Foreign Office denies minister’s claim the Chagos Islands deal has been paused – as it happened

Members of the Chagossian community in London protesting against the deal. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images

5.30pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius are still on track, the UK government has insisted, after a minister caused confusion by telling MPs that the deal was “paused”.

• Ministers are examining ways to ease the burden of student loans after weeks of pressure over a policy pulling more people into repayments, the Guardian understands.

• Ed Davey has accused a trustee of a learning disability care home of embezzlement and called for watchdogs to take over the charity to resolve a crisis he described as “one my worst nightmares”.

• Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

5.19pm GMT

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham says Reeves should be moved if she does not back multi-billion defence investment

Dan Sabbagh is the Guardian’s defence and security editor.

The head of Britain’s largest trade union demanded that Rachel Reeves be reshuffled or sacked from her job as chancellor if the Treasury continues to hold up a multi-billion defence investment plan.

Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, warned that tens of thousands of jobs were at risk from political dithering and called on ministers to “back British industry,” by signing off on future defence contracts.

She said:

If Rachel Reeves can’t grasp that concept and doesn’t care where things are made, then she should go. Actually, you have to have a vision for Britain. You can’t just be in government, you can’t just say today’s a new day.

She also called on Keir Starmer “to do what he said he would do” in February last year he first promised to increase annual spending on military – to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. Subsequently Starmer promised to increase it further, to 3.5% by 2035 – an extra £30bn in real terms, but few new contracts have followed.

Concerns are most acute for the Leonardo helicopter factory at Yeovil, the sole bidder on a stalled £1bn manufacturing contract. It employs 3,300 people on an average wage of £58,000 a week, but its Italian owner has said it would have to close down unless it was awarded the work before 1 March.

Graham was speaking to the Guardian outside Downing Street where Unite had organised a protest in response to the government’s failure to publish the defence investment plan amid Treasury resistance to its high cost.

“Labour is supposed to be in for workers in the working class. I’m seeing very little evidence of that,” Graham said, arguing that was a problem not just in terms of creating defence jobs but across government.

The defence industrial plan was expected to be published in autumn, and then just before Christmas, but has been delayed to March or April. It is intended to set out funding for £67bn of commitments from last summer’s strategic defence review.

But the Treasury has raised concerns about the affordability of the overall package while the Ministry of Defence has indicated it needs an extra £28bn over the next four years to meet its forecast costs.