in Britain and internationally, who made an indispensable contribution.

He will also be remembered by his opponents - not least for his role in the magnificent battle of Liverpool city council in the 1980s whose defeat of Margaret Thatcher left a legacy in thousands of council homes and a programme and strategy to defend working-class communities facing austerity.

His and Militant’s leading role in the 18 million-strong movement which beat the poll tax and brought down the ‘Iron Lady’ will also be carved into the memories of establishment politicians and the big business interests they defend.

The party has published an obituary here.