UK politics: Streeting says he ‘knows what it’s like to feel you have to bury a secret’ amid puberty blockers ban – as it happened

Health secretary Wes Streeting. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

5.45pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Puberty blockers for under-18s with gender dysphoria will be banned indefinitely across the UK except for use in clinical trials, the government has announced.

• Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has indicated that the government will override local objections to the construction of new prisons in England. And in an interview this morning, she also hinted that jury trials could be scrapped for some offenders in England and Wales to reduce court delays. (See 10.56am.)

• Two ministers are to be assigned to the assisted dying bill in a highly unusual move for a private member’s bill where the government is neutral, a sign it will intensely monitor the details of such a significant change.

• Bundling the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords with a wholesale revamp of the unelected chamber has been branded “an excuse for no change” at Westminster, PA Media reports. PA says the warning was issued by Labour former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton in the face of Tory criticism of the plan to boot out bloodline members, which has sparked accusations of broken promises, class war, “guillotines” and “drive-by assassination”. The House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill, which has been through the Commons, will abolish the 92 seats reserved for members of the upper chamber who are there by right of birth. Speaking during an extended second reading debate on the bill, Lord Falconer told peers:

It is said that the removal of the hereditaries should await all the other changes which should occur to this House. History tells us that that is an excuse for no change. The principle is established the hereditaries should go, it is right. It was the only immediate change promised in the manifesto, we should act.

• Asylum seekers will be housed in disused care homes and student digs under a Home Office plan to find 800 new accommodation sites and cut a bill that has risen to £5.5m a day.

• Soaring private rents, rising evictions and a chronic lack of affordable social housing have led to homelessness in England increasing by 14%, research from Shelter reveals.

Updated at 9.50pm GMT

5.35pm GMT

Two government ministers to sit on assisted dying bill committee

Two government ministers in favour of assisted dying will sit on the 23-member committee set to scrutinise a bill to legalise it, PA Media reports. Care minister Stephen Kinnock and justice minister Sarah Sackman will take a line-by-line look at the proposed legislation alongside voices of opposition including Conservative MP Danny Kruger.

Politco has the full list of MPs on the bill committee in its London Playbook PM briefing.

FOR (with the disclaimer that some are conditional): Bill author and Labour MP Kim Leadbeater …Health Minister Stephen Kinnock …Justice Minister Sarah Sackman … Labour MPs Bambos Charalambous, Marie Tidball, Simon Opher, Jake Richards, Rachel Hopkins and Lewis Atkinson … Tory MPs Kit Malthouse and Neil Shastri-Hurst … Lib Dem MPs Sarah Green and Tom Gordon … and Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader Liz Saville-Roberts.

AGAINST: Labour MPs Naz Shah, Juliet Campbell, Daniel Francis, Sojan Joseph, Jack Abbott and Sean Woodcock … Tory MPs Danny Kruger and Rebecca Paul …and Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney.